Steedman, C. (1986). Landscape for a good woman: A story of two lives. London: Virago, 1986.
Scott, J.W. (1992). The evidence of experience. In J. Butler & J.W. Scott (Eds.), Feminists theorize the political (pp.22-40). New York: Routledge.
Although Scott (1992) supports the use of experience in recording history, and as a means of studying “the other”, she contests the historical approach of using experience as fact or as the creation of knowledge. Scott describes historical explanations of experience as “foundationalist”; that is, historians do not question the pre-existing categories (gender, race, class etc.), to which they classify their subjects. In turn, existing ideologies are reaffirmed and there is no exploration of how these categories are produced. In order to understand the process of how identities are produced, it is necessary to look not only at the experience of an individual, but at how experience shapes that individual. The context, within which the subject is situated, including the dominant discourse and politics, must also be considered (Scott, 1992). Steedman’s mother’s rejection of dominant ideology exemplifies the importance of looking at process. Rather than aligning herself with the working class, her mother supports conservative politics with her motive being envy for what she does not have.
Landscape for a Good Woman is an autoethnographical account of Steedman’s childhood growing up in a 1950’s working class, single parent family in England. Steedman draws on her past to rethink and reconstruct dominant ideas of class, feminism, patriarchy, and gender. Her personal narratives not only challenge the typical image of the perfect bourgeois family, but also the romantic sense of family and work solidarity that is assumed of the working class. In doing so, Steedman illustrates the importance and the possibility of autoethnographic work that gives, “a sense of people’s complexity of relationship to the historical situations they inherit” (p.19). These complex relationships are elucidated through Steedman’s multiple references to herself as her mother despite her disregard for her mother; “that whilst hating her, I was her” (p.55). The metaphor of her being her mother reinforces Scott’s (1992) notion that individuals are “subject to definite conditions of existence” (p.793) and these conditions are especially strong during childhood, which Steedman describes as always being someone else’s story. Steedman does not claim that the history she refers to is entirely accurate, but rather states that her stories trace a part of her history so that others can (but not necessarily will) relate and in doing so make sense of their own history.
Steedman posits that one derives meaning from their memories and personal histories through both psychoanalytic as well as structural analysis. Using Steedman’s story in the bluebell wood where her father is reprimanded for picking flowers, she finds symbolism in the uprooted plants and the illegality of the situation (being an illegitimate child). She is also able to put this story into a context that considers her father’s social position as a working class male that subjects him to this scrutiny. Both social context and psychoanalysis are important to lend meaning to an experience but Steedman cautions that such psychoanalytic myths – that describe an experience and its outcomes- should not be generalized and essentialized. As is evidenced by E.P. Thompson’s work as mentioned by Scott, his attempt to capture the stories of the working class were problematic despite his inclusion of agency, because he failed to capture the variance of individual experience (whether it be gender, ethnicity or other variance), and consequently his work resulted in essentializing class. While Steedman uses such myths throughout her work, she urges the reader to refuse to consider her narratives as part of a larger cultural psychology. Why should her story be considered over someone else’s? We understand it is not her intention to make her experiences seem more important than someone else’s but does her position as an academic equipped with the analytical tools and resources to be critical of her upbringing privilege her reflections over others’? Are there negative implications of having alternate voices that come from such privileged positions?
We have seen the use of metaphors in description both in last week and in this week’s articles. In addition to the symbol of the flowers, the theme of food is presented throughout the book: not only did Steedman describe her mother’s ‘food reform’ as a means of control over their life, but she also described the emotional impact of the school meal program as a form of recognition of the importance of children. What other symbols or metaphors are used throughout her book? Looking at both last week and this week, do these metaphors add or detract from the message conveyed? How, as researchers, can we ensure to get the deeper meaning of symbols and metaphors presented?
