Newsgroups: bit.listserv.qualrs-l
Date:         Wed, 22 Jul 1992 23:45:00 CDT
              <QUALRS-L@UGA.BITNET>
From:         "tk0jut1@mvs.cso.niu.edu jim thomas" <TK0JUT1@NIU.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: Orneryness amplified

GOODALH@CLEMSON.BITNET writes:

    >If someone asks me whether it is interpretive or critical, well,
    >I guess that says more to me about their preoccupations than it
    >does about my occupation (as Kenneth Burke might put it).  And in
    >most cases those sorts of questions never really get to the
    >narratives--or the experiences--themselves.

I'm not sure Burke would put it that way at all. Burke's (pre-)
occupation, one of examining the relationship between language and the
world it constructs and by which it is constructed, is quite at odds
with the views expressed above.  "Interpretive" and "critical" are not
mutually exclusive.  It doesn't seem unreasonable to query
researchers about the epistemological and ontological foundations and
assumptions of their paradigm. After all, these are issues that we
should be considering while we do our research.  If one can't answer
it, or hasn't given much thought to it, that may tell us something
about how seriously they take their occupation. I don't believe Tom
was saying that it's improper to construct categories, or that we
should avoid reflecting on the underpinnings of our research and where
are assumptions are located within various intellectual traditions. I
interpreted him as warning against the "dictatorship of taxonomies"
and the danger of reifying their meaning without understanding the
meaning of their meanings.  Narratives, whether of research subjects
or the discourse of the researcher-as-narrator, do not exist in a
vacuum. Decoding the stories of others requires an interpretive
framework to decipher what is said and how we will relate what we hear
said. If we believe that the "work" of story-telling stops with
telling the story, we risk becoming writers of fiction rather than
empirical scientists. Good stories are built around, and are guided
by, theory. Without attending to such issues, we never really get
to narratives--or the experiences--themselves.

    >On the other hand, if we begin by asking students to choose up
    >sides on methods and camps, and then provide them with an
    >education that is devoted largely to arguing "whose big daddy
    >(theorist) is bigger than somebody else's big daddy (or mommy),"
    >we end up with a lot of hair-splitting on methods and camps, but
    >not much in the way of ground-breaking research or what Jim
    >Anderson calls, beautifully, naive expertise.

I agree that pedagogy that proceeds from the conflict metaphor adduced
above is unfruitful.  But the deeper message above seems to be that
it's inappropriate to address, either in classes or in our writings,
the relationship between knowledge, theory, and ideology.  I find this
message disturbing:  The cite seems to suggest that we ignore theory
and encourage our students to do likewise. Wouldn't it be more
appropriate to provide students with an array of theoretical tools
to enable them to more fully develop their ideas? Is it *really* wrong
to "provide them with an education" based on a body of theory that
best allows them to develop their analysis as they choose?
This needn't (and ought not) be posed as a combat between
preferred teams, but rather the honing of skills that enables
the best tools to be selected for the task at hand.

Categories, if used with caution, help illustrate the diverse
assumptions and implications of research. Techniques of data
collection and analysis seem impoverished without a strong theoretical
guiding thread.  There is a clear difference between identifying these
threads and crafting them into a cohesive and scientifically sound
tapestry on one hand, and forming a single thread into a noose that
strangles the data on the other. It seems that our efforts should be
directed at the former rather than avoided because some see the only
alternative as the latter.

As critical researchers (and others) have long-argued, research is not
passive, but active. The activity always proceeds from assumptions
about what's worth knowing, how we come to know it, and what the
implications are for that which we believe we know.  Obscurantism is
no virtue.

Jim Thomas
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU