Oct 12th 09 Posted by justin in Uncategorized

CCR751 – Sinclair – Technology and the A.A. Experience

Sinclair, Bruce. Technology and the African-American Experience:  Needs and Opportunities for Study. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004.

Introduction:  Integrating the Histories of Race and Technology

List format today in the interest of brevity.

1. Perceptions about inventiveness and natural aptitude have played a huge role in pushing the A.A. technological experience to the borders of accepted thought.  This is why A.A. are largely absent from the technological conversation.  In keeping with this theme, the work of slavery (brute force) was tied to mental capacity; hence, whites were able to tell themselves it was OK to continue slavery because A.A.’s were incapable of learning/thinking anyway.
2. White identity has long been tied to technological capability.  This is inherent not only in the Yankee ingenuity, but also in concepts of manifest destiny.  Because of the success of the democratic project in the US, whites conceived of technological aptitude and progress as a natural element of their masculinity (which means that technology was also gendered in addition to being raced).
3. “All down these long decade, white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant Americans made technology and the capacity for its skillful management central both to the task of nation-building and to the way they represented themselves.  Just as plainly, they contrasted themselves to people of color, whom they judged incapable of such things” (5).
4. Sinclair has a list of things he thinks historians and scholars should concentrate on to improve the historical explication of the intersection of race and technology.  These include:
   1. Search out all black inventors
   2. Look at the world of labor
   3. Look at the world of consumption – in other words, how have Black consumption practices played a role in the development of new technologies?
   4. How is race represented in the media?  How is it represented in different kinds of technological media?
   5. A study of black scientific and technical institutions
   6. A more complex exploration of A.A. participation in technical and industrial expositions.
   7. The author notes that deciding what to write about when reclaiming A.A. experience with technology “rests on what we imagine it is possible to write about” (13).
   8. The author makes a great point that technological advances are created out of choices, not abstract neutral technological logic or neutral process; hence, the social process that informed those choice embody the interests, positions, and attitudes of the ones that created them.  SO, the takeaway is that technology is NOT neutral.

Chapter One:  Landscapes of Technology Transfer:  Rice Cultivation and African Continuities

Judith Carney

In this article, Carney advances the argument that West African slaves were the real reason why much rice cultivation shifted from inland river based rice cultivation to eventual tidal cultivation.  Though historians have long contended that this was because of Dutch influence, the likely reality was that Africans and Europeans (in unequal power relations with one another) combined their knowledges to further develop the rice cultivation along the South Carolina and Georgia coasts.  In reclaiming this history, Carney contends that Eurocentric views have contributed to the glossing over of Africans contribution to this agrarian economy.

Chapter Two:  “To Collect Proof of Colored Talent and Ingenuity”:  African-American Invention and Innovation

Portia James

In this chapter James presents a catalogue of A.A. technological innovations from the period between 1619-1930.  Here are some highlights:

1. In the early colonial period, A.A., white wage workers and slave owners tended to work together to come up with technological innovations to common problems; however, by the beginning of the eighteenth century, as the black-white line became more pronounced, this cooperation ended abruptly.
2. Until the passage of the 13^th and 14^th amendments, it was virtually impossible for slaves or A.A. freedmen to apply for and receive a patent.  Though the patent office was in New York, and hence, the Union, blacks were rarely granted patents.
3. Before heavy industrialization in the late 19^th century, much A.A. technological innovation was concentrated in skilled knowledge of everyday processes (butter churns, etc.) and agrarian technologies.
4. Before said industrialization, Blacks were:
   1. Interested in improving their lot through technology just like whites
   2. Those A.A.’s who were particularly skilled for invention tended to gravitate to urban areas and where, hence, well situated for the technological advances of the late 19^th century industrial re-revolution.
   3. The railroad was the most powerful and significant developing technology for Black inventors.
   4. A.A.’s saw technological development and invention as a means to gain access to participation and inclusion in the Great America of the pre WWI period.
   5. A.A. during the early 20^th century had to develop marketing and manufacturing savvy to become industrialists instead of just inventors.
   6. Besides racial prejudice, $ was the chief limiters for A.A. inventors to gain access to manufacture.
   7. The two most important take aways from the study are:
      1. A.A. men and women have been active participants in the history of American technology from the very beginning (66).
      2. A.A. stories disrupt the lie that A.A.’s were naturally mentally inferior human beings.

