Re: qual-quant differences and the difference it makes.....

David Dirlam (ddirlam who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu)
Mon, 17 Nov 1997 15:18:32 -0800 (PST)

On Mon, 17 Nov 1997, Martin Packer wrote:
>
> David, I wasn't mad, but I'm starting to get a little hot under the collar!
> One assumption floating around here seems to be that interpretive analysis
> is just easier than that empirical-analytic stuff, so it's what people do
> when they can't hack it in a stats course.

I never implied or made that assumption. In fact, I believe that
statistics is sometimes what people do when they're not good enough at
discursive analysis.

I invite all empirical-analytic
> researcher to undertake the rigors of ethnographic investigation, discourse
> transcription and analysis, report writing, etc., and see how easy it is.

I hope you're not assuming I have never done such.

> Not to mention the fact that, as Eugene Matusov points out, many funding
> agencies and journals have, until very recently at least, spurned such
> work. See how easy it is to build a career in such a climate, guys!

Do you really wanna swap war stories?

> Nor am I angry at physicists, David. Is it too much to ask that the
> possibility be considered that people explore alternatives to
> empirical-analytic inquiry because they genuinely believe that this
> paradigm of inquiry is a flawed way to investigate human phenomena? That
> doesn't mean you have to accept the reasoning, just acknowledge that there
> IS reasoning behind the choice, rather than people being stupid or mad.
>
My problem is that you seem to think this isn't a problem with
every paradigm, yours included.

> Nor do I eschew the tools of physicists. But we have to better understand
> what mathematics is--a social, cultural activity. A number of times I've
> mentioned on XMCA Brian Rotman's efforts to show how mathematics is social;
> how, for example, the assumption of "infinite iterability" is a
> questionable cultural stance. On my pile of books to read is "The Ethics
> of Geometry," which challenges the notion that it's a value-free endeavor.

Quite consistent with my note to Eugene -- maybe you hadn't received it
when you read this.

> I think the boolian logic of case analysis that Charles Ragin has developed
> is very interesting (Ragin, C. C. (1987). The comparative method: Moving
> beyond qualitative and quantitative strategies: Berkeley: University of
> California Press.). As is Bourdieu's use of correspondence analysis,
> apparently a kind of non-parametric factor analysis.
>
This sounds like an interesting reference. I'll look it up.

David