>>What I find questionable about Wolfe is that he seems to use his
>>subjects as a sort of cheering section for his own punitive views about
>>public morality and attitudes towards poor people. This is antithetical
>>to what you describe as the essence of ethnographic research. I've read
>>Luker's books, and she seems to make a clearer distinction.
But, do you _know_ that he has punitive views? I know no such thing based on knowing him or on reading his earlier work. I further know no such thing given what you've written. Why should I take your word for it, when I know the guy, have grilled him about, have listened to him speak of his research, have read an earlier book which would suggest you're quite wrong.
I honestly can't recall that much about One Nation, but I cannot recall any instances in which he declares that the poor deserve their fate. But, uhm, Eli Anderson sure takes "street kids" to task in StreetWise and Code of the Streets. That is, he holds some folks accountable for their behavior, despite all the good reasons they may have for engaging in violence, etc. It still strikes me as odd that he would hold such views, given that in _Whose Keeper_ where he attacks the market/individualism that means we are so horribly incapable of understanding how we depend on one another and what we owe others is very much in evidence.
I wouldn't necessarily be surprised if he did say something like this, but I personally try to refrain from maintaining that an author does unless I know for sure. I'll have to take a look see. I'll eat crow for all when I do. Promise. Right now, I don't have copy and plans for the library were dashed when my boss got back from Europe and was ready to rumba, when he normally rests a day! grrrrrrr! :)
Justin's right about theory. But, as I said, Wolfe did old fashioned ethnography. They typically refer to it as naturalism. I told him when he was still doing the research that I thought he had a mistaken view of what that was supposed to be and what ethnography was capable of. At the time, he very much had the notion that you should report people's views and reserve judgment. Indeed, one of the trademarks of the naturalist's approach is that it can only explicate or interpret what participants say and that it can't explain. Generalization yields explanation. Case studies can only yield understanding. But as Habermas complains of Gadermer:
For Habermas, Gadamer's hermeneutics fails to admit the emancipatory possibility of self-conscious reason and reflection on a tradition. Deliberation and reflection on an interpretive tradition, not only preserves a tradition, but is also capable of rejecting "the claims of tradition" for it "not only confirms but also breaks up dogmatic forces. Authority and knowledge do not converge" (p 358). By shifting "the balance between authority and reason," reason appears reducible to authority or consensus. Gadamer's hermenuetics, therefore, cannot detect the operations of domination and power. Habermas argues that social science must recognize that, while tradition and consensus are necessary aspects of social solidarity, they are also mediums through which power operates and thus also serve "to legitimate relations of organized force"
On Habermas's critique of Gadamer, it is clear that participant accounts of social life do not suffice as adequate interpretations or explanations. Participant accounts -- bounded by tradition as they are -- may simply reconstitute and solidify the authority of a tradition which legitimates domination. An interpretive social science which remains wedded merely to participants' accounts reifies and hypostatizes language and tradition. It fails to recognize how language is shaped by larger social processes of labor and domination: labor is the technical mastery of nature guided by the criterion of success and domination is manifest in social relations required for such mastery. "These two categories of constraint," Habermas contends, "are not only the object of interpretations; behind the back of language, they also affect the very grammatical rules according to which we interpret the world." An emancipatory social science must account for relations of domination and this requires a depth hermenuetics which reveals when consensus is premised on domination and distorted communication. An interpretive social science is necessary but not sufficient. Social science must also transcend the given-ness of language and tradition: it must develop theories of labor and domination which draw on, but also move beyond, participants' accounts. <...>
yadda fuckedety yadda.
maybe I'll write Wolfe and ask him to comment. heh!
Kelley
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