Chapter Four:  New South, New North:  Region, Ideology, and Access in Industrial Education

Nina Lerman

This chapter explored the differences between “Industrial Education” models in the South and North during the Reconstruction period.  According to the author, her article,
“suggests that the paradoxes of industrial education spring from – and must be explained in terms of – contradictions between the various perceived potentials of the A.A. labor force in New South industrial development; the tradition of large-scale production through hand cultivation in Southern agriculture; the steady technological marginalization of the A.A. community in the urban North; and Northern Philanthropy’s funding of educational programs in ongoing conversation with Southern leaders” (80).

So, let’s break this apart:

1. New South industrial development – Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute presented themselves as a place for A.A. men to get a Christian education while learning some skills of industrial trades.  In fact, Tuskegee was THE Southern industrial training facility during the Reconstruction period.  What is odd about this is that Washington used Northern Philanthropic $ to train these A.A. men.  Presumably, Northern industrialists wanted to eventually use the South as an industrial home without the union presence of the North.  In training for industry, Washington was teaching his students to be obedient to the whim of industry. .. .. and NOT get involved in labor.
2. Northern trade schools – such as ICY – started out in the industrial model; however, after matriarchs and other influential community organizers died out or left the education scene in Northern cities, schools such as ICY usually changed their mission from one of industrial trade’s education to Christian moral-influenced teaching schools.  In fact, ICY – citing Tuskegee as an example – created an out of the city campus for its students.  They then trained their students to be teachers that would eventually work in the South educating in trades and domestic duties.

This seems to be the contradiction that the author points out at the beginning of her article.  The takeaway here is that “Industrial Education” as the counterpart to “Black Colleges” cannot be conceived of in a national sense; rather, they must be taken on their own, local terms to understand exactly what motivations/desires were at work.

Chapter Six:  Raising Fish with a Song:  Technology, Chanteys, and African Americans in the Atlantic Menhaden Fishery

Barbara Garrity-Blake

Blake analyzes the expressive practices of A.A. Menhaden fisherman in this piece.  Essentially, she contends that A.A.’s used singing as a technological device for a couple of reasons:

1. The work song as technology not only functioned as a tool to get the job done, it signified:  the words expressed resistance to white authority, freedom to seek new wage-labor employment, and the desire to be home with loved ones (114).
2. The author characterizes this as a “invisible technology”

Chapter Eight:  “The Open Road”:  Automobility and Racial Uplift in the Interwar Years

Kathleen Franz

This article investigates the use of the automobile by Black American’s in the period between the end of WWI and the end of WWII.  Some points of interest:

1. This essay investigates the automobile as an instrument of cultural power that offered black middle-class drivers access to both personal mobility and technological expertise. (132)
2. Cultural histories of technology that focus on material culture, users, and consumption suggest two ways to expand the scope of A.A. history
   1. Because consumption is a highly political form of technological use, studies of consumption can reveal a lot about the condition of a group.
   2. Studies of how the black community appropriated technological artifacts can highlight the importance of technological skill and knowledge within larger arguments about racial progress – in this case, the historian will use the A.A. experience with automobility to demonstrate how A.A. found their ways into discourses of economic prosperity, leisured mobility, and technological know-how. (132-3)
   3. Discourses of economic prosperity
      1. i.      A.A. used the automobile to take part in the growing middle class identity in the US in the postwar years.
      2. Leisured moibility – to participate in the middle-class ideal, A.A. used the automobile to gain access to the “Open Road” – even though the road wasn’t so open at all.
      3. Technological knowhow – A.A.’s used the automobile to challenge the discourses surrounding Black mental inferiority.

Chapter Nine:  The Matter of Race in Histories of American Technology

Rebecca Herzig

Herzig makes the argument that race, much like gender, is tied to technological development.  After demonstrating the gendered nature of the Ford Probe at the beginning of the article, Herzig notes that technology does a couple of things:

1. Narratives of technology provide a means by which individuals establish separate alternative racial identities.
2. Technologies also offer a key to resolving character’s “true” racial identity in moments of crisis.
3. Social constructions of race often ignore the materiality of race.
4. Thinking of race and technology and their relationships to one another provides better history and allow us to ask new questions about the past.
5. Thinking about the relations between race and technology grounds discussions about both in the realm of politics, not historiography.

Oct 5th 09 Posted by justin in CCR601

CCR601 – Communication As. . . . .

Communication as … Perspectives on Theory. Minneapolis: Sage Publications, Inc, 2005. Print.

