How do my values affect my resarch

How do my values influence my research interests? This is a first-week-of-study question, but I will put out a preliminary answer, written at night whilst drinking rosé:

I wish they did so to a larger degree! Anti-racism is the primary motivation for my academic activity. To make the project researchable and fundable though, I have found a case where Norwegianness is a serious point of political controversy, and focussed my study on that. The case is religious education. However, the field and literature is full over other issues that I will have to grapple with, and that represent a digression from my central motivation for this research.

That my questions and answers are heavily value laden and political is, as far as I´m concerned, a good thing. This, I think, is a Weberian supposition: questions can and should be fueled by values and politics. Analysis and data collection should aim at transparency and accountability – factors which demands a level of intersubjectivity.

The processes involved in analysis and data collection must be made intelligble and (hopefully) convincing to the readers. The answers and conclusions may well be political insofar as the questions asked were value laden. Nuanced research may give tabloid answers, the value of science does not lie in the amount of qualifiers given to any answer.

Lars Eriksen : 15 Oct 2006 20:12 |  Tags: Biography |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem