Media Review: Re-imagining the Research Process: Conventional and Alternative Metaphors
评论Alvesson和Sandberg的新书，该书通过分析研究过程中的传统隐喻（如研究设计、填补空白）并提出替代隐喻（如数据作为线索），帮助学者反思并突破学术惯例，激发更具创造性的研究。
Is our research interesting, relevant, and inspiring?Is it the best it can be?These are important questions not just when it comes to our own research but also with a view to the development of our discipline.Since the 1990s, we have witnessed a rapid massification of published research outputs, with a small number of prestigious outlets leading contemporary academic discourse.Some argue that this has helped our community to structure scholarly debate, others have noted that researchers follow increasingly standardized templates to publish in prominent journals, leading to incremental research lacking inspiration and relevance (Alvesson & Sandberg, 2014;Tourish, 2020).So, is our research the best it can be?A new book by Mats Alvesson and Jrgen Sandberg addresses a related but arguably deeper question: What research can we imagine?This question draws our attention away from the politics of 'publish or perish' to the very connection between research practice and scholarly competence.The authors adopt a metaphorical approach when they examine how we think about our research in terms of the actual research process.They identify common metaphors that govern contemporary research and writing, such as research design, gap-spotting, and theory-building.They argue that by treating these metaphors as unequivocal representations of specific research activities, we freeze our understanding of what research entails.As a result, 'rigour is confused with conservatism and conventionalism ' (p.35).This can lead to 'a form of functional stupidity' (p.8) where researchers no longer question the conventions and templates they rely on.To open up new perspectives on what kind of research may be desirable, and indeed thinkable, the authors discuss both dominant and alternative metaphors for different elements of the research process.For example, they examine how data are commonly conceptualized as 'reality recorders' (p.109) or as 'referee' (p.109) passing (or failing) claims of knowledge.They then identify alternative metaphors, such as data as 'clues' (p.111), that enable researchers, like detectives, to trace phenomena hidden from view; as 'artistic portraits' (p.111) intended to convey something more deeply or imaginatively, and as 'lightening rod[s]' (p.111) discharging (and hence protecting us from) unsupported interpretations.They invite us to contemplate what these different metaphors and related understandings imply for the ways we think about and conduct our research.Expanding on this idea of contrasting dominant and alternative metaphors, Alvesson and Sandberg develop a framework for metaphorical reflexivity, which can serve as a heuristic device for scholars wishing to question (and perhaps break away from) some of the existing conventions; true to the maxim 'I only know what I think when I have been confronted with another way of thinking' (p.8).