MediaSpace Wiki

Intercultural Spr2006 Sess04

Agenda

• Collect questions
• Answer questions from last time
• Discuss methodology
• Give assignment for next time

Introduction to Intercultural Research Methodologies

• The fundamental question in today's readings are "ways of knowing"
  • Ways of knowing
    • What differences exist between cultures
    • How important those differences are
    • Where those differences come from
    • What the implications of those differences are
  • Here we focus on a very specific set of ways of knowing
    • Research Methodologies
  • There are other ways of knowing
    • Religion, in which believing is knowing
    • Rationalist philosophy, in which logic is a path to knowing
  • Research methodologies attempt to ground "knowing" in real world observation
    • Three families of methodologies are presented:
      • Measurement-based methodologies
        • Presented as social science methodologies
        • Which often test specific hypotheses or research questions
        • And generally observe from an outsiders perspective
      • Interpretive/Ethnographic methodologies
        • Which generally seek to find patterns in observed behavior
      • Critical methodologies
        • Which generally seek to expose problems
        • Especially problems of inequality
        • Most often by seeking patterns of inequality in contemporary texts
    • These families of methodologies are, in some ways, an oversimplification
    • But their resolution through dialectics is useful
• In many courses I teach "cultural approaches" as a methodology
  • A way of understanding media texts
  • But I also teach that these "cultural approaches" intersect and can even depend on other methodologies
    • These intersections and dependencies are not terribly different than the dialectics forwarded in these chapters
• In my approach to research I generally advocate using a variety of methodologies
  • We sometimes call this "triangulation"
  • The cultural elements of my dissertation depended on surveys (measurement data), ethnographic observation, the content analysis of texts (generally regarded as a critical method), and archival data (measurement again)
  • In its effects, this is not terribly different than the dialectical approach advocated in these chapters
• I don't experience these methods as dialectics, at least in the oppositional sense
  • I see them as complementary
  • I think they need each other
  • It is possible to treat any one of them as a worldview
    • Its simply better not to
  • And it all goes back to the fundamentals
    • these are ways of "knowing" things
    • they just allow us to know different things in different ways
• Interpretive/Ethnographic methodologies
  • Provide a set of tools for observing the real world
    • By getting as deeply into the reality of that world as we can
    • While maintaining a studied objectivity
    • Expressed through "thick" description
    • of emergent and dynamic behavior in context
  • Variants of this approach include:
    • Participant-observation: participating in the culture one is studying while carefully reflecting on what one observes
    • Interviews and focus groups: asking those who do live in a culture to talk about their experiences of it
    • Audience-Oriented Analysis
      • asking participants in a culture to write about their experience of living there
      • watching participants in a culture interact with cultural texts
    • Rhetorical analysis of cultural texts.
  • These are great methods for finding patterns
    • Especially complex real world patterns that involve varying contexts and participants
    • But it can be difficult to corroborate patterns using Ethnographic methods alone
  • Hence we often think of ethnographic observation as a first step
    • Pretheoretical observations
    • That establish patterns
    • Allow us to build hypotheses and theories
    • And set up other kinds of knowledge tests, such as
• Measurement-based methodologies
  • Provide ways of establishing a level of confidence about the things we think we know.
  • Almost anything can be used as a basis for measurement and testing
    • Survey data
    • Archival data
    • Secondary data, including the results of Ethnographic observations
    • The results of content analysis
    • Quasi-experiment
    • Even occasional formal experiments
  • These methods allow us to make formal declarations of confidence in the results
    • Which is very much objective observation
    • Not necessarily "causal" observation
    • And not necessarily static
      • Time series analysis
      • Measurement across cultures
    • But will almost always be reductionist
      • with fairly restricted implications
      • testing specific, and often very restricted, hypotheses and research questions
      • And generally observe from an outsiders perspective
  • Hence we can think of measurement based methodologies as a second step
    • Testing hypotheses generated by other means
    • Testing theory
    • Extending the results of ethnographic methods to a much larger sample
• Critical methodologies
  • Which generally seek to expose problems
    • Any method that systematically exposes ethical biases
    • The usual focus is power and inequality
    • But power multiplies the effects of most ethical abuses
  • The goal, in most critical analyses, is
    • to publicize social problems
    • mobilize the abused
    • initiate a process of change
  • The root critical methodology is ideological theory
    • Which itself is a general expansion of Marxist analysis
    • Marxist analysis is not Marxism
    • But it is rooted in the ideology of Marxism
    • It believes that workers are oppressed
    • And seeks to systematically demonstrate the nature of that oppression
  • Many critical theories have the same general structure
    • An ideological belief in a desired social condition
    • Which informs a systematic analysis of the structure of current (and presumably undesirable) social conditions
      • Description of the undesirable state
      • The sources of power that maintain the undesirable state
      • Sites of struggle in the current social condition
      • Potential points of leverage for change
      • And, all to often, simple complaining
  • A usual method is to seek patterns of inequality in contemporary (and sometimes historical) texts
    • But "text" should be defined broadly
    • The content of any medium of communication
    • Perhaps even the contents of our brains
  • Other critical methods include
    • Feminist theory/research
    • Contemporary neo-conservative accounts
      • of liberalism in the media and the classroom
      • of what constitutes science in the classroom
      • of "declining" values
    • Systematic analyses of inequalities based on race, religion, national origin
    • Postmodern theory/deconstructionism
    • Psychoanalytic theory
    • Analyses of Ethical Behavior
      • Based on religious belief
      • Based on ethical principles
      • Most generally, based on cultural value preferences
    • Research, from any theoretical position, that applies that theory to "improving" things
  • Hence we can think of critical methodologies as as a third step
    • Applying our knowledge of the current social condition
    • And trying to improve things
• One hopes that this is useful in restructuring the research "dialectics" in these chapters
  • Those dialectics are not inaccurate

Causal

Reciprocal

Contested

• Measurement approaches often do seek causal paths
  • But they often have to settle for correlations
• Critical approaches seek contested spaces
  • But they also seek and try to remediate, the causes of the contested inequities
• Interpretive/Ethnographic methodologies often look for and find complex dynamics
  • But the goal is simply to describe

Reductionist

Holistic

• Measurement approaches are often reductionist
  • Reducing complex behavior to a set of underlying variables
  • But such approaches often recognize that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts
  • They simply think that some parts exert great influence on other parts
• Both Interpretive/Ethnographic and Critical approaches are often holistic
  • But critical theory believes that it can identify leverage points from which small actions can result in great social change
  • Interpretive/ethnographic approaches must inevitably reduce thick experience into a sensible and compelling narrative.
    • No matter the thickness of the narrative, a significant reduction occurs

Objective

Subjective

• Measurement based methodologies seek objectivity
  • It doesn't always entirely achieve that objectivity
  • But it explicitly seeks it
    • Validity
    • Reliability and replicability
• Critical approaches are often subjective
  • Such research usually has a perspective
  • But it also systematic
  • The impact of critical research increases
    • as a function of its objectivity
  • Effective critical rhetorics must appeal to both out-groups and some fraction of in-groups
• Interpretive/Ethnographic methods
  • Can also be viewed as subjective
  • But Ethnographers explicitly seek to be objective
    • In part by recognizing and acknowledging their biases
• In short, these research dialectics are more complicated than these chapters suggest
• As for these chapters other dialectics

Cultural	Individual
Personal Characteristics	Social Behavior
Differences	Similarities
Static	Dynamic
History-Past	Present-Future
Privilege	Disadvantage

• There will be more to say in future chapters
• And each of the three families of methodologies documented here will contribute to our understanding of them

Index card assignment due Thursday

What research method or methods are most interesting to you. Why?