Ontologies, Epistemologies and the Ethics of Commonsense

Ontologies, Epistemologies and the Ethics of CommonsenseEthnography, Ethnomethodology, and ANT

Brad KingDesign and Methodology in Communication ResearchFall 20081Agenda

Life After Method: Enacting Social Science Research

What is ethnomethodology anyway?: Garfinkels California Sociology

Ethnography and the Ethics of Closeness

Latours ANT farm: A Sociology of Translations2Messing with Peoples HeadsLaw, J. (2004). After Method: Mess in Social Science Research. London: Routledge.

3Messing with Peoples HeadsThe problem is not the method. Its our method of understanding the methodWays of knowing are always politicalSocial scientists must understand that their methodology doesnt just describe the world, it enacts itE.g. an IQ test, political pollingMethods are performative4

Working Out Durkheims AphorismThe Rules of Sociological Method

the concreteness of social facts is sociology's most fundamental phenomenon.

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The Philosophy of Social Science in (About 2 Minutes)The Rules of Sociological Method: Marx, Durkheim, Weber

6What is Ethnomethodology Anyway?A method or theory? A Method for Studying other peoples methods.

According to Garfinkel, the objective is to "understand the rational accountability of practical actions as an ongoing practical accomplishment."

He is also concerned with three constituent phenomena: 1) The establishment of objective (context-free) propositions in place of indexical ones. 2) The essential task of reflexivity that accounts for practical actions -otherwise considered banal and generally un-remarkable. 3) Examining actions in-context as a practical accomplishment.7Ethnomethodologys Programme1) opening up the field of inquiry

2) The persistence of rationality

3) it is methodologically inadequate to assume that the properties of rationality can be ascertained by referring to apriori standards that exist outside of the community of actors

8Ethics and EthnographyFine refers to the "illusions" which are sometimes foisted upon ethnographers as they go about their research.

The objective is not to suggest that ethics and ethnography are incompatible9The Ethics of Closeness1) Lies which conflict with "classical virtues" of ethnographers (Strategic Closeness)

2) technical challenges which take the form of practical problems concerning method (Technical Closeness)

3) Challenges concerning the "ethnographic self(Reflexive Closeness)

10Do you believe in Reality?Law and Urry (2004) argue that social science methodology is not only descriptive but performative

the epistemological and ontological assumptions on which such practice sits are fundamentally related to experience. 11

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What is TruthIf social science is concerned with discovering truth then the epistemological implications of practice become ontological and political.

Thus it is nearly impossible for a social science to be apolitical or "neutral."

15The Sociology of Translations: Latours ANT farmReassembling the Social

- the nature of groups and identity

-the nature of goal oriented action and it's complications

- the nature of objects

- The nature of facts

- sociology and it's articulation as an empirical science.

16Touring LatourANTs core principle is symmetry(overcoming the Subject/Object dualism)

Extension of ethnographic methods into socio-material contexts

17Science WarsAlan Sokals SocialTextTransgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum GravitySocial Text #46/47, pp. 217-252 (spring/summer 1996).

Politics, Ethics, and Science

18ReferencesDurkheim, E. (1982). The Rules of Sociological Method. (S. Lukes, Ed., & W. Halls, Trans.) London: MacMillan.

Fine, G. A. (1993). Ten lies of ethnography. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 22, pp. 267-294.

Garfinkel, H. (2002). Ethnomethodology's Programme. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in Ethnomethodology. Cambridge, UK: Polity.Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Latour, B. (1993). We Have Never Been Modern. (C. Porter, Trans.) Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Law, J. (2004). After Method: Mess in Social Science Research. London: Routledge.

Law, J., & Urry, J. (2004). Enacting the Social. Economy and Society , 33 (3), 390-410.

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