Activity 4. Politics values, beliefs, power and ethics
Thursday, 10 Nov 2011, 05:52
Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Arwen Bailey, Friday, 11 Nov 2011, 05:26
Briefly reflect upon how your personal politics (i.e. values and beliefs) may influence - or already has influenced - your thinking on:
ideas you have for research projects
how you may want to carry out your research.
Conclude this activity by actively considering how you would explain and justify to potential stakeholders your answers to the above.
You should keep notes of your conclusions for later use.
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The course is written in the context of organizations, which is not really relevant to me but probably i can find some parallels with my situation.
My personal politics
Handy thinks of politics in terms of power and influence- my commodity of power is relational as i have no formal influence. In fact this project will probably contribute to my power as a commodity related to expertise.
The course materials frame individual politics as 'values and beliefs'. Well, I guess i have an egalitarian view of the world, and believe that interventions can and should help those who have fewer options to have more options. I am quite a feminist too and believe that women are largely cut out of most decision making positions even though they do much of the work (i am talking about the context of rural livelihoods).
The third framing of politics is the wheeling and dealing that goes on in organizations.I am pretty naive and bad at this. I am pretty straight forward and transparent and lack that strategic capacity to choose the right timing for certain communications, or the right person for certain information. Where i am strong - and this goes back to power and influence above - is building networks of good feeling relationships.
So how do these affect my research?
1. Subject matter. The situation I would like to research is about empowerment and changing the balance of power at an institutional and societal level.
2. I am drawn to participatory methodologies, sharing ideas in a group. Casting the net as wide as possible, using CSH to make sure as much as possible that those affected but involved are not harmed, aiming to do good not harm. Also I believe objectivity is impossible, and prefer the call to be responsible, by triangulating, by surfacing underlying assumptions and by keeping a record so that research is transparent and can be challenged.
How would I explain these to stakeholders
Generally when i talk about my research I frame it in an instrumental way as I believe that most people can't see the benefit of an equity (right thing to do) argument:There is a body of research that indicates that where women have access to more assets, societies do better. There is also a commonsense argument that excluding half the population from problem solving is going to give you half the possible solutions to your problems.
About how to do the research... I actually work within a research organization with agronomists, economists and so on conducting research, which generally speaking I see as in a different tradition to my own (theirs is positivist), so i would expect challenges to the rigour and robustness of my research. However, the programme i work for is truly embedded in an adaptive, contingent, complexity-based view of research and development. So there I could present it easily and the challenges will make it stronger.
Activity 4. Politics values, beliefs, power and ethics
Briefly reflect upon how your personal politics (i.e. values and beliefs) may influence - or already has influenced - your thinking on:
Conclude this activity by actively considering how you would explain and justify to potential stakeholders your answers to the above.
You should keep notes of your conclusions for later use.
--------------------------------------------
The course is written in the context of organizations, which is not really relevant to me but probably i can find some parallels with my situation.
My personal politics
Handy thinks of politics in terms of power and influence- my commodity of power is relational as i have no formal influence. In fact this project will probably contribute to my power as a commodity related to expertise.
The course materials frame individual politics as 'values and beliefs'. Well, I guess i have an egalitarian view of the world, and believe that interventions can and should help those who have fewer options to have more options. I am quite a feminist too and believe that women are largely cut out of most decision making positions even though they do much of the work (i am talking about the context of rural livelihoods).
The third framing of politics is the wheeling and dealing that goes on in organizations.I am pretty naive and bad at this. I am pretty straight forward and transparent and lack that strategic capacity to choose the right timing for certain communications, or the right person for certain information. Where i am strong - and this goes back to power and influence above - is building networks of good feeling relationships.
So how do these affect my research?
1. Subject matter. The situation I would like to research is about empowerment and changing the balance of power at an institutional and societal level.
2. I am drawn to participatory methodologies, sharing ideas in a group. Casting the net as wide as possible, using CSH to make sure as much as possible that those affected but involved are not harmed, aiming to do good not harm. Also I believe objectivity is impossible, and prefer the call to be responsible, by triangulating, by surfacing underlying assumptions and by keeping a record so that research is transparent and can be challenged.
How would I explain these to stakeholders
Generally when i talk about my research I frame it in an instrumental way as I believe that most people can't see the benefit of an equity (right thing to do) argument:There is a body of research that indicates that where women have access to more assets, societies do better. There is also a commonsense argument that excluding half the population from problem solving is going to give you half the possible solutions to your problems.
About how to do the research... I actually work within a research organization with agronomists, economists and so on conducting research, which generally speaking I see as in a different tradition to my own (theirs is positivist), so i would expect challenges to the rigour and robustness of my research. However, the programme i work for is truly embedded in an adaptive, contingent, complexity-based view of research and development. So there I could present it easily and the challenges will make it stronger.