Good morning! On 4/14/07, Marcus G. Daniels <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi Matt, > >> For the social scientist, the approach raises two problems: > >> > >> 1) Too much reflection means too much attention to models of the world. > >> To ask the right questions means having unbiased data on how people in > >> some context of interest actually behave. > >> > > I take it that when you say context of interest you are inferring that > > this is a model of the world. > By context I mean some particular domain of human behavior that is > believed to operate independently enough from others to name and study > it. Societal impacts of science and technology would be an example of > what I mean by context of interest. > > I understand you as meaning that > > context is unstable, always shifting, as a natural outcome of > > reflection. The act of shifting contexts and perspectives and between > > models of the world is reflexivity. > Reflection on one's own experiences and comparing them with others > (reflexivity) won't necessarily result in correct conclusions about why > people do the things they do, or their larger social implications. > Scientific work is incremental and academic departments usually operate > more or less in parallel with others. So, by design there's a lot of > correlated work (and I'd imagine thought too). Of course, focus can be > good for punching through relevant problems in specific contexts.. > > To the point, it raises doubts in my mind just to what extent we can > treat subjective reports of scientists and technologists as independent > samples.
I see now that there is some confusion here about reflexivity as a method and reflexivity as an object of study. Many researchers do use interviews and ethnographers in particular talk about ethnographic interviews as co-construction rather than extraction. Such methods do involve gathering narratives and stories (subjective, meaningful accounts of experience) from research participants. This is method of interviewing designed to probe subjective experience and ethnographers can't get around the fact that such subjective experience is heavily influenced by the interview context. But, as you pointed out, the interview context is a different unit of analysis than the context of knoweldge production. Sure enough, knowledge production has many significant levels of organization. Reflexivity as an object of inquiry entails looking at how whole communities of practice develop norms, rules, materials... that support and direct sharing of knowledge. Such systems are designed (self-organized) to be reflexive. Individuals, indeed, are also reflexive and the knowledge system they are part of affects how this reflection happens. There's lots of ways to design social science research and construct validity. And there are many many pitfalls in doing research that relies on gathering subjective accounts especially if there is no theory or, even worse, no problem driving data collection. Amazingly enough there are research strategies, methodologies out there that legitimate non-theory driven data collection (if you believe that such a thing is possible). With such a huge ecology of research strategies and methodologies out there is would be a shame for the study of reflexivity to be confined to the realm of ethnographic interview. A system for knowing, for reflecting on reality; that's science, isn't it? A social system for reflecting on reality also fits the description of religion too (assuming that you accept a belief in what one is refleciting on is reality). We all know that there is a difference. And there has been lots of work looking at the differences (both across the sciences and across science and non-science). And as I said before, a study of the differences shouldn't be for discrediting knowledge traditions but rather to figure out how to design new ones, breathe life into old ones, and to think strategically about which ones can make a difference. Perhaps social science is a misnomer for this kind of work anyhow. Empirical philosophy maybe? > > I'm, however, > > unclear on the relationship of unbiased data to the framework you are > > proposing. > Suppose Bob's got an idea for an experiment and a paper to go with it. > He runs the experiment and it fails to turn out the way he thought but > reveals a better experiment which he also then runs and it results in an > appealing outcome and insight. Now Bob writes the paper with a new > plausible sounding hypothesis that nicely yields to the outcome and > conclusion (as if the original hypothesis and experiment never had > occurred). The paper is cited all over the place and Bob's a big hero. > > To understand problem solving in Bob's context, realizing their are > potentially lots of Bobs, is it such a good idea to go on Bob's > reflections and Bob's buddies? Wouldn't it be better to devise a way > to monitor Bob's actual day to day work in some minimally intrusive > way? One should worry about the accuracy of `reflections' and the > reflexive cross comparison of them. It strikes me that research > results in this area are vulnerable to self-aggrandizing delusions > shared by the researcher and researched (both of the scientist type). > >> 2) It's typically not possible to sufficiently influence or observe > >> people to understand cause and effect across individuals or groups. > >> The insights gained from reflexive participation will just be the kind > >> of models we get living life (but with fancied-up language to sound more > >> important than they are). Seems to me this kind of modeling is more the > >> domain of the intelligence agencies than universities. > >> > > > > I take it that when you say that there is an impossibility to > > influence or observe then you are speaking from a particular model of > > the world. I cannot understand what you mean by sufficiency until I > > better understand where you are coming from. > I don't think a cybernetic / control system approach to understanding > human behavior is impossible, just expensive and something only certain > governments could sustain in general form. One might imagine that.. > > 1) participants have models which may change in accordance to new > observables > 2) the models are shared to some extent (either to communicate or > manipulate) > 3) the participants are autonomous > 4) the participants all have something at stake -- most aren't faking it > 5) ..but some aren't what they seem -- they are there only to perturb > and measure > > You can imagine that in this kind of scenario, you'll find individuals > acting in authentic, motivated ways. > If a set of participants in this situation had large (but invisible) > cash resources to draw on, and were willing to tolerate risk (e.g. > spies), they could in some sense facilitate the kind of data collection > that would be needed to truly inform the agents in an agent based model > and in turn make checkable predictions, and suggest further > perturbations for refinement of a model. > > Overall I'm just saying it is plenty hard to make predictions about > relatively simple physical dynamical systems, even when its possible to > poke them to see how they react. Now let the particles have minds and > layers of organizational insulation (receptionists, lawyers, etc.) and > things get rather complicated when it comes to predicting things. > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > -- Matthew R. Francisco PhD Student, Science and Technology Studies Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
