Thread by @raulpacheco

THREAD: How do you "map the debates in the literature"?

This question has been haunting me since a piece I wrote on "debates around water privatization" got rejected. One of the reviewers said, plainly: "where are the debates mapped out? I can't see them".

Reviewer was right.

I recently asked one of my research assistants to "map the debates surrounding water privatization", yet again, and I explained to her the main two ones (those who are pro-privatization, those who are against), that I've been able to map over the years of doing this research.

The thing is, I think we have to teach students (or ourselves, as researchers) how to find those debates. They (we) need heuristics that help them find multiple positions about a topic or an issue in their reading, and then help them structure their notes to help them contrast.

As I have spent the past few weeks pondering this question ("how do we map debates in the literature"), I wondered about different strategies to build those maps.

One simple heuristic is to align different authors' ideas over each side of a dichotomy: pro-against.

Quite obviously, things aren't as clear as a dichotomic position, but for simplification purposes, I'm going to use the "pro-against" divide.

So, where would we get the reading material for this "mapping the debates" exercise?

There are several approaches you (we) can use:

If the topic is new, you could use my approach to mapping the literature raulpacheco.org/2018/01/mappin…

To note: this specific approach doesn't map DEBATES, but instead develops a broader map of works and how they connect to each other.

Side detour: these complementary blog posts show you

1) how to go from a map of the literature AND finding a gap in it to which YOU can contribute, to writing the LR raulpacheco.org/2019/08/on-rea…

2) how to go from a published LR to mapping the broader field raulpacheco.org/2019/08/from-r…

Ok, so you've read a tonne of papers and books on X topic (let's say, water privatization) and now you want to Map The Debates (pro-WP and against-WP). You can draw from the notes you've taken and dropped in your Conceptual Synthesis Excel Dump (CSED) raulpacheco.org/2016/06/synthe…

The next step is to set up a comparative table (Pro/Against) where you summarize Main Arguments and Supporting Citations.

The dichotomic approach obviously misses nuances, but it's helpful at least as a first pass. This is a simple example drawn from water privatization:

What I just presented is the Pro-Against Dichotomic Approach to Mapping Debates. You can use it across different fields and issue areas.

OBVIOUSLY, there's a metric tonne of people who have written about water privatization, and most of them include a summary of debates. See:

So how do we guarantee that we don't reinvent the wheel while trying to map out debates?

Well, we need to try and find those key articles that map the most important debates in the literature. Frequently, I search for articles that include "key issues in", "debates", etc.

Now, what if the issue is WAY MORE COMPLICATED than a simple dichotomy? Well, this is the case with water privatization too... there are multiple models of Alternative Service Delivery. So not every mode of water provision is "private" or "public".

So how do we do this mapping?

We can do this in multiple ways. One is using continuums (from 100% private to 100% public). And then we wouldn't map "pro" or "against", but the "pros" and "cons" or the "successes" and "failures". I did this in Mindmaps.app, but you can use another app (or pen/paper)

It's important to remember that frequently, authors will have reviewed the literature and mapped the debates themselves within their own papers and/or books. So we should be vigilant about the way we approach reading, and try to find those maps as we read.

A key point, though: sometimes "debates" are much finer than a pro/against position. So, frequently, what you will be mapping is "multiple positions about a topic", or "different views of the same issue".

THAT'S FINE TOO.

Another example, now using scholarly ethics literature

Before I continue, let's remember what I mentioned at the beginning: what the approach I showed you helps you with is with mapping DEBATES.

By their very nature, debates focus on opposing sides of the same issue. So yes, they are dichotomic (yes/no, pro/against, pros/cons).

The three blog posts I linked to earlier in the thread point you to how to map the literature and the various arguments in it.

raulpacheco.org/2019/08/from-r…

raulpacheco.org/2018/01/mappin…

and

raulpacheco.org/2019/08/on-rea…

(also see other responses in the original thread)