Introduction:  Taking a Stand on Theory

St. John, Striphas, and Shepherd

I thought this was an interesting introduction.  While much of the scholarship in rhet/comp does actually engage in the “buffet” method, St. John et.al. make it a point that all theory is not created equal.  They recognize that there are a lot of different explanations about what communication is (cultural, symbolic, material, ontological, etc.); however, they don’t necessarily see them all as equal.  They also see that communication theory matters – which is a nice way of saying that it’s relevant.

Chapter One:  Communication as Relationality

Celeste M. Condit

Condit’s argument is that all communication should be conceived of in relationships.  In other words, all “subjects” (not autonomous mind you) are constituted in a 4 dimensional weave of social relationships.  These relationships are what define us as individuals.  Hence, to study communication, one should look to the way that relationships are working.  This theory rejects a couple of different positions.  First, it rejects the idea that words relate to things (Saussure).  Next, it rejects essentialist definitions of anything.  Finally, it rejects post-structuralist critiques of presence.  In Derridean deconstruction, the metaphysics of presence, or the existence of a transcendental signified (TRUTH) are shrugged off in favor of the existence of absence.  Relationality disrupts this idea by stating that all communication and all things are both present and absent.  To some degree it’s very kairotic in that it is a constant process of emerging.

Chapter Three: Communication as Transcendence

Gregory Shepherd

Shepherd’s explanation of communication sounds strikingly like the relationality that Condit discusses in Chapter One except that Shepherd’s theory of communication is much more pragmatic.  As he mentions in the first line of his essay, “Communication is the simultaneous experience of self and other.  That’s what I mean by transcendence” (22).  After grounding reality as experience of the self and other (again, communication as a kairotic becoming or being-together), S. notes that communication is a miracle, if a mundane one.  S. next connects communication and freedom by noting how communication and its potential is always dependent on one’s will to communicate.  Hence, communication is something that happens because of you, not in spite of you.  Finally, as communication is the definition of who you are, I can’t reject you based on previous notions, but on the experience of you through communication – on other words, you are not an essential self but emergent in the act of communication.  If we all adopt sympathetic approaches to communication as an act of becoming, then communication is the act of democracy because of its possibility.  Again, very pragmatic.

Chapter Eight:  Communication as Embodiment

Carolyn Marvin

I had a really hard time getting into this chapter at first.  The author’s contention is that the world has, and to some degree will always be, a division between the textual and the bodily.  While much scholarship has placed an emphasis on the importance of the textual (think Eisenstein and Havelock), the bodily is usually neglected in conceptions of communication.  After grounding the act of communication in the bodily through the gesture – the earliest of human communicative tactics – the author makes the argument that textualization (covers up the body in media) counteracts dramatization (the things we do to enhance the communicative nature of the body – clothes, makeup etc.).  Where Marvin’s argument gets interesting for me is in her discussion of Capitalism and the textual/bodily tension.  Essentially, she makes the argument that the Reformation made the first shifts away from the body to the text.  As such, as literacy spread, the body was considered the vulgar and the textual was more respected by ruling elites.  This textual preference led to the breakup of socialist/communist/labor oriented actions because collective bodily action was eschewed in the interest of promoting the notion “of well-behaved ‘independent-minded’ literates as the only fit civic participants” (72).  Because of this preference for the textual, the bodily class (read lower socioeconomic classes and all the ethnic/race issues that entails) became detached from the political process – and rendered invisible.  Pretty neat argument.\

Chapter Nine:  Communication as Raced

Judith N. Martin and Thomas K. Nakayama

This chapter makes the contention that communication, as a discipline, is raced.  The authors use three premises to illustrate their argument.

1. Racial histories and demographics inform and reflect communication behaviors – This states that communication, as a discipline, has always been raced.  From as far back as the ancients, communication and participation in the polity was an endeavor for the white elite ruling classes of ancient Greece and Rome.  As such, this tradition has, for the most part, carried on into contemporary communication.
2. The conceptualization and study of communication is raced – historically and contemporaneously.
3. The field of communication is raced – Using stats from academic studies, the authors demonstrate that the field is racially white – roughly 87% so.  As such, whites tend to study the communication they are conversant in – white communication.  The authors wonder what effect this is having on communication as a discipline and also speculate that, if nothing changes, the rapidly changing demographics of the university will make communication as a white enterprise basically irrelevant.