Two ideas have emerged and followed us from blog to blog. Those are vision and of course objectivity. Last week, Haraway claimed that vision should be an objective understanding of our situated knowledge. It should, “attach the objective to our theoretical and political scanners in order to name where we are and are not, in dimensions of mental and physical space we hardly know how to name”(p.582). Scott’s position is quite similar as she argues that vision that precedes critical examination of social categories (such as class and gender) fails to recognize how an experience operates within society. Given the notion that such categories are so multiple and varied within themselves, who should have the authority, or in other words, who should be able to claim objectivity over one’s experience? How could a critical examination of one’s own past experience change over time? Does that memoried experience become any more or less objective with age?
Steedman claims that, “children do not posses a social analysis of what is happening to them, or around them, so the landscape and the pictures it presents have to remain a background, taking on meaning later from different circumstances” (28). She also goes on to claim that the idea of a childhood was created based on the notion that there is a “landscape of feeling” within every adult that needs to “be continually reworked and reinterpreted” (128). Both of this week’s bloggers found the notion of childhood as an uncharted or unexplored terrain to be problematic. It seems as if Steedman is arguing that children are unable to make meaning of their experiences until they are equipped with adult insight. What do these references suggest about young people’s place or value in society? How might their positions, or even childhood histories, be exploited in the process of being reworked and reinterpreted by the adult vision? If Steedman is in fact correct, is it even possible to engage children in reflective and critical discourse?
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Carolyn's Post: Politics of Knowledge
Haraway, D. (1988). Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of the partial perspective. Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575-598.
Geertz, C. (1973). Thick description: Toward an interpretive theory of culture. The Interpretation of Cultures (p. 3-30). New York: Basic.
Rosaldo, R. (1993). Culture and Truth (pp. 1-67). Boston: Beacon.
Marcus, G. & Fischer, M. (1986). A Crisis of representation in the human sciences. Anthropology as Cultural Critique (pp. 445-452). US: The University of Chicago Press.
Abu-Lughod, L. (1991). Writing against culture. In Richard G. Fox [Ed.] Recapturing Anthroplogy: Working in the Present (pp. 466-479). Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.
The authors of this week’s articles all address questions of epistemology, or how we come to know what we consider knowledge. Geertz, Rosaldo, and Marcus and Fischer approach this question from an anthropological perspective, while Abu-Lughod and Haraway add a feminist bent to similar theoretical claims. The scholars argue for a rethinking of classical approaches to ethnography, and shared issues of power, objectivity, subject position, culture, and dialogue bring these works in conversation with one another.
Haraway, writing in the elegant and metaphoric fashion we would expect from the Cyborg Manifesto author, questions our understanding of objectivity. She initially explores the dichotomy discourse of objectivity over which feminists have struggled. The first pole of the debate is radical constructivism, or the idea that all knowledge is created through positions of power. In this version of truth, “History is a story Western culture buffs tell each other; science is a contestable text and a power field; the content is the form. Period” (p. 577). The other pole of the objectivity binary is feminist critical empiricism, which attempts to elucidate a legitimate meaning of objectivity and create a “better” account of the world. Haraway believes both of these poles have been embraced in a feminist understanding of objectivity. She proposes a new project of feminist objectivity, however, that is dependent on her concept of situated knowledge. Objectivity can only be understood in terms of embodied experience, she argues. Situated knowledge privileges partial perspectives, split identity, and the multidimensional nature of subjectivity. Epistemology must account for specificity of location and positioning, and build knowledge from the body out as opposed to from above. Perhaps most interesting is Haraway’s philosophy of engagement with her subject matter; she explains that the object of knowledge must be viewed as an active subject or agent. In this way, real world accounts are not a discovery so much as a conversation between subjects. Is objectivity, then, just another word for finding a “truth”? And if so, are “truths” or “realities” of situated knowledges concepts that may be politically mobilized? Or is Haraway’s notion of situated knowledge just a middle ground (recognizing construction and reality) that ultimately leaves us nowhere?
