Jan 12th 10 Posted by justin in CCR760

CCR760 – Miller, Rutter, Sullivan, Lay, Slack et. al.

Readings from Johnson-Eilola and Selber’s Central Works in Technical Communication

• Miller, C.  (1979, 2004).  A humanistic rationale for technical communication.  47-54.
• Rutter, R. (1991, 2004). History, rhetoric, & humanism:  Toward a more comprehensive definition of technical communication.  20-34.
• Sullivan, D.L. (1990, 2004).  Political-ethical implications of defining technical communication as a practice. 211-219.
• Lay, M.M. (1991, 2004).  Feminist theory and the redefinition of technical communication.  146-159.
• Slack, J.D., Miller, D.J., & Doak, J.D. (1993, 2004). The technical communicator as author:  meaning, power, authority. 160-174.

“The Technical Communicator as Author” – Slack, Miller & Doak

• Slack notes that the fundamental insight of this piece is the “assertion that technical communicators, whether it is acknowledged or not, contribute to the articulation of meaning and thus implicated in relations of power and authority” (161).
• The author believes that technical communicators yearn for the “level of social responsibility” that their work deserves.
• Relying on Foucault, Slack notes that the concept of authorship renders some discourses less valuable than others – in particular, technical communication isn’t given the respect it deserves.
• Slack identifies three models of modes of communication:  transmission (conveying meaning from one point to another – meaning is fixed, use of the technical writer as surrogate engineer, power is possessed by the sender), translation (similar to Latour’s notion, this is the constitution of meaning in the interpretation and reinterpretation of messages, power is negotiated, meaning is produced as an interaction between sender and receiver, miscommunication isn’t the result of poor encoding and decoding; rather, different frameworks of knowledge, production and technical infrastructure might be responsible for communication breakdown – in other words, different social practice.  Also, the encoder holds the power in this understanding ), and articulation (the ongoing struggle to articulate and rearticulate meaning.  Articulation seems to be a far larger way of understanding the communication process.  In articulation, the sender and receiver are considered; however, so are the mediators or the channels of transmission.  In this case, media and technologies.  To some degree, articulation seems to be a recognition of multiplicity in the communication process – see top of 169).
• Ultimately, Slack is concerned with how to authorize technical communication.  To do so, she focuses her work on the articulation aspect of communication and how the process of articulation is wrapped up in relations of power.
• Communication is inherently ideological and imbricated in power because of it’s roots as a technology designed to “exercise control over space and people faster and farther” (163).
• Translation finds many analogues with Bakhtin’s notion of heteroglossia.
• Slack’s discussion of “identity trains” seems to have a lot in common with Latour’s “immutable mobiles” – in other words, these are trains or associations that are stable enough to base ideas/things on them.  Their meaning, while not fixed, is fairly static.
• Power in the articulation model works to fix multiplicity.

Sullivan – Political-ethical implications of defining technical communication as a practice

• Sullivan notes early on that composition has largely served the needs of capitalist/technological modes of production through objectivity, clarity, problem solving, etc.  In this process, writing has ignored the social responsibility of writers.
• Sullivan relies heavily on Miller’s conception of tech  comm.  He notes that Miller’s work argues that “traditional technical writing instruction is based on the ‘windowpane’ theory of language, a theory that frames technical and scientific writing as ‘just a series of maneuvers for staying out of the way’” (213).  Instead, Sullivan hopes that technical writing can be a “kind of enculturation” that helps students belong to a community.
• Sullivan notes that “genres define rhetorical situations”  ; in effect, genres are kairotic.
• Sullivan argues that teaching standardized formats and forms enculturates students into the military-industrial complex.  To me, this sounds absolutely true; however, is there an escape mechanism?
• Techne – skill to produce a product.  Praxis – a practice of social action.  Phronesis – the virtue of practical wisdom or prudence.
• To get out of the bind mentioned earlier, Sullivan advocates rhet/comp folks to “change my course so that it at once teaces the discourse appropriate for the technological world and makes students aware of the values embedded in such discourse and the dehumanizing effects of it” (215).
• Sullivan hopes to expand technical communication to political discourse and public discourses about technology to escape the genres of military-industrial domination in his classroom.

