Critical Social Constructionist Research

Critical Social Constructionist Research

Research for me is the art of janus aesthetic which creates thing to construct both identities as researcher. While reading Jorgensena and Phillips (2002), I visited my personal notes, memos and the concepts that I have been interested in. I have huge list to categorize my conceptualization of research and knowledge production. Each concept needs to be conceptually and pragmatically unfolded. I made one collage to debate in this post. What I have from chapter are democracy, truth, ideology, Taken-for-granted, reality, critical. These are like boiling eggs in my minds, walking foxes which seems never touch each other in my mind.

Fortunately, I spent some time to think about power. While acting in any sense, I try to track my weakness and strength. I carry my best comrades on my shoulder which reminds me that I am human being and I am very open to make something both worse and better. Society (it is necessary, but not sufficient to live in better) is the place where there is a big potentiality to change me, as well as to give me a chance to change it. As Heidegger claimed that, there are many things which seem “always-already”, this external existence could be “black hole” to take “me” away, or “artifact” that make me awake.

CSCR could be defined as the manifesto for reaching the art of aesthetic in the methodology and epistemology. As I claimed, Hegel was right about the expectation for the re-incarnation of philosophy. To think about both selves and details in our everyday practices, the aesthetic of research is the proangelos (harbinger). The crisis of human sciences forced us to get many “turns” which are known as linguistic, qualitative, critical etc. I think that these were the proangelos of philosophical aesthetic in the scientific artifact. It is still looking for its own base (plinth) to evoke us. The Ghazal of Rumi given below could give us to some insights about this re-incarnation.

Ghazal 2133

 

wake up, wake up

this night is gone
wake up
 
abandon abandon
even your dear self
abandon
 
there is an idiot
in our market place
selling a precious soul
 
if you doubt my word
get up this moment
and head for the market now
 
do not listen to trickery
do not listen to the witches
do not wash blood with blood

first turn yourself upside down
empty yourself like a cup of wine
then fill to the brim with the essence 

a voice is descending

from the heavens
a healer is coming
 

if you desire healing

let yourself fall ill
let yourself fall ill

 

Translated by Nader Khalili

Rumi, Fountain of Fire
Cal-Earth, September 1994

Democracy in research means that meaning/ truth could be intersubjectively conceptualized. In order to have this process, researcher could have an idea about how to make inquiry. The inquiry should be conducted with members of society, not about the participant. There should not be hierarchical relations to walk together. For example, the perception of the dichotomy on the subject and object (Cartesian) needs to be changed since we need to be aware of subjects relations to construct both ourselves and society. In this sense, the nature of truth should be open to be discussed (p.206). We have to be aware of the necessity of strong reflexivity since the knowledge production enables us to be productive. In order to produce the knowledge, we have to carry our criticality to see the taken-for-granted.

I call the aesthetic since it needs to be contemplative about social interaction. As researcher, we have to be aware of our existence and then the society where we live. This means that ideology is the patterns and intersections of persona and society, ideology is the structured believes, ideology works in our implicit and explicit everyday interactions. I never define ideology with pejorative sense. Ideology could be suppressed by having the aesthetic reflection about the social and personal artifact which is called “knowledge”.

Discourse is reloaded....

            Four years ago, I saw my mother crying at our kitchen. She was standing in front of our washbasin. The water was running and she was telling her sadness to water. She did not realize that I had been watching her for a while. When she saw me, she tried to hide her sadness. Even though she did not want to tell her thoughts and feelings to me, I just heart what she was telling to water. Two, or more days later, I asked her about her reason on telling to water. She told me that when you felt sad and desperate, tell your problems to water, it would take them away from you. It is a folk belief in Anatolia which people could tell the story which seems more burden to water to get rid of it.

            This cultural articulation could be transferred to discourse (water) and agent (individual). We as an agent need to express our intuitions to discourse (ordinary language / communication) to feel better and exist. It is one of the necessary part of living like breathing and feeding. This interaction leads to frame Mind, Selves and Identities between discourse and agent. Unity of two-parts is very important issue to understand the mind and claims which are produced by agent.

            Discourse is more and more meta-ground for me to make meaning visible. We could develop and use many tools and “mediating” holes to define them in an organized way since they need to be captured and decoded within interaction. Most of the collective inventions / articulations like language, culture and so on could enable us see our reflective existence in a context dependent sense, but they are also open to change and reframe. I underlined this dualistic and circular existences of human kind to explain our debates on discourse and discursive psychology.

