Seeing and Making Sense of the Social World - Essay Example

?Research Philosophies and Principles Introduction “[Q]ualitative research operates in a complex historical field that crosscuts at least eight historical moments. These moments overlap and simultaneously operate in the present” (Denzin and Lincoln, 2011, p. 3). The eight moments of research as identified by Denzin and Lincoln (2011, p. 3) are as follows: 1. The traditional moment (1900-1950) 2. The modernist moment (1950-1970) 3. The blurred genres moment (1970-1986) 4. The crisis of representation moment (1986-1990) 5. The postmodern moment (1990-1995) 6. The postexperimental inquiry moment (1995-2000) 7. The methodologically contested present (2000-2010) 8. The future moment (2010-). In each of the eight moments, different things are included in the definition of qualitative research (Jessor, Colby and Shweder, 1996, p. 129). However, it is customary to offer a generic definition of the qualitative research here: Qualitative research is a kind of research that is “based on a relativistic, constructivist ontology that posits that there is no objective reality. Rather, there are multiple realities constructed by human beings who experience a phenomenon of interest” (Krauss, 2005, p. 760). Researchers commonly adopt the qualitative methodology when they want to alter things for the better or want to bring a change. Therefore, advocacy and empathy are two of the most essential elements of the researcher’s lifestyle (Stake, 2010, p. 14). This paper evaluates and compares the research philosophies and principles of four research papers related to tourism. All of the research papers are based on qualitative research but have different research paradigms. 1. Visiting death and life: dark tourism and slave castles by Rasul A. Mowatt and Charles H. Chancellor Mowatt and Chancellor (2011) selected Ghana for their research since this country has most number of West African Slave Castles i.e. 36 out of the total 52 that have remained. Mowatt and Chancellor (2011) used interviews, photo elicitation and analysis of the tourists’ narratives in their methodology. The study involved 14 African descents eight of whom were females and six were males. All of them were from the US. The researchers agreed upon the non-generalizability of the research results. “As such the results from this study are not generalizable. A second sample could have yielded a confirmation or divergence in responses and behaviors with this sample” (Mowatt and Chancellor, 2011, p. 1428). Research carried out by Mowatt and Chancellor (2011) is an exploratory research wherein the researchers don’t come with preconceived notions about the tourists’ motivations. This research was a mix of the modernist, critical representation and blurred genres moments of research. In course of their research, Mowatt and Chancellor (2011) found that although there is a lot of disparity in the ethnic identities of the aboriginal Africans and the African Americans that have been away from their indigenous place for centuries, yet they still relate to one another and shed away all their time-bound differences when they make a visit to the Ghanaian Slave Castles. The researchers found a special bond between the tourists and the Castles, which had remained unaffected despite their distance from their native land or change in their social identities that has occurred over the time. The factor of symbolic interactionism reflects in the tourists’ discomfort with the White people in the post-visit stage. It suggests that the tourists consider the slavery a racial matter in which the Black race has always been oppressed by the White. The fact that the researchers made use of photographs as a means to achieve the research objectives in addition to conducting the in-depth interviews with them and studying their ethnography makes this research relate to the blurred genres moment of research. Also, the researchers’ personal or intellectual biographies don’t show up in the research which further promotes the blurred genres moment of research. Factors in this research that coincide with the crisis in representation moment of research are the questions of class and race that have surfaced. The research also puts a question in front of the readers whether the authorities act of opening gift shop in the Ghanaian Slave Castles is justified or not, thus calling the readers to reach their own conclusions. “A paradigm provides a conceptual framework for seeing and making sense of the social world” (Williams, 1998). The research of Mowatt and Chancellor (2011) follows a mix of the interpretive paradigm and the critical theory paradigm. “[T]here is potential for tourism scholars to draw on examples of good practice from critical and interpretive paradigms, which would offer the opportunity for tourism researchers to engage with a wider variety of research issues