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”.