Tuesday, May 31, 2011

I'm Never Going to Present

And once again, I got rejected from a communication conference.

I have submitted now to three conferences and have been rejected three times.  The first two I'm not surprised at.  They were pieces of shit that I tried to throw in at the last minute.

This one I am crazy surprised about and I'm crushed.  I finally did an actual study, a good one too!  And I still didn't get in to NCA.

What is it about me that people hate?  My Master thesis defense couldn't have gone worse... I mean, how many people actually fail their defense?  I get torn apart when I present in my theory construction course last spring.  And I'm still not good enough to present at a conference.  I'm feeling a bit screwed at this point in time.  I was really banking on finally being able to present for the first time my third year of my PhD [and honestly, that is SUPER late in my career to have my first presentation].  I just think its never going to happen.  I am never going to be good enough for this flippin' field.

I am so devastated right now.  So devastated.

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Thank you, Stephen King

"Harry Potter is all about confronting fears, finding inner strength, and doing what is right in the face of adversity.  Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend."
-SK

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Some Professors still believe in Pedagogy

I just received an e-mail from Dr. Nespor concerning my disjointed first draft of my data analysis.  It is so refreshing and also disconcerting that he actually reads drafts and gives feedback [solid, useable, concreate] about where the writing is at, where it could possibly go, and any other thoughts he has. [disconcerting because he is about the only person I've had at OSU GIVE ANY real feedback, direction, etc. in terms of writing a paper.  All I get is criticism without any guidance or direction for improvement and bad grades from my school of COMM profs].

This first draft was basically my attempt at setting the context and background for the situation of dementia in a man as told to me retrospectively by three of his daughters.  I would use language to set up the situation and then pull quotes surrounding that situation from the interviews I conducted.  I then included a section that was a literature review of the theories I thought I would be using to further make sense of the data.  Here is the e-mail I received from Dr. Nespor.  I want to academically marry this man.

Hi Katey,
Well, yours was certainly more fun to read than some of these have been!

I have a suggestion on organization and form, and also a suggestion on theory (more or less)

1)  I realize this is just a 'not all together' draft, but perhaps you might take your theme -- sense-making among intimates in situations of uncertainty (or something like that) -- and reproduce it rhetorically for the reader -- that is -- instead of telling the family's history, lay out in short anecdotes the problematic 'clues' that the daughters had (but didn't put together until after the fact):  Pose the problem for the reader -- how do you make sense of this information?  What conclusions does one draw?  Create a puzzle for them and then solve it.

2)  Theoretically -- and here I think I'll be less helpful -- a few thoughts.

--   a)  We need theories to make sense of observation (or to know what to look for). I was reading a book I got from the $1 clearance shelf at Half-Price Books last night -- a collection of essays by the paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, and it has a nice quote from Charles Darwin:


About thirty years ago there was much talk that geologists ought only to
observe and not theorize; and I well remember someone saying that at
this rate a man might as well go into a gravel-pit and count the pebbles
and describe the colours. How odd it is that anyone should not see that
all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any
service!
In other words, you only 'see' in terms of a theory.  So perhaps the question is to delineate the 'theories of their father' that the daughters were using to make sense (prior to realizing what was going on). -- This may be a dumb suggestion and no problem if you delete it!


--   b) Think in terms of turning points -- what were the turning points/transition points/gestalt shifts where the uncertainty suddenly collapsed into realization (or was it gradual)


--   c)  I've attached a piece that may be irrelevant, making a distinction between biography and case (not the sense of 'case' I use in class to talk about case analysis).  Perhaps what's happening is that the daughters shift from understanding their father biographically to understanding him as a 'case' of something.  I'm not sure where that would go.


It's an interesting study you've got.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Dead Like Me

"You can't.  You can't save any of them.  All you can ever hope to do is make it easier. And that may not seem like a lot, but it is."
-Rube

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Be Still My Academic Heart

My infatuation with Nespor's, self-proclaimed crap, writings to elaborate on his ideas and world views once again has me enchanted.  His ability to weave his thoughts with the thoughts of other scholars in such a down to earth, eloquent, and cynical manner has me screaming "YES! YES!  YES!" [in a 'I couldn't agree more' kind of way -- get your heads out of the gutter people]

So - here is his take on academic writing and the use of theory.

The orientational use of theory, on the other hand, means using a certain vocabulary or citing certain authors we make a public claim to belong to a particular academic club: It’s a way of saying "these people are our friends, those who speak differently, our enemies." The problem here is that sometimes it’s a very cliquish club, or even a cult, and theory functions like a kind of secret password. In fact, this is one reason that orientational uses of theory are common in graduate studies – precisely because graduate education is partly an initiation into disciplinary thinking. As Lutz (1995) argues , the "difficulty" of theory, the high jargon and complicated syntax, not only distance the writer from the text, but also push readers away, creating a kind of exclusionary discourse reserved only for those willing to devote the time and psychic energy required to imagine meanings for the text (or those who are lucky enough to be able to study with the authors themselves). As Gouldner (1970: 202) explained, “obscurity makes a work relatively costly,” which keeps most people away and turns it into a “cult object,” membership-symbolizing language (the obscurity allowing it to operate both to strengthen within group ties and to serve as a boundary object, Star & Gereisemer, 1999, that can spread across fields). This creates a status differentiation within the field – theorists become flying saucer pilots (to borrow Bruno Latour’s (1987) metaphor) who occasionally (in their writings at least) swoop down to abduct a bit of empirical reality for analysis.

