"After one's image?" Researching regulated and routinised training systems

• Main Author: Abila, Sanley S.
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2012
• Subjects: Occupations > Sociological aspects; Seminarians > Training of; Merchant mariners > Training of > Philippines; Social and Behavioral Sciences
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/faculty_research/12925
• Institution: De La Salle University

The positionality of a researcher (e.g., "insider" or "outsider" status) relative to the study area or group has been considered in the literature to exercise some influence on data collection and interpretation. The researcher positionality is broadly a membership status in time and space, where a researcher could be categorised within a continuum of membership status where at one extreme one is a member and at the other the researcher is an outsider. The argument is that if researchers are not clear about their position relative to the study area or group they are researching, they may be blind to the influence of their respective positionalities. In this paper, I utilise my personal experience of studying for 8 years in a highly routinised, regulated and ritualized training in a catholic seminary as a basis to understand an almost similar regimented training system, a merchant marine officer training programme in the Philippines. Viewed from Foucault's notion of "disciplinary power", I first discuss my personal experiences of a priestly training that was informed by symbols, ideals and norms of Catholicism, which in turn permeated our daily seminary routines. Second, I will analyse how this personal background supports my claim that I have become an "insider" of ritualized, regulated and routinised training systems in spite of being an "outsider" to seafarers' training. Third, I will examine how my exposure informed, influenced and potentially hindered my understanding of the training experiences of Filipino cadets, who appear to have a similar structure of training to mine. Finally, I conclude with some theoretical remarks on how routines and symbols associated with an occupational role facilitate cross-cultural understanding between different occupations.