Conquistadors and ruins: metaphors for a post positivist world AEJNE Volume 5 - No.2 March, 2000. Margaret McAllister RN, Ed D, M Ed, BA, Dip App Sci (Nsg), Lecturer School of Nursing Griffith University Nathan, Qld, 4111 Email M.McAllister@mailbox.gu.edu.au   Abstract Ethical research involves much more than informed consent or storage of data. Ethics also refers to how the researcher conducts themselves, how they regard the field, and how their entrance and departure affects the life within it. Fields are ecological environments, delicate and dynamic. Therefore, researchers have a responsibility to consider how their activity can plunder and spoil, or sustain and enrich the field in which they work. This paper will present a cognitive exercise designed to promote imaginative, principled and sustainable approaches to post positivist research.   Key words Field work, ethics, metaphor, research, post positivism   Introduction This paper explores a novel strategy for teaching the importance of ethical conduct in research. All research paradigms, regardless of world view, emphasise the necessity for ethical conduct. According to Hopkins, Bollington & Hewett (1989), researchers need to be impartial, maintain confidentiality, negotiate, collaborate and be accountable. Some of these attributes may be more or less salient, depending on the methodology chosen to drive the research. These authors believe that ethical conduct helps to improve validity because these strategies build trust and thus increase the likelihood of openness and honesty. Whilst these guidelines are helpful, they may not be easy concepts to remember. Further, they may not be easily converted to practice. In this paper two metaphors are presented in an attempt to sensitise researchers to an ethical way of being and thinking about the field in which they work.   Metaphors and Critical Thinking   Research head-work can tend to overly-rely on rational, logical, scientific thinking. But critical thinking also requires creative, non-discursive and intuitive skills (Joyce & Weil, 1986). One way to promote creative thinking is to use metaphor to help students think imaginatively about an issue, thus promoting understanding and deeper insight.   Metaphor is a figurative device which links concepts in surprising ways. Powerful metaphor helps to make the strange familiar and the familiar strange, thus extending conventional understandings and inviting imagination and creative thinking. Metaphor is widely discussed in educational literature for its potential to re-think recalcitrant problems and to push boundaries of conventional epistemologies (McAllister & McLaughlin, 1996; Henderson, 1997).   Metaphor offers many possibilities for deepening insight. For example, Freire (1972) in his revolutionary work in education introduced the bank metaphor to describe a common teaching approach which tended to view the student as an empty vessel just waiting to receive deposits from the teacher. This kind of metaphor foregrounds notions of power, passivity and elitism and also points to solutions. Thus, metaphor encapsulates information, so that the complex is made simple and more accessible; unifies concepts, so that broad and diverse notions can be understood as a whole; substitutes, by replacing one word for another; and can exercise a power so strong that commonsense understanding is challenged and conventions are subverted and revolutionised (Lakoff, 1987; McFague, 1982; Diekelmann & Denne Schulte, 1993).   Metaphors are also open-ended and ambiguous. These qualities can be harnessed when one seeks to create new ways of thinking or to generate creative solutions. For example, thinking of how nurses are like tour guides has been useful in assisting students to rethink the effects routines and rituals can have on patients (McAllister, 1995). Metaphors also unite reason with imagination. Consequently they can be coherent and rational, while at the same time creative, surprising and intuitive.   Also, the clinical use of metaphors, to assist patients to gain insight or reframe problems, or as guided imagery for relaxation, is evidence that metaphor is a powerful strategy in generating solutions (Billings, 1991; Pesut, 1991; Heston & Kottman, 1997). Finally, metaphor may have meaning which resonates for others, and thus metaphor can build unity and shared knowledge between people, but it may also have local and personal meaning. For example, the metaphor "life is a roller-coaster" may mean for one person depending on their experience, that life is a thrill a minute. For others, it may mean that life is turbulent, with peaks and troughs. Thus, metaphor is polysemic and lacks fixed, predictable meaning.   Ill-Fitting Metaphors   The instability of creative language such as metaphor can also mean that powerful metaphors can lose their potence when they are overused. Additionally, if a metaphor fails to adequately encapsulate and extend meaning it can actually constrain thinking and obscure reality (McFague, 1982).   Overuse of metaphor is easy to do because useful language is often quickly assimilated and used in everyday speech. Metaphors become incorporated into slang, jargon, advertising slogans, and political rhetoric, often transforming them into cliches. When metaphors are overused they become literalised, or dead, and the figurative language is no longer distinguishable from literal words (Phillips, 1998).   