Chapter Ten:  Communication as Social Identity

Jake Harwood

This article makes the contention that looking at the communicative practices of social groups can let us in on some of the reasons why certain social groups do what.  I think this article is more of an invective or indictment of the current communication field rather than a positive claim piece.  The author makes reference to how in the West, we concentrate on social identities in negative situations (rioters) instead of all intergroup relations (rioters, riot police, bystanders, etc.).  By looking at the goals and communicative acts of “ingroups” and “outgroups,” communication scholars can gain a far broader understanding of human behavior.  The author hopes this shift from the individual to the collective identity will be adopted as it can yield a lot of useful and enlightening research.

Chapter Twelve:  Communication as Dialogue

Leslie A. Baxter

Some familiar territory here.  I’ll hit these in list form.

1. Words are not originary with the speaker but are laced with the interplay of meaning-traces from prior conversations and from prior utterances within the same conversation
2. Utterances respond to anticipated reactions – addressivity.
3. Language use is also highly situated (or chronotoped).  Words are uttered at a particular cultural epoch by interlocutors who occupy particular social locations.
4. Tensionality – what is deemed a problem in conventional comm. Theory – is key to the dialogic because it is a site for productive happenings.
5. Communications is not an expression and replication of the self, but a fluid social interaction that is shaped by interlocturos, context and history.
6. Communication shouldn’t be about a study of individual minds but the “between” practices of joint interlocutors.

Chapter Fifteen:  Communication as Complex Organizing

James R. Taylor

Taylor’s mission in this article is to find out where the concept of “organization” comes from and how that concept relates to communication – or, how communication constitutes organization.  Taylor’s contention is that communication – even between two interlocutors – constitutes the beginning of organization because all creatures capable of learning follow patterned, redundant ways of behaving in order to exist in a hierarchy.  What is confusing is how this organization changes from a micro to a macro level.  Taylor attributes “organization” on the macro level to the meta-authoring of texts-as-agents in large scale communication communities.  The use of narrative as meta-authoring structure by individuals in macro organizations is paradoxical because the organization is a unity made up of single agents authoring single texts to create unity on the macro level.  As Taylor notes, “An organization-in-the-large is thus a complex mix of segmented – potentially fragmented – local conversations that are loosely joined by an ongoing metaconversation out of which the identity of the organization and its network of agents emerges” (139).

Chapter Twenty:  Communication as Social Influence

Frank Boster

To some degree, this seems like a straight-forward theory, but it’s pretty interesting nevertheless.  Boster is making the argument that social influence is the goal of ALL communication.  Social influence is usually, according to Boster, referred to as a “change in belief, attitude, or behavior or some combination of these three factors.  The author defines those terms thusly:

1. Belief – the acceptance of a proposition or fact
2. Attitude – the manner in which persons evaluate concepts or objects
3. Behavior – the putting of belief or attitude into action

The author takes the Spinozan idea of action as a ready acceptance of what is said then a quick evaluation to see if it works or not.  This evaluation may occur incredibly quickly.  The reason we study this is because the change from belief to attitude is a great predictor for actions.

Chapter Twenty-Four:  Communication as Articulation

Jennifer Daryl Slack

This was a great read.  Slack’s premise is that articulation – as espoused by cultural critics like Stuart Hall – is the best way to envision communication.  Articulation is composed of two parts: 1) the context (values, feelings, beliefs, practices, structures, organizations, ideologies, etc.) and 2) how the conjunctures of #1 make some sorts of movement possible and others not possible.  The author then uses this articulation of articulation to explain the development of communication as a field.  Finally she ties these conjunctures to a social justice imperative.  What would be especially useful is to perform an articulated analysis of rhet/comp history.  Finally, there is a tendency to ignore some of the context from the first part of articulation in the interest of finding results that you want to find, so be careful!

Chapter Twenty-Six:  Communication as Communicability

Briankle G. Chang

Communication isn’t perfect.  The act of sharing implies division.  When you share, you divide the original message before sharing because sharing implies division.

Oct 2nd 09 Posted by justin in Uncategorized

CCR751 – Cannon/Clark – Teaching Preaching

Cannon, Katie Geneva. Teaching Preaching: Isaac Rufus Clark and Black Sacred Rhetoric. New York: Continuum, 2002.

