'Giving voice'

I’ve been struggling with the concept of a PhD. So I decided to go back to basics and re-lay some foundations.

In the process I found I really helpful chart to match purpose for doing research with a research strategy (original from Martyn Denscombe’s The Good Research Guide), which I played around with slightly (based on John Hughes'. and Michael Crotty’s work):

Do I want a strategy to:

• Understand the complex relationship between factors in a particular social setting? – case study
• Describe cultural practices, and interpret social interaction within a culture? – ethnography
• Understand things through someone else’s eyes; describe the essence of a personal experience? Phenomenology
• Clarify concepts or produce new theories – grounded theory
• Explore a new topic and provide new insights – grounded theory
• Solve a practical problem – action research
• Produce guidelines for best practice – action research
• Give voice to individuals’ lives and their stories - narrative research

I was contemplating which was the right approach for me (personally) and which was the right approach for the research question (which would need to change if it didn’t lead to an approach that was right for me!!).

It got me thinking about the whole area of ‘giving voice”’. 

• Yes, I want people to have their voices, and have their voices heard.
• But do I want to be someone with the responsibility to ‘give voice’?
• Who am I to be giving people what is already theirs by right?

[There’s also the small philosophical issue of how anyone can ‘give voice’ accurately to someone else’s story, even when the stories are told by them using their own words and transcribed from an audio recording – but that’s for another blog]

And that got me thinking about disability and ‘inspiration porn’, and the ‘poverty porn’ that is little more than voyeurism under the cloak of being caring and compassionate.  That is often done with the intention of 'giving voice' to people, but is just telling stories about them.

If you aren’t sure what I mean by inspiration and poverty porn, it’s the kind of stories and research you see that objectifies people (hence the ‘porn’) while holding them up as objects of pity or inspiration. It makes the people who aren’t being objectified feel good about themselves, without calling for any change to an oppressive status quo.

Well, I’ve come to at least one decision from going back to basics.

I've done enough ‘giving voice’ to people who tell their stories, spill their guts, expose raw places, all in the hope that something will change for others (or themselves) as a result. I’ve done for almost 25 years as part of policy consultation work. I’ve done it on and off as part of social research. And I’ve read other people’s social research and consultation reports.  And I can count on one hand the times that people’s hopes of change have been realised.

So 2016 is the year I stop ‘giving voice’ to people. I refuse to be complicit in a game where people spill their guts to me in the usually fruitless hope of change.

2016 will be the year I work my socks off to find ways people can find and use their own voices, directly and effectively, have influence, create change and generally unsettle institutions that need unsettling.

I’m not sure that solves the problem of what strategy to use for my PhD research, but it has helped me work out what I don't want to do - and that's a good start.

It could be an interesting 2016.