Geertz, Rosaldo and Marcus and Fischer represent reactions to classical approaches of anthropology and its primary method, ethnography. Classical anthropology, as Rosaldo traces, has traditionally viewed culture as a static entity with structures and meanings that are to be unpacked through the imperialist project of Othering, ethnographic discourse. We have, however, reached an academic epoch in history in which these fixed notions of culture and their corresponding paradigms are being refashioned and reconstituted in anthropology’s new experimental moment (Marcus and Fischer). All authors problematize the notion of generalized metanarratives used to explain and predict behaviour within an object culture.
Geertz introduces us to the notion of the “thick description,” as the purpose of ethnography. This approach recognizes the impossibility of separating description from interpretation because all data is constructed by the ethnographer. This notion resonates with Haraway’s metaphor of visual processing; in both accounts, a reality is necessarily processed through seeing or writing and transformed into a situated knowledge or a thick description. Observation, recording and analysis, Geertz argues, cannot be separated. Furthermore, findings are contextually complex and specific, thus theory must penetrate the immediate observational level to determine structures of signification and import. Ultimately, he believes cultural analysis to be “intrinsically incomplete” and “essentially contestable.”
While Rosaldo agrees with Geertz that we need to complicate notions of fixed cultural patterns, he also questions a complete emphasis on thick description and thorough interpretation. Sometimes, he argues, we need to take conversations by the “force” of face value. Using the example of the Ilongot headhunters, he explains the importance of positionality of the ethnographer; it was not until his wife died that he fully appreciated the “rage through grief” justification for killing others. A corollary of this perspective on positionality is the necessity of recognizing emotion. Rosaldo notes that assuming a detached position (that is, divorcing the ethnographer from the subject as much as one believes this can be done) has the tendency to explain away emotion and thus not account for primary reasons behind human actions. Cultural rituals and patterns cannot explain the significance of all human behaviour. How might these current anthropological debates be similar or different to those occurring within cultural studies?
Rosaldo also emphasizes the necessity of critically engaging in dialogue with the subjects of research. Often, reciprocal reflections can shed significant light on the way “we” (as ethnographers, researchers, etc.) live our lives. Marcus and Fischer extend this line of thought when they note that cultural critique should be balanced and be understood as an intersection of different cultures, in which each constructs a new understanding of the other. I wonder, however, what the potential is for this “conversation” to occur between equal powers? Given the traditionally imperialist project of ethnography, can these dialogues emancipate the Other through discourse that has been typically Orientalist?
Abu-Lughod says no. She believes that the very notion of culture creates discourses of difference between the researching self and the object of knowledge Other, which serve to subjugate the latter. Culture has merely replaced race in Orientalist discourse that defines the self through the Other. She states that dialogic approaches are still dominated by the institutional resources and the political, economic, and social position of the powerful West. Is her case against polyvocal texts more compelling than the arguments for dialogues promoted by Geertz, Rosaldo, and Marcus and Fischer? Abu-Lughod shares Haraway’s notion of split selfhood to explain how feminist and halfie (that is, those of mixed national or cultural identity) anthropologists occupy a positionality at the intersection of systems of difference. Because of this positionality however, they are in an advantageous position to advocate for the importance of partial truths, a notion consistent with Haraway and Geertz. She states that because the very idea of culture creates systems of difference, we must learn to “write against culture.” She mobilizes Geertz’s notion of writing as fiction to advocate for “ethnographies of the particular.” This methodology and theoretical perspective recognizes the manifestation of long term, extra-local processes within the local and specific context.
Conversation and dialogue are of central import to these texts. Is Haraway’s notion of engagement with the world as active agent the same as the dialogues between researcher and researched that the other authors promote? Are these categories (of researcher and researched) even valid anymore? Can Abu-Lughod’s writing against culture be reconciled with the other authors’ expansion of the notion of culture or Haraway’s situated knowledge? If so, in what ways may this be achieved? Can we even expect a singular notion of culture in a postmodern era such as our own? Finally, how has an understanding of these issues changed your relationship with the subject matter you wish to study?
