Facet Methodology – a
creative research orientation
Presentation for the Late Life Creativity Network
University of Keele, 16 March 2012
Jennifer Mason
Realities at the Morgan Centre
University of Manchester
www.manchester.ac.uk/morgancentre/realities
Some problems with social science
methods
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Sterility, life wrung out
Experience? Resonance?
Lacking in multi-sensory ‘aliveness’
Enumerative logic
Categories, typologies, compromises,
separations
Rules and orthodoxies rather than creativity
and inventiveness
Facet Methodology
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An orientation, not a set of procedures
Inventiveness. A playful approach to
epistemology
A visual metaphor, used gently
Facet Methodology
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A connective and ‘entangled’ ontology –
experience of being alive, living in the world
Facet Methodology
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Facets as always methodological and
substantive
Facet Methodology
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Flashes of insight
Facet Methodology
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Casting and refracting light
Facet Methodology
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‘Troubling’ existing assumptions and
perspectives
Facet Methodology
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Playing with epistemologies – astuteness,
openness, empathy, humility, inventiveness
END
Mason, J. (2011) ‘Facet Methodology: the
case for an inventive research orientation’,
Methodological Innovations Online, Vol. 6, No.
2, ‘Crossing Boundaries’
http://www.pbs.plym.ac.uk/mi/
www.manchester.ac.uk/morgancentre/realities