Method and Methodology

Name: Baraiya Bhavna P.

Roll No: 03

Sem: 02

Paper: Cultural Studies

Topic: Method and Methodology

Method

And

Methodology

        Method is the technique employed by the researcher to frame questions, collect and organize data. Thus ‘method’ refers to the actual fieldwork, questionnaires, databases, identifying sources.

           Methodology refers to the political position and the interpretive strategies used by the researcher. This refers to the epistemological approach, and concerns the philosophical, political approach of the researcher; where she scrutinizes her own interpret the data collected.

For example:

                     If you are studying representations of women in popular Hindi films, the first step in method would be…

·       To organize the questions to be asked

·       To take decisions about the people to interview (age group, class composition, language)

·       To prepare the questions

·       To conduct the interview

 The methodology would include

·       Identifying your own ideology (Marxist, feminist)

·       Reflecting on your experiences before framing the questions

·       Interpreting the data collected based on your assumptions

              Cultural Studies, as we know, is about power and studies how power informs all acts of cultural production and meaning generation. It is therefore important to realize the positions the researcher and object occupy and the power relations between them.

              Cultural Studies has a set of warnings that we need to keep in mind in any analysis of culture:

·       What gives us (academics, researchers) the authority to use people as resource material to study their culture?

·       What is the relationship between knower (researcher) and the known (object of the study)?

·       What is the location from which the researcher is asking the question the analysis?

In most cases of rigorous Cultural Studies, the researcher isolates her own locations and politics while analyzing culture. This means, the researcher has to be conscious of the ‘vantage point’ from which she is making the observations and interpretations. This is termed ‘reflexivity’ in social and critical theory, where the researcher reflects on her own position.

If for instance…,

                     I am exploring the culture of cyber technology in India, I need to identify my own position with regard to the ‘subject’ I am observing upper-caste, internally diasporic, metropolitan, male, middle-career academic with the humanities at an elite university with a fairly decent infrastructure. From this position and informed by the politics of my location, I observe cybercafés, rural e-governance and a digital divide from my friends in First World universities, but who feels that the younger generation uses technology much better than I ever can! This reflexivity opens up my observation and agenda. How do I see myself as a knowledge-producer, critic or commentator in relation to and with the subjects I study?  Does being an academic lend more authority’ to what I say or ask? What is the validity of my knowledge or observation? This set of questions is central to the politics of research itself.

                Cultural Studies in the Euro-American contexts, especially those from a feminist perspective, often connects empirical data and theorizing about this data with a wider feminist politics in the public realm. Thus, feminist studies of film audiences link the representation of women in film media with larger issues of gender inequality in society. This is crucial because one of the basic assumptions of Cultural Studies is that cultural artifacts can not be studied independent of the social and material contexts. Representations of women in films therefore are located in actual contexts of gender oppression, domestic violence, patriarchal family structures and economic inequalities of the genders.

      Two factors have to be kept in mind:

·       The study should draw upon as large a number of ‘sources’ for it to have any value.

·       It should be, if possible, spread out over a period of time and contexts, if we need to make a generalized statement about cultural practices.

  Commentators like John Fiske (1996) have argued that the old-fashioned mode of ethnography, where the researcher immerses’ her in the culture being studied is unnecessary because we mostly study our own cultures now. Further Culture Studies is more interested in the way meanings are made and t5he discourses within these are made. This involves study of the processes of representation and ‘texts, seeing these as instrumental in the construction of identity. That is, Cultural Studies investigates, intensively, the production of meaning rather than involving itself in extended observation. The ides is not to merely accumulate data- though such descriptions are valuable but to ask question of epistemology and politics of the data that has been produced.

       The recording of experience is, as we shall see, the cornerstone of all Cultural Studies. Following Ann Gray (2003) three propositions can be set out here:

·       Identifying what is knowable

·       Identifying and acknowledge the relationship of the knower and the known

·       What is the procedure for ‘knowing’?

This requires formulating the structure of the case study’. The ‘case study’ is a limited bounded system which is under observation of particular phenomena.