Writing it up: Experimental and alternative approaches to embodied resesarch

Sparkes, Andrew. 2002. “Telling Tales in Sport and Physical Activity: A Qualitative Journey. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

Snyder, S. & Mitchell, D. T. 2001. Re-engaging the Body: Disability Studies and the Resistance to Embodiment. Public Culture, 13, 367-389.

Wacquant, L. 2009. Habitus as Topic and Tool: Reflections on Becoming a Fighter. In W. Shaffir, A. Puddephatt & S. Kleinknecht (Eds.), Ethnographies Revisited, New York: Routledge

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Since the days of Plato in Ancient Greece, scientific researchers have claimed to use value-free language (Sparkes, 2002, p. 30). But, as we know, this is simply not the case: the scientific account, which follows the scientific method, isn’t reported naturally; on the contrary, it too seeks to persuade. Based on this conceptualization, the scientific tale is fictional as well. With the rise of “rationality” and statistics, bodies have been increasingly medicalized and hence discourses of ab/normality have been produced. Comparatively speaking, qualitative methods are often used to describe and understand the experiences of subaltern groups in society. As discussed in class, many researchers choose to study topics that they can personally relate to because they’ve experienced similar emotions and situations that go along with certain experiences. On the other hand, there are researchers who choose to study the “other” because of their fascination with “deviance,” difference, and diversity. By studying other groups, however, it’s possible for the studied subject/s to be further stigmatized and then excluded from mainstream society. Is it right for us – as researchers – to determine how society views the “other”?

Take the disabled body, for example. Snyder and Mitchell realize the scientific method is not the only way to understand disabled bodies and that it’s important to focus on the experiences of marginalized groups. They examine the ways in which the definition of the disabled shifted from medical to cultural through a depiction of fictional stories and historical events. Fictional stories have traditionally portrayed the disabled body in a negative, stereotypical, and demeaning manner. Images of deformed bodies dominate some fairytales and historical stories and, assumingly, were written by able-bodied individuals who would have had no understanding of how persons living with disabilities experience life. These inhumane representations then reinforce how society views disabled bodies and, historically, have contributed to the exclusion of people living with disabilities from society.

Images of disability in narratives and visual mediums have contributed to the social depreciation of people living with disabilities. Snyder and Mitchell problematize science’s taking over of knowledge and failure to demystify disability. These “...historical representations do not disappear with the passing of an era or cultural formation...” (381) and Snyder and Mitchell question how society can change, and whether or not it’s possible for the image of the disabled body to shift from “freak” to “normal.” Do you think this is possible? How can we reverse the images that have been drilled into our minds from such a young age? Is it ok for able-bodied researchers to speak on behalf of people living with disabilities or do we need to step back and let the “other” speak for themselves?

We found the story of armless performing artist Mary Duffy to be quite interesting. Despite doctors not having a word for her “condition,” Duffy, as quoted by Snyder and Mitchell, notes “‘my body [is] the way it [is] supposed to be. It [is] right for me,’” and she describes it as “’whole, complete, and functional’” (383). Snyder and Mitchell then note, “Such an open rejection of patronizing efforts to see her body as incomplete challenges cultural beliefs that the disabled body must be augmented or aesthetically restored to a closed approximation of normative biology.” With that said, how and by what means can able-bodied individuals ethically represent people living with disabilities in the scholarly literature? Was Snyder and Mitchell’s usage of Lord Byron’s “The Deformed Transformed” as an allegory, to make their point, effective? Sparkes, inspired by postmodernism, the crises of representation and legitimation, and the so-called “narrative turn” (vii), encourages researchers to write themselves into, and take responsibility for, their text (22). If we define our work as giving marginalized peoples a voice, what exactly are we giving?

