Various options have been prescribed for performing political research within the academy, and this section reviews the relative merits and drawbacks of each of these approaches by
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68 which one can conduct rigorous critical inquiry in the pursuit of social change and social justice. Thereafter, in section 4.4, the specific approach utilised within this thesis for investigating anti-austerity politics in Liverpool is discussed.
4.3.1 Political Research from the Academy
Participatory action research (PAR) represents one such method to reject objectivity and the desire to achieve neutrality within the field. PAR criticises conventional research methods for their tendency to externally develop research designs and to extract data from the field, while the results are disseminated in scholarly journals producing few positive impacts for the researched communities themselves (Kesby, 2000; Kindon, 2005). Instead, PAR seeks to affirm the participants’ rights and capacities to effect change themselves (Pain, 2004). Its central tenets include: the co-production and co-ownership of the research with participants; bringing ‘new voices’ into the academy to ensure that research is “appropriate, meaningful and relevant” to communities (Kesby et al., 2005: 164); and facilitating participants’ empowerment and decision-making in their own lives (Cahill, 2007; Sultana, 2007). PAR is, therefore, not just a methodology, but a ‘political statement’ committed to a collaborative and non-hierarchical approach that democratises knowledge production alongside a concurrent commitment to positive change (Klocker, 2012). However, despite its growing popularity, much of PAR’s initial political impetus has been absent or lost in an array of self-proclaimed participatory projects (Wynne-Jones et al., 2015). PAR has also often failed to shrug off the aura of paternalism, whereby the researcher remains framed as the expert (Mason, 2015). The methodology has frequently suffered from a lack of enthusiasm and cooperation from participants, and the results obtained have tended to fail to effect either social or political change (AGC, 2010). This has led to an increasing recognition that participatory approaches are not inherently progressive; others have gone further and described PAR as a new form of ‘tyranny’ which masks power relations and external agendas (Cooke and Kothari, 2001). However, PAR constitutes just one strand of what is broadly conceived as politically-engaged research. Touraine’s Sociological Intervention has been used effectively by North (1998), where, through focus groups, the researcher provoked alternative analyses of the politics of Local Exchange Trading Schemes. The traditional ethnographic method of ‘participant observation’ has also seen an inversion towards ‘observant participation’, with a greater emphasis on the role of observing while one participates as a means to most usefully ‘give back’ or contribute to a movement’s aims (Moeran, 2007), whilst also engaging with the materiality of activist practices and spaces (Brown, 2007). Khasnabish and Haiven (2015) advocate an approach which is defined by working ‘outside but alongside’ their constituencies of concern using collaborative and accessible methods such as websites and audio
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69 documentary. Each of these represents an increasing concern for, and differing degrees of, political engagement with the various groups that the researcher is committed to. Finally, Dorling and Shaw (2002) have stressed the need for policy-orientated research in order to bring geographers into public debate.
4.3.2 Activist Ethnographies
A burgeoning body of literature has developed around the value of ethnographic methods for combining activism with research. Here, ethnography is not merely a series of techniques and procedures used to elicit thick description, but a perspective committed to taking seriously people’s lived realities and the context and meaning which underpins them (Bourdieu, 1977; Geertz, 2005; Wacquant, 1992). Politically-engaged ethnographic research must, therefore, assume a different posture to that of ethnographic methodologies located inside objectivist paradigms. This is because the aim is not to achieve ‘better data’, but to facilitate critical and collective inquiry amongst movement actors. Social movements are thus conceived as spaces of knowledge production in their own right, rather than simply objects of research interest (Chesters, 2012; Cox, 2015). The radical application of ethnographic methods constitutes somewhat of a spectrum, and the levels of collaboration vary considerably. Paul Routledge advocated using the ‘third-space’ as a site of critical engagement; that which exists in between academia and activism, where researchers should use the academy as a “political site from which various struggles can be constructively critiqued” (1996: 402). In practice, this means leveraging opportunities provided by the university to create resources for movements that they might not otherwise have access to (Khasnabish and Haiven, 2015). It also includes contributing the researcher’s academic labour to a specific political cause, rather than seeking intellectual recognition, promotion or remuneration (de Certeau, 1984). In a similar vein, Graeber (2007: 305) has promoted ethnography as a model for how “non-vanguardist revolutionary intellectual practice” might work. However, for Speed (2006), the minimum requirements for activist research are simply involving the participants in decisions about the research, and committing to contribute something to their struggle.
One particularly influential contribution to the debate has been Juris’ (2007) notion of militant ethnography. This concept sees the researcher committing him or herself to the movement milieu and co-producing radical knowledge on behalf of the movement, rather than for any academic exercise. In militant ethnography, the researcher deploys collaboratively produced ethnographic methods which aim to dissolve the chasm between research and practice by facilitating “ongoing activist (self-)reflection regarding movement goals, tactics, strategies and organisational forms” (Juris, 2007: 165). Following Juris, Russell (2015: 225) further defines the method of militant ethnography as the collective identification of some problematic or
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70 contradiction inherent within a social movement, from within, which then “striv[es] to understand and contribute to the collective surpassing of this paradox”. For the militant ethnographer, it is insufficient to simply do politics ‘in the field’ and then retreat to generate intellectual scholarly theory; rather, they must practice politics critically by getting their ‘hands dirty’ and putting their ‘body on the line’ through participating in the contingent struggles of the given movement (Gordon, 2007; Parr, 2001). This approach destabilises the positivist dichotomy between the detached and disembodied academic observer versus the uncritical, antagonistic activist by remaining “committed and critical” to those movement politics (Fuller, 1999: 225), and engendering support and solidarity (Otto and Terhorst, 2011). Juris (2007: 165) elaborates:
Simply taking on the role of ‘circumstantial activist’ is not sufficient. One has to build long-term relationships of mutual commitment and trust, become entangled with complex relations of power, and live the emotions associated with direct action organising and activist networking […] rather than generating sweeping strategic and/or political directives.
