Dear Rachel,
Ray McDermott distributed a list of dichotomy that disturbs the points of
discussion at 1990 AERA presession workshop. This list seems to reflect
the longstanding historical struggle with cognitivisim and standard sociology,
anthropology.
Although this list does not specify the alternative direction, it will be
useful as a resource.
Naoki Ueno
NIER, Tokyo
Ray McDermott's list of dichotomy
Some commonly sensible conceptual dichotomies guaranteed to lead to long
discussions with little result.
objective/subjective
determined/free
micro/macro
emic/etic
hard/soft (as in data)
Individual/social
mind/body
nature/nurture
context bound/context free
truth/lie
achieved/ascribed
mental/material
verbal/nonverbal
speaker/listener
male/female
in-group/out-group
us/them
quantitative/qualitative
It is not the case that these dichotomies do not gloss some important
divisions in our experience. In fact, the problem with each of these
contrast sets is that they come to us too easily. They do not come to us
complete with a description of the perspective or level at which they are
designed to be meaningful. It is the purpose of analytic terms not just to
identify vaguely "things" in the world, but to specify the relations among
things by specifying the operations that helped to bring the things into
focus. Most of the above terms will not help us to get that job done.