Methodology

At Axiology Clinic, methodology is not understood as a fixed set of procedures or a neutral container for research activity. A methodology names an orientation toward the world: a patterned way of attending, relating, deciding what matters, and staying accountable to the consequences of how inquiry is conducted.

Methodologies shape not only what questions can be asked, but how people, materials, time, and values are organized in relation to one another. In this sense, methodology is world-shaping. It influences what kinds of knowledge can emerge, what kinds of relations are possible, and what futures can be imagined or sustained.

Our work has involved developing methodology not by importing established frameworks wholesale, nor by claiming methodological novelty, but by working in sustained relation with existing theories, methods, and traditions. This work has been shaped by fidelity rather than invention.

In practice, this has meant trying on established approaches, adapting them, setting some aside, and returning to others over time. These movements were not treated as preliminary steps to be overcome, but as part of the methodological work itself.

Along the way, we learned to pay attention to where attention gathers, where friction persists, and where care becomes necessary. We also learned to notice where particular ways of moving, doing, being, knowing, and feeling become quietly exiled within a given process or articulation. Often, this exile occurs through dominant research tempos or assumptions that no longer hold, including those we ourselves reproduce.

Through sustained experimentation, reflection, and return, these recognitions were gradually articulated and refined into methodological forms. These forms remain responsive to context rather than prescriptive, and understand inquiry as a living, ethical practice rather than a technical means to a predefined end.

Methodology and methods are related, but they are not the same.

Methods refer to specific techniques, tools, or practices used within an inquiry, such as interviews, workshops, artistic processes, or forms of documentation. Methodology shapes how and why those methods are taken up, what they are expected to do, and how their consequences are understood.

The same method can function very differently under different methodological orientations. For example, a workshop can be organized as a means of extracting information efficiently, or as a space for relational engagement that unfolds over time. Cadent Inquiry does not require novel or unfamiliar methods, but it does change how familiar methods are held, paced, and interpreted.

Methods always operate within methodological conditions rather than determining them. In our work, we attempt to make this relation explicit, knowing that this is ongoing work and that our understanding remains partial. Methodology sets the ethical, temporal, and relational ground on which methods are enacted, and we treat responsibility for that ground as integral to the work itself.

Methodologies are never neutral. They carry assumptions about time, value, expertise, participation, and legitimacy, even when those assumptions go unnamed.

In many institutional contexts, dominant methodological norms prioritize speed, efficiency, clarity, and resolution. While these orientations can be useful in some situations, they can also produce predictable exclusions and harms, particularly for work that involves difference, complexity, vulnerability, or sustained relational engagement.

Developing methodology is therefore not an abstract or purely academic exercise. It is an ethical response to the conditions under which inquiry takes place, shaped by specific axiological commitments. For us, methodological development has been a way of asking how inquiry might remain livable, accountable, and responsive, while working to minimize the reproduction of extractive or optimizing logics.

Cadent Inquiry emerged from this concern. It is one attempt to reconfigure the temporal and relational conditions of inquiry so that care, access, and ethical tension are not treated as obstacles to be managed, but as integral to the work itself.

Our work, and the methodological aspects of this website, did not begin with a plan to articulate a formal methodological contribution. The methodology emerged gradually through practice and only became fully visible to us more recently, during the process of writing a grant application. Being required to articulate a proposed plan of research drew our attention to patterns of work that had been forming over time and that could no longer be meaningfully separated.

Across projects, we found ourselves paying sustained attention not only to what we were doing, but to how people, materials, time, and values were being organized in relation to one another, and to what that organization made possible. Over time, it became clear that these arrangements were shaping what kinds of questions could be asked, what forms of relation could be sustained, and what kinds of knowledge and futures could come into view.

Rather than importing established frameworks wholesale, our work involved following and tracing methodological impulses as they emerged in practice. For example in Just Breathe. This meant noticing where attention gathered, where friction persisted, where care was required, and where dominant research tempos or assumptions failed to hold. These moments were not treated as problems to be resolved, but as signals that something methodological was taking shape.

Through sustained experimentation, reflection, and return, these impulses were gradually articulated and refined. What began as working notes, process documentation, and practice-based reflection became shareable methodological forms. These forms remain responsive to context rather than prescriptive, and understand inquiry as a living, ethical practice rather than as a technical means to a predefined end.

Naming Cadent Inquiry marked a moment of recognition within this longer process, not its beginning. This section exists to make that trajectory visible: how a methodology can emerge through attentive practice over time, and how articulation follows doing rather than preceding it.

We understand methodology as something that develops through use rather than something that is finalized in advance.

As contexts shift, relationships change, and new constraints or possibilities arise, methodological forms must be revisited and recalibrated. For this reason, we do not treat later articulations of Cadent Inquiry as corrections or improvements on earlier ones, nor do we treat earlier articulations as superseded.

Instead, each articulation marks a particular moment in the life of the work. Together, they show how the methodology has been understood, practiced, and refined under different conditions.

This approach allows the work to age visibly, without freezing it or requiring it to continually justify its relevance through novelty.

This section is not intended to function as a how-to manual or a set of instructions to be followed verbatim. It is also not a definitive account of all the influences or practices that inform our work.

Readers are invited to approach this section as a set of situated articulations. Some pages describe methodological commitments; others reflect on how those commitments were discovered or tested in practice. Dates and version markers matter, as they situate each articulation in time.

Engagement does not require agreement or adoption. We expect that parts of this work will resonate, while others may not. Cadent Inquiry is offered as a shareable orientation that can be taken up, adapted, resisted, or reworked in relation to specific contexts and stakes.