Torn Many Ways Politics, Conflict and Emotion in Research

This edited collection brings together a range of experiences from the field, largely in the context of CSCW and HCI. It focuses specifically on the experiences of people who have worked in difficult, tense, delicate and sometimes conflictual and dangerous settings. The tensions faced by researchers and, more importantly, how they manage to deal with them are often under-remarked. Unlike the bulk of published ethnographic work, the chapters in this book deal more explicitly with the various practical problems that researchers with varying degrees of experience face.

Our aim in this book is to give a voice to researchers who have sometimes contended with unexpected issues and who sometimes have had to face them on their own. We explore incidents which may entail emotional conflict, embarrassment and shame, feelings of isolation, arguments with other members of a team, political pressures, and ideological confusions, to name but a few.  Senior figures in research laboratories and elsewhere may provide intellectual direction and support but may not always recognise the personal and problematic nature of qualitative enquiry undertaken by relatively inexperienced researchers. The chapters examine feelings of isolation, the difficulty of ‘taking sides’, the negotiation of personal, ethical, and political pressures in the field, and dealing with conflicting visions of what the research should be about.

The book is a resource for those embarking on the challenges of working in unfamiliar or difficult settings and moreover should act as a reminder to academics who might have forgotten the practical issues that researchers can face and how they deal with them. 

Dave Randall

Dave Randall is a senior professor at the University of Siegen in Germany. He was previously a principal lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK. He has published 7 books and over 200 peer reviewed papers with colleagues. His interests lie mainly in the use of qualitative research methods for technology- related investigation and, to this end, has mainly worked in the disciplinary areas of Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Human Computer Interaction.

Peter Tolmie

Peter Tolmie is a senior researcher at the University of Siegen in Germany. He previously worked with the University of Nottingham in the UK and, before that, with the Xerox Research Centre in Grenoble, France. He has published, with colleagues, 4 books and many peer-reviewed papers. He has interests in ethnomethodology, CSCW, domestic life and, above all, music production.

Max Krüger

Max is a PhD student and researcher at the University ofSiegen in Germany. researcher in the department of informatics and new media at the University of Siegen in Germany. He has extensive experience of working with indigenous populations in the Global South and also in providing support for migrant communities in Germany.  His primary interests lie in studies of the environment, migration and arrival, postcolonialism and problems of late capitalism. He has published at CSCW and CHI on these themes. He is currently working on a project involving forestry.

Debora De Castro leal

Debora is a Brazilian PhD student, researcher and, above all, activist. She has worked with local communities in the Amazon basin and with ex-guerrillas in Colombia and has published papers on the experiences of Farc guerrillas as they attempt re-integration into Columbian society, and on an indigenous community in the Amazon basin, Brazil. Her academic interests centre on postcolonialism, especially as the issues pertain to experience in SouthAmerica. She has published at CSCW and CHI on these themes.