than has historically been the case” (Phillimore and Goodson, 2004, p. 39). The ontological basis of the critical theory paradigm suggests that the world has both hidden and overt structures of power wherein the minority groups are oppressed and their rights are subjugated by the more powerful groups. Traditionally, the White people have governed the Black slaves. The epistemological basis of the critical theory paradigm considers the researcher’s relation with the subjects/objects of the research in between the limits of subjectivism and objectivism, and the researcher’s empathy with the minority under consideration is a strong driver of the research. Mowatt and Chancellor (2011) have employed a qualitative methodology using interviews and narrative analysis to explore the oppression experienced by the slaves and the emotional attachment of their descendants with them and the Ghanaian Slave Castles. However, the interpretive paradigm is more dominant in the research of Mowatt and Chancellor (2011). “Having a ‘researcher’ interpret the stories of the ‘researched’ implies a power relationship that can create the researcher as more powerful through their selection and interpretation of the data…even in everyday life we constantly interpret and endeavor to make sense of our own experiences and those of people around us” (Jordan, 2004 cited in Ritchie, Burns and Palmer, 2005, p. 24). An ethical issue that requires consideration is the fact that Mowatt and Chancellor (2011) inquired the tourists about something they felt bad about. “Our opinions or actions are not always regarded as inconsequential by people we study. Social scientists who study schools and social agencies regularly find that the personnel of those organizations think of research as some version of the institutional evaluations they are constantly subject to, and take measures to manipulate what will be discovered” (Becker, n.d.). Asking others to reflect upon their traumatic experiences is in itself a very sensitive issue, but sometimes, it gets inevitable. From the responses of some of the respondents, it can be inferred that the researchers’ attempt to retrieve information from them in the post-visit period made them uncomfortable. Some of such responses are quoted here: The first respondent said, “I can’t talk about it right now. . .its still on my mind. . .let’s change subject” (Mowatt and Chancellor, 2011, p. 1422). The second respondent said, “after walking around that [place] for 5 minutes, I was done. It was too much. . .I told him I had no desire of going to the [Elmina] Castle’’ (Mowatt and Chancellor, 2011, p. 1422). Another ethical issue was of controlling the racial discrimination from invigorating during the course of research. Race is one of the most fundamental themes of the research as the Black people were kept in the dungeons of the Ghanaian Slave Castles by the White people. As the fifth respondent said, “I just want to run up to a White person and ask, Why? Knowing that they couldn’t answer me question. . .no one can” (Mowatt and Chancellor, 2011, p. 1423). Certainly, no researcher would like to have a White tourist in the surroundings when a Black tourist who is overcome with emotions feels like questioning all the White people out there why his/her ancestors were treated like this. This could stimulate racial fights between the Black and White tourists which would be totally uncalled for. It is not only the Black respondents who might get upset with the interviews, even the White respondents have a lot of tendency to become uncomfortable as a White tourist said, “I also feel the hatred emanating from the blacks towards us as our paths crossed at the entrances. I understand how they feel and would react in the same measure if I were in their place. There is absolutely no excuse for what happened here. Unfortunately, I am a descendant of people who perpetuated these acts” (Offiong, 2009 cited in Mowatt and Chancellor, 2011, 1423). 2. Island of peace or island of war: tourist guiding by Alon Gelbman and Darya Maoz This was an exploratory research. Gelbman and Maoz (2012) have adopted the interpretive paradigm in their research. The ontological basis of interpretive paradigm considers the world as constituent of various realities wherein, the researchers adopt an inductive approach in the research. Gelbman and Maoz (2012) used the inductive approach to evaluate the construction of the experience of the tourists by the Israeli tour guides. The epistemological basis of the interpretive paradigm requires the researcher to enter the social setting and play the role of social actors. In their research, Gelbman and Maoz (2012) became the tourists just like the rest to assess the narratives of the Israeli tour guides. The relationship between the researchers and the research participants was also subjective as the researchers don’t reveal whether or not