Month: December 2020

Research design, what even is that?

Angus Bancroft/ / Teaching

… structured, rigorous curiosity

Also guess who’s convening the Research Design course come the semester start.

A challenge in teaching or being taught research design is talking directly about what research design is as a general topic. We can point to specific design types (experiment, ethnography, etc) but it is harder to talk about design as a generalised practice. Which is funny because everyone does it, everyone generates design. Discussions often default to talk of method or research paradigms. Both are part of design but are not it. That is a bit of a failure as we live in a research design world so it would be good to know about it. Digital platforms are massive ongoing experiments on their users using a/b testing. Cambridge analytica was reported as ‘data harvesting’ firm but it’s really a research design business model which categorises voters by how they can be influenced.

Here’s my go: The research design is the concrete, tangible form of your theory/hypotheses. It plots the relationship between the empirical and conceptual elements – the construct and the underlying, tangible reality. It anticipates and storyboards your research plan. Research design is organised around a set of principles which produce enquiry. It informs the research work plan. It organises the resources you need. It sets out success/failure conditions. It tells you whether failure is catastrophic or recoverable.

You know you need a research design when you answer any question about how you are doing your research with an answer about quals or quants. ‘Qualitative’ is not an answer to a question about the kind of research you do. Lots of researchers think that saying ‘they are using qualitative methods’ is a way of answering or rather bypassing tricky questions of ontology, epistemology, hypothesis generation, design, validity and. Qualitative isn’t a methodology, and in any case does not supply an answer to any of these questions. Neither does ‘investigatory’, ‘exploratory’ or ‘study’ anything. Scrub these lazy, meaningless words from your vocabulary. Physicists don’t say they are ‘scienceing’ some topic. Blaikie and Priest (2019) set out the different logics that drive different research designs. Reading them again was very useful for in distinguishing the research logic (the type of inquiry) from the research paradigm (the stuff about positivism, standpoint, intersectionality etc) and how these interrelate. They nest logic, then ontology, epistemology and paradgim. Frequently researchers play it with paradigm, then epistemology, logic and finally ontology.

People often start with the paradigm before they’ve thought out the logic – not their fault, it’s a result of the fealty made by some of us to a paradigm. That is a logical error.  There can be every reason to take a feminist approach to a topic but there is no logical reason why that would define one’s research programme. It turns out that way just because we tend to examine lots of the same kind of stuff. The reverse holds true and that opens up interesting possibilities for researchers selecting paradigms they would not normally consider while formulating their research aims.

Blaikie N and Priest J (2019) Designing Social Research: The Logic of Anticipation. Newark, UNITED KINGDOM: Polity Press. Available at: http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ed/detail.action?docID=5638724 (accessed 19 December 2020).

The illicit gift and the offer you cannot refuse

Angus Bancroft/ / Research

The Gift by Marcel Mauss is one of the most profound essays in sociology and anthropology. Mauss was interested in what happened between people, as that is where the social can be found. The structured obligation of the gift is a recurring act. Seen ‘in totality’ as Mass put it, the gift affirms and reproduces cultural values, social relationships and hierarchies. The millions of gift giving acts that take place each day throughout the world are unremarked other than between giver and receiver. Yet these acts bind and symbolise social relationships. They are systems of ethics, resource distribution, status maintenance, and conflict play.

Mauss implies (or Evans-Pritchard interprets in the intro to the 1966 edition) that there is a fundamental difference in the gift exchange between ‘archaic’ and modern societies. Modern economies have substituted a secular, instrumental exchange for the previous thicket of moral-ethical universes. He leaves open the question of whether the instrumental exchange is another type of generalised human moral exchange or is distinct in belonging entirely to the mechanical realm. I put my money on the former, though it does have unique characteristics. Anthropological data shows societies where instrumental necessities are exchanged using non-monetary, non rational means.

Exchange in the marketplace is every bit an invocation of morality and principles of the social system. We can tell that when the rules start to be broken. The reaction is not as one might expect to an instrumental error but a moral breach. As Douglas points out in her foreword to the 2002 edition the distinction creates the category of charity, giving without expectation of reciprocity. A free gift is doled out without social ties between giver and given to. It is a calculated insult, a power play, or worst of all, beneficent pity. Hence the meaningless ‘thank you’ given in return. A gift that is given in expectation or obligation of reciprocity is something else: it is an opportunity for action and solidarity. It presents a challenge to honour to be met. It is creative and socially binding.

Just a quick pro-tip for students here: referring to the subtle differences between two or more different editions of a classic gives you ultimate nerd points with us.

Dr. Masson and myself (Masson and Bancroft, 2018) examined some aspects of reciprocity at work in illicit markets. I want to recap this a little and examine how it applies in more explicit gifting contexts with illicit drugs. We used Parry and Bloch’s (1989) morality of exchange to show how illicit exchanges involved a moral accounting among their members. These elements of obligation to a wider ideal of the illicit market ecosystem helped maintain the resilience of drug markets in the face of a fragile infrastructure.  There are more coercive examples of the offer that binds as examined in the use of credit by drug dealers (Moeller and Sandberg 2017). Higher level dealers use partial debt forgiveness as a way of maintaining control over lower level dealers. In other environments drug users employ micro-exchanges of opiates to maintain a persistent gift economy which maintains a degree of solidarity in otherwise highly atomised and unforgiving surroundings. That can extend to a more generalised reciprocity which does not rely on dyadic exchange. As we said in the article, none of this is necessarily ‘nice’. Gifting can go along with aggression, exploitation and intimidation.

