As with all cultural studies, critical discourse analysis, image analysis and the study of artifact are problematic because of the complex and ontological assumptions inherent in understanding human activity, belief and behaviour. Thomas reminds us that "it is a grand conceit of many social scientists and postmodern researchers to assume that [their methods are] a direct route to ...an individual's meaning-making-and-subsequent-application process for everyday life" (1994, p. 685). She cautions us not to confuse representations with reality! Content analysis is a study of representations; created by specific people, in specific relationships, at a specific point in history, for a specific purpose/agenda.
The fascinating thing about this type of analysis is the remarkable connections that can be made after applying techniques of close reading, semiotics, rhetorical analysis, coherence, specificity, lexical style, and syntax. Examining epistemologies can reveal subtle but pervasive ideologies that reproduce social inequalities, dominance, and hegemonic systems that reproduce the conditions that privilege the status quo.
I'm sure that van Dijk is correct in his proposition that any domain where groups are differentiated and marginalized based on gender, class, caste, religion, language, political affiliation, geographic region or otherwise will bear out the same observations.
Van Dijk explores the relationship between power/ control and the hierarchy of power, how small groups of power elites are able to manipulate situations to oppress, manage the mind, etc, and the importance of critical discourse analysis to unpack the discrimination/ inequality. As I read the article I couldn’t help but continue to think of my own research area and that I am becoming increasingly mindful that in and of itself it is a hierarchy of power. I am a constituent within it located at the top versus the bottom – I have a B.A, a post-grad cert, now doing a Masters, I have a full-time job – pretty elite I would say. How will this affect my research? Will the community I am interested in (one that is rural and remote, suffers from unemployment, decreased access to education) think of me as an academic snob? What kind of results/ dialogue/ answers will I get if this is a judgement placed on me? I am hopeful that this won’t be the case but coming from “academia” (I do have a hard time digesting this term...perhaps it is just me but I feel it to be pretentious or maybe this is the self-deprecation coming out!!) already stirs up thoughts of elitist and holier-than-though-connotations. Am I being too oversensitive? How will my research methods be non-partisan in nature, my language be approachable yet authoritative? Would be awful for Van Dijk to come and conduct CDA on my research afterwards to uncover that my own work is oppressive and non-inclusive! Catherine Richards
To AMR's comment earlier (and following up on my comment from last week about ethnography): what I find interesting about historical artifacts is how inaccessibly remote they are from us. While, as AMR pointed out, close reading, semiotics, rhetorical analysis, &c. might reveal a lot about the culture that created an artifact, I think it's important to remember these kinds of tools can give us nothing more than an academic understanding of such a culture. I'd say it's difficult if not impossible for us to truly understand or reproduce the lived experience of an other culture from a distant time or place. We can reconstitute it with great care, piecing together all the little bits we've collected over the course of our research, but the end result will always be a representation structured in some (probably unintentional) way according to our own epistemology, the way we think all the pieces ought to fit together. This may be an obvious point but I love the mystery of it! Who were those people back there in that distant past? Humans like us, with all of the same emotions, weaknesses and needs, but so different in some ways that we may never truly know them because knowledge, our kind of knowledge, has its limits.
Catherine - I too am prone to "self-deprecation" and there does seem to be so many ways that we, as researchers, can import bias and power relations into the dynamic with those we are studying. I think fo rme, I find reassurance in going back to my research question and the original interest or question that sparked me. After all, we want to do research to ameliorate a situation, shed light, create understanding and most of all, to change how things are. The nobility (is that too lofty a word?) of our intentions and the care with which we frame our study, can help to remind us of the valuable knowledge that we're trying to generate, and the care and regard we hold for those whose situation we seek to understand. We can't eliminate power structures, only work intelligently within them, and seek consciously to dismantle them. Humtility doesn't seem a bad place to start...
re: Greg's comment: "the end result will always be a representation structured in some (probably unintentional) way according to our own epistemology, the way we think all the pieces ought to fit together" - but if we understand all research to be but a representation, seeped in power relations, interpretations, biases, framing, etc....then is this not just a more extreme example of what all social science amounts to? not saying that this is what i believe, just wondering what you think?
*this was originally posted in wrong spot (under picture thousand words spot)... just reposting under week 7*
At first when I read this week’s readings, I thought maybe I had printed the wrong ones, because they seemed so different from the other readings. As I made my way through them, though it took me a while, I started to see the link between what we had read so far and where these readings were taking us. In the past weeks we had read and spoke of ethnography. What was missing from our discussion was opening up the topic to social, political, and economic factors that influence social and cultural practices. A number of key terms popped out at me as I read the readings including: cultural meaning/individual meaning, social inequality, discourse, dominance, elite, hierarchy, communication, social power, privileged access, access to resources, access to discourse, naturalization, social representations and the notions of us and them or ‘Others.’
I think that what is key here is understanding that our research exists and takes place within a sociopolitical realm. The way in which ‘power elites’ create, sustain and legitimate the power they hold is an important part of understanding the power dynamics of our society. These elites have privileged access to resources (ie. news media) which enable them to reinforce their own ideals and maintain their position in the hierarchy. What we as researchers must consider is the way in which these structures of power and dominance have become naturalized. We must also pay special attention to the way in which this dominant ideology and these social representations trickle down to influence public opinion and how they form the basis of our social structure, social relations and social understanding.