they identified themselves as researchers in front of the tour guides. It apparently seems that they don’t. The methodological basis of the interpretive paradigm proposes a qualitative methodology, just like the one that was adopted by Gelbman and Maoz (2012). The researchers conducted participant observation as a fundamental tool to assess their influence on the experience of the tourists. The researchers paid heed to the words chosen by the guides in their speech, assessed the expressions the guides made and noted down their remarks and jokes. Following the process of participant observation, Gelbman and Maoz (2012) interviewed four of the five official tour guides. Each guide was visited four to five times by the researchers as the guides were addressing different groups of people. The researchers also recorded the guides’ narrative to conduct the content analysis. The fact that the focus of research was the interaction between the guest (tourists) and the host (guides) fulfils another criterion of the interpretive paradigm of research. In addition to that, the findings were all text-based and supplemented with quotes of the tour guides. Different kinds of ethical issues have been discussed in the research. One of the potential issues is the ethical dilemma of the extent to which the guides do justice with their role as mentors and as cultural mediators. Consideration of the name of the site i.e. The Island of Peace suggests that it is meant for the promotion of peace between Israel and Jordon that have been in a state of war with each other since 1948. This suggests that all efforts of the guides should be directed at emphasizing upon the positive events that have occurred between Israel and Jordon like the signing of peace treaty. However, to justify their role as mentors, the guides need to throw light upon the history of events, both positive and negative that have occurred between Israel and Jordon in an unbiased manner. Another ethical issue raised in the research is the fact that the Jordanian soldiers still keep weapons, but they are non-bulleted. Originally, they used to have bulleted weapons but since the tragic event that happened on 13 March 1997 in which seven 11 year old girls from Israel were shot dead by the Jordanian soldier, the policy changed thus denying the soldiers the right to keep bulleted weapons. While there is no doubt that the event was totally unjustified and uncalled for, denying the Jordanian soldiers the right to keep bulleted weapons is like placing no confidence in them. 3. Phantasmal destination: a post-modernist perspective by Bo Wendy Gao, Hanqin Zhang Patrick, and L’Espoir Decosta This was an exploratory research. The researchers were interested in finding out why tourists found interest in visiting such imaginary places as Shangri-La. The researchers also wanted to evaluate the perceptions of the tourists regarding the imaginary places of tourism and the basis of those perceptions. The research was of qualitative nature. The qualitative research model suited the researchers’ objectives best because it equips the researchers with complete understanding and knowledge of the phenomenon of phantasmal tourism since the process of development of such destinations is a continuous process. The exploratory nature of this research evaluates the imaginative processes that help the tourists associate meanings with the phantasmal destinations. To achieve this purpose, the researchers first conducted a literature review during which, they derived the name “phantasmal destinations” for such imaginary places and the name of this category of the tourists i.e. the phantasmal tourists. The Grounded Theory Method was used in this research. “Grounded theory research follows a systematic yet flexible process to collect data, code the data, make connections and see what theory/theories are generated or are built from the data” (Wadham, 2009). It was supplemented by the application of a theoretical sampling strategy which involves meaningful selection of a sample on the basis of the emerging theories. The age criterion of sampling was 18 years or older. In order to be included in the sample, the traveler should have had made a visit to Shangri-La in Yunnan, been aware of the myth of Shangri-La and been able to converse in the English language. Data was collected from the tourists using semi-structured interviews which were recorded digitally and were transcribed verbatim. A total of 32 interviews were conducted of which six were discarded because they had not been recorded with acceptable quality. Of the 26 interviewees, there were 11 women and 15 men. This research was a mix of the positivist paradigm and the interpretive paradigm. The factor that relates this research to the positivist paradigm is the fact that the researchers attempted to explain a tourism behavior. The researchers made use of the Grounded Theory method in this research, thus the research is of the inductive nature which makes it relate to the ontological basis of the interpretive paradigm of research. The subjective relationship between the researchers and the participants of research relates to the epistemological basis of the interpretive paradigm and the qualitative nature make it fulfill the criterion of the methodological basis of interpretive paradigm. 