Geertz, C. (1973). Thick description: Toward an interpretive theory of culture. The Interpretation of Cultures (p. 3-30). New York: Basic.
Rosaldo, R. (1993). Culture and Truth (pp. 1-67). Boston: Beacon.
Marcus, G. & Fischer, M. (1986). A Crisis of representation in the human sciences. Anthropology as Cultural Critique (pp. 445-452). US: The University of Chicago Press.
Abu-Lughod, L. (1991). Writing against culture. In Richard G. Fox [Ed.] Recapturing Anthroplogy: Working in the Present (pp. 466-479). Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.
The authors of this week’s articles all address questions of epistemology, or how we come to know what we consider knowledge. Geertz, Rosaldo, and Marcus and Fischer approach this question from an anthropological perspective, while Abu-Lughod and Haraway add a feminist bent to similar theoretical claims. The scholars argue for a rethinking of classical approaches to ethnography, and shared issues of power, objectivity, subject position, culture, and dialogue bring these works in conversation with one another.
Haraway, writing in the elegant and metaphoric fashion we would expect from the Cyborg Manifesto author, questions our understanding of objectivity. She initially explores the dichotomy discourse of objectivity over which feminists have struggled. The first pole of the debate is radical constructivism, or the idea that all knowledge is created through positions of power. In this version of truth, “History is a story Western culture buffs tell each other; science is a contestable text and a power field; the content is the form. Period” (p. 577). The other pole of the objectivity binary is feminist critical empiricism, which attempts to elucidate a legitimate meaning of objectivity and create a “better” account of the world. Haraway believes both of these poles have been embraced in a feminist understanding of objectivity. She proposes a new project of feminist objectivity, however, that is dependent on her concept of situated knowledge. Objectivity can only be understood in terms of embodied experience, she argues. Situated knowledge privileges partial perspectives, split identity, and the multidimensional nature of subjectivity. Epistemology must account for specificity of location and positioning, and build knowledge from the body out as opposed to from above. Perhaps most interesting is Haraway’s philosophy of engagement with her subject matter; she explains that the object of knowledge must be viewed as an active subject or agent. In this way, real world accounts are not a discovery so much as a conversation between subjects. Is objectivity, then, just another word for finding a “truth”? And if so, are “truths” or “realities” of situated knowledges concepts that may be politically mobilized? Or is Haraway’s notion of situated knowledge just a middle ground (recognizing construction and reality) that ultimately leaves us nowhere?
Geertz, Rosaldo and Marcus and Fischer represent reactions to classical approaches of anthropology and its primary method, ethnography. Classical anthropology, as Rosaldo traces, has traditionally viewed culture as a static entity with structures and meanings that are to be unpacked through the imperialist project of Othering, ethnographic discourse. We have, however, reached an academic epoch in history in which these fixed notions of culture and their corresponding paradigms are being refashioned and reconstituted in anthropology’s new experimental moment (Marcus and Fischer). All authors problematize the notion of generalized metanarratives used to explain and predict behaviour within an object culture.
Geertz introduces us to the notion of the “thick description,” as the purpose of ethnography. This approach recognizes the impossibility of separating description from interpretation because all data is constructed by the ethnographer. This notion resonates with Haraway’s metaphor of visual processing; in both accounts, a reality is necessarily processed through seeing or writing and transformed into a situated knowledge or a thick description. Observation, recording and analysis, Geertz argues, cannot be separated. Furthermore, findings are contextually complex and specific, thus theory must penetrate the immediate observational level to determine structures of signification and import. Ultimately, he believes cultural analysis to be “intrinsically incomplete” and “essentially contestable.”
