Connoisseurship : A Critical Interpretivist Exploration of the methodological landscape

Abstract

This developmental paper offers methodological musings at the point when we want to embark on a journey of empirically researching a philosophically complex and methodologically elusive concept: connoisseurship. The three authors are interested in connoisseurship for different reasons and thus from different perspectives: (1) the role of connoisseurship in developing mastery, (2) the role of connoisseurship in eminent creativity, and (3) the relationships between connoisseurship and authenticity. We believe that there is strength in this variety and we intend to undertake an empirical journey together albeit possibly finishing it with different insights. To frame our research, we have agreed about the philosophical positioning, and the main characteristics of the research design (strategy). Now we want to figure out how to collect the richest possible data, and while working on this manuscript, we managed to come up with a plausible approach. For analysing the data, we are playing with the idea of making use of AI, but not general-purpose generative AI, and not usual software tools for qualitative analyses tuned up with AI: we found an approach and tool that builds an AI tool from the ground up to conduct conversational qualitative data analysis. At this conference we hope to expose our ideas for data collection and analysis to friendly but thorough scrutiny and have engaging debates regarding the path forward.