Born on: September 5, 1999

WELCOME TO MODULE 1: DECONSTRUCTION ANALYSIS and ETHNOSTATISTICS

Quick Jump to sections of this module

Title of s web page -->Narrative Methods for Organizational and Communication Research
by David M. Boje, Ph.D.
Purpose: a web resource library of qualitative materials, exercises, and study guides to supplement the (2001) book titled Narrative Methods for Organizational and Communication Research. London: Sage Publications. See Amazon to order book and/or read book review.

Each module on this web site will tackle a different analysis in Narrative Analysis for Management and Communication Research (hereafter NA). Then we situate that analysis in its philosophy of science context - (press here) for summary table.

Readings Index & Abbreviations Explained (All Modules)

  1. NA Narrative Analysis for Management and Communication Research (book) by Boje (2001) the modules that follow are keyed to the chapters of this book.

  2. HQR: Handbook of Qualitative Research by Denzin & Lincoln (can buy the soft cover books; excellent book for background on methods and qualitative philosophies of science).

  3. ES: Ethnostatistics by Gephart (this book transcends all false dichotomies of qualitative and quantitative).

  4. WC: Writing Culture by Clifford & Marcus (optional good for intermediate).

  5. PO: Participant Observation by Spradley (optional good for beginners).

  6. GC: Greening Culture by Herndl & Brown (optional great for very advanced QM writing).

  7. FG: Focus Group text by Krueger (required for Marketing, optional for others).

Required and Background Reading for Introduction to this Module (bold = required).

Introduction to Assignment 1 and Deconstruction

Objective: Please learn that there are several approaches to deconstruction. In this module you will explore two: (1) The Derrida approach [Chapter 1 of NA book], (2) Gephart's Ethnostatistics, based upon Garfinkel's Ethnomethodology approach.  There is a third approach by Burke. Note in the next module we will learn a third approach, deconstructing grand narratives. 

The first assignment gets you to deconstruct your interrogation of you, and your petit recite. Purpose of this assignment (in Burkean sense) is to let you experience what it feels like to be interviewed, so you can empathize with Others you will interview in future assignments.

Required Assignment: Buy a tape recorder; get a good external microphone). Conduct an interview with yourself. This is a dialectic between you as interviewer (interrogator) and you as subject (submitting to the demand to construct, recite, and deconstruct your narrative). Tape it and transcribe it. Keep it 30 minutes (stop at 31). Use precise and rigorous transcription (use line numbers, record length of pauses, be exact in disclosing umms, ahhs, and strange phrasing - we are seldom grammatically perfect in oral presentation; please do not edit out all the missteps or self-interruptions - that is where the analysis is most interesting).  Interview you on  your work life story, but not an abstracted resume; include some conflicted situations about you. Decide how big your JoHari window will be? (What selves do you disclose and hide?). Can be work-related selves if you prefer. Deconstruct your story using at least three steps in Chapter 1 of Narrative Methods (NM), then whatever steps you use please resituate your story, that is get out from under some duality or oppression and restory. 

Post all your assignment answers on Web CT ( http://salsa.nmsu.edu/ ), apply readings below. You should find QM661 on your list of courses - if not contact Boje or use Aggie359 (code=adventure). 

How to approach the assignment: do at least steps 1 to 3, 4 if you are beginner, and 5 if you are advanced and want to move beyond deconstruction.

Readings (Please pick two to comment on in class):

ADVICE - THE REST OF THE LINKS AND READINGS IN THIS ON LINE STUDY GUIDE ARE OPTIONS FOR YOU TO EXPLORE. PLEASE DO SOME INDEPENDENT READING BELOW AND BRING YOUR RESULTS TO CLASS SO YOU ARE READY TO DIALOG - IF you know deconstruction, you can skip to PART I- Thanks David. 

Role of self in Analysis  Return to Index

"Deconstructing Las Vegas" special issue: (Please pick two to comment on in class).

Readings below are optional (handouts may or may not be used):

MORE ON DECONSTRUCTION

More Web Resources (do not go everywhere on web, but do go someplace)

Recommended if you want to work deeper.

Operation Management Readings (for those with this major).

 

PART I of Module 1 - Deconstruction in relation to Ethnostatistics - Derrida, Gephart & Burke

How does Derrida differ from Gephart? This is the main focus of this study guide. To answer the question you need to define terms and contrast approaches.

