How to formulate specific research method for dissertation project: a note

How to formulate specific research method for dissertation project: a note

Take for example, on observational research. To formulate a specific observational research method design to respond to a specific research objective, one needs to study the topic of observational research, to start with. A useful resource is my blog note on the video resources on this topic.

However, just studying observational research per se is not enough to help you to formulate a specific observational research design, say "to evaluate the conservative corporate culture of ABC Ltd". To pick up more research skill to do so, you need to do literature review to gain additional intellectual knowledge on corporate culture. To be specific, the relevant academic literature will give you some ideas , in the forms of theories and approaches, what information is needed for corporate culture evaluation. The academic literature also presents to you knowledge of how other researchers use specific research methods to approach research tasks related to corporate culture study.

Finally, you need to firm up your research design decision, e.g. on observational research design, and incorporate it into your theoretical framework level-1c. (of the Agile Literature Review Approach).

On place-based identity for Housing Studies: a study note

 

On place-based identity for Housing Studies: a study note

Written by Joseph, K.K. Ho   dated: August 27, 2022.

 

A summary: The notion of place-based identity for Housing Studies, mainly covered in the course of Geographical Imagination, offers a rich set of ingredient ideas and postulations for articulating thinking and examining housing topics in Housing Studies. Idea extractions, with key words and terms highlighted, are (i) categorized as concepts-clarifying and postulation-clarifying and (ii) presented in the note for Housing Studies students’ learning purpose. The study note is not a literature review essay; its main use is for students’ learning and lecturers’ teaching purpose.

 

Introduction

The notion of place-based identity is a key one for Housing Studies. It is better conceived as a intellectual theme with a rich language set for articulating and examining housing topics. This note considers a number of ideas that are concepts-clarifying and postulations-clarifying so as to more explicitly identify this rich language set on place-place identity. As such, this study note is useful for Housing Studies students learning subjects such as Geographical Imagination as well as doing dissertation projects. To be specific, the form this article takes is not a literature review essay to respond to certain research objectives. The ideas gathered in this note are presented in the next section. These ideas are numbered with the key terms highlighted in bold characters.

The place-based identity notion and the ingredient terms

The ingredient ideas and postulations collected by me are grouped into two main sub-categories, namely, concepts-clarifying ones and postulations-clarifying ones. The lists are as follows:

Sub-category 1: concepts-clarifying related

Idea 1.1: “There are numerous theories that describe and try to explain identity construction; this issue is made more complex by the fact that different disciplines have their own definitions of identity and their own terms for discussing it. Even within disciplines, the discussion of identity and its components may be contested” (Walker, 2007);

Idea 1.2: “A place can be defined as a social entity or “membership group” providing identity. A place is often associated with a certain group of people, a certain lifestyle and social status” (Walker, 2007);

Idea 1.3: “Phenomenology is particularly concerned with place and home due to the centrality of these topics in everyday life. “To dwell” has been described as the process of making a place a home (Heidegger, 1962). …. Tuan (1974, 1977) differentiated the terms “sense of place” and “rootedness,” describing sense of place as an awareness of a positive feeling for a place and rootedness as a feeling of being home” (Walker, 2007);

Idea 1.4: “In the field of cultural geography, ….  Space is seen as a timeless, absolute dimension, while place might be thought of as space integrally intertwined with time. Conceived of in this way, place is a situated practice constructed of social relations. Such a view is phenomenological inasmuch as the observer is inevitably within the world being observed” (Walker, 2007);

Idea 1.5: “Proshansky, Fabian and Kaminoff (1983) define place identity as ‘a substructure of the self-identity of the person consisting of, broadly conceived, cognitions about the physical world in which the individual lives’ (p. 59). For Proshansky, Fabian and Kaminoff ‘at the core of such physical environment-related cognitions is the ‘environmental past’ of the person; a past consisting of places, spaces and their properties which have served instrumentally in the satisfaction of the person’s biological, psychological, social, and cultural needs’ (p. 59)” (Coen, Meredith and Condie, 2017);