When we take “Telling Tales in Sport and Physical Activity” at face value, by no means is Sparkes (2002) intending to imply that we rid ourselves of science. Even the most scientific, and the most “objective” accounts are not so different from our (grad student’s and scholar’s in sociology of sport, cultural studies, etc.) own. Sparkes asks why there is such an apparent fear of relativism when scientific “objectivity” is clearly failing (220). In order to learn something from postmodernism, an individual need not fully subscribe to the “postmodern” movement. All of us have come to know truths to be partial, composed of “situated knowledges” (23). Under such circumstances, although the scientific method still reigns supreme (quantitative over qualitative), Sparkes assures the beginning graduate student that there are “many different options” for qualitative researchers nowadays (2-3). Autoethnoraphy, poetic representations, and ethnodrama are just some examples of the new and potentially exciting ways of writing up the ethnographic account. Another example is the confessional tale, which is a “behind-the-scenes” look of what is otherwise usually presented as “‘perfect’ research” (57). Because scholarly articles have been thoroughly polished, the confessional tale is a supplementary piece; it enables the researcher to additionally communicate embarrassing times, misinterpretations, and the not-so-obvious messiness of research. Such stories, according to Sparkes, are beneficial for pedagogical purposes (71).

Autoethnographies, poetic representations, ethnodramas, and confessional tales, as examples, were rarely included in academic journals just 15-20 years ago; however, nowadays, they are increasingly being published (Sparkes, 2). Sparkes interprets such diverse accounts, the methods and methodologies, as one of qualitative research’s strengths (25). “Diversity should be seen as an invitation to deepen our understanding,” he writes (224). We, the blog leaders, agree, and furthermore believe that the resulting interdisciplinarity will increasingly strengthen the qualitative brand. What do you think? Also, with the scientific method in mind, will qualitative researchers ever have such a strict method, methodology, or paradigm that all must subscribe to? Can anyone imagine what the construction of such a theoretical monstrosity would look like and if this is even be possible from a postmodern perspective, or from other academic perspectives? On the other hand, how and why would such a movement potentially be resisted?

The third article we read this week advocates Bordieu’s reworking of the “habitus.” In reflecting on his published dissertation, “Body and Soul,” “Wacquant offers an empirical and methodological radicalization of Bourdieu’s theory of habitus” (7). "On the one hand, [he] open[s] the ‘black box’ of the pugilistic habitus by disclosing the production and assembly of the cognitive categories, bodily skills and desires which together define the competence and appetence specific to the boxer. On the other hand, [he] deploy[s] habitus as a methodological device, that is, [he] place[s] [him]self in the local vortex of action in order to acquire through practice, in real time, the dispositions of the boxer with the aim of elucidating the magnetism proper to the pugilistic cosmos ... The method thus tests the theory of action which informs the analysis according to a recursive and reflexive research design"(7). Specifically, Wacquant sought to disclose the social making of a prize fighter: he asked questions such as, “Why do [boxers] commit themselves to the harshest and most destructive of all trades?” and “What is the role of the gym, the street, the surrounding violence and racial contept, of self-interest and pleasure, and of the collective belief in personal transcendence in all of this?” (3-4) By becoming a “pugilist-apprentice,” and by placing himself in the ring, according to Wacquant, it enabled him to understand first-hand what his research subjects were experiencing. Having had these experiences, how and why was he better equipped to write about the “other”? Do you all feel equipped to write about your own topics? What is your personal relationship to your topic? Do researchers benefit from experiencing the same phenomena they are writing about?

Textual Analysis and the Question of Reality

Johnson, R., Chambers, D., Raghuram P., Tincknell, E. (Eds) (2006). The practice of cultural studies (pp. 153-186). London: Sage.

Valverde, M. (1991). As if subjects existed: Analysing social discourses. Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 28, 173-187.

Smith, D. (1990) The active text: A textual analysis of the social relations of public discourse. In Texts, facts, femininity (p. 120-158). London: Routledge.

