Doing Research

Last Monday. It is me and the stack of papers. We sit opposite each other -- I, in a chair at the foot of the bed, and the stack, (spread out into less formidable, thematically-based mini-stacks), all over the bed itself. I sip my coffee and look at the blank notebook page I've opened on my lap, trying to absorb something from the stack before I begin pondering things on paper. The stack doesn't cooperate. He's cold, lifeless, comfortable in how large he's grown. Hey, look at me, I'm so fucking big you couldn't even begin to cram all of me into a single backpack! We really aren't on great terms, the stack and I. I keep one eyebrow raised, considering him over the rim of my coffee mug as I sip. Neither of us moves. We are bandits, we're out west, we're fingering our six-shooters. Did he fire six shots or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, in all the excitement I kinda lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum . . .

I eventually wade through the stack, leafing over the streaks of yellow and orange. Thoughts are occurred to me, things are scribbled in the notebook, I put down any drivel that comes to mind, in an effort to just get the gears going. I get up, I re-heat my coffee, I return to the chair, I squint at the stack, I nod and then scribble when the stack offers two dots, connected, and I get up, re-heat again.

Eventually a pattern develops. I spend 20 or 30 minutes intimating the thoughts and feelings of the stack. My coffee gets cold, thus prompting the 15-foot walk to the microwave, followed by about 5 to 10 minutes of pacing the 20-foot length of the apartment as I wait for the handle of the coffee mug to cool (since I inevitably heat it for too long) so that I can pick it up and bring it back over to the stack. The pacing is not a waste, in fact is crucial to the research process, giving me forward motion to re-think everything I've just written, to talk to myself outside the earshot of the stack, to hear aloud how brilliant or utterly ridiculous all of the past 30 minutes' thoughts have been, to work out the ever-present jitters from the caffeine. I've been pacing since about sophomore year of undergrad, it's perhaps among the greatest research methods ever devised.

The ongoing thought process -- since that's what research is, I think, is one really long thought spread out over a period of weeks or months or years and then divided up into little subheadings and clever chapter titles -- unfolds healthily but remains very dense, a thicket of ideas that does its best to clump together. Is the informal economy this, or is it that? Why are you studying these people and not those people? Ethnography or grounded theory? Method is everything -- (or method is nothing! Method is irrelevant, data is what you make of it, everything is just out there in the ether, waiting for you to just . . . I don't know, shape it or something! Turn it into your own proverbial origami swan!) I spend the week pacing, debating all these things with myself. Mostly I annoy the hell out of myself (will you just stop asking that? It's ethnography, you jackass, it was always ethnography! . . . or was it?). I shuffle the stack around, flipping articles open and closed, paper clips flying everywhere, highlighting new bits when I re-read with newfound closeness (how could I have been so flippantly amateur, how could I not have read this part, this singularly relevant paragraph in the whole 15 pages?)

Eventually, as the week rolls on, I drag certain chosen pieces of the stack over to the computer, haphazardly building an elite little satellite stack. I type, I pace (now using a kind of triangular approach, moving from desk to microwave, microwave to bed, bed to desk . . . ) and I think I'm typing good things. I'm firm, I'm declarative, I'm taking a stand on all this informal economy business and dammit -- none of you are going to make a peep about it. I feel a bit like the 16-year-old kid who tries to buy beer, hiding behind his wimpy little 16-year-old mustache in an ingenious act of misdirection. If I just use strong language, I think, just write in a clear, no-funny-business kind of way -- there's nothing trivial about this topic, sir, nothing light or linguistically whimsical, fluffy, no colorful metaphors or clever allusions or any of that nonsense here, sir, no, no hanky panky in this paper -- whoever reads this will actually believe that I am a grown-up, and that the informal economy is this thing that I have so confidently declared it to be. (Of course! How could it be otherwise! His writing is so . . . dry, it must be true!)

I spend pretty much my whole week immersed in this pacing, typing, linguistic chestbeating process. I actually make some serious progress, correcting some of the earlier fundamental problems of the study. I manage to piece together a small re-proposal, in which I restate exactly what I theorize the informal economy to be (conceptual clarification) and specify exactly what I hope to find over the next nine months. By Friday I have turned the study upside down, expanding my subject population from Subte (subway) salespeople to salespeople in public space generally. I'm going to compare all these different types of people. In doing this, I sort of "sociologize" the project, making my research aims more amenable to hypothesis, overcoming a lot of my major theoretical stumbling blocks. My survey questions are different. The dry writing reassures me. I have a direction. Phew.

But then I start meandering through some of my methodological literature for the first time in a while. I read back over the adage that one must choose the method to fit the question, not the question to fit the method. In other words, ask something first, then decide how to answer it. I second guess myself for the 843rd time since considering applying for the Fulbright. Did I rebuild my study because I wanted an easier method, because I wanted to be able to declare Yes, worry not, I have a hypothesis, I am not a crazy person, this is an actual social scientific endeavor! ? Is my original question -- who are these people on the Subte?, how did they get here?, etc. -- still answerable if I more carefully construct my method? Should I . . . re-rebuild the study?

Panic, chaos ensue. Buildings collapse, children cry, survivors develop alcohol problems. Every fucking solution, I lament with my face in my hands on the following Monday, yesterday, is fucking wrong.

I go to the office, hoping to inspire myself by sheer, you know, bravado or something, having taken the initiative to actually travel all the way to the office, where I do some class of intellectual work that I cannot do in my apartment, apparently. I luckily find one of my professors there, Lula, who I manage to book for a half hour meeting the next day. What might I say to her? I don't really even know. But it seems time to make a move, to declare aloud that, yes, I am being swallowed by my own indecisive nitpicking, my own idiocy and/or brilliance.

On Tuesday I meet with Lula. I lay it all out there. No one understands why I am studying these people. I don't understand why I'm studying these people. This method won't answer this question, that method won't answer that question, and I'm losing sight of the reasons that I actually proposed this thing in 2007. I can go with Route A or Route B, chosen from among a much larger collection of possible Routes, and what do you think Lula I'm panicking and maybe crashing and burning and I have to make a presentation to a bunch of important people from the State Department in Uruguay next week aaaand . . . ?

I say all that, but far less maniacally, in a way that makes me appear to be just a quasi-stumped young researcher. My life is together, I exude, just complicated. I wear a polo shirt to emphasize my ability to dress office casual. (I also go without an undershirt, emphasizing my ability to dress like an Argentine in a polo shirt). Without really trying to be, Lula is extremely reassuring. She looks at the various things that I have typed up and sees that I am at a crossroads in terms of topic and method, but she doesn't really think I have a problem: she thinks most of the theoretical problems I was having early on can be solved by just going with this alternative method (called "grounded theory") that I started considering the other day. We end up talking for something like an hour, and I am surprised at how eloquently and clearly I'm able to explain my problems. She asks a whole bunch of questions about how much background literature I've read and in doing so makes me realize that she really knows what she's doing and, just as importantly, seems to know exactly what I am doing.

We conclude that I will go with grounded theory and will stick with the focus on the Subte, pending the development of a preliminary questionnaire in the next week or two. Something seems to have clicked into place, I feel. I wander out of the office exuberant. Next week I go to Uruguay (week-long Fulbright conference) and when I return I will finalize my questionnaire and begin looking for informants. The hands-on research begins in about two weeks. Out of the office and into the streets.

And that's what it feels like to do research.


[Aside: did I go a little over the top with the self-deprecating sarcasm? Too many italics? I'm trying to find my voice here so I enjoy whatever comments you have...]