Writing as Method

Scholars of hermeneutics argue that writing is an ongoing process throughout a research project and integral in forming interpretations of data. A number of disciplines similarly purport writing as a process undertaken to arrive at meaning, used to work over ideas and thinking (Olson, 1996; Reither, 1985; Colyar, 2009; Green, 2015). Colyar positions writing as a ‘learning tool’ in processes of research. She claims that, “writing is product and process” (2009, p. 422) and goes on to say that, “I will not come to understand my own argument until I have completed the initial draft. Only then will I know what I want to say…I cannot draw the roadmap

until I know what the road looks like” (2009, p. 422). Colyar argues that writing is a generative act in undertaking research and should be recognised as such.

Green similarly advocates that qualitative research “…is emergent, exploratory, recursive, an ‘act of discovery’, of invention” (2015, p. 6). He posits writing as an indiscriminate component of doing research. He terms this

conceptualisation of writing, as “research-as-writing” (2015, p. 5). Shown in the extract from my research journal below, I used writing as a process for eliciting meaning, rather than a means of describing it. I followed leads during transcription and pondered my research questions and tried to remain critical of my interpretations. I questioned myself within the text, shown below by ‘what do I mean by this?’

suggesting I did not, or could not, at that time fully comprehend the ideas that were developing in my writing. In this way, I employed writing as method to work out what my data was saying:

16th June 2016

If I think of sustainability and how participants interpret it, I would say that it has to do primarily with connections. Values and connections are the building blocks for people and they hold these very close. The ways in which structural forces ‘act’ upon us tend to corrupt and direct our attention, either away from what is actually important or use these ‘what is important’ against us. What do I mean by this?

Moules, Field, McCaffrey, and Liang (2015) describe how hermeneutic writing must always be understood as never complete but always a storying of the ongoing, fluidity of the phenomena under examination. Hermeneutic interpretations

involve answering questions that could be answered differently with different interpretations (Moules, McCaffrey, Field and Liang, 2015). The importance of writing in hermeneutic research is the process of crafting quality interpretations that best answer the questions posed (Madison, 1988).

I drew on the work of Steeves (2000) to think about how to craft the best interpretations. Steeves (2000) claims that hermeneutic research necessarily demands that researchers think with data, with the objective of going beyond that data. In the following extract, I go beyond the data, “as a means of thinking about the broader world” (Steeves, 2000, p. 97). I question and make links from the transcripts to discourses of death and their influence on conceptualisations of the future:

12th January 2016

Confirming R's comments, B intervenes with the statement, 'Oh yeah, I am too I suppose' indicating that new knowledge is being developed for B as he is reflecting on R's comments and identifying with this personally. There has been two direct references to death at this point and one indirect reference with 'if you make to the next day its a bonus'. This could be an interesting consideration in the data...Does the future represent death for people and is the way death conceptualised in our culture detrimentally influencing how people conceive of the future?

This extract is one of my first attempts at interpretive writing after working with the transcripts. I did not end up following this line of inquiry, however the extract demonstrates how writing was used throughout the project in making interpretations in conversation with the interview material.

Writing as method was used as a way of actively inquiring into the themes I found in the data as well as capturing and recording how my interpretations were being formed. Throughout the project, I would regularly share writing with my supervision team who would critically engage with my interpretations and storying. This was an enriching process for the project, which provided an additional layer of reflexivity into how interpretations were presented and have subsequently appeared in this thesis.

4.5 Summary

Adopting a hermeneutical approach underpinned by habitus as method has necessitated some methodological initiative. Although Bourdieu’s work has been applied extensively across disciplines, he left no explicit method for applying habitus as method. However, scholars such as Holt (1998) and Reay (1995, 2004) have begun the process of working with habitus in ways that illuminate its potential as method. Hermeneutics offers an approach to the research that embraces habitus as method in centralising meaning-making in acts of interpretation. In this sense, including the subjectivities of participants in their constitutions and encounters of sustainability.

In this study, I employed focus group and semi-structured interview methods to explore sustainability encounters with participants from diverse social locations in Tasmania. There were five focus groups of participants represented in the study, comprising a total of 25 individuals. I conducted semi-structured interviews with 14 of the 25 participants. Process coding was a beginning point for analysis; however, it was by using writing as method (Green, 2015) that themes from the data emerged to become the stories of the following chapters.

In the next chapter, I begin storying the experiences of participants in the project. I explore constitutions of ‘the good life’ (a part of the empirical discursive frame used in discussions of sustainability) with participants and present highly diverse, yet thematically similar interpretations.