Denzin, N. (1996). The art and politics of interpretation. In N.K. Denzin & Y.S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (pp. 500-515). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Frank, A. (2001). Can we research suffering? Qualitative Health Research, 11, 353-362.

This week’s readings involve the writing and interpretation of texts, the possibilities, the problems, and the power of knowledge and implications of claiming reality.

Johnson et al outline the strengths and drawbacks of applying a structuralist approach to textual analysis. A structural analysis involves, as the name would suggest, identifying the underlying meanings imbued within the structure of the writing. Using detective novels as an example, Johnson outlines how the organization of a sequential plot and characters in binary can reveal discourses of male hegemony, heroism, the evils of criminality along with ‘othering’ resulting from binaries of good vs. evil, civilised vs. uncivilised etc. Johnson stresses the importance of considering intertextuality, the organization of meanings in relation to other texts as well as other cultural forms that contextualize narratives in larger social frameworks. This is where structuralism ends and post structuralism begins. Structuralism limits the possibility of analysis because, “complex cultural practices are reduced to their formal elements” (165). It also fails to consider the historical development of meaning within text. Poststructuralism, on the other hand, “allows for multiple meanings, fluidity, and contradiction” (167). A combination of approaches allows the reader to both identify the structures and codes of the initial text while also implicating it in the multiple meanings produced through larger social and cultural contexts. By doing so, one can begin to identify the power relations underlying the cultural, as is evident in Chapter 10 as Johnson analyses the post 9-11 speeches of both Bush and Blair.

Valverde is also concerned with how to utilize textual analysis for sociocultural study. She argues that sociocultural textual analysis should identify and analyse social subjectivity, the meaning of signs, discourses, and identities of a particular social group. Socio-historical analysis involves identifying, “the relations between discursive practices and practical subjectivities of those who produce and/or consume discourses” (177). Valverde acknowledges the usefulness of poststructuralism because it offers a framework to analyse the organization of multiple social subjectivities in relation to social and cultural systems and discourses. It is this form of postructural analysis that begins to account for individuals’ agency within these frameworks, identifying that the individual can take up varying positions and create meaning within a network of discourses and social structures. It is this form of analysis that might begin to break down the structure/agency binary.

Smith explains how texts are an element of social relations, “how individuals’ actual practices are articulated to and coordinated in social courses of action” (124). Textual analysis then can be used to explain the social and historical contexts in which those relations are created. She uses the contents of a citizen’s letter about a police incident at Berkeley and the mayor’s response to the situation to elucidate how both texts operate to explain local understandings or schemas as well as the larger political contexts that both the citizen professor and the mayor operate within. As an example, how police brutality is constructed differently in each letter suggests that not only different intentions but different social relations (power relations) are at work to organize meaning. It is the reader, as an active interpreter of the texts, who must rely on his or her own social relations to critically construct meaning from the texts provided.

This leads us to Denzin who premises the chapter by stating that, “in the social sciences, there is only interpretation” (500). Traditional forms of interpretation within the social sciences based on scientific and domain specific criteria as well as authoritative knowledge seem to be outdated. Interpretation also takes a poststructural turn as the reader as interpreter can rely on their experience and knowledge to make meaning of text. Denzin outlines the writing process in four stages: sense making (what to write), representation (presence of the writer and the Other), legitimation (authority claims), and desire (what writing practices the author uses). Interpretation involves understanding the subjectivity (in both senses of the word) in the writing process as well as their own subjectivity in deconstructing a text. Denzin outlines the approaches to interpretation (ie grounded theory, constructivism, critical theory, poststucturalist theory) but ultimately advocates a form of poststructural, postmodern method of interpretation that pulls from all interpretive communities. He suggests that in the future, we might see an interpretive paradigm that involves, “less foundational postpositivism and a more expansive critical theory framework built of modified grounded theory” (512). Can you conceptualize what that might look like? Ultimately, Denzin advocates that writing and interpretation should adhere to three tenets: human experience should be studied from the social and cultural perspective of the individual, researchers will work from themselves to understand the world around them, and finally that scholars should write accurately and powerfully.

