Epistemology and research methods

I almost have to post this, because I went on a rant in IRC about the breakdown of research methods across disciplines leading to reinventing the wheel. I am just going to paste the logs because oh god, why not. I changed two usernames because I’m weird and care about privacy on the internet, sometimes. I also fixed one typo, though it was in no way a meaningful typo.

12:26:59 AM <redacted1>: morbidflight: coding?
12:27:11 AM morbidflight: qualitative data, not programming
12:27:12 AM morbidflight: like
12:27:23 AM <redacted2>: night
12:27:24 AM morbidflight: creating a theoretical framework within which to analyze said messy qual data
12:27:27 AM morbidflight: night <redacted2>
12:27:38 AM morbidflight: but doing it from a bunch of reading and categorizing
12:27:46 AM morbidflight: it’s honestly a pretty similar task to classification in general
12:28:21 AM morbidflight: although, and we’ve talked about this before, qualitative researchers don’t tend to talk to the kinds of people who are trained in classification and so that task gets seen as bitch work while coding and qualitative analysis in general is seen as this high-level thing
12:28:40 AM morbidflight: anyway i have a grudge against that because any ontological construct is high-level work and should be recognized as such
12:28:59 AM morbidflight: and understanding the similarities in said work can help ethnographers et al. learn to manage their task in a different way
12:29:00 AM morbidflight: etc
12:29:31 AM morbidflight: yet another example of the segmentation of academic work leading to breakdowns in potential communication and collaboration
12:29:48 AM morbidflight: i mean imagine if you had a hardcore taxonomist on every anthropological team that worked with qual data
12:29:51 AM morbidflight: that’d be pretty swanky
12:30:05 AM morbidflight: i mean you’d have to argue with them about the fundamental principles of organizing knowledge but hey
12:30:14 AM morbidflight: epistemology amirite
12:30:40 AM morbidflight: itt: i care too much about research methods

A long-standing issue of mine is that I see a lot of great theoretical work being done in libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions, and by the people who study them. This work often engages with larger topical debates, such as the entire field of digital humanities (I mean seriously, who other than an information professional are you going to talk to about creating an accessible web-based database of digitized texts?), and yet these larger debates treat this work as “infrastructure” or “the help.” NOT TO MENTION the often gendered breakdown of this labor. I didn’t use the term “bitch work” lightly, above.

On that note, have a look at this article from a few weeks ago that I tweeted on June 6. Infrastructure is what makes it all possible.

Productivity and motivation

I am setting myself up for failure with a title like that, but I’m going to go ahead and try this anyway. I want to get back in the habit of blogging once a week (Fridays, probably). I know today is Sunday, but shhh. The reason why I want to do this is because it’s not just blogging I need to get reaccustomed to, it’s writing. I find it difficult to write when I don’t have pressing deadlines, and yet writing is fundamental to how I understand the world. I dislike complacency but I enjoy laziness.

How can I reconcile these? Pretty much, by forcing myself to write. So welcome to this vaguely forced post.

Here’s a bit of backstory for you, dear reader. I’ve had reason in the past few months to be around people/friends/etc. who feel stagnant in their lives. Friends who want to live their dreams but feel unable to support that. Friends who tried to live their dreams but didn’t make it (yet, I hope). Friends who don’t know what their dreams are (again, yet, I hope). In the midst of all of this, I feel simultaneously lucky and ungrateful, because I’ve been given plenty of opportunities to live my dreams and plenty of support, but I also don’t know how to pass on my luck. I feel like this about a lot of things, to be honest, which I think is how I deal with privilege in general: acknowledge my luck, and try to make a zone of luck around me for other people. (Smash the kyriarchy.)

I’m not yet in a position within the hallowed walls of academia (lol) to make such a zone for my colleagues, but I can try to get there. I can start by observing, by thinking, and by writing down my thoughts. I can start by standing up for things like anti-harassment policies (a recent example, though not the only kind of privilege I mean). But mostly I can start by remembering that everything I do, I do for myself and for others.