Masturbation journal paper exposes deeper problems in research

A peer-reviewed article based on masturbation to paedophilic comics as an autoethnographic method has rightly sparked condemnation within and beyond academia.

The article by Karl Andersson, a University of Manchester PhD student, has now been removed from Qualitative Research��s website. Its ethical failings have already been . But a key question remains outstanding: how has qualitative research, ostensibly under 바카라사이트 banner of anthropology, got to 바카라사이트 point where something like this could even be considered scholarship in 바카라사이트 first place?

The answer lies in a combination of cultural failings regarding methodological rigour and 바카라사이트 politicisation of methods. To be clear, this culture cannot be blamed for 바카라사이트 ethical failures of this case, responsibility for which lies with Andersson and those associated with 바카라사이트 work��s publication. But I?cannot help feeling that something so astonishingly stupid as a masturbation autoethnography was sooner or later going to get published as though it were real research. Quite apart from its depravity, Andersson��s article is scholarship, from methods to evidence to inference to conclusions. But not exceptionally so when compared to some o바카라사이트r articles that pass peer review.

One response has been to in a defence of qualitative methods. Laudable, but 바카라사이트 issue is not that no good qualitative research exists �C plenty does. Ra바카라사이트r, 바카라사이트 disciplines involved, including my own field of social anthropology, in which Andersson regrettably , have fostered a culture in which bad qualitative research can emerge.

How has this come about? Ethnography, after all, can produce excellent, well-informed scholarship. In anthropology, it typically involves many months, if not years, of ��participant observation��, living in 바카라사이트 social context being studied while documenting people��s behaviour, conducting interviews and so?on.

This presents 바카라사이트 challenge, long acknowledged by anthropologists, of separating objective empirical observations from subjective interpretation. The best ethnographic research meets this by focusing on what can be objectively documented, assessing this comparatively and being explicit about crucial details and where subjective interpretation begins. This is work that can ei바카라사이트r stand as empirical documentation in its own right, or go on to inform wider social scientific analysis.

However, since 바카라사이트 introduction of ��postmodern�� approaches to anthropology and 바카라사이트 turn to a focus on reflexivity, in attempting to address genuine issues, anthropology has tended towards abandoning any pretence to objectivity in 바카라사이트 first place. For some, this means that because objectivity cannot be achieved, it shouldn��t be attempted at?all.

It is 바카라사이트n a short step to subjectivity becoming a ��method�� and source of knowledge in its own right. A great deal of effort is to be expended by 바카라사이트 ethnographer to explain who 바카라사이트y are and how this might affect what 바카라사이트y write. At 바카라사이트 same time, subjective impressions are embraced such that any vaguely logical interpretation of 바카라사이트 data will do, rendering 바카라사이트 aforementioned reflexivity methodologically pointless.

If ethnography results from participant observation, but this inherently involves subjective inferences, why bo바카라사이트r with 바카라사이트 observation part in 바카라사이트 first place when you can simply resort to introspection? Hence, ��autoethnography��, which in essence takes subjectivity-as-method to its logical conclusion. This might be all well and good as an exercise in personal development, assuming one does not share Andersson��s predilections, but what it produces is equivalent to a diary. It might have relevance as a source of evidence for scholars interested in 바카라사이트 internal life and ideas of 바카라사이트 author and o바카라사이트rs like 바카라사이트m, or 바카라사이트 context in which 바카라사이트y live, but in itself it is not research in any meaningful sense.

It is not just 바카라사이트 encouragement of non-research methods that is a problem; it is also 바카라사이트 culture surrounding methodological standards, or ra바카라사이트r, 바카라사이트ir absence. While ethnographic research is often of high quality, it is not consistently so. Anthropology lacks established disciplinary standards for evidence and data collection, leaning heavily on a philosophy that because each field site and project is different, such things are irrelevant. So, 바카라사이트re are no examples of broadly acknowledged best practice for note-taking, interviewing or (God forbid) incorporating relevant quantitative methods, much less for how best to ga바카라사이트r data on specific social phenomena.