Introduction
In the introduction Cannon makes a couple of moves to situate the reader in the context of Black Sacred Rhetoric. She also dispels some arguments made against the need for teaching to be able to go preaching. I’ll use a list to hit the main points:
1. Clark believes to be a serious homelitician, one needs to develop a complex understanding of theoethical consciousness. (13)
2. According to Clark, there must be a person-in-the-know-of-God to accurately and effectively convey the word of God from the pulpit. In order to be a person-in-the-know, one must have taken a course of study with someone who was also a person-in-the-know of God. In essence, Clark argues that in order to be a preacher, you must know what you’re doing and have confronted the theoethical issues central to preaching. If you haven’t done as much, then Clark would call you a “jackleg” preacher. . . I’m thinking someone like Creflo Dollar or the other folks on the TBN network.
3. Clark’s main concern in his homiletics was to create “clear, precise, cogent, organized and prophetic utterance” (15).
4. In addition to knowing the what-meaning (Title/Subject) and the why meaning (Introduction) to Black sermonizing, Clark puts a huge emphasis on the how meaning. In other words, if the preacher “ain’t got no proposition, you ain’t got no sermon either” (16). So, to be effective it’s not enough to know what you’re going to talk about and why, you must also know how to go about talking it. To establish this how, Clark relies on homiletics. Homiletics, etymologically, can be broken down into homily and rhetoric. So, rejoined, homiletics is the production of persuasive preaching.
5. Clark notes that the essence of black preaching has developed in the following steps: 1) divine activity where the 2) Word of God is 3) proclaimed or announced 4) on a contemporary issue 5) with an ultimate response to our God. I suppose, to some degree, this is his homiletic method.
6. Clark rejects ideas that preachers don’t need education on the basis that Jesus didn’t have any. Instead, he points to the fact that Jesus studied at temple from age 12 and was a student of a man-in-the-know, John the Baptist.
To end the introduction we get a nice summation of Clark’s program:
Clark says he wants to use the most communicative kind of human expressions for convincing and persuading men and women to live creatively under God, which is crucial in expressing faith meaningfully for edifying the saints, and for winning unbelievers to our God. In essence, Clark’s language is grounded in a non-negotiable theological mandate: to apply the principles of rhetoric to the particular ends and means of the Christian gospel, for the purposes of liberation, reconciliation, and maturation in the deepest theological sense of the term, so that as professionals of the Word of God we will never be guilty of unconsciously tampering with people’s souls. (23).

Chapter One: Taking the Holiness of Preaching Seriously
In this chapter, Clark discusses why his class, his pedagogy and the act of preaching especially is a HOLY endeavor. After making reference to Rudolph Otto’s Idea of the Holy, Clark explains that his course and his person is Holy in the sense that [in Otto’s words]: “What Otto means primarily is the idea of the holy has to do with something distinctive in quality of being. Holy means something unique, something with a character that is different from the common world of things in existence. Holy means something that nothing else is like in kind, nowhere. And it is in light of this distinctive, unique, particular, different meaning of holy that Rudolph Otto endeavors to think and talk about God” (28).

Chapter Two: Bearing the Cross in This Holy Course
I’m beginning to really dig Clark’s homiletics at this point. This chapter also provided me with a good deal to think about in the way of response. Anyhow, in Chapter Two Clark lets his students know that they will be bearing a Cross of burden in his class. To understand what he means, he lets the students know that they will be confronted with three central questions in his class.
1. Nature equals what we preach.
2. Method equals how preaching is.
3. Purpose equals why preaching is.
After making the absolutely lovely (imo) statement that preaching is dialogic in that the preacher should preach with a claim and answer questions arising from that claim (even if they are unstated) to make effective preaching, Clarke spends a bit of time explaining WHY this class will be a Cross to bear. Basically, Clark is letting the students know that the class will be a rigorous examination of their own “home” beliefs (which are often wrong) as well as a confrontation with new material from their professors. To engage in this process, Clark lets his students know forcefully that they will be required to tear down their old assumptions and integrate new approaches to the “WHY.” In the end, Clark lets his students know he does this out of LOVE. He notes, “The cross in this preaching course represents the deepest meaning of God in the deepest logical sense. Love in the deepest theological sense always comes with a cross mingled with it. That is why the cross is the symbol that we wear. God’s love has a cross in it. In the deepest theological sense, we are going to lead you again and again to Calvary” (40).

