I take the central topic of the article to be the various ways in which
the authors sought to construct themselves, and found themselves to have
been constructed, in the situated work of attempting to enter various
field sites to investigate gender and technology issues in educational
computing. They locate themselves intellectual through a periodization
of the literature -- conservative positivism to liberal constructivism
to radical critical analysis to queer postmodernism. This last stance
emphasizes the semiotic aspects -- or perhaps the material-semiotic
aspects, semiosis-plus-power -- of several relationships: the already-
lived reality of gendered computing, their own early attempts to initiate
research, and the relationship that they seek to initiate with their
readers through their article. In particular, it prescribes emphasis
on multiplicity, both within and among persons; on relationality, in
society's already-given matrix of conventionally marked differences;
on domination, in the tacit praxis through which these differences
retain their invidious character despite efforts at reform; and on
strategy, through the conscious praxis of intervention through which
the differences might be leveraged, troubled, ironized, or refashioned.
This all seems fine as a point of departure. Where I start to have
trouble is with the documentation of their central phenomenon: their
failure to get access to their intended field sites. Take the following
passage:
A white male IBM rep began his presentation by recounting a story
about a so-called "old native woman" [...] At the end of the day,
in a one-to-one chat, I told him that I found the story "problematic",
and that it had really interfered with my ability to judge his product.
The rep was, well...completely livid. He told me in no uncertain terms
that I "had no business sharing my opinion with him", and that he had
"never heard such garbage".
Let us stipulate that the IBM rep was a jerk. The problem I'm having
is that I cannot reconstruct the dynamics of the interaction. The point,
I take it, is not simply that some guy was a jerk, but that the author
(whichever of the authors is employing the first person in this passage)
was, as the upshot of this interaction, positioned as a bad researcher.
But how? The evidence presented is adequate to let us judge that the
IBM rep was at least significantly in the wrong, but it is not enough
to make his behavior intelligible. Indeed, it is not even enough to make
me confident that I understand what his behavior *was*. One problem is
that the story is just sketchy. But a more specific problem is the use
of quote marks. Consider the first use of quote marks in this passage.
Usually, in the ethnographic genres that I'm familiar with, quote marks
are used to delimit reported speech, or occasionally in theoretical
passages to distance the author from an accepted term. But neither of
these interpretations works here. It is hard to understand the quoted
passage as reported speech, given that the pronouns and verb tenses are
wrong; the passage reads more as a paraphrase with quote marks around it.
Now granted, the notion of "reported speech" (distantiating quote marks)
should not be accepted uncritically; one normally elides inarticulations
and restarts and so on. Nor would I ever insist that an author conform
to genre conventions for the sheer sake of conformity. It is just that I
cannot understand what happened here beyond a simple assignment of rights
and wrongs.
Similarly, take the passage on page 130 where they authors recount, in
reverse order, two meetings with a school administrator and his henchman.
In the first meeting they were "jubilant -- practically gushing". The
second meeting featured a "red-faced, angrily-delivered monologue". What
happened in between the two meetings? I infer that something untoward
must have happened, given that the final meeting is described as having
been "inauspicious". I also infer that the administrator's complaints
were not based on the research topic of gender and educational equity, nor
on the authors' presentation of themselves as "two dykes wearing matching
Gap pants, etc", inasmuch as these factors did not prevent a successful
outcome of the first meeting. They preface this narrative with a quote
from Rabinow, who explains that "one of the most common tactics of an
elite group is to refuse to discuss -- to label as vulgar or uninteresting
-- issues that are uncomfortable for them". I infer from the sequential
position of this quote that the administrator is being interpreted in
these terms -- elite group representative refusing to discuss certain
issues. But what issues? The administrator portrays himself as uncertain
what the problem is, and no explanation at all is offered, and no data
with which to hazard guesses, interpret interactional dynamics, or
generally to unfold the mechanism by which the researchers were once
again positioned as such-and-such. I don't even understand the argument
that the administrator is best analyzed as having refused to discuss an
uncomfortable issue by labeling it as vulgar or uninteresting, as opposed
to some other noxious thing. Granted the administrator's behavior was
in some degree mysterious. Yet the authors must have some clue as to the
nature of the problem, given the "inauspicious".
It seems to me that the authors do themselves a disservice by not even
attempting to rebut what is surely the elites' own interpretation of the
events, namely that they deliberately provoked the responses they got.
I myself am certain that the situation is more complex than this, but I
lack the materials to even get started on a more complex interpretation.
