Comments for Taxomania

Comment on Cintron’s Angels Town by Jason

Jason — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 19:27:03 +0000

I’m looking forward to taking up these questions more in class today. Although I enjoyed the book, I felt similar to Ben that it was difficult to sort his strategies. It read more like a theory book than a study. I felt validated by Allison’s example of the missing LD literature, for example. Perhaps, though, I’m also asking for the very ethnography that Cintron is trying to explode. I have a lot of respect for the number of years this book took to make and I wonder if I need to spend more time with theories of ethnography than with the genre itself.

Comment on Cintron’s Angels Town by Allison

Allison — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 15:56:27 +0000

This post is poppin’! I’m really enjoying this book so far, but I’m also wondering about the selection of data we see. It sounds like Cintron had a ton of data to work from, which Tim noted signals how chaotic and messy these research and revision processes must have been. With all that data, though, it seems peculiar that we see so much of that figurative, metaphoric work.

There’s a lot going on in Chapter 4. Cintron focuses on Valerio’s LD status, constructs the wall metaphor, explores cars and baseball figures, and makes some pretty hefty claims. At times, it seems like he’s stretching the metaphors (and data) to meet his needs. For example, when he’s making conclusions about LD, he writes, “Of course, my naiveté about LD undermines this text…” (104), which actually *did* undermine my reading of his analysis. I quickly realized that though it plays an integral role in the chapter, he hadn’t picked up any actual literature on LD, nor did he reference the national overrepresentation of people of color in special education (or LD) classes.

I experienced similar moments in the elaboration of the car as “a mobile display of an artfully constructed self” (113). It’s not that I don’t buy that argument…I do. I’m just not sure I understand the process leading up to that argument. Cintron takes us on a detailed narrative journey, but when you look at where we started (a poster of a car and Valerio saying it makes him feel strong) to much larger claims about the young males in the neighborhood, I find myself wanting to see more of the data selection process. I enjoy the intimate snippets we see of Cintron interacting with the “thumpers” and with Valerio, but I wonder: Are those brief descriptions enough to sustain these larger claims? Does Cintron actually back these claims with more data that we just aren’t privy to? With all that data (hundreds of pages of notes, tapes, and documents), how does he make those selection decisions?

Comment on Cintron’s Angels Town by ben

ben — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 22:02:17 +0000

Jason and Iswari:

I’m finding some of the same issues/questions as I read, especially in the “figurative” reading of the materials and particularly in relation to the expanse of material he claims in his opening chapter.

He has all this stuff, but he explicates for pages on very little documentation in the first three chapters of the text. For instance, he talks a lot about the role of signatures and the bureaucratic language of citizenship documents–both cases expand into somewhat figurative readings without having to use any documents obtained on site.

I think it raises questions we’ve explored in other scholarship on quantitative data about what we find significant and why. I found some of the reflexivity in the first chapters interesting, but I also found to book a bit slow-going through these early chapters, slogging through historical data on Aurora (Angelstown) that I didn’t find particularly relevant to the close reading of language practices that come in the later chapters.

Comment on Cintron’s Angels Town by ippandey

ippandey — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 19:37:58 +0000

Loved your post, as always.
Two quick points about your questions here. First, it is thoughtful on the part of the researcher to understand/foresee the possibility of romanticizing the fieldsite. But isn’t Cintron pointing out the abundance of this practice in more traditional ethnography, almost always about places and people far away? Given that there are plenty of issues to be wary about “insider” ethnography, the proclivity to romanticization may not be the only one! [While we are at it, could Cintron be implicitly commenting on questions about such works (insider ethnographies) especially given their rise in the fourth quarter of the 20th century that was also accompanied by cuts in funding for research?]
Next, I was intrigued by your attention to Cintron’s “figurative” reading of his data. I wonder if qualitative research is or can be ever completely immune to it, but I am interested in hearing about how we/readers feel about this issue, especially when the writer deliberately draws our attention to those “figures.” That makes your last question all the more important!

Comment on Ethics and Ethnography by Allison

Allison — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 15:46:32 +0000

I’m interested in the idea that Newkirk & Sullivan are incompatible because I read their arguments as fairly similar (albeit from slightly different perspectives, which may be where the incompatibility comes in). Newkirk says there’s always a possibility for bad news, and I think Sullivan would agree; she just wouldn’t frame it like that. If there was a potential for bad news, I feel like she would argue that we need to work with participants to construct that information in a way that everyone is happy with (if the participants are happy with it, though, that could still possibly take the form of “bad news.”). Does “bad news” necessarily mean that the “other” is misconstrued? Can “bad news” still be productive?

In response to your last questions, the first people that came to mind are Selfe & Hawisher. It seems like in everything I read by them, they’re working closely with participants to co-interpret data and collaboratively author their work. And we saw Canagarajah discuss how he would send manuscripts back to his former colleagues who really opposed how he constructed them, although I don’t know if that’s the most productive example since that was such a messy process.