Idea 1.6: “….  place attachment (e.g. Manzo & Perkins, 2006), [is] defined as ‘the bonding of people to places’ (Low & Altman, 1992, p. 2). However, while past research has shown that ‘historical sites create a sense of continuity with the past, embody the group traditions, and facilitate place attachment’ (Lewicka, 2008, p. 211), the majority of studies on attachment have focused on contemporary, rather than historical, aspects of the environment” (Coen, Meredith and Condie, 2017);

Idea 1.7: “The idea of place-based social identities (identitad social espacial) was proposed by Valera and Pol (1994) as an extension of urban social identity (identitad social urbana). ….  information about the origin and whereabouts of an individual constitute a social category we use to inform our interactions with them and that the individuals themselves use as an element of their identity” (Coen, Meredith and Condie, 2017);

Idea 1.8: “Ethnic identity construction involves the negotiation of ethnic boundaries, where the individuals label “self” and “others” in terms of their ethnic categories (Wimmer 2008). Such labeling employs the process of othering, which is achieved by maximizing the distinctiveness of those outside the group (“out-group”), and the similarities of those inside a specific ethnic group (“in-group”) (Brewer 1991; Nagel 1994; Rijnks and Strijker 2013). ….. Lee and Park (2008) highlighted the pivotal role of cultural attributes in different geographical locations to the creation of situational identity .….” (Zhang, Druijven and Strijker, 2018);

Idea 1.9: “I argue identity formation and place making are an intertwined process. The concept of “being placed” captures the ways place shapes the self, the ways in which one becomes the place: a formation of subjectivities. At the same time, I acknowledge this as a structural consequence, that one is placed within relations of power: “being placed” is active, it is the continual positioning of the self in relation to an “Other” (Said 1978)” (Leaney, 2020);

Idea 1.10: “Identity refers to a self-defined sense of ‘who I am’ and ‘who others think I am’. It is a selfpositioning derived from belongingness to ‘home’ (Blunt et al. 2003). …  Place-based identity develops as a result when people’s sense of themselves becomes equated with a particular locale through process, project and performance (Pratt 1998)” (Zhu ,Qian and Feng, 2011);

Idea 1.11: “…. place is always a socially and culturally defined construct through which people struggle to achieve their goals and understand their existence (Harner 2001). Through this socialization with place, place and identity develop a dialectical relationship (Soja 1989), where symbolic meanings are written into physical settings. Thus, individual self-identity is recorded in places (Brace, Bailey and Harvey 2006), and to discover place is to discover the human self (Casey 2001; Heidegger 1962)” (Zhu ,Qian and Feng, 2011);

 

From the extracted ideas related to concept-clarification on place-based identity, the language in the literature comprise comprises words such as (i) space, (ii) place, (iii) place attachment, (iv) place identity, (v) place-based social identity, (vi) being placed, (vii) sense of place, (viii) rootedness, (ix) home, (x) to dwell, (xi) individual self-identity, (xii)  urban social identity, (xiii) identity construction, (xiv) identity formation, (xv) ethnic identity construction, (xvi) physical environment-related cognitions, (xvii) symbolic meanings written into physical settings, (xviii) social category and (xix) cultural attributes in geographical locations.

Sub-category 2: postulations-clarifying related

Idea 2.1: “In relation to maintaining a positive self esteem, this means that people will prefer places that contain physical symbols that maintain and enhance self-esteem and avoid those that don‟t (Hauge, 2007)” (Walker, 2007);

Idea 2.2: “Maurice Merleau-Ponty has argued that our understanding of the world is inextricable from the space around us. We are constituted by an intricate, intertwined interplay between our body, our consciousness and the space we live in – we live in it, and it lives in us. ….” (Brislin, 2012);