I do think that the issues are important, though, and I want to try
to contribute to the discussion by opening up some analytical issues
and offering some observations from my own experiences. It seems to
me that the authors' analytical framework, while (as I say) a valid
point of departure for the research, remains metatheoretical as to the
ostensible objects of research -- gender and technology. I must admit
to some sympathy for two of the other metatheoretical categories that the
authors mention -- constructivism and critical analysis. Whatever their
limitations (and I feel that the authors have interpreted them somewhat
more narrowly than they could have), they do provide positive accounts of
what gender is, what computers are, and what the relationship is between
them. In particular, they do provide spaces to explore non-essentialist
accounts of both gender and computers. Feminist literature has given
us some idea what's involved in not essentializing gender, of course,
and I think it is equally important in this context not to essentialize
computers either. Yet the authors, as I understand them, are positively
uninterested in de-essentializing computers, inasmuch as it is hardly good
politics to wait around until someone fixes and replace all of the world's
computers along hypothetically female-friendly lines before beginning any
research and interventions. Much better, I take them to say, to focus
attention on the heterogeneous strategies by which various relationships
are established among people and between people and computers. This
is okay as far as it goes, but what if we don't really know what, as
an empirical matter in these particular sites, a "computer" even *is*?
It is here that I think much is lost in leaving (particularly) critical
analysis behind. What about the notion that "the computer" is constructed
-- both by the industry and by the participants in a school setting --
as a thing-unto-itself? What if the concept and practice of "computer
literacy" served to reify something called "the computer" as a putative
object of knowledge, as opposed to focusing on practices that happen to
involve computers among other things? What if the most significant issue
from an equity standpoint were not actually "the computer" as such but
rather the practice of formal abstraction found equally, and without any
particular discontinuity, in math class, grammar lessons, calisthenics,
and so on? What if the most significant issue were not "the computer" as
an artifact but rather the linguistic practices around it, particularly
the discursive forms by which computer use is affiliated with notions such
as "the future", "games", "working right", "mistakes", "skill", "access",
and not least "equity"? Now, much depends on how these themes are taken
up, for example whether gender is essentialized in relationship to notions
of abstraction. The emphasis on strategy may be helpful if it breaks
up a certain monolithic quality of critical analyses. But it may also be
destructive if it introduces its own sort of pessimism: you have lots of
strategic flexibility in positioning yourself within this whole field, but
it's entirely a local matter -- you're on your own.
The practical question is how to take up these themes empirically. My
own social positioning is different from that of the authors, and so the
details of my experience will not be applicable to their situation. But
I spent some time as a dissident within a technical field, artificial
intelligence, and I feel as though I learned some lessons in the process.
(I recently wrote these down in a draft chapter for a book that Geoff
Bowker, Leigh Star, Les Gasser, and Bill Turner are editing in case anyone
is interested.) I found that I could get a certain amount of perverse
satisfaction by talking to AI people in language that they could not
understand, e.g., phenomenology. Sometimes I could find no alternative,
given that I had no other way of expressing what I wanted to say. And it
certainly seemed to me (and still does) that AI's own means of expression
are frighteningly constricting. Still, in this particular reality, I had
two choices: I could leave the field or I could learn to talk in ways that
they (or enough of them anyway) could understand as turns in a legitimate
disciplinary conversation. In fact I did both, but let me concentrate
on the latter. It takes practice. In particular, it takes letting go
of the need to do impossible things, such as communicating concepts to
people that they are not currently equipped to comprehend. One need not
*like* these constraints, or concede their reasonableness. But if any
research is going to happen then one must accept that these constraints
define the terrain -- intellectual, dialogic, interactional, practical,
institutional -- with which any intervention must engage. And then the
point is *not* to convince them, nor even to change them significantly,
which may well be futile right now. The point, rather, is to understand
and explain the dynamics of the situation in a way that might help others
in preparing to take some next step. This is what I tried to do.
In this, there is no substitute for learning to speak their language. Of
course, even *saying* this accurately requires that we critically reflect
on what "language" is. Is "speaking a language" a predicate that applies
people independently of their relational positioning in particular
settings? Probably not. At the other extreme, is "speaking a language"
so thoroughly dependent on relational positioning that it is literally
impossible for certainly marked individuals *ever*, no matter what, to
fashion themselves (i.e., roughly, "pass") as "speaking the language"
in certain settings? Note that a postmodern approach is more likely, a
priori anyway, to answer this question negatively than a constructivist
or critical approach, inasmuch as it posits a greater range of potential
self-fashionings. (If Deborah Tannen is right that men-as-such *solve*
problems whereas women-as-such *process* problems, then quite possibly
we need to replace everything about computing except maybe the chips.)
There is also no substitute for learning to orient to their professional
agenda, including their way of constructing such-and-such as a "result"
or "answer" or "evaluation" etc. Again, it is possible that their agenda
fully determines their whole world, with no room for wiggling. But
that is not what postmodernism would say. Nor critical analysis, given
that this is what Mike Cole, for example, is about when he critically
reconstructs quantitative testing.
The basic formula, in my experience, is this: talk to them in their
language, orienting to their agenda, and periodically express to them,
using arguments that appeal to their own premises and without a superior
or provoking attitude, the impasse or contradiction that you see or
predict within their own project. This is obviously a strategy that
can only be pursued incrementally; only in a blue moon will you catalyze
a revolution in this fashion. But then, only in a blue moon is it
*possible* to catalyze a revolution. In the meantime, though, we can
deepen our comprehension through praxis, and prepare ourselves.
Phil Agre