Dear Lubomir,
Maria and Dick are right. Good research involves first-hand engagement.
Faithful engagement with the obdurate nature of reality requires us
to step up and look for ourselves. Careful and rigorous research
requires attention to empirical reality as well as theoretical
clarity.
For some kinds of research, theory or axiomatic data may be enough.
This is so for all fields based solely on logic. For certain kinds of
natural science, analysis of data is enough. For others,
meta-analysis of aggregate data suffices. Most science requires
direct empirical observation.
Research involving the world of living human beings requires human
engagement. My mixed background includes work in human behavior,
anthropology, and sociology. The notion of "going native" would not
make sense to my professors. It would not have occurred to the great
scholars on whose work we drew.
The father of a distinguished anthropology professor made career
choices that you would have probably called "going native." So did
the professor. This gave them deep understanding and personal
commitment. Their work had an intellectual edge and moral fiber
because of it.
Those who work across cultures gain everything by entering into the
life of the cultures they study. As long as a scientist remains
intellectually honest, willing to observe with a sense of reasonable
realism, and able to report honestly what is seen, deep engagement
brings added value to the work.
Deep reading and robust theory construction are important to science.
Deep reading is PART of the work, not the whole.
In many areas of design research, our encounter with the physical
world provides the decisive information we require for sound findings.
Great theorists and first-rate methodologists insist on direct
engagement. Herbert Blumer (1969: 21-22) writes, "an empirical
science presupposes the existence of an empirical world. Such an
empirical world exists as something available to us for observation,
study, and analysis. It stands over against the scientific observer,
with a charter that has to be dug out and established through
observation, study, and analysis. This empirical world must forever
be the central point of concern. It is the point of departure and the
point of return in the case of empirical science. It is the testing
ground for any assertions made about the empirical world. 'Reality'
for empirical science exists only in the empirical world. Can be
sought only there, and can be verified only there."
In every field of science that engages human beings, those who
interact with and learn from human subjects do better work than those
who affect inappropriate distance. Human beings are "subjects of
research" rather than "objects of inquiry" because each human being
is an independent and free agent. Each is the subject and center of
his or her own life.
To learn what independent subjects feel, know, believe, and do, we
must meet them and work with them. The nature and structure of the
meeting depends on many issues. Whatever the specific issues, those
who work in human-centered fields must work with human beings to do
serious science.
The far of "going native" does not worry me. Quite the contrary, I
worry about the findings of scientists who avoid human beings for
fear of "going native,"
Euclid, Euler, and Einstein could work without human contact.
Bateson, Maslow, Senge, or Schon could not.
-- Ken Friedman
Reference
Blumer, Herbert. 1969. Symbolic Interactionism. Perspective and
Method. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
|