Slow Food and Slow Research

Luigi Toiati

In 1989 a new global movement was learning to walk, and none suspected what kind of Olympic marathoner was born that day, nor that his march would have spread throughout the world. This movement is known as Slow Food, and is obviously taken from the concept of a Slow Life. But let’s use the  words of  its founders to explain this meaning:

“Our century, which began and has developed under the insignia of industrial civilization, first invented the machine and then took it as its life model. We are enslaved by speed and have all succumbed to the same insidious virus: Fast Life, which disrupts our habits, pervades the privacy of our homes and forces us to eat Fast Foods. To be worthy of the name, Homo Sapiens should rid himself of speed before it reduces him to a species in danger of extinction.  A firm defence of quiet material pleasure is the only way to oppose the universal folly of Fast Life.”

My idea is to compare these principles with qualitative research, or better, if you kindly allow me, with the qualitative research lifestyle.

Nowadays, qualitative research doesn’t need, in my opinion, any further development towards Star Trek research, nor fast & frenzied, or big data and DIY studies. What we need is to “just sit down and breath”, or, if you prefer, to focus on ‘Slow Research’, concentrating ourselves more on observing/analysing/describing our being human, less on our aleatory bionic thriumphs. That is, what Lleat Racs in a recent article on “QRCA In Brief” defines as “our heartland values”.

Until proved otherwise, a qualitative researcher is a human being, whose job forms just a part of his/her life. Some of us, undoubtedly, live for working, but the most part of us work for a living. As human beings we share the feelings of both consumers and clients, human beings in turn. Even though within the marketers’ category, I daresay, I met at least fifty clients coming from Betelgeuse, a dozen from Mars and no less than twenty seven from Alpha Centauri.

As human beings we share a common pathos, from mortgage loans, a fondness for Mickey Mouse, love for The Beatles, hate for smog, and stress from machines.  Notwithstanding, according to our manifesto, we allowed these latter to “pervade” our private and public life under the guise of computers & other similar trifles. These are undoubtedly as useful as they are too glorified .

Some researchers in fact prefer to work or live with the computer’s plug stuck in their brain, and use it as an ersatz mind, or a daily ‘puff’. Some researchers instead employ computers cum gramo salis, that is moderately and  prefer to use their brain to reason.

What I see in qualitative world nowadays is a perpetual siesta of the mind: we pretend to be the masters and that computers are the servants, when in reality what happens is the contrary. Hence the use and abuse of social networks and blogs, big data and intricate networks. Hence DIY research, the quick, cheap and fast one, what I rejoice at calling “Fast and Furious”. Clients are delighted to moderate groups by themselves (“What is needed at the end to moderate a group?”), together with their beloved computers standing in front of them. Or, in order to save the final report’s fee, when necessary researchers have to turn into moderators, and moderators into reporters. Is it better not to use any researcher at all, when a social network provides all a research needs? Unfortunately, what this usually leads to are quantitative answers, passed off as qualitative.

In order to sell apples you don’t need just a stall and a cash register, but someone behind the scenes making apples grow and taking care of them, that is an expert, whatever  his/her level or degree. Analogously, a qualitative research study needs one – or more – experts, and just in case some machines. May I remind you that at its beginning qualitative research was christened “motivational” research, not “Hal 9000 research.”

Although a researcher must be professionally separated from his/her respondents’ feelings and emotions, as human being he/she is able to share these, to investigate the consumers’ motivations. A computer is not. It can be a useful tool to help reasoning, but it’s not the reasoning itself. Reasoning is up to us bipeds.

So what does Slow Research mean?
Let’s go further with our comparison.

“May suitable doses of guaranteed sensual pleasure and slow, long-lasting enjoyment preserve us from the contagion of the multitude who mistake frenzy for efficiency.”

Slow Research does not mean research that takes three times longer than usual. My clients usually ask the report for the day before yesterday, and I usually I can do it: therefore, it’s not a matter of time. Slow Research means expert team building with efficiency,  good fieldwork, discussion guide, moderation, or some other stuff,  if discussion groups are not required. It means first and foremost a competent  knowing of more disciplines, sociology, psychology, cultural anthropology, ethnography, semiotics, and why not, managing computers if necessary. It’s competence which makes the difference between an expert and a know-it-all.