Idea 2.3: “Architect and philosopher Juhani Pallasmaa comments that ‘cultural identity, a sense of rootedness and belonging is an irreplaceable ground of our very humanity’. Today many hold the intuition that this feeling of belonging is being eroded by homogenising processes that are flattening and equalising and neutralising the delicate, productive scales of difference between people across various geographies. The sense of identity that nurtures us is being lost.” (Brislin, 2012);

Idea 2.4: “If identity is essential to our survival, if spatialisation has an implicit and essential part in the making of identity, and if this sense of identity is being eroded, then what are the qualities of an architecture that can nurture people and provide an equilibrium between rootedness and alienation?” (Brislin, 2012);

Idea 2.5: “One can gain a sense of place only from taking the time to become intimately immersed in its particular natural characteristics – the very qualities that make it unique at a broad range of scales; by taking the time to get to know the human culture of a specific place with its rituals, memories and meaning; and by taking the time to look closely at the wisdom of the established building culture, before either exactitude or tectonic eloquence can occur” (Joy, 2012);

Idea 2.6: “Participating in community-based initiatives aimed at rediscovering heritage sites may constitute a bridge between the past and the future, as well as a bridge between ‘me’ and ‘us’. It is therefore possible that learning about the past while participating in archaeological digs, the volunteers would bring their historical group-based identities into their present practices, while sharing this experience with fellow community members” (Coen, Meredith and Condie, 2017);

Idea 2.7: “The analytical lens of “being placed” draws attention to the ways in which individuals actively negotiate their social position, through the weaving together of narratives to which they have access” (Leaney, 2020);

Idea 2.8: “… place-based identity is never a fixed status—it is an evolving process that is highly fluid and unstable. The sense of belonging is always in a process of reconstruction (Butler 1990, 1992), and the meanings of identity are in a constant dynamics of transformation. …. to recognize identities is beyond appreciating the ‘unsullied essence’ of a place (Said 1994) .…” (Zhu ,Qian and Feng, 2011);

Idea 2.9: “Place is always under threat. One of the risks that place and place-based identity confront from time to time is the rationalizing forces in the form of lifeless spaces enforced by state powers. This space–place tension, to borrow Taylor’s (1999) term, represents state’s hegemonic, unifying and homogenizing actions enforced on the delicate social and cultural structures of places. During this process, the fine-grained social and cultural fabric of place is reduced at large to the object of spatial processes of modernization and rational reorganization (Oakes 1997)” (Zhu ,Qian and Feng, 2011);

Idea 2.10: “The destruction of place and place-based meanings is in every way associated with the interruption of place-based identities. The local politics of resistance, therefore, is often set under the discourses of protecting territorial identities (Clark 1993; Johnston 1991a, 1991b; Rose 1994).” (Zhu ,Qian and Feng, 2011);

Idea 2.11: “Understanding Person-Place Fit and the changing relationship between older adults and place during the COVID-19 pandemic can influence policies at a community-based and national level” (Weil, 2021).

Idea 2.12: “Place attachment and identity refer to place being an integral part of how older adults define or see themselves. The subdomain is measured by older adults feeling they have a history with the place they live and wanting to remain in that place until they die” (Weil, 2021):

 

Regarding the ideas from this postulation-clarifying category, a number of postulates are identified, including: (i) people prefer places containing physical symbols that maintain and enhance self-esteem, (ii) our understanding of the world is inextricable from space around us, (iii) cultural identity and a sense of rootedness/ belonging is an irreplaceable ground of our humanity, (iv) spatialisation as a part of identity making, (v) sense of place gained from time taking to know the human culture of a place, (vi) community-based initiatives aimed at rediscovering heritage sites, (vii) being place being attentive to the ways in which individuals negotiate their social position, (viii) place-based identiy as an evolving process, (ix) place as under threat from the rationalizing forces in the form of lifeless spaces enforced by state powers, (x) the local politics of resistance, and (xi) person-place fit.

 

Altogether, the two set of ideas and ingredient terms used constitute a fecund language set for articulating and examining housing topics via the place-based identity lens. The list of ideas points to further learning by Housing Studies students on the pertinent academic literature to gain more knowledge on the place-based identity theme.