How does Gephart define Ethnostatistics? -  “Here, I [Gephart] define ethnostatistics as the study of the construction, interpretation, and display of statistics in quantitative social research” (1988: 9). The term ethnostatistics refers to “the study of how statistics are actually constructed and used, particularly in scientific research” (p. 10). Ethno means “actual behavior, and the informal subcultural, folk, or ethnic knowledge and activities of statistics producers and users” (p. 10). Finally, “ethnostatistics is concerned with the mundane, everyday life practices, and the lay and professional knowledge necessary to implement and use statistics” (p. 10); “describing, analyzing, explaining, and understanding how statistics are actually accomplished and used in the research process” (p. 11).

What are three moments of the ethnostatistics analysis?

  1. First Order - Construction/production of the statistics; how statistics are produced; the meanings and contexts involved in producing variables and statistics. Reductionism: Individual stories (life scripts) and social practices are reduced to numbers. Numbers mean different experiences to different people. Gephart recommends expansion analysis as a way to be sensitive to face validity in studying First-order ethnostatistics (p. 20-21). There are many intermediaries in some collection methods. Some managers, workers, customers, and experts have little time to answer researcher’s questions. There are many technical aspects to producing statistics that are not reported in write-ups.  Finally, the socialization of graduate students, the stages of learning to produce and use statistics is a topic for study.
  2. Second Order - Statistics at work – selection and use of particular statistical techniques to manipulate data; yet, the research and the inventors of the statistical package have differing assumptions. “Second-Level ethnostatistical studies take the perspective of the user of quantitative methods and statistical procedures, to discover and assess the limits of particular quantitative/statistical practices” (p. 29). This includes using quantitative methods to assess how the research, subject, measurement instrument, or the social context of measurement effects measurement outcomes and statistical results and findings. It includes how the statistical packages are used in ways that have many collectively agreed assumptions by the research community (e.g. Why is .05 the level?; why not .03 or .07?). 

    • What assumptions is the researcher making in using a statistical technique. Some assumptions are quite problematic. Some researchers make lack the technical knowledge and training necessary to understand the mathematics of the statistics.  Second-level would challenge taken-for-granted assumptions. And even look at reputation careers built on use of specific techniques.

      Assumptions (there are more that the following):

      1. Random selection is not generally possible in treatment conditions, so quasi-experimental designs are used.
      2. Quasi-experimental designs assume experimental controls are operative
      3. Unmeasured selectivity, the nonrandom factors such as personal choice that affect subject selection and impact dependent variables.
      4. Causation is not always symmetrical.
      5. Ordinal versus interval measure assumptions.
      6. Parametric and non-parametric assumptions
      7. Assuming that people are rational beings capable of assigning quantitative values to qualitative phenomena consistently and reliable using criteria (or meanings) desired by the researcher (p. 35).
      8. Assuming response categories are interpreted in the same way by different people; assuming different subjects have similar meanings to the same values and variables.
      9. Assuming phenomena are being measuring have real quantitative underlying dimensions that correspond directly to measurement scales
      10. Assuming that subjects can report true values.
      11. Assuming people have complete information, behave consistently, and can assign numbers to experiences,
      12. Some subjects have a wide range of values and others will report a more restricted range (p. 36).
      13. Constructing parsimonious path models requires assumptions and ad hoc assessment criteria: (1) the value of coefficients to be included or not, (2) the deletion or inclusion of paths based on the theory of the researcher; (3) ad hoc decision criteria of the researcher.
      14. Two different researchers using the same data may produce quite different causal or path models because of variability in decision practices (p. 46).
      15. Ad hoc criteria change in research communities over time, with what is fashionable and in vogue.
    • There are many other assumptions: search the article you deconstruct for each assumption made. 
  3. Third Order - Statistics as rhetoric - interpretative and impression management practices. Texts are deconstructed using literary criticism to explicate underling literary practices that accomplish the meanings evident in the texts. This includes philosophical and epistemological problems involved in using quantitative methods, and interpreting them. This can involve issues of face validity. This does not mean statistical is rhetorical. Rather, there are textual practices of interpretation and construction used in write ups, such as tropes, metaphors, metonym, synecdoche, irony, and storytelling (p. 49). A good source is McCloskey’s (1985) work on deconstructing significance tests (see Gephart, p. 50-51). A key concept is selectivity. It can apply to first-order - what measures, subjects, constructs, operational approaches get selected and not selected (expresses the signature of the author). In second order the tests are selective. In third order, there is much selectivity. 
    • Selectivity - Again selectivity and indexicality apply (p. 51). Gephart recommends deconstructing journal articles to recontextualize their content (p. 52). Look at how quotes are used, how the author’s voice is established (or its signature hidden), how past literature is used to create reasons for the study’s existence. These are traces of the work, in order to reconstruct the author’s beliefs, understandings, knowledge, and rhetorical style. Gephart suggests looking at categorical and regrouping errors that are indexical to meanings (p. 57). Finally, he looks at indexicals that are study-specific practices (p. 59).

