[Xmca-l] Re: The Science of Qualitative Research 2ed

[Martin Packer]

Well, David!  I am once again puzzled. I suppose you might say that that’s just my “subjective reaction” to what you have written. But even subjective reactions are aspects of the interpretation of a text, are they not? So let me try to explain my confusion. It arises afresh from each of the 4 paragraphs in your message:

#1. Yes, Goldmann identifies some differences between Heidegger and Lukacs. That would not be difficult for anyone to do, would it!? The main point of his book, however, is that there are fundamental similarities between existentialism and marxism, and between Heidegger and Lukacs in particular. (Heidegger rejected the label ‘existentialist,’ but let’s leave that to the side.)

Let’s stick close to Goldmann’s actual language. His principal thesis is that "between 1910 and 1925 a true philosophical turning-point occurred, which resulted in the creation of existentialism and contemporary dialectical materialism.”

As a consequence, one can find several “fundamental bond[s] between Lukacs and Heidegger.”  Central among these is "the rejection of the transcendental subject, the conception of man as inseparable from the world which he is a part of, the definition of his place in the universe as historicity.”

Yes, there are "differences which put the two philosophies in opposition to each other, but on this common foundation.” What is the common foundation, again? It is the recognition that "Man is not opposite the world which he tries to understand and upon which he acts, but within this world which he is a part of, and there is no radical break between the meaning he is trying to find or introduce into the universe and that which he is trying' to find or introduce into his own existence. This meaning, common to both individual and collective human life, common as much to humanity as, ultimately, to the universe, is called history.”

This is indeed the rejection of dualism that you have noted. It is also, as I have noted, key to Wacquant’s project, which begins with the assumption that a boxer is not ‘opposite’ the world of boxing, upon which he acts; he is a part of this world; there is ‘ontological complicity’ between person and world. And it’s worth noting, I think, that this rejection of dualism must call into question the seemingly self-evident distinction between ‘subjective reaction’ and ‘objective analysis.’ 


#2. Yes, Goldmann proposes that "for Heidegger the historical subject is the individual where­as Lukacs... conceives of history as the action of the transindi­vidual subject and, in particular, of social classes.”  But in my opinion this is based on a questionable reading of Heidegger (but that doesn’t make it nothing more than a ‘subjective reaction,’ does it?). Heidegger’s concept of Dasein - “being there” - is a general term for human being, whether an individual or a group. Division 2 of Being and Time (with “living-unto-death”) is about *individualization*: how one can *become* an active individual agent of history. But Vygotsky was also interested in individualization, wasn’t he? This seems a difference in emphasis, not unimportant but possible only on the background of a shared foundation. (Note that this is in no way intended as a defense of Heidegger, whose personal life was deplorable and whose philosophy is fundamentally flawed.)


#3. You write that "I don't accept that an anthropologist who codes interviews in terms of "tropes" is doing anything more than coding his or her own subjective reactions to the data.” 

First, Wacquant doesn’t “code” his data at all. What he does do is identify and then interpret the tropes that the boxers use when talking about their occupation. You’ll find an argument against the common assumption that qualitative analysis involves coding in chapter 3 of my book. Second, you seem to be suggesting that paying attention to tropes - metaphors and other figures of speech - is somehow merely a subjective reaction. I assume then, that you don’t have much sympathy for George Lakoff’s analysis of the recurrent metaphors in everyday talk, in Metaphors We Live By? Or for Hayden White’s massive analysis - what he calls “tropology” - of grand historical narratives - those of Marx, Hegel, Nietzsche and others - in his book Metahistory?


#4. You suggest that social class and employment are not of interest to Wacquant. But Wacquant has written widely - and I mean *widely* - on the mechanisms of reproduction of social class, on the intersections of class and race, and on the way class is handled in sociology (he’s a sociologist, not an anthropologist).

In this article, for example, he points out “That boxing is a working-class occupation is reflected not only in the physical nature of the activity but also in the social recruitment of its practitioners and in their continuing dependence on blue-collar or un-skilled service jobs to support their career in the ring” (p. 502).

In addition, he insists that his analysis of what the boxers say is necessarily informed by his knowledge, as a researcher, of various aspects of the form of life of boxing that they boxers themselves cannot grasp: "(i) the objective shape of that structure [of the social ‘field' of boxing] and the set of constraints and facilitations it harbors; (ii) its location in the wider social spaces of the ghetto and the city; and (iii) the social trajectories and dispositions of those who enter and compete in it” (p. 491). This approach seems to me hardly to ignore class, its inequities, or its economic necessities.

I guess we simply have different 'subjective reactions' to this article!  :)

Or, in a more serious tone: when you ask me to "Compare:

a) "Phonology is variable but semantics is invariant."
b) "Phonology is variable but semantics invariant."
c) "Phonology variable, but semantics is invariant."

What is the difference between a) and b)?”  are you not asking for my “subjective reactions”? Or are there “objective reactions”? Aren’t we talking about consciousness, always an aspect of our being-in-the-world, mediated by material representations?

cheers

Martin

> On Jan 7, 2018, at 3:07 AM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I read it, Martin. What Goldmann says is that Lukacs accepts subject-object
> dualism in a way that Heidegger would find unacceptable. He even speculates
> that Goldmann does this because he is writing for worker autodidacts and
> not other professors. He also notes that they supported different sides in
> World War II, and to his credit considers this a difference and not a
> similarity.
> 
> But the chiefest difference Goldmann notes is that Heidegger is essentially
> interested in the fate of the individual and not the social; Dasein is
> really an individuation of Sein, and "living-for-death" is clearly
> individualistic. Lukacs is the other way around: he's interested in the
> individual job only in so far as it is a token of the mass and the class.
> 
> Let us get back in the ring. I agree that there is very little analysis of
> the actual language, which to me means that there is very little analysis
> of the actual data. I don't accept that an anthropologist who codes
> interviews in terms of "tropes" is doing anything more than coding his or
> her own subjective reactions to the data. This is why Vygotsky rejects the
> "objectivist" accounts of development (e.g. that of his friend Blonsky,
> based on teething, or accounts based on sexual maturation) as being
> essentially subjectivist: he says that the choice of this trope or that one
> is subjectivist.
> 
> For example. Wacquant doesn't even bother to notice that a huge proportion
> of his informants are night watchmen or security guards or rent-a-cops. He
> even says at the outset that out-of-the-boxing-ring jobs in particular and
> the class status in general are not factors in his study. But I think you
> can see that boxing is not exactly irrelevant to professions which involve
> the use of violence in defence of private property. Isn't it subjectivist
> to simply write this off?
> 
> David Kellogg
> 
> 
>>