Interactividad en las profesiones del diseño - la teoría del conflicto

In this paper I “throw together” (Massey, 2005) two heterogenous data sets using two different methods: a series of interviews with 14 community land trust organisers as well as a study with 18 mental health service users exploring an arts-based method referred to as ‘Story Houses’. This paper integrates both data sets under a plural methodological framework. Plural methodologies are a well-established field within qualitative methods (see Denzin & Lincoln, 1994; Easterby-Smith, Golden-Biddle & Locke, 2008; Frost et al., 2010; Goodbody & Burns, 2011;

Kincheloe, 2005) and often include the mixing of different types of methods,

datasets, cases and techniques for analysis (Bazeley and Kemp, 2012; Mason, 2006).

But the term ‘plural’, as used here, is also meant as a nod towards feminist methodologies and epistemologies (Mol, 2002; Thompson, Rickett & Day, 2018) that acknowledge the plurality of voices across multiple bodies of knowers and knowledge (Harding & Norberg, 2005).

According to Fieldings (2012, p. 125) there are three main reasons why such a plural approach to research may be preferable over single approaches:

i) Triangulation of data: One of the most cited concepts, in regard to plural methodologies, is triangulation, which goes back to a more positivist tradition of establishing validity for different research methods, as well as comparing ‘uncontaminated’ research methods (Bazeley & Kemp, 2012, p. 61). Denzin (1970) populated the term triangulation and later clarified that triangulation is not necessarily about making findings more valid but about giving a fuller and more enhanced picture of a research problem (in Bazeley & Kemp, 2012, p. 61).

ii) Richer analysis: This states that weaknesses and strengths of different methods can actually compensate for each other and lead to more robust conclusions. This is because approaching one issue from many angles may yield an overall richer analysis (Bazeley and Kemp, 2012, p. 56).

iii) Holding tensions: Miles and Huberman (1994, p. 173), when talking about cross-case comparison, note the importance of inviting and coming to terms with the tension between the particular and the generalizable in order to deepen understanding and explanation of the social phenomena under investigation.

In the following, I describe both cases, their context and methodology.

5.3.1 Case I: Semi-structured interviews with urban CLT community organisers

Context

A project entitled ‘Urban Futures’, led by Alan Southern, looked into the phenomenon of urban CLTs. We identified nineteen urban CLTs in the UK which

we then contacted through the National CLT Network. In addition, where appropriate, personal emails were sent through contacts of the research team.

Fourteen of the nineteen urban CLTs agreed to take part in the research project. I then personally visited and interviewed these fourteen CLTs between May and December 2016.

Data collection and analysis

Semi-structured interviews (Mason, 2017; Silverman, 2015) were between 30 and 120 minutes long and followed a loose interview script that broadly covered housing activism and community wellbeing. However, all interviews allowed for a degree of variance as circumstances were dependent upon location, time of interview and type of interviewee. Some interviews therefore naturally diverged from the interview script and took on a more narrative character (Mason, 2017). All interview data was professionally transcribed, although I utilised the audio recordings of the interviews, in some cases, to refamiliarise myself with the tone and feeling of the data and adding this information to my personal notes and adding further personal notes to the transcript. In addition to the transcripts and recordings, field notes were taken. Ethics approval was attained through the University of Liverpool Ethics board with Alan Southern as principal investigator. All data was coded and analysed using NVivo 10 (and later NVivo11) following principles of thematic analysis (Braun

& Clarke, 2014). Participants are referred to as community organisers with the name of the respective city they are active in. This is because, at the time of the interview, various participants were not a part of a fully-fledged CLT and, in some cases, later decided to not continue with the legal structures of CLTs. However, each participant was part of an active organisation that was strongly sympathetic to the philosophy of CLTs (hence why they were registered on the national CLT network) and actively battled with the socio-political implications of what it means to organise community-led social housing.

5.3.2 Case II: Story Houses

Context

‘Story Houses’ are a multi-modal research method that combine guided poem writing with the decoration of the box using various materials—the Story House—

and interviewing participants afterward about their creations (Zielke, 2019). Arts-based methods like poem writing can offer “engaging, memorable insight into the uniquely individual, complex and idiosyncratic experiences” (Miller 2018, p. 8; see also Bagnoli, 2009, Magrane, 2015). By artificially creating and then unravelling dichotomies broadly relating to the metaphorical sense of dwelling, for instance inside/outside or alone/together, Story Houses aim to capture the totality of lived experiences and are a suitable method for exploring the complexly unfolding emotional landscapes of vulnerable participants (Zielke, 2019). The data at hand focuses around themes of becoming well in the face of adversity and what it means to feel, and be at home with oneself.

Data collection and analysis

A study with 18 mental health service users across the North West of England was conducted between July and November 2017. The Story Houses yielded interesting findings in regard to how one makes sense of one’s past, how one opens up about personal hardship when given a safe environment, and the ways in which one can explore the fantastical worlds of what happens in the depth of a metaphorical sea and ‘underneath one’s surface’ (see Zielke, 2019). Ethical approval was granted through the University of Liverpool Ethics Board. All interviews were transcribed by me, and data was coded and analysed using NVivo 11 following principles of thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2014). The analysis further engaged with the descriptive-phenomenological methodological underpinnings of the research study that looked for a sense of ‘essence’ across the different types of data (cf. Boden and Eatough 2014; Finlay, 2012; Giorgi, 2012; Wertz 1983). In addition, I paid attention to different metaphorical imagery that laced the different accounts around the theme of home (Lakoff & Johnson, 2008).

5.3.3 (Dis-)integration data through dwelling

Data integration is a central concept in plural methodologies and refers to the idea of bringing into conversation diverse methods, data sets or cases, by identifying similar or overlapping themes across multiple modes of analysis, and then critically comparing and contrasting them to one another (Bazeley & Kemp, 2009; Kara, 2015, p. 112). Unlike data synthesis, for instance, data integration actively seeks for tensions and incongruences between different types of data (Bazeley & Kemp, 2009) and thus makes room for accommodating the ‘messiness of interaction’

(Askins & Pain, 2011), urban ‘disorder’ (Sennett, 1996 [1974]), and a sense of

‘throwntogetherness’ (Heidegger, 1962; Massey, 2005) all of which pertain to existential questions of living together, relating and belonging in space.

When trying to find the right way to present the findings, many times, I struggled with my analysis feeling too one-dimensional, while, in other moments, it seemed overwhelmingly complex. Case I sometimes felt like it was simply providing some depth to Case II, and vice versa. It was not clear at many points where my departure point was and where exactly I was heading. To address these struggles, a feminist dwelling lens invites us to stay in-between, lean back and forth, sway left and right, but never succumb to either end of a dichotomous spectrum; to never just look for the private or just the political, but always find one within the other. Within that movement, we become one with our environment while, at the same time, making room for analytical plurality; to become one in many and many in one (Dahlberg, Todres and Galvin, 2009).

As both of my data sets were coded and analysed through NVivo 11, I could easily identify family resemblances across them, specifically around the theme of dwelling and home. The two data sets tackle this theme from very different perspectives and therefore allow a multi-perspectival view towards this complex theme that, by nature, spans different levels of analysis. As such the integrated analysis offers a symbiotic reading of the close entanglement between the micro and macro practices of home. Brought into conversation, they open up an uneven but deep discourse on the practices of being at home.

In the analysis, I refer to the Story House participants with anonymised first names, and the CLT community organisers with the names of their cities, and where appropriate, their respective CLTs. To do justice to the idiosyncrasy of individual experiences the findings also show different vignettes that illustrate more specifically an individual’s idiosyncratic and intimate experience with home.