Gephart frequently says he is tracing and deconstructing the construction, interpretive, and rhetorical steps of the statistical researcher. He relies on two important ethnomethod concepts:

Indexicality - The indexicality and reflexivity of social order; i.e., action is meaningful in context, but the particularities of the context, and thus is a significant way, the context itself are/is emergent. “The term indexicality refers to the fact that all human interpretive work is bound to the context in which it occurs” (Pfohl, 1985: 283). It is through our research work that reality gets constructed.

Contextuality  - indexing to a social, political, historical or economic situation, which we think others share or do not share. Context is dynamic and changing, as well as emergent, and self-deconstructing. Stories amplify context; variables rip away context.

OK, answer the question - how do Derrida and Gephart's deconstruction differ? The analytic moves are different. Gephart is not searching for dualities (but finds many), nor is he tracing, but instead is looking at constructing processes of the individual (subject) that get fudged in reductionistic ways in the first order, fudged uses of statistics in the second order, and fudged uses of rhetoric in third-order. Derrida is looking at a combination of on-going systemic deconstructions (the entropy of the textual process and intertextual) i.e. the ways the text is deconstructing; Gephart is not looking there. Rather, in ethnomethodology the assumption is that a great deal of ambiguity and nonsense is mead sensible by attributions (illusory correlation as an example). Gephart stays true to a Garfinkel perspective. One continuity is Gephart is resituating (a Derridian move) the hegemony of statistics over qualitative, by reversing the claims; i.e. tracing what is subjective and not entirely rigorous or objective in the operational, statistical, and interpretive work of the quantitative researchers. Gephart looks at how statistical researchers appropriate the life story of the "subject" reducing it to numbers, then dazzling the uneducated or statistical challenged with numeric arrays and tests of fit; finally returning to substitute a signature-story (a researcher's story) for the stories that have been abbreviated, fragmented, and tortured.. Both Derrida and Gephart resurrect the story that has been killed. In sum, there are continuities between  Derrida and Gephart, but important differences. 

How does Derrida differ from Burkean Deconstruction? This is a more advance question. You may not derive an answer in this next week or your entire life time. For the curious reader, a fourth approach to deconstruction, is the of Kenneth Burke. Burke resituates the dialectic not that of Hegel, but Aristotle's so as to become a counter approach to Marx's dialectic. Marx said he turned Hegel's dialectic on its ear, by replacing spirit with material condition; Burke says Marx is not doing a dialectic, but searching for a universal truth (see next study module on Grand Narrative). Burke in a sort of postmodern move looks at dialectic as still pre-mod in the Aristotle sense, but also modern, and beyond, yet without a teleological engine, such as Spirit (of Hegel's approach) or Material Condition (of Marx's approach). And for Burke, instead of synthesis of Hegel, or resituation of Derrida, or dismissive of Grand Narrative of Lyotard, there is an exploration of the middle in ways that allow for transcendence.  

So answer the question - OK, Burke and Derrida have some continuities and differences. Both resituate Marx's dialectic. Both see that unbundling the clusters of terms at the extremes of the binary allows tracing the hierarchies as well as the ways some terms connect at the middle. Both refuse to fall into the trap of universalisms. Burke differs from Derrida, in a search for values that provide a local and in some ways (but not all ways) common ground. 

Links

References discussing Burke

In sum, there are many ways to craft deconstruction. In this module the focus is on Derrida and Gephart. Understanding the variety of approaches to dialectic is good grounding for deconstruction. People are forever deconstructing Aristotle and Marx's approaches to dialectic and proposing their own.

PART II of Module 1 - Deconstruction in relation to Ethnomethodology and Ethnostatistics - Where do numbers come from?

