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RefleXIVity. Summary and review
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Reflexivity
As stressed throughout this chapter, when analysing qualitative data there is constant movement between the data and analysis, and simultaneous data collection and analysis help in gaining more insight into the problem being researched. They aid in deciphering core categories and phenomena, concepts and conceptual themes. As I engaged in this toing and froing, I became aware that I was gathering very different experiences of CSA. Patterns were emerging according to the context of abuse, and commonalities between experiences in different contexts were presenting them- selves. This was prompting me to deconstruct the broad term CSA and reconstruct it to accommodate the patterns of experiences that were emerging. This is in part what I mean by becoming self-consciously reflexive. Being aware that you are med- dling with your raw data is not always immediately apparent and this can be even less apparent when research is written up, reported on and disseminated.
In previous editions of this volume (Davies, 2000, 2010), I have written about my own experiences of doing research, and elsewhere about the pains of writing in the first person (Davies, 2012), following highly reflective and reflexive pieces of writing where I have written about my own experiences of family misfortune (Davies, 2011, 2014, 2017).
In each of these publications, I have laid bare emotions and have made an effort to be authentic about the state I was in. Stanley (in this volume, drawing on Cohen, 2001) has observed that once we ‘know’ about harms, there is a level of expectation that we will also act to make things better. In the same way that Stanley shows that her research has revealed ‘the mundane realities of state violence’ that have been ‘deeply damaging over victims’ lifetimes’, the research I have drawn on in this chapter has revealed the mundane realities of child sexual abuse and the deeply damaging effects on direct victims and their non-abusing family members. The ripple effect of child sexual abuse was repeatedly shown. For researchers who are wedded to a particular ontological position, this level of reflexivity creates a strong ethical impulse for progressive social change. Research con- ducted with rigorous and thoughtful analysis can produce a clear agenda for real-world applications and policy implications. Such research will not only be theoretically sensitive (Glaser, 1978) but also theory building.
SUMMARY AND REVIEW
In this chapter, I have drawn on my own efforts to do qualitative analysis in the context of research around child sexual abuse. I have explored some general issues related to analysing qualitative data and have provided some detail about my own efforts to dovetail analysis of documentary and interview data in the context of child sexual abuse. Concepts and conceptual themes have been illustrated whilst some key qualitative features, including grounded theory, theoretical perspectives, praxis and reflexivity, have been drawn on, all as a segway into a different level of analysis that has contemplated theory building. I have explained how my own approach to analy- sis has been done through the lens of critical reflection and the use of feminist and victimological perspectives. In these ways, the chapter has attempted to explore the connectivities between real-world victimization, evidence-based knowledge and how an advanced stage of analysis can lead to theoretical developments.
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SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
In a rather different subject area – that of green crime and victimisation – two key articles and a rejoinder piece, written by Davies and Lynch, provide a useful illustration of how dif- ferent analyses of the same event and phenomenon can be produced:
Davies, P. (2014) ‘Green crime and victimisation: tensions between social and environmen- tal justice’, Theoretical Criminology, 18(3): 300–16.
Lynch, M. J. (2017) ‘Green criminology and social justice: a reexamination of the Lynemouth plant closing and the political economic causes of environmental and social injustice’, Critical Sociology, 43(3): 449–64.
Davies, P. (2017) ‘Green crime, victimisation and justice: a rejoinder’, Critical Sociology, 43(3): 465–71.
These readings also show different styles of writing and how scholarly research can be a very contentious occupation!
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