 
And here is a little bit of insight on the effects of scholars wearing blinders [which sounds QUITE A BIT like the department I am in - since we can't write a research proposal WITHOUT having some sort of theoretical frame to guide it... boo to that.  BOO I SAY!]

The potential pathologies here are 1) that it makes you as mere earthling students feel like you can’t theorize; it also turns theory into an academic language game, and pretty soon we’re no better than the people who think the world’s made up of “variables” and instrument-generated constructs like “self-efficacy.” Theory then functions like Vaughan’s blinders, allowing people to see only those things which can be described in terms of the theory. More fundamentally, it misconstrues the whole purpose of theorizing, which is to explain things/events/crap actually happening. This is what the best theorists do:

As Foucault explained, his purpose is "not to formulate the global systematic theory which holds everything in place, but to analyse the specificity of mechanisms of power... to built little by little a strategic knowledge" (Foucault, 1980, p. 145) and, as Bourdieu often argued, he wanted his readers to read his works as "exercise books" rather than theories and was keen to "remind us that 'theory' should not be valued for its own sake" (Karalayali, 2004, p. 352). He felt strongly that we need to be reflexively aware of the implications and effects of theory in relation to the social world we conjure up in our work. (Ball, 2006, p. 4).
 
Great social theorists are "data-heads" as Abbott says somewhere (and you could say the same of methodologists) – if you can’t find places where people are actually engaging with empirical problems – describing specific cases, explaining things – be skeptical of their theoretical and methodological writings.

I would like to point out that I laughed my ass off when I read the line - "and pretty soon we’re no better than the people who think the world’s made up of “variables” and instrument-generated constructs like “self-efficacy.” OSU School of Comm anyone?

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Analytic Induction

This mutability of the case/pattern/description is not a problem but rather something you strive for. One approach to this is sometimes called “analytic induction.” In Jack Katz’s (2001) definition

Initial cases are inspected to locate common factors and provisional explanations. As new cases are examined and initial hypotheses are contradicted, the explanation is reworked in one or both of two ways. The definition of the [thing you’re trying to explain] may be redefined so that troublesome cases either become consistent with [your hypothesis or explanation] or are placed outside the scope of the inquiry; or the [thing you’re trying to explain] may be revised so that all cases of the target phenomenon display the explanatory conditions. There is no methodological value in piling up confirming cases; the strategy is exclusively qualitative, seeking encounters with new varieties of data in order to force revisions that will make the analysis valid when applied to an increasingly diverse range of cases. The investigation continues until the researcher can no longer practically pursue negative cases.

At its most productive, analytic induction needs to be on-going as you’re doing fieldwork or interviews – it guides what you’re asking and looking at. Thus Lindesmith (1952) argues that:

The principle which governs the selection of cases to test a theory is that the chances of discovering a decisive negative case should be maximized . . . This involves going out of one’s way to look for negating cases. (p. 492)

[This is the core idea that Glaser and Strauss (1967) later formalized into “theoretical sampling”] A negating case – or an anomalous case – requires you to revise: you keep doing this until you can’t find any more negative, inconsistent, discrepant, anomalous evidence, until then you constantly revise your explanation to encompass all your evidence. If you have “disconfirming” evidence left over you haven’t finished your analysis or done it well, or you have more work to do in the field.

Writing the Case Study [because this is so salient to me currently]

A good explanation, then, which for a qualitative researcher usually means a good case analysis, ties events, situations, and people together without making them lose their distinctiveness, their narrative richness, or reducing them to theoretical constructs, vague catchphrases, or statistical generalizations. As Stinchcombe (1978) argues, without the description we can never work out the deep consequential analogies that connect cases:

Far from it being the case that the most powerful general theorists ignore the details, the precise opposite is true. Social theory without attention to details is wind; the classes [categories] it invents are vacuous, and nothing interesting follows from the fact that A and B belong to the class. . . .