Chapter Three: A- Not the, but a – Theological Interpretation of Preaching
Clark notes that this part of the journey is one called “knowledge.” He states that knowledge is midway between understanding and implementation. It is in this chapter that Clark lays out the 5 step program I mentioned in the introduction of these notes. First, he discusses preaching as divine activity. Clark says that the implications of divine activity are two-fold. We must remember that even though we are the speakers we must keep God first. Second, always remember that preaching is really a reenactment of the creation. Next Clark discusses Proclaimed or Announced. In this section Clark notes how we must proclaim because “the contemporary implication for us as proclaimers is that we require conferences with our king; it is necessary for us to steal away in a programmed way for prayer and meditation, so that people will be aware that their heavenly king has spoken to us first, in order for them to be convinced that they need to obey our proclaimed/announced orders” (45). In a sense, this is a ethos-building activity. Word of God is next on the list. For Clark, the meaning of Word of God is holy stuff being delivered to needy people for the purpose of feeding hungry souls the manna most satisfying. We get a couple of definitions in this section for Sin (being basically rebellious, defiant, arrogant in trying to take over in God’s kingdom, basically against God) and Grace (a gift of forgiveness and power, wherein pardon, amnesty, and friendship are proclaimed in a convincing way so that sinner’s can move to God’s presence one again) (46-8) Finally, Clark discusses Contemporary Issues. He states that these are “the recommended definition of preaching has to do with relevant, existential context, real-life situation to which the gospel is addressed, relating the gospel concretely to problems burdening people down beyond human repair, helping people to overcome in the ultimate sense of the term” (49). The last section for Clark is the “Ultimate Response to Our God.” For this fifth and final element, Clark is discussing a choice to either live by God’s decree or rebel against it. In a sense, this is the responsibility of the preacher, but also the congregants that listen to the preaching.

Chapter Four: A Critique of Contemporary Preaching
In this chapter Clark indicts many preachers using the model he laid out in Chapter Three. He notes that the main reason people aren’t going to church, or at least aren’t motivated by the churches that they attend, is because the preacher isn’t doing a good job translating the message using the aforementioned technique (or any technique that makes it relevant). To a large degree this is a problem in preacher’s not understanding the contemporary issues issue. Clark using Billy Grahamism to note how nearly a million folks attended his crusade and thousands were saved. They did this not because of TV presence, plants, etc., but because they were HUNGRY and Graham had the food for the soul. For Clark, the preaching situation in mainline Protestantism is “shallow and in the shadows.”

Chapter Five: The Sermonic Text
In this chapter, Clark discusses the three important elements that define sermonic preaching. First there is the text, second the text must be of the Word of God and third, the text is frequently taken from the Bible (99.44% of the time actually). In addition to the bible, a preacher can use hymns, church history, rituals (baptism, etc. BUT TAKE IT SERIOUSLY).

Sep 27th 09 Posted by justin in CCR601

CCR601 – Williams, McNabb, MacDonald

Problems into PROBLEMS:  Rhetoric of Motivation

Joseph Williams

In the introduction, Williams makes the point that he is interested in the “substantive problem” of rhetoric – and his definition of this substantive is a little unclear.  Later in the first section, he defines exigence as “a situation that demands a rhetorical response” (3).  Williams notes that students have difficulty writing because they don’t know how to pose problems.  Second, they don’t know how to identify problems because there are no heuristics available to them to make it clear and finally, third, we as teachers often don’t understand how an introduction shapes a reader’s response to what follows it, so it’s difficult to teach our students those skills.

Some notes on problems:

1. They must be a ‘de-stabilizing condition’
2. The destabilizing condition must entail consequences that are undesirable to the person who claims the problem.
3. For a problem to matter, it must not only matter to the person asking it, but it must also matter to the community of readers who acknowledge and accept that the Cost has an impact on them.  This is how you change a problem into a PROBLEM.
4. Articulations of problems usually take a Cost-Condition-Solution format where these parts are interchangeable.
5. The author notes that the “privileged” order is Condition-Cost-Solution

Why Students Can’t ID PROBLEMS:

1. There is no pragmatic, tangible consequence to the problem we ask (Hamlet v. AIDS)
2. Education is more than knowledge acquisition
3. Few students understand that the articulation and structure of the problem is a problem itself.
4. We ask students to consider conceptual problems that are “pure” and hence, whose conditions and costs aren’t really “out there” in the world but “in here” in the mind.
5. Because conceptual problems are often interpreted as failures to make meaning from problems instead of sites for research, students often give up instead of forming research questions from conceptual problems.
6. Students usually approach topics with this developmental sequence:
   1. Self interest – S is attracted to the topic
   2. Self puzzlement – S finds something that is perplexing and must be resolved because it is there
   3. Self enlightenment – S resolves complexity and changes thinking about problem and things related to it.
   4. Community interest – student attracted to topic because he and community find interesting
   5. Community puzzlement – same as self
   6. Community enlightenment – see S but extend to community.