 

Concluding remarks

This brief study note serves to give some ideas to Housing Studies students on the place-based identity notion and how to further study it. At the same time, it is a handy teaching note to introduce the place-based identity notion to Housing Studies students. Thus, lecturers of Housing Studies should find it useful.

 

References

Brislin, P. 2012. “Identity, Place and Human Experience” Architectural Design November 5, Wiley: https://doi.org/10.1002/ad.1485.

Coen, S., Meredith, J. and Condie, J. 2017. “I Dig Therefore We Are: Community Archaeology, Place-based Social Identity, and Intergroup Relations Within Local Communities” J. Community Appl. Soc. Psychol. 27, Wiley: 212–225. DOI: 10.1002/casp.2299.

Joy, R. 2012 “Identity Through the Grounding of Experience in Place” Architectural Design November 5, Wiley: https://doi.org/10.1002/ad.1491.

Leaney, S. 2020. “The Council Estate and “Being Placed”: Everyday Resistances to the Stigmatization of Community” Housing, Theory and Society 37(4): 383-399, DOI: 10.1080/14036096.2019.1624387.

Walker, R.C. 2007. “An Alternative Construction of Identity: A Study of Place-based Identity and Its Implications” American Communication Journal 9(3) Fall: 1-17.

Weil, J. 2021. “Pandemic Place: Assessing Domains of the Person-Place Fit Measure for Older Adults (PPFM-OA) during COVID-19” Journal of Aging & Social Policy 33(4-5): 332-341, DOI: 10.1080/08959420.2020.1824539.

Zhang, B., Druijven, P. and Strijker, D. 2018. “A tale of three cities: negotiating ethnic identity and acculturation in northwest China” Journal of Cultural Geography 35(1): 44-74, DOI: 10.1080/08873631.2017.1375779.

Zhu, H., Qian, J.X. and Feng, L. 2011. “Negotiating place and identity after change of administrative division” Social & Cultural Geography 12(2): 143-158, DOI: 10.1080/14649365.2011.545140.

On the city memory notion for Housing Studies: a study note

 

On the city memory notion for Housing Studies: a study note

By Joseph, K.K. Ho   dated: December 21, 2022

 

A summary: The notion of city memory offers a sophisticated intellectual lens to study Housing Studies topics that exhibit subjective, inter-subjective and critical considerations. The ingredient ideas and propositions from the pertinent academic literature are capable to be applied based on the unitary, pluralist and critical theoretical perspectives. This study note, with ideas embedded in extracted quotations, serves to introduce the city memory notion to Housing Studies students for their learning and research purpose.

 

Introduction

In Housing Studies, the topics of city heritage, quality of residential life, urban planning and design, urban regeneration, sense of home, sense of place and place-based identity are related and important ones. In this regard, the analytical notion of city memory in the subject of Geographical Imagination, as a Housing Studies subject, offers insight on these Housing Studies topics. This study note portrays the ingredient ideas as well as the analytical propositions of the city memory notion by drawing on five academic articles from the pertinent academic literature associated to Geographical Imagination. The content, primarily in the form of an organized study note on quotations, is grouped into two subcategories, with two illustrative examples included. The aim is to sensitize Housing Studies students to the conceptually rich notion of city memory; the notion, enables them to examine Housing Studies topics as an analytical approach option.

Two subcategories of ideas on the city memory notion

Subcategory 1 focuses on the description of ingredient ideas of the city memory notion (i.e. for conceptual clarification) while subcategory 2 is attentive to the analytical propositions underpinning the city memory notion (i.e. for analytical practice). The ideas, embedded in quotations, are in bold characters; they are shown as follows:

Subcategory 1: On the description of the ingredient ideas of the city memory notion

Idea 1.1: “… the urban fabric is seen as an arena where different historical eras converge. This shift may be interpreted as ``the transformation of the time of progress into the space of seemingly meaningless juxtapositions'' ..” (Crang and Travlou, 2001);