            The most important thing that I really want to underline is that the material and psychical condition could change our potentialities about understanding both system and lifeworld, mind, selves and identities in terms of power, freedom, responsibility and right. These four are my axis  in social science. When the machine of printing press was invented, the discourse / rhetoric was the written. The dependent relations between listener and hearer led to frame the new form of relations which are based on the reader and writer. Modernity was not only about having the articulation of new methods, it was also about polarization of positions in terms of discourse as a ground. When we looked at the other invention like recorders, television, phones and computers, we have more roles who have been called with different labels, audiences, viewers, user and customers. We know that all of them are based on the basic relations of human being which are teller and listener, mediating is the meaning and scope of meaning within language.

            Certainly, I liked our both reading texts which are Woofit (2005) and Jorgen & Philips (2002) as an introductory resource to discourse, critical discourse and discursive psychology. The tracking about similarities and differences between them is very helpful, to read about the differences seems to me that it is very empirical report. I know that I need more studies and theory about “the behind stage”. I feel that I watch a new academic serial as genre, I would like to hear more about the material and psychical conditions that makes conversation analysis possible, discourse analysis “post” etc.

Framing Mind, Selves and Identities as sociocultural holes

            If I frame the possibility of mediating and organic nurture of social actions, I could make more sense about the formation of mind, selves and identities. I know that freedom, power, responsibility and right are universal norms for me, they need to be self-determinant like subject, system etc. They could interpellate us to frame our mind to make the world better place, or we could lead them to make it in “this game”. We are both homo-sapiens (biological) and homo-ludens (dialogical) and we seek to find holes to cross our own horizon.

What makes possible to go further about understanding the discourse? I feel that Hegel was right as well as Marx.

Critical Discourse Analysis

When I think of discourse as both theory and method, I do not have any separation in my mind in terms of ontological and epidemiological differences about discourse. Whenever I use discourse, I remember one kind of the Archimedean Point. Discourse related not only to what is said, but essentially where, how it is said as an act. It is reproduced by agent and system together. It is a kind of joint ground, line to frame the meaning.

There are multi-levels of definitions that we have to be clear about it. I can classify them to make sense of it, I make a kind of categories. We need to define the difference between hegemony and ideology. Wodak, Fairclough and van Dijk seem slightly different rationalization to use and define them. Functionality and causality should be redefined to understand the meaning. In addition to them, we have to define language and power to produce and reproduce the discourse to legitimize the inequalities in social and economic relations. The second one is that consensus and social reproduction of meaning is needed to explain in a discursive sense. In other words, discourse could be explained as a regime to decontextualized power relations as social truth. I am still having many uncertainty about my reception of discourse. But, I am certain that discourse is essence as presence of discourse itself. Either it is wider battle field (Wodak), or “war of maneuver” and “war of position” (Fairclough) make inequality visible. Either it could be progress to create reason (van Dijk), or it could be regime to reproduce the genealogy and archaeology of meaning.

Fourth-Week Post on Discourse

I waited my post after class discussion since I was really curious about the centrality of debates on Post-Marxist. I certainly claim that discourse could be my epistemology and methodological "homes" from the point of Laclau and Mouffe. I have some criticism the way how we can articulate their grounds. First of all, the failure of "left" and "Marxism" in Europe is one of the oldest discussions that Gramsci has many insights and questions about it. The main question was about why the revolution had not been made by Europeans like Italy, Spain, Germany, France etc. This is vital question to understand the claims that Western Marxist had. To explain this problematic, all components of superstructure were defined as "relatively autonomous" structures. This means that they are the battle area to change the superstructure bit by bit, little by little. This way of thinking resulted from the idea that "meaning" is not only ideologically bounded, but also consensually articulated. At this point, they used the term Hegemony to explain the idea of consensus. The variety of social interests, belonging to the different types of oppressed and repressed people, has a potentiality of having a temporary meaning. In this sense, all socially constructed relations are incomplete and they are open to be changed. The main thins is that there could be many strategies and tactics to persuade the others to have consensus about "meaning". I might claim that this way of thinking could be useful for liberal system and open society. When I think about non-western countries where religious sources are still primary reference to frame the social relations. It is really hard to claim that there could be discursive change to have better society and social relation. Secondly, I really have many positive insight about the pragmatic insight in their theory. At this point, I can claim that what makes Marxism valuable approach for is the hope. What I mean that Marxism has a belief on Human Being and their potentiality to create the better world. The main critical point for me is that liberal democracy in the field of capitalist discoursivity is not capable of equally and equitably constructing the meaning. It has many assumptions about the human rights, not about human as a kind. The last one is that Greece is going to be "experimental" case to reshape the discourse about politics and social relations. We will see the responses from others EU states and then we will witness the "relativity". Thus, for methodology and tactics in an academia, discourse is the only battle area to have real dreams about the world.