In Frank’s account of his experience with illness and suffering, he explains that sociological interpretations and descriptions interpret events that consequently construct new meanings that validate the social scientist’s position and specific ruling relations in society. He references Smith (1999) who states that, “ruling relations appear as abstracted systems, hooking up local events with extra-local organizational forms” (357). In other words, social scientists take personal or local experience and generalize it to larger social discourse that no longer represents the individual experience like illness or police brutality. If an experience like suffering cannot be essentialized into an extra-local category, it is marginalized and forgotten (sounds a lot like subjugated knowledge!) Frank states that, “a claim to know the other’s suffering takes away part of that other’s integrity” (359). Researchers should not try to explain people’s behaviours because it is both harmful to the individual and to the meanings placed on the phenomenon being studied. Instead, researchers should seek to explain the social structures and power systems that affect how we embody, experience, and understand suffering.

Questions:

According to Denzin, “authentic understanding is created when readers are able to live their way into an experience that has been described and interpreted” (506). What is authentic understanding? Could such an understanding exist after a researcher has constructed and interpreted that experience the reader is reading?

Smith (1990) states that texts, “are social in origin and built into social relations. Analysis therefore depends upon the analyst-as-member’s knowledge of the interpretive practices and schemata relevant to the reading of a particular text” (121). How can we determine the knowledge-base or understanding of an ‘analyst-as-member? Can we determine by interpreting a text ourselves, if the researcher has adequately interpreted the experience that they are trying to explain?

Valverde states that, “the challenge is… to develop ways of theorizing social subjectivity that break through the structure/agency dichotomy by highlighting the dynamic process of struggles over meaning including the meanings of categories of resistance (184). How does Frank’s explanation (or lack thereof) of his suffering begin to complicate this dichotomy, the notion of resistance, and social subjectivity itself? Can autoethnography even effectively interpret the meaning of one’s experiences?

According to Denzin, new schools of social sciences rely solely on community recognition and peer validation to determine the credibility of a research paper. Are these standards too soft? What can be lost or overlooked when you base the quality of a paper on the opinions of a likeminded and theoretically homogenous academic community?

Foucauldian Methodologies

Foucault, M. 1980. “Two lectures” in C. Gordon (Ed.), Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977 (pp. 78-108). New York: Pantheon.

Foucault, M. 1981a. Questions of method: an interview with Michel Foucault. Ideology and Consciousness, 8, 3-14.

Foucault, M. 1981b. Method. In History of Sexuality, Vol. 1 (pp. 92-102). Penguin.

King, S. (2008). What’s Queer About (Queer) Sport Sociology Now? A Review Essay. Sociology of Sport Journal, 25, 419-442.

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The first three of this week’s readings were concerned with better communicating the methodologies employed by Michel Foucault in his post-1970 researches, which was supposedly when he became interested in “the how of power” (1980, p.92). In particular, Foucault sought to explore how certain “mechanisms of power, at a given moment ... by a means of a certain number of transformations ... become economically advantageous and ... politically useful” (101) to bourgeois society. Especially since the mid-1960s, because social scientists have become increasingly intolerant of “the inhibiting effect[s] of ... global, totalitarian theories” (Power/Knowledge, p.80-81), it was not Foucault’s intention to establish universal truths. “In contrast to the various projects which aim to inscribe knowledges in the hierarchical order of power associated with science,” he wrote, “a genealogy should be seen as a kind of attempt to emancipate historical knowledges from that subjection” (85).