Relationship between quantitative and qualitative methods

Assignment:2  Where do numbers come from (their subjective qualities), and how appropriate are the statistics used? Pick the top quantitative journal article in your field of study, and answer both questions. Keep this to 3 pages and turn in at this class. 

Post your answer on Web CT ( http://salsa.nmsu.edu/ ), apply and cite readings below. You should find QM661 on your list of courses - if not contact Boje or use Aggie359 (code=adventure). 

Readings to apply to your answer and make these required readings sing in your in class dialog:

ROBERT GEPHART is a professor at University of Alberta robert.gephart@ualberta.ca 

Questions we shall definitely explore in class:

  1. What is ethnostatistics?

  2. What is ethnomethodology?

  3. What is indexicality?

  4. What is the spiral of indexicality and reflexivity?  (apply to your statistical journal).

  5. How would Garfinkel define a `social fact'? Ritzer p. 374 (Ritzer, George, Sociological Theory, third edition, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1992). 

 

Web Resources to Answer above questions: (Please be able to answer questions above for class using Gephart's book or digging further below)).


Recommended

    Ely, Robin J. The power in demography: Women's social constructions of gender identity at work. Academy of Management Journal. 38(3): 589-634.

    Yu, Chong Ho (2001). Misconceived relationships between logical positivism and quantitative research: An analysis in the framework of Ian Hacking. Presentation at American Educational Research Association, Seattle, WA. On line at http://seamonkey.ed.asu.edu/~alex/computer/sas/positivism.html 

Theatre of Capitalism Stream CMS 2003 of the 2003 Critical Management Conference in the UK - also continues what we discuss in class 

How to understand One? Part of the work, for me has been to look at Society of the Spectacle (DeBord) and look at connections to McDonaldization (Ritzer), and Las Vegasization (see Managing Special Issue http//www.dmsp.dauphine.fr/management/). I think there is a need to look at a critical theory of theatre of capitalism. It would for example look at Marcuse and One-Dimensional Man, connect up with Augusto Boal to look at how Spectacle theatrics becomes a one-dimensional theatre, one that reduces and marginalizes the dialectic, truncating it to positivity (by banning the negative). Boal for example points out that Dale Carnagie is engaged in what Marcuse would call "positivism," and one that is decidedly Machiavellian. His remark put be onto a search to understand why Boal would say such a thing (The assertion appears in Theatre of the Oppressed). He is talking of the American disciples of Machiavelli, having just analyzed the play Mandragola.

And today his American disciples, inspirers of that exemplary line of the theatre and movies - Dale Carnegie and others - cannot avoid the comical element inevitably involved in their advice, expressed in books of the type of How to Make Your Wife Keep on Loving You Tenderly, Even After She's Go a Lover Who's a Much Better Guy Than You Are. If the reader would forgive the absurdity of the comparison, we would say that both Machiavelli and Dale Carnegie preach the slogan "Where there's a will there's a way" -- the former with all the seriousness of a class in the process of imposing itself; the second as a present-day Yankee (Boal, 1973 78).

For me the inquiry in theatre is to look at how it is the dialectic is reduced to positivism, in works that purport all is won through Positive Mental Attitude, while rejecting negativity, a term often applied to critical theory.

Those of you who took up the challenge of understanding ONE, and have the Marcuse book, please continue the dialogue - Thanks David


Part III - ETHNOSTATISTICS and Rhetoric analysis

This Module will focus on ETHNOSTATISTICS

 Assignment 3: The third question of ethnostatistics is to deconstruct the rhetorical claims and table interpretations in your selected journal article.  Keep this to 3 pages and turn in at this class. Cite several of the following in your assignment. 

 

APPENDIX A - VALIDITY= See http://trochim.human.cornell.edu/kb/measval.htm for detailed definitions.  

See application of following to Nike case

Construct validity refers to the degree to which inferences can legitimately be made from the operationalizations in your study to the theoretical constructs on which those operationalizations were based. Two types: Translation and Criterion.

Translation validity - focus on whether the operationalization is a good reflection of the construct. In includes

Criterion-related validity - examine whether the operationalization behaves the way it should given your theory of the construct. It includes:

External validity involves generalizing from your study context to other people, places or times.  

http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/nike/nike_pages/reliability_and_validity.html 

 


 

MODULE - 2 Grand Narrative Analysis     or (use menu to your left)