Week 4: The Bedraggled Daisy

Well, this certainly was an interesting exercise! Not surprisingly, I had no trouble at all creating a list of what my research will touch on, but all the trouble in the world putting it into 'flower' form. I think that a large part of this is due to the research itself, which is concerned with thinking about the implications of certain phenomenon as they relate to a central concept. In the end, I had to modify my flower to put this concept (Graffiti), and it's associated implications (for public policy and law), in the middle - there was simply no way for everything else to touch that sections of the plant without resulting in a seriously deformed daisy. As my study is also a comparative analysis, I put the two time period/regions under study as the foundations of the flower, or the 'stem' that I will be drawing materials from. I did try to overlap the other petals as best as possible though, so that the ones that have the deepest links are closest to each other.

I did enjoy this exercise, even though it had to be modified. The reading itself was also very instructive as to how best to go about locating sources in a world where there is so much information overload, and provided a lot of useful reminders to this extent.  I do have one caveat though re: Lucker's discussion of the 'Harvard' method (2010, p. 93-95): I do think that it is important to read some books that don't fit into the 'readable' category in order to do truly good research. Books who's thereotical frame does not match yours, and who also don't contain a great deal of useful or new emperical data, can still be important to help establish context and to understand what has been done and why you do not want to do that. This should certainly not be a large component of your research process, but I personally feel as though I benefit from reading a couple (even a few!) of such texts more in-depth during the beginning stages of that process.


Sources:

Luker, K. (2010). Salsa dancing into the social sciences. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.