I found the Warren and Gratch article to be very interesting. And I am not saying that just to earn points. The concept of Critical cine-ethnography seems to be an interesting way to deal with many of the problems that are encountered with research. of course, it is not perfect, but taking the time to make sure that the researcher is considered part of the environment rather than an intruder seems very effective. At least to someone like me that is skeptical of traditional research methods that seem to be so unrealistic at times. Also, I love the idea of examining bias and being honest turning a critical lens on subjectivity by taking a reflective attitude. Personally, I think we need more of that in research.

In The New Constellation reading this week, Bernstein is examining Foucault and his views on critique as a philosophical ethos. I think I understand this to mean how we investigate history and the way we became who we are. Bernstein also looks at Enlightenment blackmail, and he seems to not be very happy about the whole idea, even though I am not quite sure exactly what that entails. Of course, Bernstein points out how many of Foucault’s critics end up frustrated and confused when they examine these areas, so I am guessing that I am not the only one a bit confused by this whole topic.

In The Restructuring of Social and Political Theory reading for this week, Bernstein is covering a lot of ground and is obviously even taking the title of the book from this section. But in all honesty, I had a hard time following most of it. After a while, there are so many names and concepts that I only have a vague familiarity with. Bernstein writes with an assumption of deep understanding of anything he touches on, something that I think you probably need multiple degrees in before you understand. I am hoping that the meeting time Monday can shed some light on this for me. Or maybe I am just tired from a busy weekend 🙂

So I think I went into this week’s readings thinking that since we looked at quantitative papers last week, that we would see more qualitative this week. But the numbers still slipped in there in several! Not that I have a problem with numbers – they have their place. I just feel like I get more insight into the subjects of a research study when I know more of the why behind their responses. Some interesting studies, although a few were over topics that I have no background in so I was a bit lost on some of it.

In all honesty, I don’t think I have really learned that much about my professors over the past few weeks just by looking at one paper each. I am currently taking classes from Norris and Warren, but I feel that I know much more about them by having been in their classes. The papers I read from them really didn’t seem to add or take away from that knowledge, so I am assuming that the one paper I have read from others will not tell me much about them either. I think I have discovered something about one research topic per professor, but I know they all have more than that. So I will probably need to read much more from each one to really get a picture of who they are.

The Wang article on Foucault seems to be different than the others. I can’t seem to find Wang on the list of faculty in the LT department. So I am guessing with our past interactions with Foucault that this article was one to read and learn from. But it is also one of those articles that basically says “this is what I am saying. But not really. Or maybe so.” Wang is basically examining where others get Foucault wrong. That much I understand. The part I am unsure of is whether Wang presents an actual answer, or if he is just thinking through something that he is unsure of. At the very end, he seems to be suggesting that we not overturn power, but seek to transform power relations into powerful subjects. I am guessing this is the essence of the productive power that he speaks, but overall the point is still unclear to me.

This week we are looking at a sampling of our professor’s publications. Since this is going online, I don’t know if I want to put anything public about what I think about them :). Actually, I did enjoy reading all of them, even though they did not all fall in my main areas of interest. I noticed that some were very quantitative, one was qualitative, and the other was more of a meta-analysis.

I’m not against numbers and statistics, but when all of the information in a study gets broken down into pure numbers, I often feel like I am missing something. It is just hard to know what factors are behind those numbers. I think that is why I lean more towards a qualitative paradigm. I don’t mind breaking down research responses into categories and codes to see where the numbers fall, but I still want to know what is behind those numbers.

Another thing I want to do with my future research is to hire a good editor! I am not a good editor, but I can see in all of them typos that I would want to catch before publication. I know that is impossible – I worked for a publishing company that had 4 English majors reading everything before it went out and all of them still missed stuff. So I guess I shouldn’t worry too much about it – maybe in the future it will all be digital and we can just send out edits to update all documents in a flash.

In this week’s reading. Bernstein is looking at the contrasting angles of modernity and postmodernity that some seem to pull out of the works of Habermas and Derrida. Bernstein’s point is that these angles should be read as an allegory of the modern / postmodern condition, one that can not and should not be reconciled. They are eternally locked in a struggle of otherness with each other. They have irreconcilable differences that form a “New Constellation” to guide us as we discuss ever changing elements of life. At least, that is what I think he is trying to say. We should embrace the problems of reconciling modernity with postmodernity rather than smooth them out.

One of the concepts that caught my attention was the concept of Otherness as explored by Derrida. Not that there really is enough here to really give me a total picture of what it is, but the issues of how we are different and what that does to us… seems to be played out extensively on social media all the time. I just wonder what theorists are doing with social media, since it seems to be giving us many more windows into the minds of others than we had access to in the past.

Habermas is looking a lot at classifications of speech acts. Once again, I think I get the individual parts when I read them, but struggle to put the whole together or to be able to summarize what I have read. Basically I get that it is important to look at how we are communicating so that we can (as accurately as possible) communicate what we intend to.

Well, I am not sure what to blog on this week. I finally finished what I was originally supposed to read, but it seems that the class instructions were changed without any notice. I just finished reading this morning what was originally up there for part 8, which was part III of Bernstein’s Restructuring and the article by Savenye & Robinson. Now that I looked back in Schology, it lists some other chapters that I have not read yet. If you make changes like that, please let us know – once I start reading, I really don’t look back at the reading list until I am ready to blog. Although, I thought we already read the rest of Chapter 2 in Habermas? Man, I am confused.

Well, I can only comment on what I read. The Savenye & Robinson article is a good article on qualitative research. I think I will understand more of it when I get to so some actual qualitative research. So this article will be a good reference when I get to that stage. The article seemed to also be calling for more acceptance of qualitative research, which has probably happened to more of a degree since the article was written.

The chapter that I read in Berstein was just… confusing. It seemed to be about different issue of what it means to be a human, what it means to exist, etc. Lifeworld was brought into this chapter.. That is about as far as I got in understanding it. But I guess I will be re-reading it in the future at some point? Maybe then I will understand more. Now off to try and get caught up on what I was supposed to be reading all of this time.