Rutter – History, Rhetoric, and Humanism

• Rutter is working to place technical communication in the fields of rhetoric and, more broadly, humanist education in this piece.
• Rutter reviews the humanist and rhetoric of science traditions to demonstrate how technical communication can learn a lot from both strands of education.  He does this to demonstrate that all communication – even technical – needs the “theoretical” element – the imaginative element – to be useful and good.  If not, it’s merely replication of power. . . something that Slack addresses when describing technical communication as transmission.
• On pp. 26-8 Rutter provides a nice intellectual history that provides the basis for understanding the development of technical writing courses at the university level.
• Rutter advocates a consideration of the same elements that Slack assigns to the process of translation and articulation – a technical communicator (and research in technical communication) must consider the writer, audience, mediators and social realities when composing technical writing.  He calls it “culture” (30)
• A fantastic quote – “What we do need to understand is that majors and careers are by-products of education, not the purposes for which it should be sought” (32).

Miller – A Humanistic Rationale for Technical Writing

• At it’s core, this essay asks “could we argue that technical writing has humanistic value?”
• This essay – like Rutter and Slack especially – argues that technical communication ISN’T an act of transmission.  It ISN’T in service to positivist dreams of complete replication of reality through writing.
• Miller contends that technical communication is often taught from the “windowpane” view that language is a reflection – completely and wholly – of reality. . . no missteps possible.
• Postivitism – the conviction that sensory data are the only permissible basis for knowledge (49).
• Miller addresses four problems in the teaching of positivist technical writing in this article: 1)unsystematic definitions of technical writing; 2) emphasis on style and organization in technical writing at the expense of invention; 3) insistence on certain characteristics of tone in technical writing; and 4) analysis of audience in terms of ‘level’ in technical writing (50).
• Miller is also aware of technical writing as an instrument of a capitalist military-industrial complex (52).

Lay – Feminist Theory and the Redefinition of Technical Communication

• Recognizing the positivist and androcentric tendencies of technical communication research and scholarship, Lay argues for a revaluation in this piece.
• This piece looks at how ethnography and collaborative writing provide new and interesting connections between technical communication research and feminist theory.
• Characteristics of feminist theory:
  • Celebration of difference
  • Theory activating social change
  • Acknowledgement of scholars’ backgrounds and values
  • Inclusion of women’s experiences
  • Study of gaps and silences in traditional scholarship
  • New sources of knowledge – perhaps a benefit of the five characteristics already listed
• Issues in feminist theory:
  • Should feminists emphasize similarities or differences among men and women?
  • Should these differences be located in cultural or biological traits?
  • Should these first two issues promote or displace binary opposition?
• Technical communication is not objective; rather, Lay contends that the distinctions between science and rhetoric disappear when truth is conceived as agreement within a community.
• Because science is inherently masculine (until now anyway), it’s androcentric qualities will be difficult for many tech comm. Folks to recognize.
• Ethnography and feminist theory are described – especially the shared values toward researcher background, acknowledgement of researcher in research process, discovery of meaning and reflection on process.  Also triangulation, thick description, and effect of ethnography on participants.  All good ideas for researchers in tech comm. Researchers in corporate/organizational environments.
• Though a bit binaristic, Lay contends that male collaborators need to adopt female approaches toward conflict to conduct effective collaborative writing.

Nov 18th 09 Posted by justin in CCR691

CCR691 – Network – Ch. 6 – for Comment

Spinuzzi, Clay. Network:  Theorizing Knowledge Work in Communications. New York: Cambridge UP, 2008.

Chapter Six:  Is Our Network Learning?

