Angie Answers · Thursday November 16, 2006
Angie Jamison, Sister of Best Friend Aaron Flint Jamison, married to the Venerable Rob S. Jensen, and generally awesome person and brilliant scholar. Thanks for letting us sleep on your floor this summer, Angie!
“So let’s run with this. (Of your other ideas, I think the richest and least-researched is wiki collaboration, but that would ultimately take you far away from bigger questions of political power. Good for a later research project, in any case.) But this is a good question, and in many ways it expresses your deepest personal query. That’s a reason to commit to the question.
“But that’s the thing. It’s a deep and, as RJ says, motivating question. It frames a research agenda—a life’s work. Like for my dissertation, the motivating question is, “what are the implications of globalization for the world’s most poor and otherwise screwed-over people?” Moving forward in a kind of analytical exercise, i can specify both nouns in that sentence until the question becomes more and more focused while still expressing its original essence. So, for example, a first cut would be: “What does the deregulation and global dispersion of industrial production mean for the capacity of workers in that production to assert themselves vis-a-vis the owners of capital?” In the next cut, i focus on a particular industry. Next cut after that, I operationalize what it means for workers to “assert themselves” i.e. what factual scenario constitutes it when i’m out there observing shit on the ground. Eventually, as i specify, i find i’m talking increasingly about descriptive scenarios—what RJ describes as “is” research rather than potential (“can”) research.
“This brings me to another thought, in support of that distinction made by RJ. The point in your paper when you talk about “can blogging change hegemony” is when you comment on your findings about “has blogging changed hegemony.” then you have some sort of basis on which to make claims on the possibilities and limitations of blogging to have that effect. But the “possibilities and limitations” conversation is distinctly reflective upon the “this is the situation” sort of “establishing the phenomenon” (see robert k merton) work that you do as a genuinely curious researcher.
“Again, don’t let go of your big question. It’s basically going to guide your whole life. Just recognize that its relationship to the specified version we’re advocating is the same as the relationship of your whole life’s work to this, your first major research project. Motivating Question: Empirical Research Question :: Alex’s Life’s Work: Alex’s MA Paper.
“So, how to specify while at the same time keeping that relationship of the specific and the general intact. First, you sample. RJ commented on that, but without pointing out taht it’s a fundamental way of implying the big in the small. Sampling is arbitrary, and because of that arbitrariness it purports to take a snapshot of a world that replicates over and over what the sample itself contains. So the parts, so the whole. By way of that rhetorical and “scientific” device you can find a smaller world inside the world and indeed, go crazy on a case study without losing your perspective. This approach has the added benefit of actually contributing to knowledge generally, instead of just contributing to commentary upon knowledge. If you can tell me something really true about, say, urbanhonking, that’s the best way for me as an empiricist to understand blogging generally.
“So moving forward, one thing to consider is indeed, i would argue, choosing a case. what is urban honking a case of? perhaps the challenge of a certain kind of media dominance?
“or maybe if you want to, working the other way, choose a case that is a better example of dominance-challenge, you’d look at, say, election coverage. specifically, perhaps, how did dailykos unseat the media as an alternate source of info and indeed spin in the recent midterm elections? did it matter? was it different from previous? how did it work? and what does that say about your big question? in this iteration, you’re an expert on media and election coverage by way of getting at your big question, eh?
“incidentally, if you did focus on that sub-question, you’d be doing really important research. nobody really knows about this stuff in “scientific” circles, where a lot of decisions get made. this month i published an article on the effect of oprah and other soft news media on the 2000 election, and have gotten tons of official attention about it (check out www.ucla.edu for an ex). because although everybody knows that the 2000 prez candidates focused a lot of their efforts on appealing to voters through talk shows, scientists didn’t even recognize that this was a change from the norm or that it might have had serious political-cultural implications. what seems obvious to you, because you’re embedded in the world you study and a huge expert on it, will not at all be obvious to your new audience. the thing now is to develop that deep and original understanding you have in a way that will actually speak to these people and take advantage of their pretty good insights into the nature of political power and the way that possibilities and limitations for changing it can be predicted on the basis of history.
“sorry for being so rambly! i don’t know if it’ll be helpful, but you’ve got great ideas. it’s just a matter of switching up the jargon a bit. good luck. aj”
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