It is a presentation on Research Methodology- to be deleivered at the school of Social Sciences, Kottayam on 27-May-2015

1. P.Madhu

3. Is language a vehicle of
meaning or conveyer belt
of thought?

4.  Shares its etymological root with
Conceit!
 To “take in”!
 "take (seed) into the womb, become
pregnant,"

5.  Concepts are the constituents of
thoughts
 Is ‘non-conceptual understanding’
possible?
 ‘referential’? – Networked references!

14. With concepts we
classify particulars!

15. Concepts are
methodologically (?) arrived
from observing or analyzing
sources

16. Cloaks’ of senses?

18.  Method: Methods are means by which
concepts are either discovered or invented
from sources ?
 The procedure by which we weave meaning?
 A procedural means to uncloak?

19.  Method – is technique- Techne-
 Techne is Bringing Forth – revealing
 Techne is linked to episteme: Knowing in the widest
sense
 Bringing Forth is Poesis- opening up
 Poesis is something Poetic!

20.  It is not a means to an end- not making, not
manipulating, not manufacturing – Not merely
instrumental- It is a way of revealing (Heidegger)
 Means presuppose effect! Hence- not opening up!
 A means is that whereby something is effected & thus
sustained (Heidegger)
 Methodology is a Bridge- not a dam. Not daming,
storing, distributing- rather letting flow
 Not an exercise in enframing

22.  What?
 What Time, sequence, seriality, co-presence… (When)
 What Place, habitat, ethology, ecology, space (Where)
 Through What Process? Mechanism, co-happenings,
Triggers (How)
 What reasons/effect- bring forths (why)
 What name, identity, co-ordinate, gender.. (Who)

23. Who?
Why?
How?
When?
Where?
What?
Revealing ESSENCE
Committing to
Essentialism

24. Causa = to fall (effecting): silver is the material shaped into form driven by its
‘purpose’ by silver-smith- silver smith ‘effects’ production- (effective cause)

25.  What Brings forth (co-responsible for- occasioned -
aitia) the effect (Revealing)- Poesis
 NOT Whose Moralistic Lapse is the effect (Enframing)

27.  We enframe because- discursively seduced to be
enframing, daming…impulsive, actors as agents… Like
our Film heroes--- who pick up fights… & be ultra
emotional… methodology is becoming masala
methodology, unfortunately… it boils blood… its
victims think that it may be because they are
‘revolutionary’…
 Poesy is more re-volutionary than enframing?... It
unwinds!

33.  Source
 Object of Study?
 Objectified by concepts & methods?
 That which we try to un-cloak?

43. Rene Magritte

45. This is not a school

48. Sources, Method and concepts are
mutually related and they reinforce/
torpedo each other

49. 1. Sources don’t lie out there to be discovered. Even their
existence can’t be recognized or acknowledged without
the means of concept or method.
2. Methods are not merely neutral tools available there.
They have to be invented and sharpened as we grasp our
research problems better. They have to be reinvented as
our political conscience improves with research
acquaintance.
3. Concepts are not truth statements. They are habituated
patterns of organizing facts influenced by our political
sensibility and exposure to other concepts. Concepts are
method dependent. Though ideally concepts are arrived
as the result of a research process, without a conceptual a
priori we cannot approach a research problem.

50. the first impression is not a fundamental truth. In point
of fact, scientific objectivity is possible only if one
has broken first with the immediate object, if one has
refused to yield to the seduction of the inicial choice, if
one has checked and contradicted the thoughts which
arise from one's :first observation. Any objective
examination, when duly verified, refutes the results of
the first contact with the object.
-Gaston Bachelard (Psychoanalysis of fire)

51.  Research gap?
 Concept creation? Establishing truth?
 Methodological precision?
 Appropriating Source?
 Exposing error?
 De-cloak meaning?

56. Santa Muerte (Spanish for Our
Lady of the Holy Death)

68. There is always a
further!

72. Nimitha
Induced
Akrama
Nimitha - effecting
Akrama: Chaos, rupture, dis-order (revealing)

74.  Usually we begin our research process from our conceptual
a priori. Conceptual a priori is the positive unconscious of
knowledge of the individual researchers or the research
field. The objective of our research, I would recommend,
should not be reproducing our conceptual a priori by
means of readymade methods justified with data sources,
approaching all the three uncritically.
 The research process is also the process in which the
researchers gain ability to handle source, method and
concepts dexterously. The greater research processes take
researchers to break away from conceptual a priories the
dexterous they are.

75.  A refined research process is, to my understanding,
explaining or understanding the source, using the best
possible method.
 Methods are better to the extent they challenge the
conceptual a priories. The coarsest of research
endeavor on the other hand would be reproducing
conceptual a priories. A still worse research process
may not even be aware of the existence of the
conceptual a priories within which researches are
problematized.

76.  Most of the hypothetico-deductive research projects
reinvent the conceptual bias with which they started
their truth-game. Conceptual a priories though are
inevitable, research projects of greater authenticity
move ahead by prioritizing methods over concepts. By
prioritizing methods over concepts I mean challenging
a priori concepts by critiquing methods by which they
were produced.
 Precisely, this is called methodological critique. Such a
critique may free research endeavors to look at the
sources in a new light

77.  Research endeavors of greater authenticity critically
examine the methods in relation to their efficacy in
understanding the source. Understanding or
explanation of the source through undergoing into
spirals of methodological reflexivity is pivotal to
research endeavors of greater authenticity. The idea is
diagrammatically expressed in the Figure given above.
 The diagram exposes the tentative reflexive spiral
researchers may go from a priory concept to
methodologically refined concept.

78.  Of the three, among the trio: source, method and
concept, I suggest, we need to be more cautious and
guarded about ‘concept’. One has to be aware,
concepts are not truth statements, but they are results
of our attempt to systematically understand the source
through a set of methods.
 Concept is Krami!

79.  Commitment to methods over understanding the
source is an error we often commit. The error of
committing to one or another set of methods towards
understanding the source however, may not be fully
avoided. Nevertheless, the awareness regarding
inevitable fallaciousness of methods in understanding
the source may enhance our caution against reducing
truths into concepts

80.  Research is a never ending endeavor of making sense
of the source with reflexively produced
methodological engagement. The moment, we declare
the concepts we have drawn as pure truth, we should
know, is the moment our research and scientific
temperament is lost to dogmas and prejudices

82.  Disappropriate
 A-signifying Puissance!
 Potency
 Void
 Event
 Reveal, Bring-forth, open up…. Take off!