Masson K and Bancroft A (2018) ‘Nice people doing shady things’: Drugs and the morality of exchange in the darknet cryptomarkets. International Journal of Drug Policy 58: 78–84. DOI: 10.1016/j.drugpo.2018.05.008.

Mauss M (1966) The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. Cohen and West.

Mauss M (2002) The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. Routledge classics. London: Routledge.

Moeller K and Sandberg S (2017) Debts and Threats: Managing Inability to Repay Credits in Illicit Drug Distribution. Justice Quarterly 34(2): 272–296. DOI: 10.1080/07418825.2016.1162321.

Parry, J., & Bloch, M. (1989). Money and the morality of exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

The real steal

Angus Bancroft/ / Research

In what sense is crime a coherent action category? There is the positivist sense that there is a state defined category of human action that justifies coercive control and we can leave it at that. That approach leads us up some blind alleys as key terms such as human trafficking are then left undefined, or default to a limited reading of the law. As far as the illicit is considered it’s either a problem of governance, or a dark zone that exists when the state withdraws or lacks the competence to govern it. Critical researchers do not take categories as given and just accept that such and such an act is a crime in the terms and the way defined by the state and society. We should take the existence of these categories seriously as they have significant effects. We also need to delve into the naturalness of them. If they link in fundamental ways to survival strategies and environmental adaption then we’re in a little bit of trouble. Or at least those of you who think humanity is perfectible are. If they link in fundamental ways to the social order then we are in another kind of trouble.

There is some evidence of crime as naturally occurring category. Monkeys in field experiments and in the wild steal from tourists and the researchers who study them, using well worked out plans to do so. In one study of gangs of macaques at Uluwatu Temple, Bali, Indonesia, the monkeys were observed to systematically take items from tourists and then ‘sell’ them back in return for food (Brotcorne et al 2017, 2020). Brotcorne et al measure the rob/barter (RB) rate. It is a form of forced exchange or racketeering by the macaques. RB intensified in groups that were numerically more male dominated. The monkeys must be able to identify the specific tourists they have stolen from in order to extort food. The RB process is a set crime script. Take a non-edible item – presumably as edible items are secured by the forwarned tourist and the non edible ones are less defended – squirrel away and then reappear with it to barter.  Routine activities theory would frame this as offender, target, and absent guardian. Social learning among the macaque is key to honing this behaviour, avoiding numbing brute force hacks.

From that it can be deduced that crime is a competitive behavioural adaption, one that emerges in symbiotic human/animal cultures with certain characteristics. It is not wholly anti-social. It demonstrates and uses ingenuity, organisation, adaptation, and innovation. It socially involved as the macaques steal from and sell to us, recognising how much the category of inalienable property matters to the humans. Whether or not the macaques in some sense recognise the concept of private property, it exists as a category they can usefully act towards. The know some of the rules and exploit them.

There are many other ways in which crime can be fundamentally embedded in a setting. If in a community the only way to secure status is through crime; if social cohesion relies on gang influence; if social order relies on the underworld;  if an economy relies on a supply of illicit labour; if it depends on minerals produced in defiance of environmental regulations; if the most productive and highly capitalised sector of the economy ignores regulatory compliance; if survival depends on it, we can talk of crime as fundamental and necessary. This moves our focus beyond the ‘dark zone’. At one time symbolic interactionist sociologists thought people became labelled as deviant and adopted a deviant identity. Crime existed in the left over grey spaces of the licit world. Now, we see crime designed into systems, and crime that creates its own context, its own technology and architecture. Technical and social networks are crucial to the development of criminal capacity to organise effectively. The capacity to create hybrid systems in terms of state-crime relations, legal-illegal and organisational-platform/infrastructure is crucial. Like the macaques, social learning makes crime systems rapidly adaptive and resilient.

Brotcorne F, Giraud G, Gunst N, et al. (2017) Intergroup variation in robbing and bartering by long-tailed macaques at Uluwatu Temple (Bali, Indonesia). Primates 58(4): 505–516. DOI: 10.1007/s10329-017-0611-1.
Brotcorne F, Holzner A, Jorge-Sales L, et al. (2020) Social influence on the expression of robbing and bartering behaviours in Balinese long-tailed macaques. Animal Cognition 23(2): 311–326. DOI: 10.1007/s10071-019-01335-5.