We do not need to know how to clear a blocked drain, even if our wife would estimate such knowledge more significant than semiotics, but we need to understand which kind of sensations does a blocked drain trigger to interviewees, and why.

Slow Research means entering the client’s mind and his needs’ background, that is to study in advance the details of this or that research. It means to see our job as a “slow, long-lasting enjoyment”. Obviously, this is not always possible, but also when we face very boring surveys, we may find in our competence a good “sauce” to better “serve” … or “digest” them!

If we are able to see research as a challenge to our intelligence – and if we trust our competence! – we will be able to dare exploring unknown territories, i.e. by improving, or inventing-on-the-spot our techniques, in order to solve whatever problem. We will be able too to create tools tailored to the client’s needs, or adapted to the socio-cultural background we are facing in a given situation. And, believe me, this is not a matter of experience or age but if anything of cour-age!

Again: “Our defense should begin at the table with Slow Food.”

Our pleasure too should begin at the table, when we study, we moderate interviews, we write our conclusions, and/or present them to our client. Enjoying our own professional competence is not a matter of narcissism, but relates to the awareness of  just doing well our job.

“Let us rediscover the flavours and savours of regional cooking and banish the degrading effects of Fast Food.”

Some years ago a US “colleague” (this is not exactly, I am afraid, the word which I would have defined him with, but decorum prevented me to use a different one…) , engaged in a worldwide qualitative research study, told me that all he needed during an interview abroad was a good translator, since he, as american, did not “care less about local culture”. He will certainly be a loyal client of each MacDonald in the world, disregarding any local food!

Each culture has its personal regional flavours and savours. Hence, the same as in cooking, each culture requires different approaches and different times, ad hoc tools, a bit of improvisation, and a generous handful of creativity. That is, a Slow Research attitude. Any generic, cheap, and frenzied approach is a “degrading effect” of Fast Research and Life.

“In the name of productivity, Fast Life has changed our way of being and threatens our environment and our landscapes. So Slow Food is now the only truly progressive answer. That is what real culture is all about: developing taste rather than demeaning it. And what better way to set about this than an international exchange of experiences, knowledge, projects?

Slow Food guarantees a better future.

Slow Food is an idea that needs plenty of qualified supporters who can help turn this (slow) motion into an international movement, with the little snail as its symbol.”

Slow Research can not grow without a Slow Life-style behind. Take your time, keep your cool, think a lot, breath, walk, have a cool time, sit down and observe, do what you want, not what you must, follow your inspiration. Your job is a long part of a short life, not the whole of it. Turn your job as qualitative researchers into a way of developing the ‘taste’ of your life,  not of ‘demeaning’ it.

In its ‘manifesto’ for next Qualitative Conference in Amsterdam ESOMAR writes: “This new reality of technological transformation and big data is making the qualitative world spin.”

I do not completely agree. Like in Pandora (seen the movie “Avatar”?), our world spins thanks to our human energies, not to technology or big data, which in turn are nothing more than a mere tool – or the voguish toy of the day – in our hands. Nor I accept that, as in this conference will happen, a client would establish its own criterion to “select” qualitative researchers: do we really need company clones? But this is another story!

I agree instead with Peter Cooper and Alan Branthwaite when they say that a quallie is a “Magic Trickster”, I would actually add an “Alchemist” perhaps, also a “chameleon” according to Nelise Doornebal: a Jolly in the Research, able to predict the unpredictable, to develop his/her own “sixth sense”, without ever losing the baggage of his/her own knowledge. Human beings are not big data, and fast research is only for  amateurs, either clients or researchers.

Slow Research “guarantees a better future”, and the same as Slow Food it needs both qualified supporters and an international acknowledgement of its value, which also mean… an international practice of  Slow Life!.

Luigi Toiati is founder of Focus SrL in Italy