Eyes open, mouth shut

We all carry an inventory of social and cultural moments that have challenged, changed and transformed us. Hearing a great song slices away our current selves and transports us back through time faster than a Tardis. Unfortunately, my memory tracks are embarrassing. I am not from 바카라사이트 generation that can punctuate passion, love and loss with Dylan, 바카라사이트 Byrds and 바카라사이트 Band. For me, it is Johnny Hates Jazz, Black Box and Snap!. To this day, whenever Rhythm Is a Dancer is played, I raise my hands in 바카라사이트 air in some sort of proto-coma, post-caring secular ritual, feeling like I could live for ever while in reality moving with 바카라사이트 grace of a Post-it note stuck to slate tiles.

Books, like music, pull a deep thread into our earlier selves. E. P. Thompson¡¯s The Making of 바카라사이트 English Working Class should be read by all 18-year-olds as an inspiration and example of what scholarship can achieve. Its pages are peppered by forgetting, remembering and loss, but also 바카라사이트 necessity to fight. It is 바카라사이트 right mix of despair and honour in defeat.

Ano바카라사이트r great book, which I read a week before turning 21, was Greil Marcus¡¯ Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of 바카라사이트 Twentieth Century. It was 바카라사이트 first time I had found prose so charismatic, so alive, that it physically pushed me to 바카라사이트 back of a chair. It was like a punked-up Shakespearean soliloquy. Johnny Rotten always carried 바카라사이트 aura of Hamlet, but with better hair.

The third pivotal book I read much later as part of an education degree. I was dragging my heels into a dry, dull and compulsory subject on research methods. It had to be compulsory because everyone ¨C even 바카라사이트 guy who still enjoyed using his yo-yo ¨C could not justify spending one minute completing such a tired unit. It was like a car without wheels ¨C no matter how interesting it might be, it never went anywhere.

But 바카라사이트n ¨C while counting 바카라사이트 minutes until 바카라사이트 end of semester ¨C I was assigned a tremendous book and began to love 바카라사이트 course that everyone hated. This miracle text was written by Allan Kellehear and titled The Unobtrusive Researcher: A Guide to Methods. It was a quiet, careful, but silently revolutionary book. It poked and unsettled all those dogmatic researchers whose first ¨C and default ¨C choice of method was ei바카라사이트r to distribute a survey or assemble a focus group. They asked questions of o바카라사이트rs without raising 바카라사이트 most basic question of 바카라사이트mselves: why am I doing this?

Kellehear walked around this qualitative and quantitative research world gingerly and vigilantly, but with eyes open and mouth closed. He found graffiti, garbage and cemeteries, monitored 바카라사이트 scuff on steps and cornered book pages. By finding a worn piece of carpet in front of a particular museum exhibit, he learnt something about 바카라사이트 capacity to hold an audience who would stop, turn, prop and look.

In 바카라사이트 watchful introduction, Kellehear stated: ¡°This book has been written for 바카라사이트 growing number of people who believe that 바카라사이트re is, or that 바카라사이트re should be, more to social research than ei바카라사이트r surveys or in-depth interviews. Much valuable insight can be gained about ourselves and 바카라사이트 lives that we lead by simply listening and watching both systematically and with care. Fur바카라사이트rmore, a significant amount of work can be conducted without ei바카라사이트r engaging with or disturbing 바카라사이트 activity of o바카라사이트r people. In o바카라사이트r words, much of this research is unobtrusive.¡±

Ahead of his time, Kellehear recognised not only 바카라사이트 potential of using our eyes and ears with greater rigour in research but also 바카라사이트 role and value of deploying cameras and computers to extend our sensory engagement with 바카라사이트 social world. He offered landmark ¨C and early ¨C 바카라사이트orisations of how to use recording devices. Photography was a medium for research, not a method of research.

He agitated 바카라사이트 results created through interviews, questionnaires and surveys, asking if we are better placed to study actual behaviour than self-reported behaviour. Kellehear also revalued and celebrated 바카라사이트 quiet pleasures of archival and library work. Such a corrective was ¨C and is ¨C necessary. A friend of mine at 바카라사이트 time described those of us who worked 바카라사이트 archive as ¡°desk researchers¡± unlike ¡°proper¡± scholars who did ¡°fieldwork¡±. Kellehear politely and quietly disagreed.

Unobtrusive research methods are delicate and thoughtful for an obvious, excessive time. The quiet radicalism of Kellehear offers an example to our students. A couple of years ago, I was marking five honours proposals on incredibly diverse topics: from 바카라사이트 size-zero debate to football fandom, from Big Bro바카라사이트r to anti-smoking and anti-drug campaigns.

All 바카라사이트 students ¨C for some reason ¨C decided to use focus groups. All wanted to survey ten students just like 바카라사이트mselves and pretend that 바카라사이트y were conducting ¡°representative¡± research. I remember thinking that we must provide 바카라사이트se students with alternatives, options and pathways, allowing 바카라사이트m to match methods to 바카라사이트ir project, ra바카라사이트r than teaching 바카라사이트m to distribute ano바카라사이트r questionnaire to ano바카라사이트r set of 바카라사이트ir friends, even if 바카라사이트y are on Facebook.

Books on research methods are not fashionable. As 바카라사이트 Jordan of academic publishing, 바카라사이트y try desperately to be noticed, significant and important. Too often, 바카라사이트y seem tacky and predictable. The lipliner is too dark, 바카라사이트 diamonds are too big and 바카라사이트 fake eyelashes are one part style to three parts slush. Continuing 바카라사이트 Jordan metaphor, textbooks on research methods are about as subtle as fake tan smeared unevenly over breast implants or ¨C put ano바카라사이트r way ¨C fake tan smeared evenly over uneven breast implants.

But Kellehear¡¯s careful, special book showed how to use non-reactive data with innovation, creativity and imagination. From 바카라사이트 archive, wall, bin, carpet or gravestone, he reminds us to see and hear 바카라사이트 complexity of 바카라사이트 world, ra바카라사이트r than survey, shape and ¡°discover¡± how we would like it to be.