I know you don’t want to talk about ontology so I plan to make you

Angus Bancroft/ / Teaching

Ontology and epistemology are two dimensions of research that are easily despatched in a sentence yet which give every research a lifetime of heartache. Ontology is the theory of the nature of reality, and epistemology of the acquisition and evaluation of knowledge about it. Both are facets of understanding. It is the most opaque and the most all encompassing topic which represents a special challenge. Everything, every question of life and the universe, can be divided into questions of ontology or epistemology (fight me). All the tricky questions of research flow from these first principles so it does help to get them in focus if not finalised early on (no pressure). They should help you as a researcher but it is easy to get caught up in unhelpfully broad statements about the social construction of this and that which do not help very much. They often do not connect to the nuts and bolts of being there in the field.

Like learning a language, it’s best to get stuck into real usage and then work back from that. It takes you straight to the point when these questions are really going to start to matter. Say you wish to study theft. What is it? Who is doing it? What kind of data is there about it? You want to move from a common sense understanding where everyone ‘just knows what it is’ to a critical understanding of what we don’t know and refuse to acknowledge about it. Let’s say it is the acquisition of a good or service without the owner’s knowledge, consent or process. The 1968 Theft Act for England and Wales defines it as ‘dishonestly appropriat[ing] property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it; and “thief” and “steal” shall be construed accordingly.’ The Act states ‘It is immaterial whether the appropriation is made with a view to gain, or is made for the thief’s own benefit.’ In doing so it established intent as critical and excludes consideration of purpose. Altruistic taking is still theft. The Act has a lot more to say on these themes.

The first step is to self critique and lay out what this definition excludes and the effects that has. My ‘or process’ handily categorises compulsory purchase orders, taxation, governments taking jewellery from asylum seekers, fees for access to industrial tribunals and courts and many other charges as not theft. If those other acts are wrong, they are wrong in a different way to theft. Another gap in the definition is that it does not say who or what the taking is from, and what control over the item stolen is necessary to establish theft.

The process lays out what aspects of the taxonomy are contingent and which are necessary, and which are socially constructed and which are naturally occurring. Some questions that will lead you in this direction. What needs to exist for this phenomenon to exist? Private property is one. People and organisations who steal stuff are great fans of private property, they just think yours would work much better if it were theirs. Just in case anyone thinks stealing is some radical anti capitalist activity, most looting is carried out by established institutions. Theft is built into many business models and practices, not least theft of people’s time. The time a worker spends pursuing his or her employer for unpaid wages is a kind of theft. What we understand then is that the definition implies claim about human nature and society.

It naturalises private property rights and de-historicises them. For example, let’s say I find that my ancestors once had rights to pick up fallen timber on formerly common land and spend my time going a pickin’ up wood for my stove. The land was subject to enclosure as part of the great land enclosures that happened in England from the 13th Century on and the great loss of common rights that happened mainly during the 18th Century. EP Thomson and other historians have documented this mass theft. Well I cannot pray in aid the fact that these rights were taken from my ancestor and therefore from me without any recognisably just process. The status quo is what matters. What I am doing is theft, m’lud.

That examples gives us an opportunity to create difference, another critical act in the ontology thinking process. Creating difference means laying out what looks like our object of study but is not it. Scavenging, salvaging, beachcombing, dumpster diving and other acts are a bit like theft (taking without consent or knowledge of the owner) but are not. Some are legal in some circumstances, some are governed by other statutes, and some are in that intriguing grey area of ‘not legal or illegal because we didn’t think anyone would bother doing it.’ The law is a great study of process ontology because the legal system has to address these fundamental problems all the time. That also explains our fascination with medicine which has to make similar calls. So with ontology think in a similar way to a barrister. Every judgement is contingent but should refer to past decisions and anticipate future ones.

 

 

Once more into the uncanny valley my friends, once more

Angus Bancroft/ / Research

Our first autonomous robot arrived in the house last week. It is a wee fellow, hugging the ground as if cowering in the presence of its true master, the iPhone. A round plastic body, a sensor cluster, wheels and a vacuum are set off with a cheery burble. It is black, so the manufacturer has coded it as a masculine living room product like the television or the hi fi. The alternative is a feminine white good like the washing machine, a much more established robot functionary, secure in its indispensability. We find a room for it in under the TV, slotted in the pile of leads which I am sure connect to something but not quite what.

We went through the usual routine when taking delivery of a new pice of tech or software, of adapting ourselves to the machine. This process has been noted since Karl Marx identified how the factory worker puts his or her craft into the steam powered loom. Then the loom becomes the crafter and the worker its servant. Uber drivers know what I’m talking about. Ours is more prosaic, like the process where cafes are designed with tiling patterns that show up well on Instagram. An analogue filter is applied to make the digital perform better. The robot is sensitive to dangling cords and rugs and confused by reflective surfaces. The floordrobe is moved out of the way. Doors are propped open. Then the robot can begin.

Over time we become used to its strange shyings. One day it will not enter the kitchen. What does it see there? It runs skittishly through the living room and lingers in the bedroom, jamming itself into the corner and having to be lured out. It pauses thoughtfully in the hallway before returning to base. The robot’s friendliness and our anthropomorphising of it belie what it is. Unlike the old washing machine, it is one end of a vast data stream. Robots were once envisioned as universal servants, then as rampaging oppressors. Neither comes to pass. Robots do not serve us, they bypass us.

This post was sponsored by our robot overlords