Summary:

In this chapter S. discusses how the nature of work has changed fundamentally in the age of informational capitalism.  By referring to workers as “deskilled” (Haraway), “dividuals” (Deleuze), “reskilled” (Castells), and “lifelong learners” (Zuboff and Maxmin), S. points out that the worker in the informational age will be in a constant state of negotiating different tasks and demands.  This argument is laid out in more detail at the beginning of Chapter 5.  Anyhow, after illustrating that Telecorp’s primary problem is a modular-production training model (well suited for Fordist economies, but no more), S. argues that they must do more associational – or rhizomatic – training in the future.  Instead of vertical integration models of learning (it all comes from the top down), what needs to happen more is horizontal learning practices – learning predicated on associations across departments.  While S. criticizes the formal training, apprenticeship and self-learning at Telecorp, he recognizes that learning did occur – to some extent.  He categorizes that learning in the same way that he characterizes networks in chapter 2.

1. Heterogeneous – Workers at Telecorp were able to juxtapose different things – humans, individuals, nonhumans, groups, tools, belief, etc. – into assemblages that collectively perform activities.  They even learned in a heterogeneous manner through heterogeneous genres and tools.
2. Multiply linked – Because of all of the hidden passages and Hannibal’s passes at Telecorp, learning happened through multiple links to multiple people and technologies.  This learning subverted the vertical integration model.
3. Black-boxed – There was a problem with black-boxing at Telecorp.  Because the various assemblages wherein work occurred had so many facets and were changing so often, the information to that needed to be transferred between actants became too idiosyncratic and specific.  According to Spinuzzi to more effectively traverse the assemblages at work, more horizontal training in confidence-building and negotiation needed to be attended to.  This sort of training would result in the closure of some of the more problematic black-boxes in the network.
4. Transformative – Transformations are central to any network because they allow for new pressures (Actor-Networks) to be assembled.  While Telecorp did a good job transforming texts, they did not provide for a way to transform their workers (training) so that the workers themselves would be capable of working through the associations and away from siloic modularities.

Method:

• While the method has been pretty clear throughout the book, Spinuzzi again attends to Actor-Network-Theory and, to a lesser degree, Activity Theory in this section.
• Spinuzzi’s work is ethnographic.

Questions:

• I wonder to what degree Spinuzzi’s method is a rhetorical-analytical schema to make sense of an ethnographic study.  Bonnie Nardi, in her new book (forthcoming 2010) on activity theory and World of Warcraft calls her activity-theory informed research as “go-with-the-flow ethnography.”  To what extent is this work ethnography with an ANT/AT inspired data analysis sieve?
• How can we see ourselves using ANT or AT in our own work?  We’ll try to take this question up more at the end of our presentation tomorrow.

Nov 7th 09 Posted by justin in CCR691

CCR691 – Final Project – Rudy

Rudy, Alan. “Actor-Network Theory, Marxist Economics, and Marxist Political Ecology*.” Capitalism Nature Socialism 16 6 (2005): 85-90. Print.

• The relationship between Marxism and ANT is logical because of Marxisms longtime engagement with the historical concern with relations between natures, sciences, technologies, and societies.
• ANT is characterized as a “non-modern relational mode of analysis” that isn’t comfortable with the dualisms of modernity:  science-politics, subject-object, macro-micro, etc.  In Marxist terms, it utilizes a materialist conception of history.
• Power in ANT is a network effect – not something wielded by social individuals over objectified others or natures (87).
• Latour and ANT background many of the “sociopolitical worlds” infusing technoscience.
• ANTs goal – as articulated by Callon – is to permit “an explanation of how a few obtain the right to express and to represent the many silent actors of the social and natural worlds they have mobilized” (90).  In this sense, ANT is an exploration of political representation and the genesis of sovereignty.

Nov 7th 09 Posted by justin in CCR691

CCR691 – Final Project – Linstead

Linstead, Stephen. “Ethnomethodology and Sociology: An Introduction.” The Sociological Review 54 3 (2006): 399-404. Print.