While Rosaldo agrees with Geertz that we need to complicate notions of fixed cultural patterns, he also questions a complete emphasis on thick description and thorough interpretation. Sometimes, he argues, we need to take conversations by the “force” of face value. Using the example of the Ilongot headhunters, he explains the importance of positionality of the ethnographer; it was not until his wife died that he fully appreciated the “rage through grief” justification for killing others. A corollary of this perspective on positionality is the necessity of recognizing emotion. Rosaldo notes that assuming a detached position (that is, divorcing the ethnographer from the subject as much as one believes this can be done) has the tendency to explain away emotion and thus not account for primary reasons behind human actions. Cultural rituals and patterns cannot explain the significance of all human behaviour. How might these current anthropological debates be similar or different to those occurring within cultural studies?
Rosaldo also emphasizes the necessity of critically engaging in dialogue with the subjects of research. Often, reciprocal reflections can shed significant light on the way “we” (as ethnographers, researchers, etc.) live our lives. Marcus and Fischer extend this line of thought when they note that cultural critique should be balanced and be understood as an intersection of different cultures, in which each constructs a new understanding of the other. I wonder, however, what the potential is for this “conversation” to occur between equal powers? Given the traditionally imperialist project of ethnography, can these dialogues emancipate the Other through discourse that has been typically Orientalist?
Abu-Lughod says no. She believes that the very notion of culture creates discourses of difference between the researching self and the object of knowledge Other, which serve to subjugate the latter. Culture has merely replaced race in Orientalist discourse that defines the self through the Other. She states that dialogic approaches are still dominated by the institutional resources and the political, economic, and social position of the powerful West. Is her case against polyvocal texts more compelling than the arguments for dialogues promoted by Geertz, Rosaldo, and Marcus and Fischer? Abu-Lughod shares Haraway’s notion of split selfhood to explain how feminist and halfie (that is, those of mixed national or cultural identity) anthropologists occupy a positionality at the intersection of systems of difference. Because of this positionality however, they are in an advantageous position to advocate for the importance of partial truths, a notion consistent with Haraway and Geertz. She states that because the very idea of culture creates systems of difference, we must learn to “write against culture.” She mobilizes Geertz’s notion of writing as fiction to advocate for “ethnographies of the particular.” This methodology and theoretical perspective recognizes the manifestation of long term, extra-local processes within the local and specific context.
Conversation and dialogue are of central import to these texts. Is Haraway’s notion of engagement with the world as active agent the same as the dialogues between researcher and researched that the other authors promote? Are these categories (of researcher and researched) even valid anymore? Can Abu-Lughod’s writing against culture be reconciled with the other authors’ expansion of the notion of culture or Haraway’s situated knowledge? If so, in what ways may this be achieved? Can we even expect a singular notion of culture in a postmodern era such as our own? Finally, how has an understanding of these issues changed your relationship with the subject matter you wish to study?
Friday, February 5, 2010
How to Think About Our Research
Becker, Howard S. Tricks of the Trade: How to Think About your Research While You're doing It. 1. Chicago IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1997
Denzin, Norman K., and Yvonne S. Lincoln. Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005
“The Discipline and Practice of Qualitative Research” provides us with a historical background of where the practice of research originated and what its initial purposes were for. Originally, research was used to produce knowledge about indigenous peoples (Denzin 1) Researchers would observe foreign settings to study culture, customs, and habits of groups (Denzin 2). The article discusses the different phases of research over the last 100 years and shows how the research process has progressed to how we do it today. It also discusses the different phases of the research process. I think the article puts into perspective the importance of our own research. By studying “the other” we open up opportunities for certain groups and we provide the world better understandings of current social issues.
Howard Becker’s book about sociological research is a guide to learning how to think about society, interpret it, and make sense of it. As a student at the “Chicago School” of Sociology, Becker experienced the initial thinking of sociology and chooses to share his expertise and advice with future researchers. He uses the word “trick” to describe a technique which can be used to help explore society. The tricks are meant to help with difficulty, and to act as models which can be imitated when similar problems arise (Becker 4). In my opinion, it is important that we take these tricks to heart because they can only help us when/if we become lost in understanding the social phenomena we study. It is especially important to look back on past research and/or theory to help discover our own topics and interpret our analyses.