When writing introductions, we typically set up a stable environment contextualization (stasis) and then disrupt that environment with threats.  Stasis-Disruption-Resolution.  Also, elliptical introductions that omit underlying structures cause difficulties in our students when reading for PROBLEMS (32).  So, to get into the disciplines expectations about writing, one should adopt the Stasis-Disruption-Resolution format (see 34-7).

Williams creates a nice graphic on 45 to describe the articulation of a problem in these terms:

Practical Problem à motivated à conceptual problem à motivates à research problem à points to solution of à practical problem.

The Method or Williams “So What?” – The parts of successful student writing

1. Find the main point
2. Specify that contradiction, conflict or discrepancy
3. Ask and answer “So what?”
4. What belief does this challenge?
5. Re-assemble

Professional Academic Writing in the Humanities and Social Sciences – Susan Peck MacDonald

Introduction

M. sets out to demonstrate through an analysis of 1) written texts, 2) knowledge-making goals and practices, 3) disciplinary communities and 4) professionalism  that the different disciplines all engage in knowledge making, but do it in different textual ways.

Useful definitions in the section on Disciplinary Communities about how and why these communities arise.  The idea of rationality, if we accept social constructionist claims is no longer an emphasis on logic and substance; rather, it shifts to process and community – or what M. says is “the process whereby a community of practitioners gives reasons for its choices, carries on negotiation and persuasion within the community, and selects some problems and solutions as superior to others on the basis of shared disciplinary understandings” (13).

M. states that there are four patterns of variation in the ways that academics approach their knowledge problems:

1.  Variations from compactness to diffuseness

A. the result of a lack in clear goals (like some hard-science fields)

B. the variation between academic fields in stated problems results in a nice human geographic metaphor for academic work:  urban fields have a small number of problems and a large number of people working on them.  Rural fields (like ours) have a huge number of problems and few people working on each.

2.  Variations in exploratory versus interpretive goals

3.  Variations from conceptually driven to text driven in relations between generalization and particular

4.  Variations in the degrees of epistemic self-consciousness that are explicit in texts

Making the Gesture:  Graduate Student Submissions and the Expectation of Journal Referees

Richard McNabb

As a definition, gesturing is “the critical tactic of ‘shifting interpretive authority out of the context of everyday human and social activity [our professional practices] and into an independent, already constituted and structured realm of subjects, works, ideas, and linguistic patterns’” (10).  In other words, it authorizes an argument and grounds that argument in a disciplines “use”.    McNabb found that graduate students often didn’t get published because they didn’t 1) gesture to an appropriate rhetorical mode, or 2) gesture to an appropriate problem presentation.

By not gesturing to the appropriate rhetorical mode (usually theory or historical), grad students often don’t get published.  This is because most reviewers in the field want the article to be grounded in the academic discourse of the academy rather than that of personal experience.

The author also found that published manuscripts almost always used epistemic introductions.  Epistemic introductions do not refer to “a writer’s attempt to generate new knowledge in the field, but rather attempt to show the knowledge-making processes of the field” (17).  McNabb also notes that the process of gesturing to an appropriate problem presentation not only includes situating the introduction in the discourse of the field, but creating a perceived need for the argument you’re about to make.

Sep 25th 09 Posted by justin in Uncategorized

CCR691 – Ethnography Ch. 2 Horner – For Comment

Horner, Bruce. “Critical Ethnography, Ethics, and Work:  Rearticulating Labor.” Ethnography Unbound:  From Theory Shock to Critical Praxis. Ed. Stephen Gilbert Brown. Albany: SUNY Press, 2004. 13-34.

Main Claims/Executive Summary

In this chapter Horner advances the argument that critical ethnography’s approach to collaboration, multivocality, and self-reflexivity have been steps in the right direction to distance ethnography from the myth of the “Lone Ethnographer” toward a more accurate researcher.  This new, “critical” ethnographic model developed in light of feminist, postcolonial and poststructuralist conceptions of knowledge and experience.  Yet, in making this step toward a more accurate ethnographic project, researchers in the field have not, according to Horner, adequately addressed the social/cultural materiality of the research process.  In eliding this question, researchers often push up against ethical dilemmas that could be preempted with an extended treatment of the materiality of ethnographic research.