Comment on Purcell-Gates, Perry, and Briseño’s “Analyzing Literacy Practice: Grounded Theory to Model” by Seth

Seth — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 20:36:03 +0000

Jason, I feel like you ask some very important question about the scope and the attempts at generalizability of this piece. After you point out the coding that they go at lengths to describe yet still seems a bit cloudy, you bring up a good point about generalizability. We are able to recognize that “historically marginalized groups’” resistance and appropriation are dictated by their context, yet we attempt to lump them together as if their experience with or reaction to hegemony is the same or similar. Interesting…
To a similar point, I agree with you Ben. The same quotation stuck out in my head as well:
“Our data indicates that hegemonies appear to be defined by the natures of the relationships between those in power and those who are dominated, rather than being defined solely by the political or economic structure of the context.”
As I read it, I was thinking, much like you, that was a weak assertion. I do understand that the authors are not able to provide the in-depth write ups on the specific case studies. I find myself always skeptical of generalizations made from several sites or case studies, when I cannot fully see where they are getting the data. While I believe they probably had an in-depth understanding of what was going on in their 11 case studies (even though that is not entirely clear), I also understand hegemony is typically very complicated, which makes it very hard to make generalizations over several contexts. In this way, it seems like the authors are paying more attention to constructing and defending The Cultural Practices of Literacy Study itself (which is the focus of the piece), rather than the complications and nuances of each of the “historically marginalized groups.”

Comment on Purcell-Gates, Perry, and Briseño’s “Analyzing Literacy Practice: Grounded Theory to Model” by ben

ben — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 03:59:37 +0000

I want to pick up on the ethical questions you posed to Purcell-Gates et al’s work, but also question what seems to me an ineffective method.

(allow me to rant…)

I should start by saying that this work frustrated me to no end. I thought as reading about how much time (7 years!) went into gathering data that leads to very weak conclusions: “Our data indicates that hegemonies appear to be defined by the natures of the relationships between those in power and those who are dominated, rather than being defined solely by the political or economic structure of the context.” That is as specific as the assertions get. It’s a conclusion that I think any of us could have made without looking at case studies, and Purcell-Gates et al. only reference a few lines from 2-3 case studies to support it (owning to how simple an assertion it is). Further, they don’t bother to cite James C. Scott or his Weapons of the Weak, a classic in anthropology and political science from 1985 that established complex calculations and responses to oppression as a given–that is, something that doesn’t need to be borne out in data 25 years later by the CPLS.

I also question how well they could learn the context of hegemony in 11 case studies over 7 years. Never mind the specifics of coding, which they spend most the article describing, I want to know how the researchers came to understand what hegemony meant in such diverse cases. Without knowing that they had intimate knowledge of each case study and the specific culture of each literacy practice, I wouldn’t want to rely on any of the data they gathered.

Finally, I want to get back to where you left off you post, Jason, asking if there is any reciprocity between researcher and researched here. Stake reminded us that “We need to remember that, at the end of the study, whatever understandings we have gained may not be worth the trouble we have caused (209). Purcell-Gates et al. just make one attempt to justify their research for those they are studying:

“Part of the data collected included observational and interview data of the literacy practices of the Nicaraguan immigrants in their homes and communities as well as those of the Costa Rican mainstream. These data were collected with the goal of bringing more familiar literacy practices into the schools to attempt to increase the academic achievement of the Nicaraguan children” (441).

I guess they mention this 1 study of 11 because it is the only study in which there was the guise of reciprocity. That they don’t elaborate on how the “goal” of helping Nicaraguan children played out or any details about how they might change power structures in Costa Rica’s schools, I assume they didn’t meet it.

Comment on Intro to digital humanities by » Purcell-Gates, Perry, and Briseño’s “Analyzing Literacy Practice: Grounded Theory to Model” Taxomania

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 02:43:30 +0000

[...] of the CPLS and its goals (especially after discussing the potential and difficulty of the digital humanities last semester), but I did wonder if others had thoughts about both the possibility and the ethics of the [...]

Comment on Mortensen’s “Analyzing Talk about Writing” by Allison

Allison — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 19:08:11 +0000

Thanks for revisiting Mortensen, Jason. It was definitely the fuzziest of the readings for me–I couldn’t always understand what he “talking” about, and I didn’t have the clearest sense of the terms he defines (whereas Bazerman gave all those great examples to illustrate his terms).

Your question about studying the affects of student-led discussion on writing (or talk about writing) is great. It reminded me of the research project you mentioned a couple weeks ago about tracking how students apply the “talk” from writing center sessions to their drafting/revising/editing work. Maybe those studies aren’t out there because we haven’t come up with a successful way to do them…What would a study that analyzes the affects of “talk” on students’ composing processes look like?

Comment on Mortensen’s “Analyzing Talk about Writing” by ben

ben — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 16:23:52 +0000

Thanks for unraveling some of Mortenson’s dense threads for us in the post. I think this theoretical/practical/experiential complication is necessary when we discuss research in the field.

This section of the blog resonated with me, returning me to the debates we discussed last week in class:

“Looking back more closely at Mortensen, seeing how he calls all studies fictions, I now wonder if he believes that empirical studies are even possible. He gives pragmatic and functional analyses praise, so I think he deems them worthy pursuits, yet his critique at the end of this piece makes me wonder how serious he would take empirical (more positivistic) studies.”

And it spoke to what Tim and I got discussing earlier in the day, about how complex the reading/writing process is, especially when we add the necessary social, cultural, and power dynamics.