In contrast to conventional research methodologies, the militant ethnographer does not revert to producing objectivist theories; instead they facilitate self-reflection through valorising the participants’ own knowledges and critical capacities (Juris and Razsa, 2012). This also recognises the existent self-critical proficiencies of activists – including their increasing ability to self-publish – and thus undermines the assumption that political groups depend on ‘expert’ scholarly theorising. That said, the intention is not to reaffirm the political tendencies of the movement uncritically, and researchers must continue to reflect upon the politics of representation.
4.3.3 Reflections on the Challenges and Limits of Political Research
Most recently, the constraints and limits of conducting activist ethnographies have been called into question. While militant ethnography is reasonably well-defined for those operating within or across relatively bounded, small-scale and homogeneous forms of political activity, the methodology is less instructive for engaging with movements in different and more challenging contexts. Russell’s (2015) use of militant ethnography, for example, depended upon his specific circumstance of already being an active component of the movement milieu, but this offers little guidance for researchers seeking to engage with movements with whom they sympathise, but are not (yet) active participants. Further, the method is incompatible with attempts to study movements whom the researcher does not sympathise with at all, such as the far-right (Gillan and Pickerill, 2012). Those who have researched more spatially extensive or networked forms of political activity (such as Davies, 2009; Halvorsen, 2015) also challenge the types of observation or political commitment that an ethnographer can feasibly make.
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71 There is also a further fear that while some movement actors may be receptive to the reflexive contributions emerging from activist ethnographic observation, others are likely to perceive it as nothing more than an academic exercise with little substantive interest or impact for debates within the group itself (Martinez and Lorenzi, 2012). Activist ethnographies also risk reinforcing hetero-normative and macho framings of ‘capital A’ activism which are both exclusive and disempowering (see Garrett, 2013; Routledge, 2002). For Maxey (1999), capital A activism fetishises participation in certain activities, such as direct action, in ways which potentially solidify social injustices rather than challenging them. In turn, while recognising that activism has informed their work, some researchers have abandoned or rejected the label of scholar-activist (Brown, 2007; North, 2011b). In response, Taylor (2015) argues for adoption of the less prescriptive notion of simply ‘being useful’. This involves developing more inclusive conceptualisations of political engagement and collaborative research which accept the need to destabilise the intellectual-activist and research-practice binary, but not in ways which privilege capital A forms of activism. This perspective emphasises the myriad understated ways in which a researcher can be useful to social movements, such as mobilising academic resources and exploiting and creating ‘cracks’ which rework and reimagine the roles and functions of the neoliberal university itself (Holloway, 2010).
Within the context of actually existing forms of anti-austerity politics in Liverpool, and my own positionality which saw austerity as a regressive political programme that I wanted to see overturned (see 4.4.1), I developed a form of activist ethnography that would minimise the power imbalances existing between the researcher and movement actors, whilst simultaneously promoting an ethics of reciprocity through which I could feasibly ‘give back’ to the movement milieu. This was at once mindful of Taylor’s (2015) critique of capital A activism and suitable for a positionality that, at the outset of the research, was critically committed to anti-austerity politics and sought to facilitate critical self-reflection. I was not an expert at the beginning of the research process, and was instead committed to democratising the production of knowledge and privileging the knowledge of movement participants. Contra PAR, I also supposed that a worthy and extensive political project already existed – to oppose austerity through various anti-austerity campaigns – and that it would not be appropriate to seek an alternative research pathway that might fail to galvanise the enthusiasm and cooperation of activists involved, or adopt an approach that would result in placing an intensive burden on their time. It would also have been unethical to lure individuals into participating in a research project under the premise that it would produce positive social change; a goal that I certainly could not guarantee. Deploying an activist ethnographic approach therefore provided opportunities to engage with movement actors and the milieu on
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72 to their political praxis. Paraphrasing North (2011b), this specific approach opened up a space in which to develop a sympathetic critique of the politics of anti-austerity from the perspective of a politically-engaged, supportive, yet critical, academic who was committed to collaborating in order to find ways in which the activism could be more effective. Moreover, although activist ethnographies define a clear epistemological and political stance, what the method actually entails is highly context-dependent, as its proponents readily concede (Colectivo Situaciones, 2007). This review therefore suggests utilising the existing literature on politically-engaged research as a guide, but the definition of a precise methodology could only be determined once the researcher was fully immersed within the milieu. The following section discusses the exact research design, and how this centred on the logic of the aforementioned political commitment.