Geography 600, graduate introductory methods course
Tad Mutersbaugh, tmute2@uky.edu, 257-1316,
871 patterson office tower
First Day!!! Introduction Methodology: Epistemology, ontology, reflexivity
From the Dictionary of Human Geography: epistemology, ontology, space.place
Dictionary of Social Thought: methodology, realism
WEEK 2: What is data, anyway?
The Bowman expedition and militant empiricism.
Ethnographic mapping and ethics: Mexican indigenous communities and geographical knowledge
Political Geography Exchange:
Wainwright J. Geopiracy p.47-52 (human terrain and geosecurity) 67 - 92 (chapters 5,6), p. 12-20 (expert v. amateur)
A few primary source documents
Letter from Tiltepec & University of Kansas student newspaper interview
American Geographical Society Newletter from 2010
Interesting powerpoint about the Bowman Expedition
tad's letter to Oaxacan Colleagues (English version)
[A few Discussion QUESTIONs: what is militant empiricism? Why is it important? What are the alternatives? What are the ethical questions? Is it possible to support the Belmont principles in an age of PRISM and XKeyscore? What are the alternatives? Please suggest your own Discussion Qs!]
Task #2: Human Subjects and research ethics
Complete CITI training for human subjects research. Most of the research we would do falls in the 'exempt' category, but if research you contemplate does not, complete other sections as well; read through the 'UK instructions' portion to see which sections of this you need to complete. As X number of students have learned, failing to complete this can lead to a Rube Goldberg: Internal Review Board (IRB) petition for research clearance to be held up, funding is on hold, cant find faculty to fill out forms, research put on hold…
The web site is: https://www.citiprogram.org/
Also please check out the UK human subjects website: http://www.research.uky.edu/ori/humansubjects.html
IRB Survival Handbook
WEEK 3: Epistemological foundations of Research: Causal v. Dialectical; flat and structured ontologies
Billo & Hiemstra, 2013, Mediating Messiness
Research Design (a good statement of 'scientific' geographic method)
Thomas Kuhn Structure of Scientific Revolutions chapters 2, 4, 7 & 9
Marston, Jones, Woodward and the flattened ontologies debate.
Sayer, A. Critical realism (classic statement of post-positivist social science)
WEEK 4: SEPT 19 No Class
WEEK 5. Qualitative/Quantitative divides
Bergmann L, Sheppard E, Plummer P, 2009, Capitalism beyond harmonious equilibrium: mathematics as if human agency mattered Environment and Planning A 41: 265-283
Sibley, D. 1998. Sensations and spatial science: gratification and anxiety in the production of ordered landscapes. Environment and Planning A 30 (2): 235-246.
Wily E, 2009, Strategic positivism. Professional Geographer 61(3):310-322
Dialectics anyone?
Dixon and Jones: on the otherhand...dialectics
Sheppard: geographical dialectics
Brief discussion of dialectics in geography: (e.g., Melissa Wright's use of benjamin for femicide in Ciudad Juarez, o'connor's use of marx's metabolic rift)
DOING: matt (zook) recommends GeoDa software: this is useful since it is a. opensource (free), b. has a lot of geostatistical tools, and c. has sample datasets to play with. This is a bit timeconsuming, however, so I'll request that -- for the purposes of class discussion -- you limit engagement to 1.5 hr. including downloading etc. So,
1. Download GeoDa: varies depending upon your operating system (duh)
2. Download user manual: this is the principal, somewhat out-of-date tutorial, but others with updated instructions are available
3. Download sample data: choose any datasets that appeal to you, I used the Argentinean corn production data! (note: info on variables is available in the dataset download folder; note: the tutorial uses a lot of different databases, for the sake of time economy i would suggest trying the different exploratory statistics on just one database)
Play with this: i got as far as histograms in 1.5 hrs: so much for calculating spatial correlations!
Asad, Talal. Ethnographic representation, statistics and modern power.
Hacking, Ian. 1991. How should we do the history of statistics? In G. Burchell, C. Gordon and P. Miller (Eds.), The Foucault Effect, 181-195. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
Barnes, T. J. 1998. A history of regression: actors, networks, machines and numbers. Environment and Planning A 30 (2): 203-223.
Hepple, L. 1998. Context, social construction and statistics: regression, social science and human geography. Environment and Planning A 30 (2): 225-234.
SKIM Burt, James E. and Barber, Gerald M. 1996. Elementary Statistics for Geographers, Second edition. New York, Guilford. (pages 1-31) [SKIM]
WEEK 7. Reading quantitative geographical research
[Each student signs up for ONE of the following articles to present in class (yes, it did say two, I'm pleased to share the seminar with a lot more of you this time around!)]
Robbins, Paul. 2001. Tracking invasive land covers in India, or why our landscapes have never been modern. Annals of the Association of American Geographers91 (4): 637-659.
