Mixed methods, materialism and the micropolitics of the research-assemblage

We assess the potential for mixing social research methods, based upon a materialist and micropolitical analysis of the research-assemblage and of what individual research techniques and methods do in practice. Applying a DeleuzoGuattarian toolkit of assemblages, affects and capacities, we document what happens when research methods and techniques interact with the events they wish to study. Micropolitically, many of these techniques and methods have unintended effects of specifying and aggregating events, with the consequently that the knowledge produced by social inquiry is invested with these specifications and aggregations. We argue that rather than abandoning these social research tools, we may use the micropolitical analysis to assess precisely how each method affects knowledge production, and engineer the research designs we use accordingly. This forms the justification for mixing methods that are highly aggregative or specifying with those that are less so, effectively rehabilitating methods that have often been rejected by social researchers, including surveys and experiments

New materialist social inquiry: designs, methods and the research-assemblage

This paper discusses issues of research design and methods in new materialist social inquiry, an approach that is attracting increasing interest across the social sciences as an alternative to either realist or constructionist ontologies. New materialism de-privileges human agency, focusing instead upon how assemblages of the animate and inanimate together produce the world, with fundamental implications for social inquiry methodology and methods. Key to our exploration is the materialist notion of a ‘research-assemblage’ comprising researcher, data, methods and contexts. We use this understanding first to explore the micropolitics of the research process, and then – along with a review of 30 recent empirical studies – to establish a framework for materialist social inquiry methodology and methods. We discuss the epistemological consequences of adopting a materialist ontology

Making the Right Connections: ‘Knowledge’ and Power in Academic Networking

Academic survival demands far more than the obvious vocational skills of researching, publishing and teaching. In order to succeed (or even hang on in) you are required to ‘be’ as well as ‘do’. By this we mean there is a hidden but potent ontological pressure to embrace particular values about who you are and how you relate to others. Such values emphasise individuality, independence, rationality and merit, and form the cornerstones of the educational establishment. Reflecting and reinforcing the lives and experiences of the dominant and powerful these values invariably underpin academic achievement at both school and university. Those who are successful in exams and become teachers or academics themselves have either been brought up to take these values as given, or must internalise them in order to progress. This chapter explores the social process of academic assimilation, focusing particularly on the practice of social networking in universities

Thinking globally, acting locally: Women activists’ accounts

This paper intends to describe the range of forms women’s resistance to globalisation takes, emphasising diverse strategies from everyday acts, the development of practical alternative resources, organising in women’s groups or trades unions, mass demonstrations and symbolic defiance. Recognising that it is the women of the South, in particular, who bear the brunt of the impact of neoliberal ‘free market’ economic policies, it hoped to be sensitive to the struggles for survival that might frame the urgency of resistance amongst women of the South, and make links with some of the strategies of activist women in the more privileged North

Feminist review (special issue)

Clare Hemmings and Pam Alldred are editors of this special issue