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The book explores the implications that research-density has on the people and places researched, on the researchers, on the data collected and knowledge produced, and on the theories that are developed.
It examines the effects that research-density has on the people and places researched, on the researchers, on the data collected and knowledge produced, and on the theories that are developed. By weaving together experiences from a variety of countries and across disciplinary boundaries and research methods, the volume outlines the roots of over-research, where it comes from and what can be done about it.
The book will be useful for social science students and researchers working in ethnographic disciplines such as Human Geography, Anthropology, Urban Planning, and Sociology and seeking to navigate the tricky 'absent present' of already existing research on their fields of exploration.
List of contents
Introduction: Over-research: what, why, when, where, how? 1. Towards a theory of over-researched places 2. Overcoming over-research? Reflections from Sydney's 'Petri dish' 3. Epistemological, decolonial, and critical reflections in constructing research in former Yugoslavia 4. Ghosts of researchers past, present, and future in Mumbai 5. La Duchère, Lyon, France: an over-researched place that ignores itself 6. 'Research has killed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict': navigating the over-researched field of the West Bank 7. Overlooked cities and under researched Bharatpur, Nepal 8. When over-researchedness is invisibilised in bibliographic databases: insights from a case study about the Arctic region 9. Confessions of an 'academic tourist': reflections on accessibility, trust, and research ethics in the 'Grandhotel Cosmopolis' 10. Locating climate change research: the privileges and pitfalls of choosing over- and under-researched places
About the author
Cat Button is a senior lecturer in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at Newcastle University, UK. She creates interdisciplinary and international research on the global challenges of water. She is currently a co-investigator on two UKRI GCRF Hubs: Water Security and Sustainable Development and Living Deltas.
Gerald Taylor Aiken is a research associate at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) and a fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society. He researches the role of community in pursuing low-carbon futures, particularly how community is used to understand, value, and relate to the environment.
Summary
The book explores the implications that research-density has on the people and places researched, on the researchers, on the data collected and knowledge produced, and on the theories that are developed.
Report
"Urban studies has been heavily shaped over the past half century by serial bursts of scholarship focusing on a small number of cities, or parts of cities. Through this process certain cities or urban districts have emerged as exemplars of urban change everywhere to such an extent that they can even emerge as clichés. In this topical and innovative collection, authors and contributors confront the phenomenon of over-researched places head on. Drawing on a range of lucid case studies from across world the book's contributors confront for the first time what it means for urban studies disciplines to be so heavily reliant on a small number of paradigmatic cases."
Stephen Graham, Newcastle University, UK
"Button and Taylor Aiken are to be applauded for bringing together this brilliant, long overdue and incisive examination of the concept and processes of over research. Globally framed and theoretically and empirically nuanced, each of the chapters push us to rethink what over research means and reconsider its implications for social research."
Sarah Neal, University of Sheffield, UK
