Lost in the Translation: Shifting Claims in the Migration of a Research Technique

Research techniques are sometimes seen as the atoms or essential building blocks of research projects: invariant, inviolable steps that are applied the same way, no matter what the socioeconomic characteristics of the environments in which they are deployed. That is, they are often seen as arhetorical, and rhetorical choice and agency play a role only in how they are arranged and implemented. In this article, I draw on the notion of translation to provide an alternate account, one that emphasizes the rhetorical nature of research techniques without overdetermining the influence of the environments in which they developed. To illustrate, I examine how one research technique-prototyping-has been translated to fit four different socioeconomic environments, undergoing significant changes in claims and implementation while maintaining enough coherence to be seen as a unitary technique. Finally, I argue that the notion of translation provides us with an account that emphasizes the rhetorical nature of research and our agency as researchers while still acknowledging how techniques constrain our work.