The first portion of the book describes tricks that can help us shape our topics and determine the direction of our research. Becker advises us to construct an image about our topic using existing data and theories mixed with our own intuitions and experiences. He goes on to list about a dozen “tricks” of pre-existing general imageries. These “tricks” are not meant to act as theories, but rather as tools and remedies for better understanding our topics. I think that we’ve all already constructed an initial image in our minds about our own topics. Does anyone feel that Becker’s advice has altered their images? Or even persuaded you to think about altering it?
The second part of the book teaches us about sampling. Becker offers advice on data collection. The tricks he offers are meant to help researchers as they encounter problems or to act as tools to prevent such problems from occurring. He constructs a list of rules to help researchers avoid common mistakes. Although I do not have the room to thoroughly discuss any of the tricks he teaches us in this chapter, I thought I’d mention the issue of authenticity since Melanie brought it up on Tuesday. Becker reminds us and warns us that it is extremely difficult to label anything as authentic. He also advises that we never “assume” or use “common sense” to justify anything. Becker offers some light advice such as “everything is possible,” even the rare, and that there is no “pure description” for anything. Overall, he advises that we step away from our instincts and open our minds to unforeseen possibilities.
Concepts are “...generalized statements about whole classes of phenomena...” (Becker 109). They show us “... where to look, what to look for, (and) how to recognize...” (Becker 110). They are statements about facts that can typically be applied anywhere at any point in time. In this chapter, Becker provides us with the tricks for “...using (our) data to create more complex ideas that will help (us) find more problems worth studying and more things about what (we) have studied worth thinking about and incorporating into (our) analysis” (Becker 109). The basic trick Becker teaches us in this chapter is that “...the definition of concepts rest on what the examples they are based on have in common” (Becker 119-20). Once these examples are established, a concept can be created. The knowledge the examples produces is only useful if it can be reapplied (Becker 123). Becker warns us that we must be careful not to apply our example to a concept, but rather a concept to our topic. We can only discover which concept is applicable once we’ve gathered all our information.
The remainder of the book teaches us tricks on how we can take full advantage of the data we collect. Becker insists that there is always more to be learned and that should we want/need to learn more, we should look no further than the data we’ve already collected. The tricks he teaches us in this chapter show us how we can use logic to further extract information from the data we’ve already analysed. Logic, according to Becker, teaches us how to go about “...manipulating what we know according to some set of rules so that the manipulations produce new things” (Becker 146). The chapter teaches us about thinking, and how the thoughts we produce can further our research. There are two specific tricks of logic that Becker teaches in this chapter; finding the major premise, and using truth tables to discover possible combinations.
The first trick involves the typical A=B=C argument. There is a major premise (A=B), a minor premise (B=C) and then a conclusion (A=C). We may have learned this simple logic in elementary school, but Becker warns us about the issues that can arise in making these types of statements. He brings up examples where the minor premises involved stereotypical “facts” about race or religion which ultimately allowed for false conclusions to be made. The A=B=C equation we once knew as a logical explanation for many phenomena is rarely applicable in sociological research. Facts cannot be subjective and we must always be careful of what we deem as true or false. Do you think this model can ever be applicable today in qualitative research?
Becker advises us to design a way to manage our data using specific language and terminology that reflect consistent methods of social research. He lists several different methods of organizing data that can help develop ideas. I don’t have much space to discuss these methods, but hopefully someone else in the class will. Becker believes that logic provides us with possibilities for discovering more information that could otherwise go unnoticed. These tricks can be extremely helpful for us when dealing with own data.
Overall, Becker has extreme faith in the future of research. He believes in the power of a student’s mind and has an overall positive attitude about the results they can accomplish. I think this book speaks directly to us as we are about to embark on our own research journey. I hope that every one of you gained something positive and helpful out of Becker’s advice. I’d love to hear about which tricks are most applicable to your own research.
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