(Photo courtesy of skoddeheimen on Pixabay)
Dr Patrick Thomsen’s lecture on examining the struggles of gay men in Korea through the lens of a pacific lens was quite the ride. The past year has instilled in me a curiosity about how varied viewpoints can be used to analyse different topics. I personally have fallen in love with emic and etic research styles, observing the differences that come from researching as an outsider and an insider. Thomsen’s research certainly fits in there. He is both an insider and an outsider at the same time within the gay Korean culture. Still, he utilises his unique positionality as a gay Samoan man to navigate his research in exciting ways.
He broke down his research practices for us quite neatly – start with personal experiences, ask questions, find gaps, and seek answers. I stand by the idea that lived experiences are an excellent point to start research from. After all, we as humans are constructed from our experiences. They are what make us unique. They also provide us with surprising questions. While having your engagement called off might seem like a strange reason to do research, it prompted an excellent research opportunity in Thomsen’s case. Why do gay Korean men have a hard time coming out?
Interestingly, while doing his research, he focused intently on his participants’ own lived experiences. In his talk, he mentioned the Samoan practice of talanoa – to talk about nothing. He used this as his style of interview, rather than a ‘formal’ question-answer style talk. This side of himself was brought into the core of his research. It influenced his research style, as well as his results. He developed a relationship with his interviewees, exchanging stories and time. Through stories, you get to live the lives of others, see through their eyes. He got to learn about them and their culture in a way that predetermined scripts could not possibly hope to match.
A final takeaway message I got from his lecture was that questioning and sometimes throwing out existing models and frameworks is occasionally necessary to get to an answer. The Cass model he pulled up as an example really brought the point home for me. The model’s idea that people need to go down a specific pathway to have ‘accepted’ their queerness is bizarre at the best of times. However, since this queer culture is grounded in Korean culture, a completely different set of social rules apply. The same rules in the western Cass model can’t exist in a world where homosexuality isn’t even acknowledged. Letting go of these strict models is key in gaining a new level of understanding and depth in research.
There are so many more things I could pull from this lecture alone. At the end of the day, I came away from his class pondering which parts of my life had unanswered questions. Where could I fill in my own gaps, using my own positionality to inform my research?
Only time will tell.