• Ethnomethodology’s goal is to create an “alternative program to reveal social order as dynamic, contingent ‘ongoing accomplishment” (399).
• Ethnomethodology doesn’t consider the micro or the macro, rather, it tries to concern itself with the different contexts of accountability in which both individuals and institutions are given identity and reproduced.
• Ethnomethodology was first articulated by Garfinkel.  Latour references him as an American theorist working toward similar goals as ANT.

1. Garfinkel’s work looked at neither macro or micro sociology (sites); rather, because Garfinkel doesn’t study either institutions or individuals, but contexts of accountability (think the network and relations inside the network, the black box, etc.) because this is where and how social institutions and individual members are reproduced holistically” (400).

Nov 7th 09 Posted by justin in CCR691

CCR691 – Final Project – Hunter

Hunter, Shona. “Oscillating Politics and Shifting Agencies: Equalities and Diversity Work and Actor Network Theory.” Equal Opportunities International 26 5 (2007): 402-19. Print.

• This essay uses ANT to develop an analysis of Iopia, a Black woman equalities educator working in a prison in the UK in an education context.  The article hopes to demonstrate how the actor-network interacts with both human and non human objects to “challenge racism” in this particular context (402).
• The study found that Iopia moved from an initial position of being marginalized to one central to the “new” network for quality and diversity.  This network challenges and sustains narrow exclusionary definitions of diversity.
• The authors consider this a “feminist ANT analysis” and see their work interacting with more fully developed and integrated versions of critical race and critical culture theories to analyze equalities work.
• The article places an emphasis on the act of translation to see how folks can use “material objects to draw in multiple ‘others’ into their own networks.
• A fundamental tension for this article is the one that develops between the “real” work of equality and the work that many folks do – sometimes begrudgingly – toward diversity.
• ANT is used in this article to “illuminate the formalized and less formalized processes through which equality and diversity gets taken up and not taken up in organizations” (404).
• ANT is taken up by some feminist science studies.  A list includes:  Singleton 1996, 1998; Star 1991; Haraway 1991, 1997).  Perhaps you should look to these to see how feminism and ANT work together.
• This article points out some fundamental problems/debates in ANT : 1) the colonizing policy of ANT in relation to the “other,” 2) the politics of ANT, 3) the importance of ambivalence (amorality), and as a result, extensive embellishments on the original work.  (405)
• Much like Latour, the authors of the piece rely on Callon (1986) to demonstrate that the objects of the world are constituted by their relations with objects, not vice versa.  Callon’s work also demonstrates that there is no analytic distinction between human and non human actors.  Notions such as “institutions, state, class, ‘race’ or gender’ are constituted as ‘coherent, consistent, uniform across time and space’ through networks of people, ideas and objects” (406).
• Great lay definitions of the processes of gaining allies:
  • Interessement:  This is what you really want to be
  • Translation:  We are the ones who can help you become that.
  • Enrollment:  Grant your obedience by your own consent.
  • Displacement:  Ignore or pay less attention to other scenarios, make this network more durable
• Feminists such as Susa Leigh Star “suggests that one powerful way in which feminist analysis and ANT can be joined is in linking the outsider or marginalized actors characteristic of feminist work with the translation model of ANT to explore ‘the point of view that which cannot be translated:  the monstrous, the Other, the wild’” (408).  In this way, ANT can help analysts understand what “marginal actors achieve through day-to-day work and the novel ways in which organizational future may get play out as a result” (ibid).
• This article really uses ANT to demonstrate how to “coerce” or “persuade” actors through translation toward enrollment.
• This ANT work underscores the multiplicity of identities involved in ANT work by highlighting how the networks we engage in are multilayered and intersectional.  While being an enroller of different actors, one is also always enrolled in other networks.  These multiplicities point to how a single conception of the object is always woefully inadequate.  The study also highlights how non-human actors (policies in this case) have the ability to enroll actors and make things happen (they have agency).