From methodology to method

In the previous part I described the processes involved in conceptualising and constructing the research hypothesis. I present fragments of theoretical approaches that refer directly and indirectly to transition as a learning and development process, and to the deconstruction and reconstruction of personal experience. I claim that although transition, as a learning and development process, is a spatio-temporal condition, it cannot relate directly to time or space as objective measurement scales, unless we create ourselves the context in which we want to locate it. I call this context spatio-temporal image. My aim is to create this kind of spatio-temporal image, represented through this thesis as narrative or a story (defragmentation), in which I give my own interpretation of transition. I decide to deconstruct learning instances to their basic components, which I call momenta, and then reconstruct and commodify them. I hypothesise that this will lead me to a redefinition of transition as a continuous reconstruction of our self-ecology, in the present, past and future. Based on this hypothesis I argue that this continuous reconstruction is nothing, but learning and so I conclude that we either learn in transition or that learning is always transitional. This argument constitutes the data on which the thesis is built.

In the present chapter I discuss the way I conceptualise the methodology and describe that which forms my data collection and analysis. In the outset of the research I act perceptively. I do not have a clear idea of the methods that I will use to collect and analyse my data. The area before me is so fragmented that it is difficult to identify a method adequate to expand knowledge about transition. Competing feelings of dissatisfaction, curiosity and doubt lead me gradually to construct the methodology. I am aware that not everyone has experienced these

feelings, as a beginning for their research. For most sociologists the world is more manageable in pieces.

«Analysis is their soul or else a methodology of indifference that separates and reduces the world so pitifully that a man can empty the world.» (O’Neill, 1975: 7). [Italics mine]

I start by being conscious of others, whether these are my family, friends or colleagues, and willing to learn. For this reason I return to first things, to place, time, communication thought and pattern. In thinking and speaking I choose paths to resolve the history and geography of my life (cited in O’Neill, 1975: 10). In this broad context the methodology evolves in accordance with a variety of socio- psychological metamorphoses that take place while I progress with the choice of the research methods. Its aim is not to simplify a situation, or describe it in either sociological or psychological terms, but to test my limits.

«The aim of the method [...] is to test in us that strange distance between our work and those for whom we intend it. Sociologists are particularly attached to methods for the sake of their claim to scientific status; I am concerned with the poetic claims of method. I think these two belong together in our working lives. Method plays the music in what is of interest to us; it shapes our sensibilities, determines our passions, and defines our world. Method is our practical idealism; it is the opening in things and of ourselves toward them. This is possible because we are able to convert our private enthusiasms into objective enterprises that, in turn, are never accomplished once and for all and so require of us a constant response according to our own need.» (O’Neill, 1975: 12).

The knowledge that I gradually gain while I do the research is a knowledge of metamorphosis. I see my roles changing day after day. I become the reader and the writer, the researcher and the researched. It is I who is the substance and form of what I describe and who comments upon its logic and matter.

My approach is not a solo effort. It may seem to involve the emotions, but it encourages a way of looking at things and talking about things. It is something that matures with its own practice. It assumes hierarchy of ideas and concepts, but it does not command the first word and it does it insist upon the last. It is found in the dialogue that is entirely rooted in the aspirations of self development, temporal and spatial change and stability. It does not thrive where some have the right to

speak and others only the obligation to listen. I aim to re-construct an approach that enables better understanding of transition as a form of learning and evaluation of personal experience. As a process this is frustrating. This frustration is alleviated with the general assumption that the method is based on a hypothetico-deductive model of scientific approach. In its principle this model is concerned with causal relationships and the way these are established (see Henwood & Pidgeon, 1992). The emphasis is placed on an a priori theory that is assumed to direct the processes of data collection, analysis, and interpretation.

Although I do not fully specify my theoretical concerns in advance of the study, what I do in the research is to move from data towards theory. I develop a theoretical concern that later leads me to a quite unorthodox result. The research questions, the hypothesis, the strengths and weaknesses emerge only vaguely in the beginning, but more clearly later. The methods I use to collect and analyse the evidence do not produce a standardised set of results that any willing researcher in my situation or someone who studies similar issues would be able to produce. It presents a coherent and illuminating perspective of a situation that is based on a detailed analysis of the way the factors that are involved in it consent and dissent. It explains and argues on the basis of personal experience that is re-framed in a new context.

The choice of methodology is not that far from what Lyotard suggests in reference to ‘freedom of thought‘. For Lyotard (1985), consensus is the end of freedom and of thought. Dissensus allows us to experience freedom and to think and extend our possibilities. Emancipation of knowledge depends on the perpetuation of dissensus, on a permanent crisis in representation, on an ever greater awareness of the contingent and localised. The unstable nature of all norms for representing the world. Consensus in this respect is only a particular state of

discussion, not its end (cited in Henwood & Pidgeon, 1992: 163). This belief in the emancipation of thought brings me closer to what Fischer (1985) calls post- modern deconstructionism. In accordance with further reading in the area of post- structuralism and the way it influences social science today, I develop the research methods.