If conceptual profundity depends on the deep building of analogies from one case to
another, we are likely to find good theory in exactly the opposite place from where we have been taught to expect it. For it is likely to be those scholars who attempt to give a causal interpretation of a particular case who will be led to penetrate the deeper analogies between cases. (pp. 21-22)


[Nespor, 2011, Case-oriented analysis writings, pg 2-3]
*Italics added by me for emphasis

Making light of Case Studies - more ramblings from Nespor

Because apparently I have a HUGE academic crush on my qual methods professor and could listen to or read him for hours.  A snippet from one of his weekly elaborations on what we're talking about - this week, the case study:

In the actor-network take on pattern explanation, Latour (2005) contrasts this relational view of
explanation-as-description (which Latour just calls “description”) to the more familiar use of the term to refer to accounts meant to supercede and replace descriptions with statements consisting of abstract nouns, variables, psychological construct, or conceptual categories (a kind of explanation which Latour just calls ‘explanation’):

The opposition between description and explanation is another of these false dichotomies that
should be put to rest. Either the networks that make possible a state of affairs are fully [described] . .. and then adding an explanation is superfluous – or we ‘add an explanation’ stating that some other actor or factor should be taken into account, so that it is the description that should be extended one step further. If a description remains in need of an explanation, it means that is a bad description. (p. 137)

Latour is not rejecting the idea that we need general terms and phrases to describe theoretical
mechanisms – he certainly introduces many of them in his own writing. We need them in part because everyday vocabularies are often inadequate for characterizing connections and relations – indeed sometimes hide relations. As the anthropologist George Marcus (1998) argues, many key “relationships, connections, and indeed cultures of connection, association, and circulation . . . are completely missed through the use and naming of the object of study in terms of categories ‘natural’ to subjects’ preexisting discourses about them”
(Marcus, 1998, p. 17).

Sunday, May 1, 2011

More of Nespor's Used Cabbage

I'm currently trying to get over the debilitating hurdle of writing up a rough draft of analysis of my interview data from last term.  This qual methods course is really challenging me to think outside of the box of normal analytic convention.  So - needless to say - I'm struggling. Immensely.  I have no idea where to begin.  So, here I am, sharing with you all, the intellectual ponderings and offerings of my favorite teacher so far, Jan Kent Nespor.

Analysis as a Dialogue


There's a nice interlude in EP Thompson's funny and instructive critique of Althusser in which Thompson basically lays out a synopsis of the logic of historical inquiry.  His metaphor of analysis as dialogue or argument is useful, I think.  For Thompson, inquiry is a 
A dialogue between concept and evidence, a
dialogue conducted by successive hypotheses,
on the one hand, and empirical research on the
other. . . . It is this logic which constitutes the
discipline’s ultimate court of appeal: not, please
note, ‘the evidence,’ by itself, but the evidence
interrogated thus. (52-3)
an argument between received, inadequate, or
ideologically-informed concepts or hypotheses on the
one hand, and fresh or inconvenient evidence on the
other; with the elaboration of new hypotheses; with the
testing of these hypotheses against the evidence, which
may involve interrogating existing evidence in new
ways, or renewed research to confirm or disprove the
new notions, with discarding those hypotheses which
fail new tests, or refining or revising those which do, in
the light of this engagement.
    What we are saying is that the notion (concept,
hypothesis as to causation) has been brought into a
disciplined dialogue with the evidence, and it has been
shown to ‘work’; that is, it has not been disproved by
contrary evidence, and that it successfully organises or
‘explains’ hitherto inexplicable evidence; hence it is an
adequate (although approximate) representation of the
causative sequence, or rationality, or these events, and it
conforms (within the logic of the historical discipline)
with a process which did in fact eventuate in the past.
(Thompson, 1978, pp. 58-9)

Nespor's Used Cabbage 967

I'm stealing this from my qual professor - because I absolutely adore him and his biting and crass ways of teaching qualitative methods.  But this isn't so biting or crass.  Just a wonderful lens.  A different lens.  A lens we never are exposed to in The School of Communication at OSU.

Analysis considered as a Canoe Trip in the Open Sea without a Compass

Gladwin (1964), as summarized by Berreman (1966) (in an
interesting essay in which he's using the contrast to characterize
different forms of research -- I'm borrowing not just the quote but
 the analogy), describes the practices of Micronesian navigators
who can sail out of sight of land without a compass:

[Gladwin] points out that the European navigator begins with
a plan – a course – which he has charted according to certain
universal principles, and he carries out his voyage by relating
his every move to that plan. His effort throughout his voyage
is directed to remaining “on course.” If unexpected events
occur, he must first alter the plan, then respond accordingly.
The Trukese navigator begins with an objective rather than a
plan. He sets off toward the objective and responds to
conditions as they arise in an ad hoc fashion. He utilizes
information provided by the wind, the waves, the tide and
current, the fauna, the stars, the clouds, the sound of the
water on the side of the boat, and he steers accordingly. His
effort is directed to doing whatever is necessary to reach the
objective. If asked, he can point to his objective at any
moment, but he cannot describe his course.
(Berreman, 1966, p. 347; Gladwin’s account is now known
to be wrong in some ways, but not in ways that reduce the
value of the analogy; see Lewis’s We, the Navigators)

Berreman gave yet another example of the European navigator's

(1) ... Once the European navigator has developed his
operating plan and has available the appropriate technical
resources, the implementation and monitoring of his
navigation can be accomplished with a minimum of thought.
He has simply to perform almost mechanically the steps
dictated by his training and by his initial planning synthesis
(Gladwin 1964:175).

The analogy, if not clear, is this:  the researcher using an experimental or
population-analytic type of research design works from an operating plan, like the
European navigator.  The qualitative researcher, by contrast, operates more like the Chuuk navigator