Idea 1.2: “Space acts to bound and contain an archipelago of incidents, or as Poulet (1977, page 90) puts it ``closed vases'' that are left by the withdrawal of life. The work of memory is an incessant process that puts these places in juxtaposition rather than melding them into a whole” (Crang and Travlou, 2001);

Idea 1.3: “Memories are organised and called up by attention to the present and the future; what Bergson calls ``attention to life'', or we might say being-towards” (Burgin (1996, page 25) cited by (Crang and Travlou, 2001);

Idea 1.4: “The action of memory is like a cuckoo, laying eggs in others' places. Space is practised place and is mediated via memory” (Crang and Travlou, 2001);

Idea 1.5 “with the different times coexisting, `places' are not unitary spaces and times but include sub-terranean landscapes of fragmented spaces” (Crang and Travlou, 2001);

Idea 1.6 “Nora’s (1989) conception of lieux de me´moire (realms of memory) …. highlighting both material sites of memory, including battlefields, burial places, cathedrals and prisons, and non-material sites of celebration, spectacle and ritual. ….  I situate urban memory in the body through an exploration of sensory remembrance, which, according to Bennett, is central to the concept of enchantment, defined as ‘a state of wonder . . . a condition of exhilaration and acute sensory activity’ (2001: 5) centred around a collection of smells, sounds and tastes” (Lahiri, 2011);

Idea 1.7: “City spaces are filled with symbols that communicate certain stories about a community’s past. Symbols are understood here as signs embodying multiple meanings, carrying a face and an underlying sentimental value that gives the symbol its stability and effectiveness (Bartlett, 1924; Wagoner, 2017a). Symbols could be seen in monuments, historical buildings, politicians’ billboards, graffiti and street art, or ruins of destructed structures. They are all symbols that shape the public space by preserving certain memories while intentionally concealing others” (Awad, 2017);

Idea 1.8 [an illustration] “Kolkata was also represented as a soundscape, a city of sound and music, giving primacy to auditory over the visual senses. From the cries of the street hawkers selling their services and wares, to radios blaring out film music and city dwellers practising musical scales that would percolate out of their homes and into the streets providing a varied soundtrack to Brahmo and more broadly, Kolkatan Bengali urban memory” (Lahiri, 2011).

 The ideas gathered can be comprehended as “capable to be” affiliated with different underlying theoretical perspectives. This is presented below as a rough intellectual exercise with the multi-perspective, systems-based research (Ho, 1996) flavour:

 The unitary perspective (concerning how to comprehend a prevailing culture): idea 1.1, idea 1.3, idea 1.4, idea 1.6., idea 1.8.

The pluralist perspective (concerning how to appreciate, nourish and flourish in cultural diversity): idea 1.2, idea 1.4, idea 1.5.

The critical perspective (concerning how to evaluate power [especially the oppressive one] and gain healthy human development conditions): idea 1.7.

Subcategory 2: On the analytical propositions and analytical value underpinning the city memory notion

Idea 2.1: “In shaping how we think of our world, what and how we remember (even when those memories turn out not to comply with the facts) matters” (Møller-Olsen, 2021);

Idea 2.2: “So for Halbwachs (1992) space functions for collective memory by stabilising and anchoring identities” (Crang and Travlou, 2001);

Idea 2.3: “Degen examines how urban regeneration is made effective through the organisation of sensory experience. As she argues, ‘bodies make places and places make bodies’ (Degen 2008: 199). Rather than a humanistic appeal to view the body as a constant through which imprints of the city are read, cities are rendered meaningful through memories of bodily movement and sensation” (Lahiri, 2011);

Idea 2.4: “Memorative signs’ (Starobinski 1966: 93) revive urban nostalgia, not just through an image of the past, as Starobinski suggests, but through additional sensory stimuli including taste, smell and sound” (Lahiri, 2011);

Idea 2.5: “Space is a reality that endures: since our impressions rush by, one after another, and leave nothing behind in our mind, we can understand how we can recapture the past only by understanding how it is, in effect, preserved by our physical surroundings. It is to space—the space we occupy, traverse, have continual access to, or can at any time reconstruct in thought or imagination that we must turn our attention” (Rosenberg, 2012);

Idea 2.6: “Collective memory, Halbwachs claimed, exists within spatial frameworks. He argued that collective memory is socially constructed and formed around collective identities defined by kinship, class, religion. Identity is anchored in physical space; and space offers the stability necessary to gain access to the past” (Rosenberg, 2012);

Idea 2.7: “memory is evoked and mediated by our relationship to physical place through the commemorative practice of walking. … For the walker, place is not stable, but ephemeral and contingent. Rather than use place to evoke a fixed idea of the past, [these works suggest that] places are physical situations that are ambiguous and contested and experienced in the present” (Rosenberg, 2012);

Idea 2.8: “… to adequately understand the urban environment is to capture the physical as well as the mental representations of the space (Foucault, 2008), to explore it as a ‘‘fully lived space, real and imagined, actual and virtual, a place for individual and collective experience and agency,’’ what Soja (2000) refers to as third space” (Awad, 2017);

Idea 2.9 [an illustration]: “Sanjoy’s multi-layered auditory memoir of Kolkata, in which the public and private spaces of the city converge: My memories of shutting and opening different windows in the morning and my mother moving from room to room. I could hear her bangles clinking, that is a very intimate sound . . . the constant noise of traffic because I live at the main crossing. … the radio also connected city dwellers in their homes and on the street to an Andersonian ‘imagined community’ (Anderson 2006) of radio listeners: Calcutta radio on Saturday at 1 o’ clock; everybody works until one on Saturday” (Lahiri, 2011).

 Repeating the same intellectual exercise for subcategory 1, the subcategory 2 ideas are grouped as follows:

The unitary perspective (concerning how to comprehend a prevailing culture): idea 2.2, idea 2.4, idea 2.5, idea 2.6, idea 2.7, idea 2.9

The pluralist perspective (concerning how to appreciate, nourish and flourishing in cultural diversity): idea 2.3, idea 2.8

The critical perspective (concerning how to evaluate power [especially the oppressive one] and gain healthy human development conditions): idea 2.1.

 The set of ideas gathered from the city memory literature underscores the fecund nature of the city memory theme. These ideas are capable to endorse specific theoretical perspectives; how a particular idea is theoretically anchored to which perspective in an analytical exercise in Housing Studies is largely the researcher’s own choice under his/her tailor-made theoretical framework employed in particular research application.

 Concluding remarks

The city memory notion, as introduced in this note, offers a sophisticated approach to examine an array of Housing Studies topics; this can be performed with unitary, pluralist and critical considerations simultaneously. In this respect, the city memory notion and its ingredient ideas make available an academic language to comprehend and articulate thinking on Housing Studies topics. The note points to some pertinent academic sources to study this notion. Thus, it serves as a useful study material for Housing Studies students, especially those who study the subject of Geographical Imagination.

 

References

Awad, S.H. 2017. “Documenting a contested memory: Symbols in the changing city space of Cairo” Culture & Psychology 23(2): 234–254.

Crang, M. and Travlou, P.S. 2001. “The city and topologies of memory” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 19: 161 – 177.

Ho, J.K.K. 1996. “MPSB Research Explained” Journal of the Operational Research Society 47, Operational Research Society Ltd.: 843-852.

Lahiri, S. 2011. “Remembering the city: translocality and the senses” Social & Cultural Geography 12(8): 855-869, DOI: 10.1080/14649365.2011.615665.

Møller-Olsen, A. 2021. “The city is a journey: heritage and memory in Zhu Tianxin’s novella The Old Capital” International Journal of Heritage Studies 27(8): 819-829, DOI: 10.1080/13527258.2020.1731839.

Rosenberg, E. 2012. “Walking in the city: memory and place” The Journal of Architecture 17(1): 131-149, DOI: 10.1080/13602365.2012.659914.