Specific Claims:

Collaboration

In making his argument, Horner addresses three aspects of ethnography where he believes a material consideration will be most useful.  First he addresses collaboration.  Traditionally, critical ethnographers have viewed the position of collaboration as essential in order to 1) challenge the hierarchical relationships between the researcher and the researched and 2) gain more detailed accounts of research participants in the “context of their daily lives” (17), and 3) allow research subjects the space to gain new knowledge about themselves and their lives through the project.  The problems with this position include: 1) the subject may not care about the research, 2) the “social positioning” of the participants might complicate the ideal.  To address this issue, Horner recommends that researchers consider

unexpected questions of labor, value, and capital (symbolic and otherwise) [about] who will do what work, determined by whom, to produce what use value and exchange value realized by and for whom, paid for how, on whose time, by what means. (21)

In recognizing these factors, the ethnographer will “recognize and confront the material differences at the research site among the researchers and researched rather than assume an ideal of shared interest among equal partners, and we need to recognize the labor all contribute, and factor in the values to be accrued through such labor and how such values are realized, in planning and taking  up such inquiry (22).

Multivocality

In this section, Horner recognizes that embracing multivocality in ethnographic research allows for the “Other” to speak in the text instead of being merely spoken about.  Unfortunately, under the current ethics based model of ethnography, the ethnographer is hemmed in by 1) the desire of the participant NOT to participate in producing texts and 2) the “commodity fetishism” that develops when researchers make gestures toward incorporating multivocality as a textual nod (genre?) instead of as a recognition of the labor involved in creating those multivocal texts.  To correct the ethical problem of multivocality, Horner recommends considering the “specific material social conditions of the audience” of the ethnography as well as adopting a multiplicity of texts (perhaps in an appendix?) that can demonstrate the context of the study.

Self-Reflexivity

In this section, Horner investigates the practice of self-reflexivity in critical ethnography.  While acknowledging that the practice has meaningful import as a way to ensure that one’s own view doesn’t color the views of the study or the researched subjects, Horner also recognizes that the “No more metanarratives” (he uses ‘ideologies’) position of many pomo’ists is really an affirmation of the metanarrative of no more metanarratives.  I guess it’s kind of the uber-metanarrative.  Instead, Horner argues that the practice of self-reflexivity is another textual commodity of ethnographic form.  Further, he also likens it to a gesture toward enhancing one’s ethos as a researcher instead of a real act of reflection.  In addressing this issue, Horner recommends that researchers 1) use self-reflection on a personal level (via re-visiting diaries, etc.), 2) recognize self-reflexivity as an activity rather than a “textual production” to meet the genre and 3) by recognizing that researchers aren’t alone, but actually part of the larger social.  Finally, Horner recommends that if self-reflexivity is to be used in ethnography, we must accept that it is a material social practice that needs to be accounted for in the planning and budgeting process.

Working With:

Bizzell, Patricia.  “Marxist Ideas in Composition Studies.”  Contending with Words:  Composition and Rhetoric in a Postmodern Age.  Ed. Patricia Harkin and John Schilb.  New York:  MLA, 1991.  52-68.

Cintron, Ralph.  “Waring a Pith Helmet at a Sly Angle: or, Can Writing Researchers Do Ethnography in a Postmodern Era?”  Written Communication 10 (1993):  371-412.

Working Against:

Kirsch, Gesa E., and Joy S. Ritchie.  “Beyond the Personal:  Theororizing a Politics of Location in Composition Research.”  CCC 46 (1995): 7-29.

Key Words/Phrases:

collaboration

self-reflexivity

material conditions

social

multivocality

Questions/Thoughts:

1.  I found strong resonances between what Horner is discussing as the “commodity fetishism” of much ethnographic posturing and the commodification of publishing that Matsuda discusses in the article we read for Collin’s class.  Missy best articulated this problem in our class as one of publishing for purpose or publishing or perish. . . just an observation.

2.  I get the sense that what Horner wants – through a really rigorous qualification of labor and resources needed on the front end – is a program of possibilities instead of gestures on the back.  Does that make sense?

3.  Related to question two, I think Horner might see ethnography, in the gesturing/commodity fetishism of textual practice state as a calcification instead of what ethnography should be: possiblity.