Metaphors can also be dangerous when they obscure reality. Orwell (1949) alerted to the power of language to obscure in his view of the future in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Consideration of metaphors used by the military is chilling in the way they manipulate to see only part of the reality. The MX missile is known as the peacekeeper, anticipatory retaliation is the metaphor for dropping the bomb first, and military strategies are likened to a chess game. In these imageries there is no blood or death. Indeed there is no humanity.   So, metaphor is a powerful linguistic and heuristic device that has an important place in teaching nurses. It can bring unlikes together, upset conventions and condense extensive information. It can shock, enlighten and transform. But, like any powerful tool, one needs to take care in its use since a metaphor can also restrict and constrain meaning.   The image of Conquistador   Imagining the researcher as a conquistador is an illuminating exercise which helps deepen thinking about ethical conduct in the field. Consider the image in Figure 1. The conquistador is sitting high in the saddle. He is respectable, revered, intimidating, self-righteous, an outsider. He has his weapons which are like research tools. He also has his armour, which for researchers may be distance and objectivity. He feels he has the right to lead an army into foreign lands because his homeland expects him to make discoveries and to bring back riches.   Researchers can be like conquistadors when they assume a redemptive attitude toward the field-that the people there need to be saved, a problem conquered, or a cause discovered. Sitting high in the saddle may command respect but it may also inspire awe, distance and avoidance from others and thus free and open dialogue may be thwarted.   Conquistador researchers who gallop into the field may tend to scatter or trample data along the way causing damage, which may not be reparable. Ignorance and cultural insensitivity may wreak even worse havoc. Like the devastation caused by smallpox, battles, raping and pillaging attributed to conquistadors of old, researchers risk contaminating the field with their enforced ideas, their claims to knowledge, and by their very presence. Participants can feel robbed, exploited, wounded or defeated if researchers fail to see that they have no right of claim to the field and the data within it.   Just as conquistadors gallop into the field, their departure can be just as sudden. It is very tempting as a researcher, to run gleefully from the field with what you think to be precious bounty, essential data or complete truth. I recall one incident in my past research work which illustrates this.   I had been audio-taping a classroom activity for over three hours. At the same time I was making field-notes commenting on non-verbal interactions, student behaviours, teacher skills and so on. I had captured excellent data, or so I thought. Hours later, when I sat down to transcribe the tape, I realised to my horror that all four of the audio tapes were blank. Absolutely no data.   My disaster taught me that underlying my choice in research techniques was an unconscious desire to not get involved. I had chosen techniques including non-participant observation, and transcriptions of tape-recorded classroom activities because I thought it might help me become more objective. But I was tricked because these tools are simply ways to keep the researcher away from data. Such tools can create distance, obscure vision and narrow insight. For the first time I realised the limitations of research tools--they can be crude, clumsy and shallow. Tools prevent the human capacity to feel, to sense, to see, to hear, to voice.   Still later, I learned that this disaster was evidence that I was being guided by a weak and ill-fitting metaphor for the kind of research in which I was involved. I imagined that my tools would make no difference to the field. I imagined that my tools would capture the essence of those classroom transactions. I imagined that I could minimise myself within the field, so small that no-one would notice my presence and they would behave as they normally would. I saw myself as a ìfly on the wallî. Not only is this image a weak and ill-fitting metaphor, it is also dangerous because researchers can never be inconsequential. They are also not omniscient. Nor can they ever be objective, because they are at once insiders and outsiders. As insiders, social researchers are always partisan and they are themselves a research tool, making omissions and focussing on particular data because of subjective knowing. At the same time, they may also be outsiders because they are observers and analysers, who have not quite earned the right to full group membership and therefore may not be privy to private knowledge.   Returning to the image of researchers as conquistadors, one is reminded of the arrogance in the relentless quest for discovery, regardless of consequence. In this image, research is done on participants, not with them. Outcomes benefit the researcher, not the researched. In this image, natives to the field may be left abandoned once data have been gathered. Their way of life may not have been enriched or improved in this process. Essentially, they have been conquered and they are victims. It is sad to think that research could possibly lead to victimisation, but without adequate preparation, without humility and collaboration, research can result in unintended harm. But ignorance is not sufficient defence for the basic ethos for all research is that the researcher do no harm.   