Inside the research-assemblage: new materialism and the micropolitics of social inquiry

Alldred, P. ORCID: 0000-0002-5077-7286 and Fox, N.J., 2015. Inside the research-assemblage: new materialism and the micropolitics of social inquiry. Sociological Research Online, 20 (2), pp. 122-140. ISSN 1360-7804

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Abstract

This paper explores social inquiry in terms of the ‘research-assemblages’ that produce knowledge from events. We use the precepts of new materialism (and specifically DeleuzoGuattarian assemblage ontology) to develop understanding of what happens when social events are researched. From this perspective, research is not at root an enterprise undertaken by human actors, but a machine-like assemblage of things, people, ideas, social collectivities and institutions. During social inquiry, the affect economies of an event-assemblage and a research-assemblage hybridise, generating a third assemblage with its own affective flow. This model of the research-assemblage reveals a micropolitics of social research that suggests a means to interrogate and effectively reverse-engineer different social research methodologies and methods, to analyse what they do, how they work and their micropolitical effects. It also suggests a means to forward-engineer research methods and designs to manipulate the kinds of knowledge produced when events are researched.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Sociological Research Online
Creators:	Alldred, P. and Fox, N.J.
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Date:	1 May 2015
Volume:	20
Number:	2
ISSN:	1360-7804
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.5153/sro.3578 DOI 1300350 Other
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Jonathan Gallacher
Date Added:	02 Mar 2020 14:28
Last Modified:	02 Mar 2020 14:28
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/39347

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