Abstract
This chapter takes one step towards conceptualizing a transrational peace research methodology through the lens of the researcher. It commences from the assumption that positivist, modern research tries to negate the influence of the researcher on the research topic and is guided by ideals of objectivity and neutrality, postmodern research seeks to problematize the researcher by contextualizing her position in order to make visible unexamined biases and assumptions. In postmodern manner, it is assumed that any research conducted in the field of Peace Studies cannot be separated from the researcher’s particular perspective that frames and shapes the research process. This chapter then complements the postmodern critical stance by assuming in humanistic fashion hat the researcher is both source for and resource during the research process. The text so (1) gives a very brief overview on modern and postmodern research methodologies as they are relevant for Peace Studies. It (2) renders the ontological and anthropological basis for a transrational peace research that takes the researcher as starting point, (3) elaborates the epistemological consequences of such a view and (4) briefly addresses the ethical aspects that are implicit in this transrational shift. Turning to the researcher as (re)source (5) five systemically interrelated forms of knowing are identified. The question of (6) how to possibly structure research findings is addressed. The chapter concludes with (7) a general remark about the transdisciplinary nature of such (transrational) peace research.
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Notes
- 1.
This definition is taken over in adapted form from the Frascati Manual dealing with surveys on research and experimental development published by the OECD (2002, 30).
- 2.
On modern cosmovisions and understandings of peace see Dietrich (2012, 65–115).
- 3.
The very term ‘subject’ implies what is at stake: subiectum  – the fundamental, the ground.
- 4.
For the optimistic variation of modern anthropologies see Dietrich (2012, 135–144).
- 5.
On postmodern cosmovisions and understandings of peace see Dietrich (2012, 161–209).
- 6.
Shamanic traditions for example often perceive all of existence as alive and imbued with spirit. The human world, the natural world and the world of ancestors and spirits are connected through relations of kinship: Grandfather Fire, Father Sun, Mother Earth (Halifax 1982, 9–11). The Lakota proverb Mitakuye Oyasin – we are all related (Hampson 2010, 19) – that has been quoted at the beginning of this chapter points into the same direction. This ‘we’ that is related does not only include human beings, but all of existence. It is a ‘we’ that is the expression of an immanent sphere of relationality without an ‘other.’
- 7.
See Walch (Chap. 12) in the current volume.
- 8.
Similar conceptualizations can, for example, also be found with Frances Vaughan (2000) and Jorge N. Ferrer (2002, 121). Gabrielle Roth does not state from where she herself derived this fivefold. It seems that she developed it during her time at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. This, together with the conceptual similarity would once more suggest a root in Gestalt psychology and the Chakra blueprint, yet this remains speculative.
- 9.
The term somatics has been introduced to a larger audience by Thomas Hanna. The term derives from Greek and implies the study of the soma , that is the human body as it is perceived from within, namely through a first person perspective and through the senses (Hanna 1995, 341; Hartley 2004). Hanna distinguishes between the third person view of a ‘body’ and the first person proprioceptive view of the soma. This largely corresponds to the German distinction between Körper and Leib as it is used also by Edmund Husserl . Unlike the latter, somatics however is not interested in the philosophical ramifications of such a distinction but offers a rich embodied practice of training perception and of experiencing in such a manner.
- 10.
Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of embodied perception in the notion of a chiasmic flesh that includes body and world is relevant here, for it takes away the dualistic separation between body/world that is often found in embodied practices. To follow this track further would lead too far here. I hope to be able to fully explore this notion elsewhere and for now leave it with pointing towards the relevant literature in Merleau-Ponty (1968) or David Abram (1997).
- 11.
Rosemarie Anderson (2011, 24) identifies the five commonly known senses of hearing, seeing, touching, tasting, smelling and additionally adds the kinesthetic sense of motion, proprioceptive sense of orientation in space and the visceral sense arising from the sense receptors of inner organs and body tissues.
- 12.
- 13.
Soul is here taken to have a double nature. It at once completes and balances the different personal aspects and also extends into the transpersonal, from where the personal is permeated and suffused by the energy of the larger All-One.
- 14.
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Koppensteiner, N. (2018). Transrational Methods of Peace Research: The Researcher as (Re)source. In: EchavarrÃa Alvarez, J., Ingruber, D., Koppensteiner, N. (eds) Transrational Resonances . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70616-0_4
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