3 thoughts to “Final Research Design Presentation”

  1. Mohammad,

    Overall this is a beautiful contribution to interpretivist work. You have especially good mapping of your representations as well as context in order for the reader to better follow your process. Your thinking is very much in the interpretivist mindset and it shows well throughout this presentation. It is certainly something that I have had a hard time transitioning to as a mindset, and it is awesome and inspiring to watch how much your thinking has changed from our upbringings as neopositivist researchers.

  2. Hi Mohammad,

    You definitely have a unique perspective on this topic being apart of the in-group! I do not know quite how to word this so I am just going to go for it. So because one’s identity is formed in their formative years by their culture and family could potential governmental pressures or ‘indoctrination’ force an identity on someone. This is just food for thought and I think that you can combat, like you said, any issues of trustworthiness through the detailed mapping of discourse as well as your own thought processes.
    Another question I have delves deeper into your choice of discourse. My question is pretty neopositivist so bear with me, but is there change from public vs official discourses within the area? For example, are the words of the Emir different than those of other leading public figures like Imams?
    You have a pretty excellent framing to go forward and I wish you luck,
    Best Tristan

  3. Hi Mohammed,

    As always your presentation was incredible. Your understanding of our course material is really great and it makes your project all the better. What I was most intrigued by in your project, so far, is your personal relationship to the topic and your discussion of that relationship in your portion on reflexivity. I’m also intrigued by your project because it ties in the context of pan-Arabism though discusses democracy, an idea often under-discussed, if at all, in the Western discourse on the Middle East. I also very much enjoyed the tying of your personal lens of the world to the reasoning for your methodological approach – I think that can be quite helpful.

    The only question I have is in regard to the vast range of representations you have for the official discourse. You list five and go really into depth with them which is great. My only question is if the representations are at all influenced by the public. In the discussion of democracy the people are central to the theory. And if they are NOT influencing these representations is that in itself something to be noted about how democracy is viewed. I’m not suggesting at all that you stray away from official discourse. All I am suggesting is that in the context of official discourse surrounding democracy – a people’s based, bottom-up approach to governance – how do the people influence the official discourse. And again, if they are not influencing what does that mean for representations of democracy. You might already be doing this, but it’s just something I thought about.

    Overall this is an incredible design and presentation and I’m excited to see what the full project becomes.

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