Sharpening my focus

Two weeks ago I participated in the teleseminar, Setting Out on Your Journey: Finding Your Topic. I felt that I had already decided on my dissertation topic but would benefit from sharpening my focus and better articulating my interests. The seminar was free; the conversation, interesting. I learned that, in some universities, making positive social change is one of the dissertation requirements.  Dr. Sally Jensen and Dr. Kat Malinsky, who led the teleseminar, discussed several important issues (e.g., what constitutes a contribution to the discipline, how to find gaps in the literature,  etc.). I liked the exercises that were offered. I completed the first three of them ("The Dissertator's Vision Inventory," "Choosing a Preliminary Focus," and "Topic Goodness Criteria") before the teleseminar. In the handout, the fourth exercise, "Topic Challenge: Generating Original Topics,"was filled with an example, and I didn't work on it until yesterday.

That exercise asks to make a list of interesting questions that have been asked about your dissertation topic area and, in another column, provide answers for each of these questions. I thought about the literature I have read and came up with the following questions:

1. How do identities affect behavior?
2. How do multiple identities of an individual interact?
3. Why do identities change?

Looking at  the teleseminar example, I noticed that two of their questions began with "what" ("What factors influence teachers' responses to bullying?" and "What prevents teachers from reporting bullying in schools?")  while two of mine, with "how," and started to wonder whether I was doing something wrong, but continued with formulating answers to those questions. Here are the answers I came up with.

1. (a) According to identity theory (Burke & Stets, 2009), each identity contains a set of meanings that define that identity and are called the identity standard. Individuals continuously verify their identities by altering their behavior to align their perceived meanings about oneself in a specific situation  to the meanings in the identity standard. That verification process may function at both conscious and unconscious levels.  (b) According to social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979; Turner, 1982), any social identity both describes and prescribes one's attributes as a member of that group, which may include what one should think and value and how one should behave. When a  social identity gets activated, perceptions and conduct of an individual become in-group stereotypical.
2. (a) According to identity theory,  in some situations where multiple identities of an individual are activated, their identity standards may become mutually exclusive, thus preventing the simultaneous verification of all these identities. Then, the identity, which is higher in the hierarchy of salience, is more likely to be verified, and the identity standard of the other one is likely to be modified. In addition, some scholars advance the concept of master identity. Master identities (e.g., race, gender, etc.) are supposed to be more stable and consequential than role identities  and help set the standard of other lower level identities (Tracy, 2002). (b) Critical scholars (hooks, 1990; Trinh,1989; etc.) insist that cultural identities are nonsummative and that one cannot simply quantify and separate which aspects of his/her identity are due to race, class, gender, or sexuality; instead qualities of experience are rooted in the multiplicity of overlapping and colliding cultural identifications.
3. According to identity theory, identities change because of the changes in their identity standards. In fact, identity theory assumes that identity meanings are always changing but at a very slow pace, so that change is noticeable only over longer periods of time. In addition,  Burke and Stets (2009) outline four sources of  identity change: (a) changes in the situation that alter meanings of the self, putting them out of congruence with the identity standard; (b) conflicts between two (or more) identities of an individual; (c) conflict between the meanings of one's behavior and the identity standard; (d) adaptive strategy inherent in identities that works to establish mutual verification contexts and achieve desired and shared meanings.

In my opinion, the current identity literature doesn't sufficiently address the following questions.

• How do multiple cultural identities and role identities intersect and interact?
• What (if anything) can be learned about that interplay of identities from individuals' accounts of relational history and self-reports of behavior?

I understand the necessity of contextualizing those questions and focusing my research on a certain group of people at a specific cultural-historical conjuncture, and I''ll talk about that in my future posts. However, overall I'm interested in bringing into a dialogue different traditions of identity research and getting a better insight into how an individual experiences his/her identity in its multifaceted totality.

If you are familiar with identity research, please let me know whether that makes sense to you. I would also like to know what do you think about the "Topic Challenge: Generating Original Topics" exercise and how you approach narrowing your dissertation topic.


References:

• Burke, P. J., & Stets, J. E. (2009). Identity theory. New York, NY: Oxford University Press
• hooks, b. (1990). Yearning: race, gender, and cultural politics.  Boston, MA: South End Press.
•  Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 33-47). Monterey, CA: Brooks-Cole.
• Tracy, K. (2002). Everyday talk: Building and reflecting identities. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
• Trinh, T. M. (1989). Woman, native, other: Writing postcoloniality and feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
•  Turner, J. C. (1982). Towards a cognitive redefinition of the social group. In H. Tajfel (Ed.), Social identity and intergroup relations (pp. 15-40). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University press.