As with all cultural studies, critical discourse analysis, image analysis and the study of artifact are problematic because of the complex and ontological assumptions inherent in understanding human activity, belief and behaviour. Thomas reminds us that "it is a grand conceit of many social scientists and postmodern researchers to assume that [their methods are] a direct route to ...an individual's meaning-making-and-subsequent-application process for everyday life" (1994, p. 685). She cautions us not to confuse representations with reality! Content analysis is a study of representations; created by specific people, in specific relationships, at a specific point in history, for a specific purpose/agenda.
ReplyDeleteThe fascinating thing about this type of analysis is the remarkable connections that can be made after applying techniques of close reading, semiotics, rhetorical analysis, coherence, specificity, lexical style, and syntax. Examining epistemologies can reveal subtle but pervasive ideologies that reproduce social inequalities, dominance, and hegemonic systems that reproduce the conditions that privilege the status quo.
I'm sure that van Dijk is correct in his proposition that any domain where groups are differentiated and marginalized based on gender, class, caste, religion, language, political affiliation, geographic region or otherwise will bear out the same observations.
Moved from original post October 26, 2011 6:18 P
Van Dijk explores the relationship between power/ control and the hierarchy of power, how small groups of power elites are able to manipulate situations to oppress, manage the mind, etc, and the importance of critical discourse analysis to unpack the discrimination/ inequality. As I read the article I couldn’t help but continue to think of my own research area and that I am becoming increasingly mindful that in and of itself it is a hierarchy of power. I am a constituent within it located at the top versus the bottom – I have a B.A, a post-grad cert, now doing a Masters, I have a full-time job – pretty elite I would say. How will this affect my research? Will the community I am interested in (one that is rural and remote, suffers from unemployment, decreased access to education) think of me as an academic snob? What kind of results/ dialogue/ answers will I get if this is a judgement placed on me? I am hopeful that this won’t be the case but coming from “academia” (I do have a hard time digesting this term...perhaps it is just me but I feel it to be pretentious or maybe this is the self-deprecation coming out!!) already stirs up thoughts of elitist and holier-than-though-connotations. Am I being too oversensitive? How will my research methods be non-partisan in nature, my language be approachable yet authoritative? Would be awful for Van Dijk to come and conduct CDA on my research afterwards to uncover that my own work is oppressive and non-inclusive!
ReplyDeleteCatherine Richards
I am Anonymous now! It won't let me post as me
ReplyDelete:(
Catherine Richards
To AMR's comment earlier (and following up on my comment from last week about ethnography): what I find interesting about historical artifacts is how inaccessibly remote they are from us. While, as AMR pointed out, close reading, semiotics, rhetorical analysis, &c. might reveal a lot about the culture that created an artifact, I think it's important to remember these kinds of tools can give us nothing more than an academic understanding of such a culture. I'd say it's difficult if not impossible for us to truly understand or reproduce the lived experience of an other culture from a distant time or place. We can reconstitute it with great care, piecing together all the little bits we've collected over the course of our research, but the end result will always be a representation structured in some (probably unintentional) way according to our own epistemology, the way we think all the pieces ought to fit together. This may be an obvious point but I love the mystery of it! Who were those people back there in that distant past? Humans like us, with all of the same emotions, weaknesses and needs, but so different in some ways that we may never truly know them because knowledge, our kind of knowledge, has its limits.
ReplyDeleteCatherine - I too am prone to "self-deprecation" and there does seem to be so many ways that we, as researchers, can import bias and power relations into the dynamic with those we are studying. I think fo rme, I find reassurance in going back to my research question and the original interest or question that sparked me. After all, we want to do research to ameliorate a situation, shed light, create understanding and most of all, to change how things are. The nobility (is that too lofty a word?) of our intentions and the care with which we frame our study, can help to remind us of the valuable knowledge that we're trying to generate, and the care and regard we hold for those whose situation we seek to understand. We can't eliminate power structures, only work intelligently within them, and seek consciously to dismantle them. Humtility doesn't seem a bad place to start...
ReplyDeletere: Greg's comment: "the end result will always be a representation structured in some (probably unintentional) way according to our own epistemology, the way we think all the pieces ought to fit together" - but if we understand all research to be but a representation, seeped in power relations, interpretations, biases, framing, etc....then is this not just a more extreme example of what all social science amounts to? not saying that this is what i believe, just wondering what you think?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete*this was originally posted in wrong spot (under picture thousand words spot)... just reposting under week 7*
ReplyDeleteAt first when I read this week’s readings, I thought maybe I had printed the wrong ones, because they seemed so different from the other readings. As I made my way through them, though it took me a while, I started to see the link between what we had read so far and where these readings were taking us. In the past weeks we had read and spoke of ethnography. What was missing from our discussion was opening up the topic to social, political, and economic factors that influence social and cultural practices. A number of key terms popped out at me as I read the readings including: cultural meaning/individual meaning, social inequality, discourse, dominance, elite, hierarchy, communication, social power, privileged access, access to resources, access to discourse, naturalization, social representations and the notions of us and them or ‘Others.’
I think that what is key here is understanding that our research exists and takes place within a sociopolitical realm. The way in which ‘power elites’ create, sustain and legitimate the power they hold is an important part of understanding the power dynamics of our society. These elites have privileged access to resources (ie. news media) which enable them to reinforce their own ideals and maintain their position in the hierarchy. What we as researchers must consider is the way in which these structures of power and dominance have become naturalized. We must also pay special attention to the way in which this dominant ideology and these social representations trickle down to influence public opinion and how they form the basis of our social structure, social relations and social understanding.