Originally, of course, conquistadors were seen by their country-folk as heroes, skilled and brave. They were well resourced and supported because of the dominant belief that discoveries would lead to progress. Progress itself held a promise that all would benefit, and that problems would be solved. There was faith in rational-scientific discourse and in universal truth. Now that such beliefs have been exposed as uncertain and problematic, one needs to be cautious of bold claims from researchers that truth has been captured, problems solved, causes identified, prayers answered.   Thinking of researchers as conquistadors is informative for its lessons on how not to act in the field, and as such is a useful image reminding researchers of the need for caution, humility, cultural sensitivity, and to regard the data as owned by participants rather than the researcher. One can enter the field as a guest and behave with courtesy and respect. And on departure, the field should be left intact, not in ruins.   The field as a ruin   Ironically another metaphor for thinking about research is of a field which begins in ruins. Figure 2 displays the remnants of an ancient ruin. This image has potential to reframe the way one commonly thinks about the research field-- be it a hospital ward, the concept of cardiac technology or the issue of wound infections. The notion of the research field as a ruin illustrates how metaphors can be used to think about the familiar in strange and surprising ways, and thus begin to re-think a concept too readily taken for granted.   Ruins are remnants of a past world, or a world in decay. Ruins might also be places steeped in history yet which still harbour life. Archaeological ruins may be a place for fossicking and sifting, careful analysis, requiring gentle yet purposeful approaches. Old urns, ancient writings and partial skeletons may be uncovered. They represent clues, rather than clear referents, to past and perhaps present cultural practices. They tend to be partial and incomplete fragments, rarely found in their entirety. The research field may be like this ruin, revealing fragments and partial truths, perhaps referring to a past culture and offering explanations for current practices.   Like a paleontologist imagining what a dinosaur ate all from one tiny piece of fossilised bone, the researcher may only imagine what the meaning behind these social practices are. Since ruins are relics of the past, the image also emphasises the value of history and historiography in post-positivist researchóthat one might understand the present in terms of the past. For example, Buchanan (1999) suggests that naturalised ìtruthsî about nursing are informed by a critical examination of past representations of Nightingale.   Ruins are also messy places. Truths are hidden, incomplete, relics of the past. In this environment certainty is not to be had, cause and effect may never be revealed, and outcomes will at best be local truths, contextually located. The image encapsulates a post-positivist epistemology because it understands the world in terms of multiple surfaces, fragmented, partial, revealing knowledges (not truth) which are partial, contextual, constructed.   The image also reminds of the need for caution when making claims on absolute or universal truths. It foregrounds the notion that data can only be understood within its socio-political context. Thus, thinking about why particular nurses act in particular ways requires a consideration for the location in time, place, socio-political interactions and environments.   Partial knowing may be the only achievable goal. One can never expect to actually capture truth. Reaching data saturation, and data completeness are really just unatainable, mythical goals. More realistic is the idea that good research produces knowledge that is partial and raises questions. It does not bring down answers or close debate.   Because a field is in ruins and ruined even before the researcher begins to research allows one to wonder and problematise some heretofore unquestionned positivist assumptions. Can knowledge be discovered or only uncovered? Is it possible to capture truth, or only reveal fragments of truth? Is knowledge contextual or fixed? Will rational scientific inquiry into the order of things necessarily render objective or certain knowledge? Could there be room for meditative, intuitive, embodied ways of knowing in social research? Is valuable knowledge only that which is lying deep within, or could it also be found on the surface of fields?   Whilst time and effort is routinely spent constructing what we think is a stable, valid, reliable research method, one needs to be aware that problems will still arise in a field which is unpredictable and in flux and no amount of preparation will protect against that. Moreover, data gathering may involve unearthing problems, and one should expect complexity, rather than simple answers. The field is a complex, troubled place. What researchers need is to stop thinking about the field as something that can be, or needs to be conquered or controlled.   Even though claims of objective knowledge may not be achievable, the researcher still needs to pursue their inquiry systematically and rigorously using methods that other people understand and trust. After all, the ultimate aim of research is to extend public knowledges. It is not a private pursuit.   