Sunday, March 17, 2013

The unbearable invisibility of the observer

Just submitted my abstract to a methodological conference at King's. Something I  have been working on for the last two years, I have so much material to talk about but I need to think strategically and implement my "One and Half Ideas Rule": only one idea and a hint at another in every presentation/article. strangely enough, I come upw ith that rule based on my experience of writing travel articles.

I decided to focus on one of the main issues of the Cartesian disassociation: the invisibility of the scientific observer. It has been a big deal in social sciences, particularly in anthropology, although economics, history and some others have managed to get away with pretending it does not exist.

I break down the issue into three aspects: epistemic, cultural and pscyhological, demonstrate how that gets in the way of research results on study cases and then suggest how that might be tackled. 

Subversion (collaborative software)

This software apparently facilitates collaborating on writing articles. A mental note to check it out: http://subversion.apache.org/

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Sociology vs. anthropology: the invisible subject


Recently I have started teaching social theory to Sociology students. I found myself having to make some adjustments. Although Sociology is adjacent to Anthropology, there are serious differences. First, thanks to Durkheim's poweful thrust to establish the former as a proper science, there is a lot more emphasis on quantitative methods. (Yeah, 'coz numbers are the way prove it's scientific.) Well, it's something most know anyway. However, there's more.

As I started reading more sociological articles, I kept coming across evidence of unabashed Eurocentric views that would make any anthropologist cringe. Terms like development, human rights and international community are used in entire seriousness. Apparently unexposed in any significant ways to any society but their own, sociologists completely buy into their cultural yardstick being the truth. Even worse, they don't seem to realise it's a yardstick, to them it's the scientific method.

Anthropologists, on the other hand, as has been noted by some, including Bourdieu before, are blissfully unaware of the workings of their own society. Meticulously trained to write up cultural difference, many seem forever to be engaged in describing how their village is different from what they believe they know as the world, basically their own home country. Although, a considerable part of anthropological training is dedicated to de-eurocentrising, in other words, the epistemological debunking of one's cultural yardstick as the yardstick, what is lacking is a systematic knowledge of that yardstick, beyond the received common sense.

So, in reality, there's no structural difference between the two: both observers, anthropological and sociological, still remain, for  diametrically opposite reasons, invisible to themselves. And no one seems to be aware of that invisibility, probaby by its very virtue of being invisible!

In other words, there is another layer of the scientific observer's invisibility, besides the unawareness of one's Self that stands in the way of merging the subject and the object.  "Dark is the base of the lighthouse."


(There also does not seem much theoretical exchange between the twain, despite all methodological similarities. Fads and turns do not synch up and while functionalism (gasp!) is still big in sociology, Levy-Straussian structuralism has even not brushed it, in the Anglophone world anyway. I will write about it later.)

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Interdisciplinary methodology in humanities and social sciences: stumbling blocks

Perhaps the most obvious stumbling block that has so far kept interdisciplinary endeavours in social sciences and humanities is a lack of common methodological platform. Before we start cross-pollinating, we need to agree on the yardstick(s) by which we will evaluate and critique each other's works. A lot of people seem to be aware of that, but so far the talk has not gone much beyond proclamations of intent. How come?

In their  training, all scholars go through separate indoctrination processes specific to  their subject - for research methods courses are, in fact, indoctrination camps where we internalise, often unquestioningly, the axioms of our discipline, to proceed whereupon buildinthe  body of our research for the rest of our careers. Whatever intellectual incursions we may make into other disciplines, they most likely will be terminological borrowings or radical adaptations to embroider into the epistemic canvass of our own discipline. 

Epistemological considerations are hardly ever in the picture. Epistemic axioms and methodologies are rarely seen in the context of modernity, history of western science. Researcher's reflexivity is never explicitly encouraged. In some areas, even critical thinking is never given any attention, so undergrads' papers I read sound more like high-level journalism than any kind of scholarly output.

The dearth of true dialogue is then, to a substantial extent, down to the fact that we all speak different professional lingos, never asking ourselves of how they came into existence nor why and wherefore we have been shaped into this particular kind of social subject, the scientist.

In conclusion, I would like to elucidate what goes on in the academia by way of allegory.

First, I see a huge open field, where each discipline stacks up a pile of books to broaden its horizon. The higher the pile, the broader the field of view, but so much the harder it is to climb down, walk over to another discpline's pile, climb up and start talking. What I  suggest is a blimp to float between the piles. It is not an easy-peasy ride, it takes a lot of energy to get it airborne, and a lot of skill to control and navigate it.

The helium for the former would be teaching theoretical fundamentals in a discipline-neutral fashion (I have been working on extended outlines for two such courses for about a year now), the manual for the latter would be epistemological and reflexivity training.  

However, before we even get there, we need to carefully cast the ballast of the previous centuries, by becoming aware of the philosophical premises and resulting limitations of western science: the Cartesian dissasociation, the separation (and eventual compartmentalisation) of the domains of knowledge, the all-knowing scientific observer, etc. It is shocking to see how so many PhD (Philosophiae Doctor!) students have never been taught any basics of philosophy.

Please let me know what you think (remove the XXX from the email address, that's spam crawler prevention) or leave your comment below.

Friday, March 1, 2013

No, Professor Dorkins!

Biologists should be legally prevented from unqualified pontification about society, religion, politics, etc, and  stick instead to what they have been trained to do: shoving bits of DNA up the microbe's ass.

Nuclear physics and anthropology, shall the twain ever meet?

For a clearly humanities-inclined kid, I have done tons of algebra, geometry and physics at school. That may be why, when I talk to people who have made it into social sciences by way of A-levels and GCSE, their squeamishness about parallels from natural sciences very quaint. Granted, the methods and methodologies may seem opposite, but there are areas where the twain, human/social sciences and cognitive disciplines, do meet. That's the philosophy of sciences and nuclear physics -- remember Thomas Kuhn?

I remember all too well the winces and the blank stares I encountered every time I would bring the following quote in Research Methods in Anthropology seminars: "The observer always influences the observed system." That sums up all anthropological discussions about representation, authenticity, ethics, etc. in one sentence. Maybe that's why it makes people feel uncomfortable.

I do enjoy thinking of myself as a Socratic gadfly, so here is another nuclear physics quote for you: "What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning." Werner Heisenberg. That answers a lot of questions even before they are asked, doesn't it?