Strategy Supervision for doing corrections

I had a supervision yesterday and think it is time I actually filled people in on how things are going. I have been transcribing interviews  as demanded by my examiners simply because:

1. It is pretty straight forward, the task is to capture in enough detail what other people say
2. It is a major piece of work to do.

I have got all the ones from my first congregation transcribed and sent them off about a couple of weeks ago to my supervisor as I was supposed to see him the following Tuesday. This did not happen as he had a tummy bug and probably just as well as when I discovered that I did not need to go to Birmingham I went to bed and slept. Indeed at present he seems to be running through a set of misfortunes because he did not make Society for Liturgical Studies conference either. This was noted because he was the opening speaker. Having the delay proved psychological difficult for me as my body registered I had sent things for my supervision and refused to work on other interviews. The first weekend was frustrating but I persuaded myself that I should draft a paper last weekend instead. As I had to do that soon anyway I think it is probably stopped me from wasting that weekend too.

However, the meeting was rearranged to yesterday, which was the only date he and I could make until late September.  His conferences and mine neatly dovetail to block out the early part of the month. So I got my train as usual to Birmingham and then transport wonders started happening. The connecting train at Birmingham was just further along the same platform as the train I arrived on. This was more than usual relief as New Street Station changes layout every time I go there at present. The result was that I was at the University about two and half hours before my tutorial (you have heard of cautious, well in my family it sometimes gets ridiculous). I spent some time looking around the John Smiths Bookshop and must admit that its range of books made the former Waterstones store look good, but the computers on sale had me coveting. The books tended to be full sets off reading lists. Somebody needs to design a piece of software that allows people to order books through the bookshop and then notes what books people are ordering and what buying and tries to suggest related books for the store to stock. After a while I could well see people dropping in for a look as store browsing is still a much more enjoyable experience than browsing online.

I went up for my supervision. There are a lot of staff moving around in the Arts Tower. The law department is now where Music was and it looks as if American Studies are moving off the top floor. However my supervisor is stationary.

The good news is that I think his assessment of my result is the same as mine. That is they wanted to give me the time rather than it actually being a reflection of the quality and that if I had wanted to I could have challenged the result on the grounds of things they said both in giving me the result after the viva and in the reports. However as the work would still have had to be done, there was little point in doing so. He also approved of my attitude that the task was to view it as references for a submitted paper. The changes needed doing and I should just get on and do them.  We went through the revisions and discussed them. Some it was actually a matter of putting back some of the things I had removed. I was told that I needed to assert my originality (there was not question about me being original, I just needed to assert it). That basically means putting back in the first person pronoun that I had carefully gone through and removed. Some I am realising I am actually relieved to do, in that I was sometimes brief because I was short of space and their revisions have created space to expand these points.

There are some points which are not corrections specified by my examiners but are rather a failure to communicate through the thesis. They have treated the thesis as if it is an interview based ethnography. It is NOT but rather an Ethnography based within the Social Anthropological tradition that depends quite heavily on the participant observation and conversations naturally arising out of the research setting. Therefore I am going to have to strengthen that element within my methodology.

One of the difficulties is that I am going to have to explore again how I treat Weber. It is problematic, Weber is a big theorist but he is also decidedly shaped by the Reformed tradition. I recognise his thought as coming from the tradition and at times the "mythos" of the tradition leads to him cutting corners so as to get the results of his thinking to fit with that of the tradition. The result is that there is a good fit between the general tradition and much of what is in Weber theory.  The difference between Church and Sect works pretty well for those in the Reformed tradition, so much so that it has been picked up by a variety of Reformed Theologians (Troelstch and Richard Neibuhr for starters). It does not fit nearly as well within other traditions.

Anyway we have a basic forward direction mapped out. The first thing is for me to spell it out more clearly. I hope to get the interviews done by the end of October. Then by Christmas have most of the work done on the introduction. This gives January and February for pulling methodology,tradition and the three data chapters into their final form with , March  for Belonging and April to the proof readers.  Its tighter than I would like, but it is doable.

I then started to make my way back but got distracted first to look for a cardigan that I had left in a coffee shop and then to get a bottle of fizzy water as I thirsty. The result was that for the first time ever I was too late for the train I was booked to travel on to New Street. However, when I got to New Street I found that my train was delayed. It looked like half an hour so I decided to miss it as it would be full of commuters. I went up to the main concourse bought a magazine and decided to get ready for catching the later train. However, when I was back on the platform I found that my train was still in and indeed many of the commuters had decided to catch the train that was on time rather than try and save a few minutes by catching my train. Therefore, I got on it and got to my seat in a half empty train.  The journey home was much pleasanter for this although I must have been about three quarter of an hour later than planned.  However I was only back in Sheffield after the social for  my writers group had started and I was tired and emotionally overdrawn with a migraine rumbling in the distance. So I did not feel up to writing yesterday.

Worship chapter off to supervisor, later than I planned

Blue Sky through my window

Thought I would start with a picture of blue sky that was outside my window this morning. We do not get much of it so it is nice to have a record of when it happens.

This draft of thesis is definitely on the homeward leg now. I have got my chapter on worship off to my supervisor. The strange thing is the way it came together. I am happy with it for the reason that now I have got to the end I find that what I wrote now makes sense at other levels apart from the academic. This is a state I like to get to when I am doing statistics. The findings once I have gone through the process appear to be common sense. The feeling of "of course that is what is happening".  There is something though which is important being said and I think it has been missed in the literature. If that is the case then I think we may need to go back and rethink our approach.

Another thing I think I have learnt is that if people have not the power to change things themselves then they will lobby to get those with power to change things in the way they want them changed. Lobbying is a complex process with both positive and negative lobbying. Positive lobbying is not necessarily about lobbying for, rather it is lobbying that aims to make it pleasurable for the person with the power to change things in the way you want. Negative lobbying aims at making not complying with what you want a negative experience for the person with the power. It is very easy for positive lobbying to become bribery and it is very easy for negative lobbying to become bullying. Therefore it is essential to understand that lobbying originates in wanting a changing and not being able effect the change. They therefore reach for the tools by which they can affect it.

This means that when we get to situations where either bullying or bribery are present we need to ask questions about the power structures in the situation and why people are not happy with them. Sometimes the reasons can be stupid. I know of a situation where people were upping the anti with lobbying to affect a decision while not exercising their right to be part of the decision makers because that meant they would have to acknowledge that things had changed. Equally quite often what is driving them to desire a particular change is not what is presented.  Therefore, I am not necessarily in favour of giving people the power always but I am equally pretty sure that a simplistic attitude of centralising power when this sort of thing happens is just a form of wanting teacher to come and sort things out at best and calling on your big brother at worst. There is something in me that is beginning to ask how do you make direct democracy work.

That said next week will be interesting. There is a Society for Liturgical Studies student study day happening at Carrs Lane in Birmingham. I am not presenting a paper due to finishing thesis but I am going as it is chance to hear what others are saying. There is a paper on studying liturgy historically, I have questions to ask about how well that can be done when a liturgy is as ephemeral as the historic English Dissent, and if it can't cover such cases is it perhaps dealing with a very partial perspective. I would expect folk devotion within Catholicism to be largely as ephemeral as well. Another one looks at "Anglican Mission and Identity: Liturgy and Transformation". This means some moving around of things but I still hope to get pretty well the two plus writing days I am managing at the moment.