More on note taking

It was brought to my attention that the default blog settings that I used had a chilling effect on comments. I made some adjustments and hope people will leave public comments, in addition to giving me private feedback :)

What I've learned from comments of others is that, at some earlier point of their journey, many dissertation writers tried to experiment with different note taking approaches and eventually came to the conclusion that the most important thing is to start (and keep) writing, plugging new sources in along the way when necessary. I also looked for advice on note taking on the internet. One of my favorite findings was  Note-Taking - Learning Historical Research. This page contains discussion of various topics related to research and writing, which can be useful for instructors who assign research papers and want to provide better guidance to their students. Among those topics are keeping a research journal, finding new sources using library call numbers connections, acknowledging sources, etc. On the same page, I also discovered the following excerpt:

“The whole time I'm researching I'm keeping one file open on my computer all the time, which is, essentially, my notebook… Anything interesting I read, I'll copy it in, highlights from interviews I do, I'll copy it in, and I'll try out sentences and I'll try out leads and I'll try out conclusions and I'll make lists of points and reading lists and it's kind of a big mess. Usually there are about fifty single-spaced pages of this before I really start writing.” – Michael Pollan, environmental writer, as told to Pamela Demory.

This writing preparation description caught my attention and made me look for the entire interview, which is available at http://michaelpollan.com/interviews/its-all-storytelling-an-interview-with-michael-pollan/.

I generally enjoy hearing about research and writing of others and always take something useful out of that. Pollan's interview wasn't an exception. Although I didn't learn anything drastically new, it was interesting to read how he utilizes common writing suggestions (i.e., outlining, writing something every day, developing a writing routine, editing, etc.). I liked Pollan's idea of having one computer file of notes for each piece of writing. In my case, I decided on one file for each dissertation chapter. My next question was how to structure that computer file. I didn't want the file to be organized chronologically, like a journal, or by source, since the extensive amount of notes may make it difficult to navigate the file and to efficiently incorporate the information it contains into the chapter. Eventually, I came up with an idea to follow the headings of my identity chapter and to organize the file in a similar fashion. That probably makes sense because I'm happy with the current structure of the chapter and my goal is not to revise it, but to further develop, deepen, and enrich my argument. Hope that will work. What do you think?

All I ever wanted to know about identity: Conundrums of literature review

"Identity" has become a prominent part of political debates, cultural discussions, and scholarly investigations. But, despite its frequent usage and a consequent sense of intuitive understanding, it is rather difficult to provide a concise definition that adequately captures the variety of present meanings of the word identity. While some understand "identity" as distinguishing personal characteristics that make one a unique individual different from everybody else and that often serve as a source of self-esteem and personal pride, others view "identity" as social belonging to a group or category (i.e., nationality, race, ethnicity, gender, occupation, etc.), and still others talk about identity in terms of relational roles (mother, wife, friend, etc.). Often scholars focus solely on one of these aspects of identity, and, as a result, identity theorizing is somewhat fragmented with different conversations taking place in different domains. To add to the complexity, scholars approach "identity" both as a phenomenon to be explained (e.g., what constitutes Russian identity) and the one that has explanatory force (e.g., standpoint theory, with its focus on a unique insight that comes from the lived experience of oppression). Arguably, this ambiguity and all-inclusiveness contribute to the lure of "identity," which results in a vast and diverse body of scholarly literature on the subject. At the same time, the sheer scope and diversity of the identity research present a challenge for those reviewing this literature.

During last year and a half, I have been systematically reading about identity because identity, or more specifically its intersectionality, is the focus of my dissertation. What is intersectionality? To put it simply, by birth, occupation, residency, interests, and preferences, we all belong to multiple social categories and groups. Although those categories and groups may seem as distinct and independent, with little (or no) interconnection between them, different dimensions of our identities do interact and affect each other (and not just in an additive way). Those interactions and mutually constitutive relationships represent the intersectionality of identity. Usually, in scholarly literature, "intersectionality" refers to the study of intersections of multiple systems of oppression and discrimination experienced by individuals belonging to several different minority groups. I argue that the scope of the investigation of intersectionality of identity should not be limited to social identities and needs to be broadened to include relational and personal identities as well, since all these types of identities interact with each other and jointly constrain and shape how an individual experiences his/her identity in its multifaceted totality. I'll discuss my argument in more detail in my future posts; for now, I just want to make a point that the nature of my topic compelled me to look at the literature beyond the communication studies discipline, to which I belong, and to include readings from psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, cultural and gender studies, etc.

One of the main problems I've been facing is note taking. I am happy with the structure my identity chapter, which I developed based on my earlier readings (more about that later), but I struggle to incorporate new sources and new ideas and  to keep track of the latter. When I read, I am not always able to grasp right away the relevance or significance of new ideas to my project; that may come to me later while I'm reading something else. As a result, the notes I make are somewhat disorganized and difficult to use. Any suggestions? What are your note taking strategies?

Introduction

Welcome to My  Dissertation Blog!

I greatly appreciate your interest and very much look forward to your comments and suggestions!

This blog is a space for me to track my progress, reflect on writing process, discuss my research, and share some questions and problems that I encounter on my dissertation journey.