Interesting were the ways in which Foucault conceived of power. First, in Power/Knowledge (1980), “Power is essentially that which represses ... nature, the instincts, a class, individuals ... So should not the analysis of power be first and foremost an analysis of the mechanisms of repression” (p.89-90)? This notion is something in which King (2008) seems to agree. For instance, she calls “for [sociology of sport] studies that critically interrogate, rather than reproduce, White bourgeois normativity” (p.420). Because Foucault’s frameworks don’t interpret power to always be subordinate to the economy, he advocated for a post-Marxist conceptualization of power. In P/K (1980), he specifically sought to generate discussion around “an economy of discourse of truth ... There can be no exercise of power without a certain economy of discourses of truth through power and we cannot exercise power except through the production of truth” (93). Although peoples, communities, cultures, etc. are constituted by certain discourses, he notes on p.98 that the individual is also a vehicle of power. If genealogies are in fact “anti-sciences” (83), as Foucault alludes to, then I ask: how, when, and why are they so? Also, what is [t]his notion of truth economics? How does an economy of truth and surveillance work together to shape the behaviour of social actors? Furthermore interesting was [t]his notion of the body being permeated by social forces, however, because this is where Foucault seems to lose me, I also ask: how are our bodies permeated by social forces? Do these forces literally penetrate our skin or do they influence us by some other means? Lastly, switching authors, why does King repeatedly use “White” as opposed to “white” throughout her piece? (Did you interpret this to be political, like I?)

In The History of Sexuality, Foucault proclaims that wherever there is “power” there is also resistance, which “comes from below” (94). He argues that power is not a binary division between ruled/r – which has been “inscribed in [power] as [the] irreducible opposite [T/F]” (96) – and that it is not acquired seized, shared, etc., but rather “exercised from innumerable points” (94). Because this plurality of resistances exists, King sees the unclearness of queerness to be advantageous in challenging hegemonic ideology: “If queer takes nonnormativity seriously, it should be applicable to any deviation from the norm, to any site of cultural familiarity that critics with to make strange” (436). Foucault furthermore adds, in H of S, that “it is in the sphere of force relations that we must try to analyze the mechanisms of power” (97). He then proceeds to outline his four “cautionary prescriptions” for investigating power: 1) the Rule of immanence; 2) Rule of continual variation; 3) Rule of double conditioning; and 4) Rule of tactical polyvalence of discourse (pp. 98-102). However, because I have lots more to say, I’m going to refrain from commenting and would instead like to open the floor for others to do so if they found these rules of interest. If necessary, some probing questions are: did Foucault convince you of anything? What does he mean by “spheres of force relations” (97)? Was his interpretation of power relevant to your own research objects? With King’s article and her above quote in mind, what are some examples of behaviours that may be classified as “queer” and what are the pro’s and con’s of such a poststructural classificatory system?

It’s clear that Foucault sought to influence a wide audience in his scholarly pursuits. (King, a renowned scholar, is just one example.) In Power/Knowledge he claims the inconclusive nature of his project/s was/were purposeful: “They were merely lines laid down for you to pursue or to divert elsewhere, for me to extend upon or re-design as the case might be. They are, in the final analysis, just fragments, and it is up to you or me to see what we can make of them” (78-9). He makes a similar claim in Questions of Method, “I like to open up space[s for] research, try [them] out ... where those who may be interested are invited to join in ... My books ... at most ... are philosophical fragments put to work in a historical field of problems” (1981a, p. 4). He asked, for instance, “How does one punish?” in Discipline in Punish, and sought to shed light on the politics of in/sanity in Madness and Civilization, as examples. In Questions of Method, he then states,

The target of analysis wasn’t institutions, theories, or ideologies, but practices – with the aim of grasping the conditions which make these acceptable at a given moment; the hypothesis being that these types of practice are not just governed by institutions, prescribed by ideologies ... but possess up to a point their own specific regularities, logic, strategy, self-evidence and ‘reason.’ (5)

In other words, his researches investigated “eventualisations” as opposed to events. The “eventualisation” of a research object “lightens the weight of causality, [it] thus works by constructing around the singular event analyzed as a process ... a ‘polyhedron’ of intelligibility, the number of whose faces is not given in advance and can never properly be taken as infinite” (6). This polymorphism of a research object results in a multiplicity of genealogies, which will then act as anchorage points for one’s (read: researcher’s) intellectual pursuits. Comparatively speaking, in discussing lesbian-centered theories, studies in hegemonic masculinity, and poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, and queer theory, how did King contribute to the opening up of space (or how has she provided “anchorage points”) for future researchers?