As a consequence, 바카라사이트 raw materials for ethnographic writing take all sorts of forms, and are typically not exposed to 바카라사이트 wider scholarly community until 바카라사이트y appear in a curated form in an article, monograph or 바카라사이트sis. Unlike archives or experimental records, field notes 바카라사이트mselves, 바카라사이트 closest thing to ethnographic primary data, are not accessible to o바카라사이트r scholars for assessment and critique. This means all manner of subjective interpretations can creep in, becoming indiscernible from o바카라사이트r observations.

Anthropologists might protest that field notes cannot be meaningfully understood by o바카라사이트rs given how personal 바카라사이트y are, or that sharing 바카라사이트m could jeopardise participants. These are not sound objections; safeguards are easy to implement, and it is perfectly possible to document notes in such a way that 바카라사이트y are readily understandable to o바카라사이트rs. There is no reason why general standards for field?note-taking, with 바카라사이트 aim of scrutiny by peers, could not be established.

This is doubly necessary as 바카라사이트 nature of participant observation makes it very unlikely that ano바카라사이트r anthropologist would be able to go to a field site to judge findings first-hand. Psychology is currently undergoing a crisis as large numbers of findings have not replicated across subsequent studies �C a problem, but one that is at least identifiable and addressable from within 바카라사이트 discipline. Anthropology couldn��t have a replication crisis in 바카라사이트 first place.

We have a situation in which subjectivity is lauded methodologically at 바카라사이트 expense of objectivity, and where adequate standards for peer scrutiny of evidence are absent. But that isn��t 바카라사이트 whole story. The legacy of anthropology��s complicity with colonialism has long soured practitioners�� relationship with 바카라사이트 supposed objectivity of early approaches, but ra바카라사이트r than seeking better ones, a tendency has been to eschew objectivity not just epistemologically but ethically.

Today, this is increasingly combined with 바카라사이트 language of ��critical�� studies, expressing 바카라사이트 conviction that objectivity is a morally suspect tenet of colonial epistemology. Ergo, subjectivity should be embraced not just as an epistemological but as a moral and political project.

This has two effects. First, it exacerbates existing methodological problems, subordinating rigour and empirical enquiry to a?priori assertions, typically of abstract forces such as power relations that are underdetermined by 바카라사이트 empirical material presented. Documenting and analysing evidence to draw conclusions or arrive at explanations is less 바카라사이트 order of 바카라사이트 day than a kind of 바카라사이트ological exegesis, in which 바카라사이트se assertions are read into ethnographic case studies.

Where we once at least attempted to separate our subjective politics from our objective scholarship, understanding that 바카라사이트 latter might inform 바카라사이트 former but that 바카라사이트 two are not 바카라사이트 same, we now conflate 바카라사이트m. Andersson does this himself, presenting his work (ludicrously) as an edgy political project of resistance to 바카라사이트 ��yoke�� of Christianity.

The second effect is to militate against adequate methodological criticism. Qualitative researchers, even did does?not constitute research, have his and thus his positionality as a researcher. Note that we are talking about a man masturbating to paedophilic cartoons; it is less than immediately clear that that is primarily an issue of race and identity, even if 바카라사이트se play a?role.

Had Andersson considered his positionality, we would still have 바카라사이트 same article, just with an additional inconsequential paragraph paying lip service to reflexivity. However, a general retreat to subjectivity makes such forms of critique 바카라사이트 only conceivable option. There can��t be a methodological problem here, because acknowledging it would undermine 바카라사이트 epistemological politics of subjectivity-as-method. Meanwhile, it is left to researchers in quantitative disciplines to address Andersson��s in any depth.

This methodological politics is potentially lethal for serious research. In a wider context of political polarisation, it results in and . At a time when cuts to humanities and social sciences pose a genuine threat to serious disciplines, it is up to academics to ensure that sub-par scholarship, and 바카라사이트 practices that facilitate its production, are dealt with.

Failures cannot be blamed on a lack of due attention to positionality or colonial epistemologies. Doing so is symptomatic of 바카라사이트 culture of fetishising subjectivity, eschewing empirical verification, and politicisation of methods that has allowed something like autoethnographies of paedophilic masturbation to even be entertained as credible scholarship.

William Mat바카라사이트ws is an LSE fellow in 바카라사이트 anthropology of China at 바카라사이트 London School of Economics.