Abstract
Rhizomatic travels, new materialism, intra-action, diffraction, agental realism, im-pro-visus, schizoanalysis, response data, research assemblages, bodies-without-organs, affects, plugging-ins, becoming-other – the anthology edited by Ann Merete Otterstad and Anne B Reinertsen offers an explosion of concepts, perspectives, reasonings and experiments, and all sorts of literal twirls that might be relatively new acquaintances for the wider public. However, the book is not only about creative concepts or neologisms. Rather, it is a multifaceted production of explorative actions often materialized in empirical studies.
In order to understand the context of this work, and the field it contributes to, I find it appropriate to make a brief mention of what Otterstad and Reinertsen in the introduction of the book designate as ‘post-methodology’ (which can be related to the terms ‘post-qualitative research’ (St. Pierre, 2011) and ‘anti-methodology’ (Nordstrom, 2015)). In recent years, the almost self-evident use of qualitative methods in social and behavioural research has been challenged. The critique is directed towards mainly two problematic features which are inherent in qualitative research at the present time. Firstly, as St. Pierre (2011) stresses, qualitative research can be claimed to be not qualitative enough. Although qualitative research has developed in opposition to quantitative methods, it has become blurred by quantitative concepts and standards. In the introductory chapter, Otterstad eloquently shows, with a contemporary and well-founded study, how concepts such as ‘impact’, ‘effectiveness’ and ‘effect’ are operating in the field of early childhood education in relation to children’s development. The main problem with this, Otterstad writes, is that: ‘The research questions are pre-defined within the theories of knowledge reflecting certain views on childhood’ (39; my translation).
In contrast, the chapters of this anthology do not start or finish at specific point. Rather, they grow, and they do so from within the events and from the middle of the empirical actualizations, such as children’s songs at the lunch table (Beate Leirpoll’s chapter); girls’ experiences of ill health related to school (Hillevi Lenz Taguchi and Anna Palmer’s chapter); or silence in preschool (Maggie MacLure et al.’s chapter) and the writers allow these events to be the sources of questions, problems and further theorizations. Taking note of the unique and the phenomenon itself (which can be claimed to be the original idea of qualitative research) is often emphasized in post-methodological research, in order to get ‘data to glow’ (MacLure, 2013a) and produce research that surprises (MacLure, 2013b). There is no doubt that this stands in stark contrast to the highly developed industry of handbooks in qualitative methods, which often advocate a systematization of the research process and design.
The second problem with traditional qualitative research is that it tends to centre the human being and the human being’s perceptions, experiences and thoughts about the world, mostly through linguistic expressions (St. Pierre, 2011). In this approach, the human being is regarded as an active, rational and verbal subject, whilst things, animals, tools, and so on become passive, mute and controllable. Post-methodological research not only opens up space for small-scale, theory-driven approaches, but also introduces a flat ontology which questions binary distinctions between theory and practice, objects and subjects, reasons and sense, etc. Recently, these thoughts, regardless of which label they have received, have proven to be especially fruitful in research in early childhood education since they offer tools also to study the non-verbal and the corporal (e.g. the chapters by Erica Burman and Nina Rossholt). Simultaneously, it invites in the material, which is often attendant to the research scene in preschools (toys, pencils, clay, tables, trees, etc.), not as passive artefacts, as in socioculturalist perspectives, but as assemblages with agency (which Susan Nordstrom’s chapter eloquently shows in relation to research methodology).
Proposing to be a book on post-methodology, this anthology aims to contribute to an elusive field of research. The question that accompanied my reading was: Is it possible to write a book on methodology in a research area that emphasizes the unique and small scale? In itself, the book is an explosion of theories and perspectives, of writing styles, languages and words, of interests and ambitions. Internationally well-known names are mixed with names with less academic weight – a rare but powerful and engaging combination. The majority of the 31 contributors are situated within the field of education in general and early childhood education specifically. Among the most powerful contributions, we find Beate Leirpoll’s chapter, entitled ‘An openness for the events to come’, in which Leirpoll shows how preschool teachers operate between the already known and the unknown by improvising in entanglements with children, their bodies and affects.
In addition to these more empirically rooted studies, the anthology also contains chapters with straightforward theoretical reasonings. In one such chapter, ‘No paradigms, no fashions, and no confessions’, Gert Biesta questions the tendency for overtheorizing in some studies, where scholars get ‘a little lost in other people’s theories’ (133). Instead, he argues for a pragmatic use of theories ‘in connection to the question “What is the problem?” – or, to be more precise: “What is the question to which theory is supposed to provide the answer?”’ (134). This chapter is an interesting contribution to the anthology since the argument can be considered with respect to the overarching aim of the book or, alternatively, in opposition to it, depending on ‘which team you play for’.
The third part of the book, which focuses on artistic forms of expression, shows how post-methodology effectively breaks down the barriers of prevalent dichotomies in research by inviting, for example, opera and theatre onto the research scene. These chapters are interesting in their own right, but they contribute to what is my main concern with the book: the lack of a clear thread, some overall themes or something that keeps these multiple, experimental and varied contributions together, without losing their inherent and obvious richness. The anthology’s most frequently cited scholars – Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari – might offer a way to understand the book, as a rhizome: unlike trees or their roots, the rhizome connects any point to any other point, and its traits are not necessarily linked to traits of the same nature … It has neither beginning nor end, but always a middle (milieu) from which it grows and which it overspills. (Deleuze and Guattari, 2012: 23)
Without doubt, the ‘traits’ (chapters) of this book are not ‘linked’ to ‘the same nature’, but to multiple and varied natures. Thus, it might seem a contradiction to criticize a ‘methodological festival’ for being scattered, but I believe that this – and its length – could obscure and blur the aim and vision of the anthology.
Overall, I believe that the book will serve as a good introduction to the area, as it contributes with new and different perspectives, concepts, visions and inspiration that strengthen a field which is becoming. Most importantly, I think that the book offers good practical examples not of how post-methodology should be done, but rather how it could be done – not blueprints or a recipe, but sources of inspiration for what might happen when the traditional boundaries in research methodology are challenged. In addition, and from a broader perspective, the post-methodology that Otterstad and Reinertsen, together with the other contributors, introduce us to might offer new tools for acknowledging and paying attention to the daily activities in preschools and the everyday relations between teachers, children, bodies and materials.
And, to answer the question that I posed earlier in this review, since the anthology avoids any tendency to generalize, systematize or advocate research designs, in favour of empirical actualizations and the small scale, it effectively shows how a book on post-methodology can be written and it highlights the need for further discussions about what is often taken for granted in educational research in a broad sense.