Imagining the field as a ruin also cautions the researcher to remember that fields are fragile environments. Too often, researchers tramp around the field, stomping on seedlings, turning over stones, all for the sake of data collection. Such an ignorant approach negates the reality that power resides not just in the researcher but also within the field.   Since power, and therefore the potential for exploitation exists within the field, researchers need to problematise ways of thinking about what constitutes harm. Harm is often perceived as deliberate acts of omission or commission, but this utilitarian view fails to consider that power, and therefore potential for harm, is operating whenever researchers think, write and speak about the field, not just when they act within it. Thus, researchers need to adopt a more humble position, planning carefully, interacting respectfully with people, and dealing with data as if it is an artefact from an ancient ruin.   Imagining the field as a ruin also places value on spending time in preparation before entering the field, spending time inside the field, then afterwards in reflection. Ruins are places which can be far away, reached at the end of a long journey. Before researchers arrive they need to have made careful plans. In terms of research, the social world may be better viewed from the eyes of a visitor rather than a conqueror. Since a ruin is a place to visit, to pillage from it would be akin to raping the land. This notion can teach respect and caution. As a visitor one is more likely to ask before you reach out to take, and more likely to be self-conscious about taking action without permission. If you are a welcome visitor, the locals are more likely to show you the essence of the land.   In a similar vein, Erica McWilliam (1993) is critical of what she calls "a rush to the field" in which researchers just can't wait to get out there and discover data. McWilliam says that this is stupid optimism, that underlying this rush is a belief that data are simply waiting out there to be found, or that people are waiting to be saved, and that research will constitute redemption for these "poor people".   Then, once the researcher is inside the field, there is value in simply spending time there, immersed in the atmosphere, walking around this strange and magical place, facilitating new ways of thinking and being. Thinking of the field as a ruin, encourages this meditative thought and may strengthen research analysis because it slows down the process of meaning-making.   Lather (1997) offers another counterpoint to this tendency to overvalue field work at the expense of head work. She argues that researchers need to imagine research as involving not just the binary of data collection and analysis, but rather a three pronged approach she calls: head work, field work, and text work. She argues further that the purpose of research is not to dig deep in an attempt to uncover true meaning, but to tinker around the surface and wonder about meanings.   Tinkering around the edges is a useful analogy for thinking about fieldwork because it foregrounds notions of bordersóthat social researchers are on a border of being both inside and outside data. Also, they can never truly be outside data, because of their presence in the field. Alternatively, they can never truly be inside data because they are observing and commenting on it. Similarly, post-positivist researchers may be able to use objective and subjective knowing to inform their work. Tinkering around the edges also values knowledge which may be both surface level, conscious, overt information and that which is deep, embedded, unconscious. Borderline work facilitates moving away from binary divisions which can constrain thinking and allow researchers to be both qualitative and quantitative, collecting and analysing, answering and questionning.   Conclusion   By exploring these metaphors about research, I have attempted to trouble some taken for granted assumptions about the research field, and the researcherís place within/without it. I have questioned notions about claiming truth, objectivity, and highlighted the presence of power and the potential for exploitation. Images of conquistadors and ruins offer an alternative to the dominant utilitarian view of ethics in research, foregrounding the notion of ethical presence, ethical thinking as well as ethical practice. I have tried to stress that researchers need to expose the unconsciously held metaphors that drive their work so that their work can be transformed. In my own work, I learned that I tended to adopt a positivist stance, and what I needed to do was to wonder, not colonise; to fossick, not plunder; to ask not answer; to visit not conquer. As a ruin, the field is positioned not as a rugged and robust laboratory environment, but as a fragile place. A ruin gives space for careful, respectful deliberation and takes away the relentless need to discover answers and close down debate. The field is a mystical place which may teach many ways of thinking about our worlds.   References   Billings, C. (1991). Therapeutic use of metaphors. Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 12, 1-8.   Buchanan, T. (1999). Nightingalism: Haunting Nursing History. Collegian, 6, 28-33.   Diekelmann, N., & Denne Schulte, H. (1993). Interpretive research and narratives of teaching. 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