Secrecy and Methods in Security Research: A Guide to Qualitative Fieldwork by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367027247
Google: 8BF3uwEACAAJ
Amazon: B07S3WT1KN
Barnesnoble: B07S3WT1KN
Goodreads: 48561716
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-08-27T00:00:00+00:00

Such a commitment to openness in our research encounters would also open up new forms of critique and resistance, what Rech et al. (2015: 56) call “engaged critique.” This mode of engaged critique can take different forms. One way is to actively look for and allow for alternative voices in our research. As Basham and Bulmer (2017: 68) write in the context of their work on militarism, an engaged form of critique “necessarily means letting go of our comfortable beliefs that we already know who is resisting, and how they are doing it, and being brave enough to remain open to alternative possibilities from people and places we least expect.” Such alternative voices and possibilities may come from veterans, as some authors in critical military studies have suggested (see e.g. Bulmer and Jackson 2015), but also from ‘whistleblowers,’ or from dissident or alternative voices in the security industry, as my example in the above illustrates. The point is that we should not simply presume that the researcher has the sole claim to critique. Rather, the people who we engage in the research process “have their own critical capacities which they use to reflect on their experiences” (Basham and Bulmer 2017: 68). We should engage these potentialities for critique more explicitly in our research designs and when conducting and writing up our research.

Another way in which we can practice a different and more engaged form of critique is by acknowledging more explicitly, as feminist research encourages us to do, the ways in which we, as researchers, intervene in social and political processes when we conduct our research. Sarah Bulmer discusses in an article by Baker et al. (2016: 148–150) how in the process of her research she began to think differently about her own role as interviewer. She explains:

I realized that in asking questions about gender and sexuality I was reproducing the very discourse and subjectivities I wanted to change (…). I sought to actively destabilize the gendered terms I was using in my asking of certain questions and in gently challenging my interviewees on some of their responses.

(ibid.: 148)

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