kelley wrote:
> actually i don't think you've s provided an argument
not convinced by my arguments might be closer to the point. in which case, we's going around in a circle.
> basically, my concern is that you paint everything with a rather broad
> brush.
yes. that's the nature of writing in fragments.
> you haven't really explained what you mean by the terms you use.
yes i have, at your insistence, many times, both on and off list.
> also find it extraordinarily odd that you seem to have no
> idea that sociologists have been struggling with the issues you raise
for
> decades now. gimme a break. you write as if this is news to anyone
nothing i've written is news. the debates are there, and these have been my conclusions; they differ with your conclusions. a post on sennett turned into a lengthy series of posts on sociology, again at your prompting.
> your statements are moral judgments.
no, you read them as moral judgements: you personalise it.
> what i did find problematic was your proposed solution to
> a problem you see: get out of people's lives [without explaining why
that
> has anything to do specifically with the methodology]
i have explained it, time and again. eg: ethnographic methods enable a proximity that statistical collection does not; people can lie to statisticians in a way that's harder to do than with observation; etc. you haven't been reading.
> or stop operating
> from the social control perspective. this, to me, is the same thing
as
> blaming individual capitalists rather than analyzing capitalism.
no, it isn't. it's precisely about the connection b/n a certain discipline and capitalism, where the former takes on the role of determining the possibilities of social control and cohesion.
> no problem ma. but what on earth are you doing?
i thought my tone was rather bored, actually.
> i've not read an argument as to why ethnography is bad. what you've
> claimed as examples are problems with the researchers logic of
> research--they've asked certain kinds of questions about social
structure
> and used methods and methodologies that can't ask those questions.
that
> doesn't make the methods and methodologies inherently wrong.
that's not what i said. i said, twice, they've been compelled to seek out methods and methodologies which try to answer those questions more effectively, hence the shift to ethnographic methods. whether the methods and methodologies are really more effective or not is beside the point to some extent.
> please. i ask only that you make an argument, not sweeping
generalizations
> --as if the church workers or sennett or whoever is representative of
all
> sociology, as if no one has critiqued the social control perspective,
as if
> no one is aware of the problems w/ ethnographic research.
i have made the arguments. you think they are unconvincing. so be it. and, never said the social control perspective hasn't been criticised. what i did say, countless times, was that if you abandon a social control perspective, you are no longer doing sociological research. despite certain giddensian attempts at integrating alternative questions, at broadening the canon, sociology still asks the question of social order. eg: giddens' holy trinity of marx/durkheim/weber only includes marx on condition that his writings are transformed (reduced) into an answer to the question that both weber and durkheim ask, that of social order.
> give me a lollipop.
ok.
Angela _________