16 Reconceptualizing the Task of Writing a Literature Review
The dinner party metaphor
Kamler and Thomson present a way of thinking about the literature review that some graduate students have found helpful.[1] They suggest that it can be useful to think about the literature review as if you are hosting a dinner party. This metaphor works for several reasons:
- A dinner party occurs in your home and, likewise, the literature review should be grounded in familiar territory (i.e., pertaining to your research question/area – your “intellectual home”).
- You get to choose who to invite when hosting a dinner party and, likewise, you have agency as a scholar in choosing which scholars you would like to engage in conversation in your literature review. You do not have room for everyone at your table, so you need to make decisions about which individuals or areas occupy what seats, and which may stand on the fringes or not make the cut.
- Just like you select the menu and serve the food at a dinner party, you also present the main course in your literature review. As the host, you get to make space for your guests to talk about their work, but always in relation to your work – the food your guests chew and digest at your table.
The benefit of this metaphor is that it emphasizes the agency you have as the host of your own party – you are not a passive bystander reviewer. You cannot invite everyone, because they would not all fit around your table. As conversations and relationships develop, you can decide who to invite back later.
“Critical thinking” and the literature review
One of the struggles a lot of novice (and even seasoned) scholars face is the development of critical thinking and critically reviewing the literature. Again, this seems to be a catchword thrown around in academia that is not always thoughtfully laid out or defined.
What critical thinking is not
Critical thinking is not simply looking for and pointing out what is wrong in someone else’s work (i.e., critiquing it), neither is it simply providing a disjointed summary of one source after the next.
Thinking back to the dinner party metaphor, if, as in the first case, the host of the party invited all of their guests over simply to criticize them, ridicule them, and prevent them from talking back to each other, that would not be a very nice party.
On the other hand, if the host allowed each guest only their one time slot to stand up and say a speech, one after the other, and then sit down, that would be boring and unengaging.
Instead, you want your literature review to involve the facilitation of a conversation between the texts/areas of interest you have invited to the table and, if relevant, highlighting the significance of bringing together texts or areas that have not talked to each other before.
What critical thinking is
Being critical is not just about praising or critiquing the work of others; rather, it involves several judgements along the way while writing the review, including:
- Which scholarship/scholars to invite to the table
- What aspects of their work to stress and which to downplay or ignore
- Paying attention to the underlying assumptions of a text, its methodology, and findings
- Being respectful and taking an appreciative stance
- Key question: What does this text contribute?
In critically appraising a text, Wagner suggests looking for “blank spots,” and being able to differentiate these from the “blind spots” of a particular methodology or theory.[2]
A blind spot refers to something a particular theory or methodology does not do. Survey methodology, for example, can provide a broad snapshot of something that is going on, but what it cannot do is provide in-depth reasons about people’s motivations or why the answers they gave are what they are. This is the survey method’s blind spot. A research project cannot be harshly critiqued for its blind spots – or not doing what it simply did not set out to do.
A blank spot, on the other hand, refers to something that a particular research project could have done, but did not. If there were important questions missing on this survey, for example or if there was a flaw in the analysis of the data, this would be a blank spot that should be addressed in the reviewer’s critique.
When looking for blind spots and blank spots in your critical appraisal of a piece of research, remember to avoid critiquing a project too harshly for not doing what it did not set out to do.
Critical questions to ask about individual texts:
- What is the argument?
- What kind/aspect of your topic is spoken about in this article?
- From what position?
- Using what evidence?
- What claims are made?
- How adequate are these (blank spots and blind spots)?
- Does other literature build upon this work? Is it building upon other literatures?
Using evaluative language
When reviewing a large body of literature, remember that not all ideas, articles, or books will be on the same level of importance or of equal value to a field. Being able to identify the value of the contribution of an idea is another signifier of critical thinking/appraisal.
You can signify that a large number of scholars seem to agree on something with statements like, “This seems to be a pervasive view” or “The research consistently states…”
Statements like “There appears to be no concurrence” or “The literature is divided…,” on the other hand, signal to the reader that there are a variety of different opinions or findings about an area and no consensus has been reached.
Finally, statements like “I/this research will argue,” “Groundbreaking studies like…”, and “Most significantly, the literature…” provide positional value statements and signify where you stand in relation to the field, as well as what ideas/articles are flagged as being the most pivotal to pay attention to.
