The Practicality of Particularism?
During class, we raised, but did not answer, the question: what are the implications of Shotter’s exposition for social science research? Tatiana, Ela, and Efe all touched on this in their blog posts in different ways:
I am first going to pretend that I accept Shotter’s argument 100%. If we accept this argument, meaning is entirely contingent, each “meeting” (encounter of any kind between two living things) is unique, and so on. What, then, can social science—or we can even change the term to social research or social theory—do? It seems to me that it becomes utterly impossible. We cannot generalize, we cannot categorize (as Efe argues we otherwise can), and we cannot say anything general about how humans interact except that it is always unique, always fresh, always another “first time.” We could sit in a public place and listen and look voyeuristically at individual encounters, but we could not even write up our notes—we would be missing all the visceral elements that Shotter finds so central. It seems all we could do, as Ela suggests, is to write literature—poetry, drama, novels, films. Is Shotter proposing the end of social science (or social research or social theory)? Did he climb that ladder only to kick it away?
Somehow I do not imagine so. What if we understood his work differently—if we understood it as a plea to social studies (if you will) to merely inch away from general theories, away from Cartesian mind-body dualism, away from language-as-stable-meanings? Does he really mean that language has no stable, external meanings, or merely that we have given it too much credit for doing so? Does he really mean that one social encounter bears no resemblance to another? I think not—only that there is less resemblance than we might assume. His argument might be read, then, as a critique of social science, an argument in favor of acknowledging more contingency of meaning, more mind-body unity, and more uniqueness of each social situation.
With this modified interpretation of Shotter in mind, NOW what are the implications of his writings? Maybe the best that comes out of it, as Tatiana points out, is that “I might understand myself better, and how I interact in the social world, or even how others interact differently based on the vocabulary and values we assume.” Is that enough? As Tatiana continues, “but how does that translate to research and knowledge that others can find valuable?”
I am (relative to others in the academic setting) a very practical person. I enjoy asking questions like the following: How do we eliminate large-scale violent conflict? How do we eliminate poverty? How do we improve governance and promote democracy? If we accept Shotter in the modified way I suggested, not as meaning what he says literally but meaning it relatively to the rest of the social science literature, then the implications for practice are rather interesting. We would ask, not, “How do we eliminate large-scale violent conflict?” but rather “How do we eliminate this particular large-scale violent conflict?” We would not ask, “How do we eliminate poverty?” bur rather “How do we eliminate poverty in this particular place and time?” Not “How do we improve governance and promote democracy?” but “How do we improve this particular piece of this particular government, or how do we help this piece of government become more transparent to and inclusive of this particular population?” We would be compelled to go and look and listen and absorb at least a bit of the richness, the uniqueness, and the ever-evolving nature of the particular population involved in a particular time and place before acting.
I, for one, am not interested in abandoning all search for general answers to the more general questions posed above. It seems to me, however, that if practitioners asked themselves these more particular questions, we might end up with solutions that are more practical, more responsive, more respectful of the wisdom of local populations, and less imposed from on high, less expert-driven, and less, perhaps, imperialistic. I still feel that one can indeed generalize across cases and develop explanatory theories that can be utilized in practice, but I see how Shotter’s view of the world can help us hold our theories (and resulting interventions) with an appropriate level of humility.
posted by Suzanne at 3:41 PM
4 Comments:
I echo your frustration.
(And I sure hope that it is not just that we had to head to our next classes that we feel frustrated, Suzanne! Maybe after we left they unveiled the big secret to Shotter and discourse analysis!).
However, to be fair to Shotter, I don't think that the questions you are asking are within the scope of his inquiry. Not that he might not be personally interested, but I don't think he would ask "How do we eliminate poverty in this particular place and time." Instead, he might as, "How are we construing poverty? What do we, together (in our discussion of it in class, in the media, in government, in aid organizations), say it means?"
(I almost said that he would add "And what effect does that have on the poor, rich, aid organizations, NGOs, etc., but even that might be a stretch here).
I am starting to understand that this is actually important. More than "defining our terms" before starting an experiment, this exercise lends significance to the terms themselves, and states that it is the terms, and their meanings in context, that are important (and perhaps more important than the "so what" question).
To offer a further example, in my work in microfinance, we had a year-long discussion on the phrase "the poor." What does that phrase mean? Where does it come from? If Jesus says that "the poor will always be with you," what meaning does that take on for a fundraising organization, or a microfinance institution? How does the meaning of "the poor" shape a mission statement? In the end, we did not like the meaning that the phrase took on in the global conversation, so we started saying "those living in poverty" in order to humanize the clients we were serving, and move away from making them almost a race.
That's what I think the implications are.
Let me try to restate my confusion (and maybe to an extent frustration). I actually agree with Suzanne's interpretation. And I believe her statements are valid for pretty much every scholar we read this semester. Meaning is time and space bound, created by individuals, indexical etc. The terms we (they?) use change, but I think the overarching theme boils down to the rejection of mind-body dualism and the role of research and researcher in the meaning making process.
Yet, if I am to ask the question "How do we improve this particular piece of this particular government", how am I supposed to 'accumulate' "scientific" knowledge? Because the information/meaning creating in situation A only slightly resembles situation B. I am not trying to claim that situation A and B will be the same but the resemblances or differences can be categorized and analyzed (This is the confusion I have nowadays).
It may help to revisit here the beginning of chapter 8, where Shotter, drawing on a colleague (Anderson), makes clear his dis-ease (…) with “the rationalization’ of existing practices” (155). This calls to my mind Orr’s account of the field service technicians. And Orr and Shotter do seem to agree that (certain?) ‘scientific management’ practices—say, a ‘faith’ in the efficacy of manuals—is rather misguided. Shotter clearly contests this “one-size-fits all mentality” (156). (I’m tempted to argue that this could call into question not inconsiderable aspects of ‘modern’ modes of social organization. But I won’t do that. It might quickly shade into notions of 10,000 villages and the like.) So I’d certainly agree that Conversational Realities can be read ‘profitably’ as an entreaty to move away (at least at times!) from ‘colder’ views of human behavior that speaks or thinks of covering-law-type Truth claims. Make small-t, contingently generalizable truth claims, right?
Still, maybe we shouldn’t too quickly stop thinking about the potentially radical implications of Shotter’s approach. I’m not talking about social engineering, here. Perhaps it’s more to do with notions, as pointed out in other posts here, of reason and will, and their respective place in human endeavors to live together better. The former is essential yet alone inadequate—social science must concern itself with the latter, too. This could mean that one’s research, when presented, sometimes reads more like a novel or poetry. How should we comport ourselves to ‘others,’ ‘the world’ (a minor question, I know…). It’s easy for an interloper like me to ask such things, but why should not an aspiration of ‘our’ research be to engender, at least sometimes, a sense of wonder in ‘extraordinary,’ ‘qualitative…living…changes of reality itself’ (180)? Although our outlook on the world may seem at times static—fixed by reason, even—an appreciation of meaning’s dialogic contingency might at least keep research from ‘imposing’ unnecessarily upon ‘the world’/‘possible worlds’. This perhaps echoes the sentiments in Suzanne’s final paragraph.
I think Suzanne has offered a very generous and gracious interpretation of Shotter's book. I did not get the impression, however, that he had the improvement of government or the elimination of poverty in mind when developing his philosophy. I think his philosophy developed in the context of the field of psychology and that he is focused on helping people navigate interpersonal communication. I understand him better when I interpret his work within this context. Outside of this context, its utility seems to diminish.
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