In this concluding paragraph, I ask (necessarily I think): who was Michel Foucault as a scholar? Was he postmodern (even if he argued “no” to that question in the past)? Who has the right to define his intellectual pursuits? Because it’s natural for our interpretations of scholarly work to be quite different, what did you find MORE interesting than I (what did I neglect to cover, in other words)? That is another open call ;) Finally, did learning about Foucauldian methodologies contribute to your own understanding of the world in some way (that is general, I know)?

-Max

Transnational Methodologies

Prakash, G. (1990). Writing post-orientalist histories of the Third World: Perspectives on Indian historiography. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 32, 383-408.

Mohanty, C. (1998) Under Western eyes: Feminist scholarship and colonial discourses. Boundary, 2, 12, 333-358.

Burawoy, M. (2000). Introduction: Reaching for the global. In M. Burawoy et al. (Eds.), Global ethnography: Forces, connections and imaginations in a postmodern world (pp. 1-40). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Thayer, M. (2000). Travelling feminisms: From embodied women to gendered citizenship. In M. Burawoy et al. (Eds.), Global ethnography: Forces, connections and imaginations in a postmodern world (pp. 1-40). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Although each of this week’s readings take a divergent approach to transnational methodology, central themes of the construction of time and space, the production of knowledge, and the deconstruction of foundationalist approaches run throughout. In dealing with the global, the construction of time and space are central sites of struggle that form representational identities through scholarship and research that, dialectically, construct our understanding of time and space and the people who occupy these positions. Both Prakash and Mohanty focus on the politics of knowledge production and how representations in discourses (through the project of modernity, colonialism, and neoliberal globalization) act as technologies of power. Their goal is to challenge these essentializing and foundationalist approaches. While Burawoy, and Thayer also engage in these theoretical debates, their work is an example of how transnational scholarship can be put into methodological practice.

In his work, Prakash is advocating post-Orientalist historiographies that recognize the contingency and relationality of identities. By tracing the hegemony of power relations he argues that the production of knowledge regarding the East-West / Orient-Occident occurring in various discursive epochal approaches (from colonialism, through nationalist historiographies, anthropologies, Marxist critiques, and historical sociology), may have had different political projects but remain essentializing, foundationalist, and teleological. The representations of “the Other” change, but the structure of knowledge remains similar. Whereas Orientalist discourses constructed the “Third World” as an object of knowledge, creating it in opposition to the Occident and thus justifying the colonial project of modernity, Nationalist narratives established India as an active subject that challenged colonial rule. However, according to Prakash, these discourses shared common elements that construct the Orient/India as an undivided entity that is given ontological presences and mobilizes teleological approaches, framing modernity and Reasons as the goal. Ultimately, Prakash is arguing that global scholarship must move beyond these essentializing, foundationalist approaches towards post-Orientalist historiographies. Mobilizing the work of Edward Said, Prakash argues that such approaches cannot merely subscribe to reverse-Orientalism, in which the “real” Orient is substituted for the myth of the Orientalist (p.399). The goal, instead, is to deconstruct identities as relational rather than essential (e.g. in the work of Haraway and Butler). He argues that this project resonates with subaltern studies which claims autonomy and voice for the subordinated subject, and post-structuralist theories that recognize power relations inherent within cultural forms and historic events. In what ways is Prakash’s concept of “post-Orientalist” problematic in that it may essentialize Orientalism from which it departs? Perhaps this debate is similar to the questions posed in our debates of modernism and post-modernism.

