Method and Its Undoing: Research Methods, Fall 2020

Abstract

In the field of communication, method is typically treated as belonging to one of two categories — qualitative or quantitative. Even mixed method approaches take these categories for granted. But this dichotomy hides as much as it reveals, and other modes of inquiry, responding to other concerns, are not only possible but desirable.

This book is the record of a doctoral-level methods seminar at the University of Ottawa in Fall 2020, during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. The authors ran the seminar through email, preserving their messages here. The readings challenged familiar methodological paradigms by questioning their epistemological and ontological bases. The first half of the seminar asked about language and persuasion, which are not neutral tools. Indeed, they actively shape our encounter with the world we claim to be studying, and their methodological implications demand sustained reflection. But these approaches, too, hide as much as they reveal: the philosophy that grounds them is subject to politics and, in some cases, the bald assertion of power. Thus the second half examined challenges to Western methodological hegemony, in particular from Indigenous perspectives.