Third-Week Post on Discourse

            Our two readings are very helpful to make sense of the way how discourse analysis could be done in an organized way. In this post, I mostly focus on making some claims about the past-present and future of discourse to frame the dimensions of discourse. My specific question was: how would the dimensions of discourse be themtized as an independent discipline?

            Potter (2004) in his article, Discourse Analysis, seemed that there were three levels in the work of discourse analysis. They could be listed as (1) the way of reporting, which includes recoding, transcription, listening & reading and coding, (2) the way of analysis, that consists of variation, detail, rhetoric, accountability and stake & interest; (3) the way of validation which covers participants’ observation, deviant cases, coherence and readers’ evaluations. I have some concerns about this kind listing in any methodology and theory.

            I think that we need more critical explanations for solving the various discrepancies. All of the three steps could be defined as the way of reporting the structure or construction of “something”. Actually, we need to be aware of the context that make these ways possible. In other words, what we have to understand the necessary conditions of discourse should lead to understand the sufficient condition to be critical. For example, the feasibility and accessibility of reporting have been changing a lot. At the beginning, there were only paper and pen, now we have more complex machines to record and make something textual and recorded. While we are aware of these developments, we have to be aware of our theoretical and ethnomethodological assumptions. In the article, these changes were given as different spaces, for me, there is no differences between “coding” and “analyzing”.

            Most of the research guides make a sequential list to complete the research as an objectified and project. I think that research is itself as artifact, extracted claims and “facts” are claimed. I think that the means and modes of knowledge must be related with both ethos and eros. Thus, what is the difference between writing diary / letters and field notes? When the private reporting becomes the data?

2 comments

• Zulfukar:
  We are certainly aware of our praxis with potentiality to try to objectify and be objectified in and through the social actions taking their shapes in the representation (concept). Researcher has to be more critical and transparent about her motivations and intentions. This means that having clear idea on context and her standpoint is the most important things and these should be written in the papers.
  
  Analogically, the transparency about the production, praxis and motivation makes researchers' artifacts more reliable and valid.
  Zulfukar 7 days ago Reply Delete
• Jessica Lester
  Love the idea that research itself is a production, an artifact, a trafficking in of a representation (produced by a particular researcher). How might, then, a researcher write up a DA study in a way that explicitly acknowledges this?
  Jessica Lester 7 days ago Reply Delete

Second-Week Post on Discourse Analysis

To write about the methodology for me is the most challenging attempt in social sciences. I have been reading various resources on discourse analysis (DA) and conversation analysis (CA) that can be classified in terms of their orientations and articulations. In this post, I am going to discuss some of them including our readings in order to articulate the trajectory of discourse and conversation analysis. When we look at the definition of discourse, it is really hard to find one and clear definition of discourse. In order to define it, there are many concepts that are necessary to be defined and elaborated. For example, Philips and Hardy (2002, pp. 3-11) defined it by giving reference many concepts like reality, meaning, social reality, data, qualitative etc. “They defined a discourse as an interrelated set of texts, and the practices of their production, dissemination, and reception, that brings object into being (p.3)”. It is a clear that the concept of discourse could not be defined without giving a reference to philosophical, methodological and theoretical concepts.

System / Structure Related Concepts	Agent / Subject / Act Related Concepts	In Between
Ideology	Act	Power
Hegemony	Certainty	Truth
Language	Position	Meaning
Structure	Art	Reality
Order	Aesthetic	Dialogical
Langue	Parole	Forming
Encoding /Coding	Encoding / Coding	Dialectic
Construction /Deconstruction	Perception / Reception	Change
Formation	Interpretation	Struggle
Objective	Subjective	Intersubjective
Ontological	Epistemological	Methodological
Grammar	Texts	Intertextuality
Social Rules	Talks	Normativity

As you see in this table, there are many concepts related with the practices and interpretations of discourse and conversation. These are not enough to define and debate the discourse as a methodological ground / home, but they might help us to get “a coherent framework” to be aware of our philosophical, theoretical and methodological differences and similarities among the approaches (Jorgensen and Philliphs, 2002 p.4).

            To make my way of thinking is more visible and graspable, I would like to ask some practical and technical questions like

1.     “how language is used in a certain context”

2.     “how language is acted in a certain context”

3.     “how language is presented in certain acts”

4.     “how speech acts are thematized in both langue and parole in certain contexts”

5.     “how truth could be accessed in a certain context”

6.     “how non-discursive could be defined with / without being discursive” 

Reference:

Jørgensen, M., & Phillips, L. (2002). Discourse analysis as theory and method. London: Sage Publications.

Phillips, N., & Hardy, C. (2002). Discourse analysis : investigating processes of social construction. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.