Although Mohanty doesn’t explicitly call her work post-Orientalist, her ideas resonate with this deconstructive approach. Mohanty argues that Western feminist scholars who write of the Third World are discursively colonizing women in the global South through the construction of the “Third World Woman”: a monolothic singular category that is an a priori foundational identity before it enters social structures and relations. This category is subject to an ahistorical construction of oppression and patriarchy that does not account for agency or the heterogeneity of experience. Through the construction of the singular “Third World Woman” as not-progressive, traditional, ignorant, backward, un-developed, the First World Woman is implicitly constructed as appositionally rational, knowledgeable: the true active subject. This is consistent with Prakash’s discussion of Said’s Orientalism and the construction of the Occident through opposition to the Orient. In this arguably post-Orientalist approach, Woman as an identity is constituted through experiences that cannot merely be reduced to actions and processes. Indeed, we must incorporate the contextually specific values of, and meanings attached to, these processes, representation, actions. How is Mohanty’s argument against foundational categories (of women specifically) similar to or different from Prakash’s call for Post-Orientalist historiographies? Are Mohanty’s First World feminists who discursively colonize the Third World akin to Prakash’s anthropologists or social historians, for instance? Many of us attended the Queen’s 2010 Vagina Monologues production. How can we understand the VagMons as a Western feminist interpretation of women’s shared subordination? How do the VagMons construct the Third World Woman, and what does Mohanty argue are the ramifications of such discursive colonization?

Given the foreground of theoretical understandings of global spaces as sites of contestation and struggle, we are better equipped to critically analyze putting transnational approaches into practice--as Burawoy and Thayer seek to do. Tracing the historical conditions and events that mark the emergence of global scholarship as a field of study, Burawoy takes up a similarly anti-essentialist approach. In outlining the works of globalization theorists being produced throughout the globe, Burawoy identifies the commonality and centrality of globalization as the “recomposition of time and space”. Here, Burawoy argues, “lies the connection to the ethnographers, whose occupation is after all, to study others in ‘their space and time’” (p. 4). Similar to the Post-Orientalist approach that challenges reductionist and essentialist understandings, Burawoy argues that global ethnography, and by extension global scholarship in general, cannot simply be the identification and application of external forces (discourses, people, capital, ideas) to a global level, but must problematize the foundation of the very concept of these forces. Informed by the anti-colonialist climate of the post-war period, Burawoy argues that global ethnography can be a site in which subject and subaltern positions are challenged. The focus of ethnography, Burawoy writes, “is on the way global domination is resisted, avoided, and negotiated” (p. 29).

Thayer’s article is an account of her ethnographic research attempting to elucidate the globalization of feminist health organizing as it was manifested in the SOS Corpo(SOS Body) NGO in Recife, Brazil. She argues that as ideas, concepts and discourses are appropriated from specific localities to be used by others, meanings take distinctive forms. In Recife, for instance, SOS Corpo utilized the women and body discourse popularized by the Boston organization that published Our Bodies, Ourselves. However, due to different local conditions and practices, these discourses were necessarily changed (consciously and strategically) to be more relevant and politically mobilizing. As a result, the concepts of women and body were replaced by discourses of gender and citizenship. Thayer’s methodology may be consistent with a post-colonial or Post-Orientalist approach in that she engages the subordinated subject, but is the approach of SOS Corpo undermined or challenged by the globalized positionality of the organization’s founders as Western-educated white women? How might this practice enforce or produce Mohanty’s Third World Women, or Said’s Orient? How ere these effects mitigated or enforced through the strategies utilized by SOS Corpo? In what ways does Thayer’s “ethnographic” research relate to Burawoy’s understanding of the political possibilities/implications of global ethnography? Finally, mobilizing the arguments presented in this week’s readings, how can you mitigate against discursive colonization in your own work that may or may not be transnational it its scope?