[Air-L] epistemology, process, method, policy, generalization... not "quant or qual"

Radhika G gradhika2012 at gmail.com
Fri May 9 04:25:07 PDT 2014


Excellent reminder of primary source/context and debate, David! Trust Terri
to ask the questions that lead us back to sources:)

The comparison of method in the preface for that work also contrasts
Moliere's so-called flat character descriptions to more complex character
sketches by Cervantes and Shakespeare.

I would say though that the issues raised in Malinowski's book are still
relevant - in terms of epistemology. Of *how* we acquire the information
and build it up as knowledge that then feeds into world views.

Two points I'd like to raise:

1] if we take away the moralizing that seems implicit in "armchair" vs
"hands-on" research - what might we learn from each in relation to internet
research methods?

I'm not sure that these are mutually exclusive if we want a larger overall
picture.

2] Going back to Malinowski's issue with what he terms "armchair
theorizing" should also remind us of the policy implications of the
research we do - and the reason that generalizing based on partial
information and developing policy that is "generalizable" is problematic.



just my 2 cents.

Radhika

___

http://radhikagajjala.org

____



On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 5:56 AM, David Hakken <dhakken at indiana.edu> wrote:

> > From: Terri Senft <tsenft at gmail.com>
> > To: Ellis Godard <egodard at csun.edu>,  "air-l at listserv.aoir.org"
> >       <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
> > Subject: Re: [Air-L] Three Questions (was qual/quant and all that)
> > Message-ID:
> >       <
> CAMsrFiFto+tHkBNtMOe3ar-XzKQ8mSQE-PLz4dGMH2dASRPzkw at mail.gmail.com>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> >
> >
> > 3. Does anyone have an actual reason to use the term, "armchair
> > theorizing?"
> >
> Dear Terri
>         I'll skip the hard questions and go for the easy one. "Armchair
> theorizing" was the term used in introductory anthropology courses for the
> standard 19th Century form of ethnography/ethnology, which involved
> collecting information on the customs of "primitive" social formations by
> sending letters to various government officials, missionaries, and traders
> requesting such information, and then assembling the answers into a general
> account. Sir James Frasier's _The Golden Bough_ was the usual example. This
> approach was critiqued, ultimately and most famously, by Malinowski in his
> _Argonauts of the Western Pacific_ (being republished now by Routledge) who
> argued for actual fieldwork among the peoples of interest. This is often
> referred to as the "revolution" in anthropological methods.
>
> David Hakken
> Information Ethnographer
> Professor of Social Informatics
> School of Informatics and Computing
> 901 E. 10th Street, #318
> Indiana University
> Bloomington, IN 47408
> dhakken at indiana.edu
> 812-856-1869 office; 812-391-2966 cell;  812-856-1995 fax
> Faculty Fellow at the Department of
> Computer Science and Engineering,
> University of Trento, Italy
> http://www.informatics.indiana.edu/research/profiles/dhakken.asp
>
> Trento office hours (May-mid-July)
> by appointment
>
>
>
>
>
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