4. Tourism and Hybridity: Revisiting Bhabha’s Third Space by Maria Amoamo The research of Amoamo (2011) was an exploratory research as it explored the tendency of the Maori tourism operators to adopt the identity of third spaces. In this research, the researcher has yielded information about herself that she is a Maori researcher. In this capacity, the researcher finds herself at the interface of being an insider and an outsider. This is the very condition that the researcher has referred to as the “third space” in the research. Being a Maori, the researcher identifies how complex the process of construction of identity is since Maori identity is always in a state of change. Being a Maori, the researcher is well-equipped with the values of the Maori culture which is why, a Kaupapa Maori perspective was adopted for the research’s methodology. Amoamo (2011) conducted a literature review of the colonial history of New Zealand. She carried our interviews with the officials of tourism agencies in 2005 and tourism operators and the industry personnel in Maori in 2006. This research follows the critical theory paradigm. Maoris form a minority in the New Zealand and this research tends to explore the ways in which the Maori tourism operators have reformed their old cultural identities they had in the precolonial era. The ontological basis of the critical theory paradigm suggests that minorities are oppressed and their rights are subjugated by the majorities or the people in power. As a result of this research, Amoamo (2011) discovered the heterogeneous identity of the Maomi tourism. “Overall the particular values incorporated within each tourism experience from a kin group perspective override any essentializing characteristics because cultural integrity was shown to be an inherent feature of the production” (Amoamo, 2011, p. 1268). Amoamo (2011) also found that although the co-participants made indirect expression of such identity, yet the operators were considerably displaying the concepts of hybridity and third spaces. The epistemological basis of the critical theory paradigm requires the researcher to strongly empathize with the minority group like Amoamo (2011) does since she shares the same ethnic identity with them. The methodological basis of the critical theory paradigm requires the researcher to conduct interviews to draw the information which Amoamo (2011) does, so this research is based on the critical theory paradigm. The ethical issue in this research is that Amoamo (2011) assumed the risk of upsetting the Maori tourism operators by making them realize the subjectivity of their identity. Conclusion All four researches were exploratory in nature and employed a qualitative methodology to reach their respective objectives. “Qualitative researchers are interested in understanding how people interact their experiences, how they construct their worlds, and what meaning they attribute to their experiences” (Merriam, 2009, p. 5). Gelbman and Maoz (2012) and Ghao, ZhAng and Descota (2012) have used grounded theory method in their researches. This method involves an uninterrupted process of comparative analysis (cprjournal.com, n.d.). Unlike Gelbman and Maoz (2012), Ghao, ZhAng and Descota (2012) and Mowatt and Chancellor (2011), Amoamo (2011) sufficiently discussed her personal identity and its potential impacts on the research paradigms and perspectives and the methodology she adopted for it. From the subjects of the research papers discussed, it can be inferred that they all relate to the eighth moment of the qualitative research which is “the future”. “The eighth moment requires asks that the social sciences and the humanities become sites for critical conversations about democracy, race, gender, class, nation, states, globalization, freedom and community” (Denzin and Lincoln, 2011, p. 3). Tourism is an industry with a huge potential to enhance the economic strength of countries. There is need to explore such issues in order to enhance the functioning of the tourism industry across the globe. References: Amoamo, M 2011, Tourism and Hybridity: Revisiting Bhabha’s Third Space, Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 38, No. 4, pp. 1254–1273, doi:10.1016/j.annals.2011.04.002. Becker, HS n.d., The Epistemology of Qualitative Research, viewed, 9 January 2012, . cprjournal.com n.d., The Grounded Theory Method of Qualitative Research, viewed, 9 January 2012, . 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