Gilbert, Melissa R. 1998. "Race," space and power: The survival strategies of working poor women. Annals of the Association of American Geographers88 (4): 595-621.
Political Geography: one area with a lot of quantitative work...Let's just pick one!...i couldn't decide, they're all interesting, so whoever signs onto this 'political' group can make the choice...
Ellis, Mark; Holloway, Steven R.; Wright, Richard; Fowler, Christopher S., 2012, Agents of Change: Mixed-Race Households and the Dynamics of Neighborhood Segregation in the United States. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 102(3): 549-570
WEEK 8. Thinking Qualitative...(ly)
Qualitative Data Packages?
WEEK 9. Reading qualitative geography
[Each student signs up for one article to present in class]
WEEK 10. Visual methodologies of Place and Landscape (content analysis and semiotics) [task: photos, transects, readings]
Rose, Gillian. 2001. Visual Methodologies: An introduction to the interpretation of visual materials. Sage: London. (chapter 1)geography_methods_pdfs/rose_visual-meth-ch1.pdf
WEEK 11. Mappings
EPICOLLECT?
Huffman image 1; Huffman images 2 & 3
Matthew Sparke, 1998. A map that roared Annals Association of American Geographers 88(3): 463-495
(article on politics of First Peoples mapping in Canada)
WEEK 12. Surveys [Do a survey]
Survey as an interactional practice: well, maybe not so interactional; perhaps as a 'researcher-framed textual interaction'.
Czaja, Ronald and Blair, Johnny. 1996. "Chapter 1: An introduction to surveys and to this book," and "Chapter 2 - Stages of a survey." In Designing Surveys: A Guide to Decisions and Procedures. Thousand Oaks, Pine Forge Press.geography_methods_pdfs/czaja-blair_design-survey
The survey in its broader 'geographic' meaning as a mode of 'surveying' the world: landscapes, practices, etc. It would be great if we could have a discussion of how 'survey' came to be constrained to have such a narrow meaning in methodological terms...survey, surveil...
(a big Thanks to Eric Nost for suggestions!!)
WEEK 13. Interviewing and Focus Groups [task: focus group interview]
Kvale, Steinar. 1996. Interviews: An Introduction to Qualitative Research. Thousand Oaks, Sage Publications.
"Chapter 2--The interview as conversation,"
WEEK 14. Ethnography: modernist, realist, poststructuralist, autoethnographic, participatory, approaches
Mary Louise Pratt 'Fieldwork in common places'
Malinowski: Argonauts, 'arrival' trope excerpts: I'm interested in this as a form of 'high modernist' ethnography -- thinking of modernism as a form of thinking that emerged in the early 20th century, one in which many of the hallmarks of positivist science are present: the master subject position, notions of social rationality and taylorism, objectivity to name a few. Read as much as you like, but i'm mostly interested in the description of the ethnographer's role, the description of the relationship (with nary a mention of colonialism) between 'ethnographer' and 'native' (yikes!).
Quantitative work in ethnography: Logics of everyday life
Mutersbaugh: bread and chainsaws -- I can't be the only geographer who mixes quantitative work in with ethnography, but without scratching through piles of pdfs (or whatever one does with them) i've pulled out this piece. I'd be interesting to think how one might apply this sort of time-geography of gender conflict to contemporary settings -- how would one quantify facebook venturings and spatialities? time investments?
Participatory Action Research (PAR): here are a couple of PAR pieces, one expressly, the other less so: i'd be interesting to think about the boundaries of PAR.
Autoethnography: Love this piece by Skidmore
Karaoke Fascism, Skidmore chapters 1-3 on autoethnography in an authoritarian regime -- Chapter 3 is the most important part of this narrative, particularly the parts on fear and the ethnographer's inability to do a standard sort of ethnography. There are other interesting parts, though
Labor ethnographies in geography: the interest in manufacturing process, in the integration of body and machine, in the semiotics of this encounter, really is a distinctive geographic contribution to ethnography.
Dunn: Privatizing Poland: quality control and the person -- very nice piece of work on the mobilization of TQM for polish firms
Melissa Wright: excerpt from 'disposable women' -- this excerpt really doesn't do this piece justice, but gets at some of the shopfloor practices
WEEK 15: Epistemology Redux: analyzing discourse and assemblage AND Research into Methods into grants:
Methods in grants: examples and analysis -- organization, language, strategy, presentation
Foucault: Birth of the clinic
Deleuze: Kafka, towards a minor literature
Latour, B, Pandora's Hope, Chapter 2 (Actor-Network Theory)
WEEK 16: Mall trip (or whatever else we decide to do...): meet student center parking lot for research trip
IRB review
Explaining methods: grant into strategies (the liminal state between significance and protocol)
Mall Write-up ASSIGNMENT DUE Friday of finals week)