Please pardon the interjection. IMHO, if our perceptions are shaped by our
conceptions then it is only reasonable that WE (the big "we") will find
different meanings of subjectivity around -- psychology, sociology, chat(s),
etc.. But I do think the problem of subjectivity is an old one, and its
emergence in different disciplines, variously over the last century or so, and
persistently, indicates that it is a fundamental one. I'm just guessing that
WE have faced this problem over and over, as researchers and scholars, in such
canonical forms as emic/etic dichotomies (and even in physics with the collapse
of the wave function).
I experienced two personal events today in interesting coincidence with this
thread. 1) I've just read an article about the dilemma of an ethnographer who
was attempting to study CoDA (CoDependents Anonymous) dealing with IRB
regulations on the one hand and the CoDA rules of anonymity on the other.
Doing high quality ethnographic research meant, like the other participants of
CoDA, becoming anonymous, and not revealing the nature of the
researcher/research, which was in direct opposition to the IRB regs. 2) I
watched (again) the 1987 movie "Wings Of Desire" (precursor to "city of
angels") in which "A lost angel grows tired of observing human activity and
wishes to become human after falling in love with a mortal." (Description from
Bravo). There are some beautiful quotes from the movie, which I'll have to
take time to rent and pull out, that have to do with the problems of being an
angel, and only being able to observe from afar, and not from *within* the
experience of being human. This angel eventually becomes convinced to be an
observer participant. The problem is one of subjectivity, it is not? -- that
the observer can take in and take up different things by being and acting in
the subject, in contrast to being outside of, and other to, the subject.
So no, I don't think that being up close and personal and in the action is the
only way to do research. But I keep being drawn to the idea that the
distancing of the researcher from the study, i.e. the "subjectivity" of the
research writ large, is an inextricable part of a study and needs to be
addressed explicitly and integrally, in an unglossed fashion. What the
researcher knows influences both what the observer observes and how the
researcher intervenes (take "Garfinkling" as an example, contrasted with
"transforming experiments", "design experiments", "critical theory" and
experimental/control-group studies). And I don't have any general solutions
that would lead to any new strategies. As I consider multi-observer studies,
all I can think is "Yikes!". But I do think I would like to learn more, and if
there is a general need to develop with others more robust practices concerning
subjectivity, I'm there.
bb
=====
"One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly become the author of something beautiful."
[Norman Maclean in "A river runs through it."]
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