Page - 219 - in Über Bücher reden - Literaturrezeption in Lesegemeinschaften

© 2021 V&R unipress, Brill Deutschland GmbH ISBN Print: 9783847113232 – ISBN E-Lib: 9783737013239 stories aboutmethod, told fromtheperspectiveof a researcherwhonever feels quite ready for thework that is in frontof her, promptquestionsor reflections thatproveuseful toothers fordecoding theirownmaps. FocusingonReaders Over thepast twentyyears the fieldof reading studieshasbeenmapped froma series of different disciplinary perspectives including library science, cultural sociology,media studies and linguistics.2Researching readers and reading ex- periences has become a richer andmore complicated enterprise, not least be- causeof the co-extensivenatureofdigital andprint cultures in the twenty-first century.3What this canmean for project design is partly illustratedby the de- cisionsthatDeNelRehbergSedoandImadeaboutmethodsforourtransatlantic study of shared reading events known asBeyond theBook.Ourmain research question—“whydopeoplecometogethertosharereading?”—wasshapedbyour conceptualisationof reading as a social practice.4 It is also aquestion that puts readers at the centre of enquiry demanding that, as researchers, we needed to employmethods thatwould enable adult leisure readers to articulate their ex- periences,desires,frustrationsandmotivations.Atthesametime,ourtheoretical commitmenttofeministstandpointepistemologyinformedourchoiceofmixed methods.5 The notion of lived experience as partial and situated knowledge guidedour attention towards a series of standpoints and the relations between different agents—readers, eventorganizers, institutions including libraries and schools,publishers,andthemedia.Onlythroughmultiplemethodsandalayered approach to readingas a social process couldweproduceanuancedaccountof contemporarysharedreadingasa situatedsocialpractice.Notonlydidwework with readers in threenation-states using threemethods, butwealsoundertook qualitativeinterviewingwithreadingeventorganizers.Additionally,wecollected a large amount of promotionalmaterials and event ephemera so thatwe could undertakea typeof textualanalysisof it thatwould interrogate therhetoricand publicframingofthereadingeventsthatwewerestudying.6Throughthesemixed methodswesought togenerateaseriesof standpointsonthesocial, ideological, 2 See,forexample,publicationsby(forlibraryscience)Rossetal.2006,2018,Pawley2009;(for culturalsociology)Griswold2008,Long2003;(forlinguistics)Peplowetal.2016;(formedia studies/literary studies)Murray2018,Thomas2020. 3 See, for example, the essays collected inAllington/Pihlaja 2016; Fuller/RehbergSedo 2019b;Rothbaueret al. 2016. 4 Fuller/RehbergSedo2013,p. 27ff. 5 Fuller/RehbergSedo2012. 6 Fuller/RehbergSedo2013,p. 43ff. “It’snotonmymap!”: A JourneyThroughMethods in theCompanyofReaders 219 Open-Access-Publikation im Sinne der CC-Lizenz BY 4.0