(Re)search Methodology
With the desire to find out, what transrational peace research entails, I conducted an analysis of fellow peace researchers that refer to transrational peace concepts in their work. Although Kathleen McGoey (2013) recently published a beautiful and brave
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Empiricist and rationalist methods function as a defence against anxiety. […] No, my point is not that this method is incorrect. Rather, I am arguing that method is a way of making some things count while discounting other things. (Romanyshyn, 2007:208,212).
With the desire to find out, what transrational peace research entails, I conducted an analysis of fellow peace researchers that refer to transrational peace concepts in their work.4 Although Kathleen McGoey (2013) recently published a beautiful and brave example of transpersonal research, there are no other published accounts that suggest methods for transrational knowledge seeking strategies. Such methods however have been the topic of discussions as well as teachings not only in the realms of the Innsbruck School of Peace but also while I was at the University for Peace in Costa Rica. It was during the analysis, that I (re)remembered (and yet it seems for the first time (re)-realized) that there is no such thing as a transrational peace research methodology when it comes to academic research and writing.5 However, I consider the discussion on research methods as a vital aspect missing from the Transrational Peace Philosophy as taught at the Innsbruck School of Peace. Given that the Transrational Peace Philosophy is a relatively new approach to contemporary peace studies, the absence might not come as a surprise. Nevertheless, behind the apparent lack is a conscious reason for the absence of prescriptive suggestions. Dietrich, in his second volume of the Many Peaces Series, Elicitive Conflict Transformation and the Transrational Shift in Peace Politics (2011, 2013) provides a comprehensive explanation on, as well as examples of elicitive conflict transformation methods. His wonderful book theoretically captures the practice behind the Transrational Peace Philosophy. Dietrich further shows, that awareness towards transrationality is emerging on a global scale when it comes to response to conflict (diplomacy, military peace operations, aid politics as well as in socio-economical spheres) and peace studies (topics that 4 5
See: Dietrich 2008, 2011, 2012, 2013; McGoey, 2013, Vallejo Piedrahita, 2012, Dueck 2012, Lozano Mancera, 2012, Bukuluki 2011, Ditzel Facci, 2011, Buchleitner, 2010, Kumar 2010. To explain myself further, I (re)-remembered and (re)-realized because I knew before, we talked about this during my time as a student in Innsbruck but I had forgotten to an extent that when I rediscovered a wave of excitement soaked me in with the intuition that it is important to write about a transrational approach to research within peace studies.
S. Friedel, The Art of Living Sideways, Masters of Peace, DOI 10.1007/978-3-658-08955-9_2, © Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden 2015
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concern healing, trust, awareness and consciousness). Nonetheless, he does not give a research paradigm or methodology on how to seek or understand knowledge in a transrational manner when it comes to academic writing and enquiry. D
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