In a message dated 5/26/2002 1:56:25 PM Central Daylight Time,
jllbc@cunyvm.cuny.edu writes:
> I don't want to lay this dilemma specifically on Keith, he's just following
> a long-established academic practice -- but it is very much a
> characteristic of modernist academic scholarship that people try to "take
> command" of very large fields of discourse by reducing them to a simple set
> of abstract binaries.
>
> The result is that we often end up arguing over either (a) whether the
> binaries have been properly applied, the writings properly classified, or
> (b) whether the particular binaries are useful or applicable. We forget
> sometime that most of us long ago rejected binarism itself, or sharp
> logical categories as such, as useful tools for serious thinking about the
> matters we ourselves study.
In the master's paper I am writing I found myself wanting to combat
developemntalist view vs. nondevelopmentalist views and frustrated myself
that while reading the literature I couldn't get my preconceived notions of a
particular author to fit nicely into either camp. Jay, I would appreciate if
possibly you could discuss this phenomena further so that it would speak to a
methodology for measuring goal directed activities. A while back I had
thought that co-genetic logic may lend a hand for categorization purposes,
are you familiar and if so what ar your thoughts regarding this? thank you
for your contributions to this discussion it is still of utmost interest to
me. You also must understand that as long as my job means that I provide
individual assistance then I need to be concerned with individual agents.
Good luck at your new postiion,
eric
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jun 27 2002 - 08:02:50 PDT