From: "hugh bone" <hbone-AT-optonline.net>
Subject: Dilemna
Date: Mon, 1 Jan 2001 02:12:03 -0500


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Denys,

The dilemna seems unsolvable  and seems to make you victim of an iatrogenic disease-from-cure situation.

Subject/object is only two thirds of subject / perception / object. 

George Lakoff and others are pointing out how thought is
limited by its physical embodiment. 

Quantum physics, almost a century old, highlighted the interference of subject/perceiver with the results of experiments conducted to determine "objective reality". 

Those who work for a living must be politically correct in or out of academia.   Can't see any way to solve this dilemna.

You could take a chance and "tell it like it is" instead of "telling it like they want it to be".

Your post is in itself a powerful statement.

Hugh Bone







  I am a post-grad student currently engaged in writing a thesis involving social policy analysis. It appears that those "powerful"  forces to which I am attached (and subservient) are demanding implicitly, and to a much lesser degree explicitly, adherence to forms of theorising that will acknowledge (and perpetuate) the existence of a single, or (at the very least) sets of, "objectified realities".

  My problem is this, the fundamental premise on which my research thesis rests is the assumption that certainties, as objective truths, have created dogmatic discourses as "realities", that has resulted in a set of particular public policies that have missed, become iatrogenic, or have become just downright brutal and destructive to those who have been subjected to them. It seems that I am expected to utilise an "accepted" objectified theoretical framework, as "the" tool of analysis and interpretation, when it is this that I am actually arguing against.

  I suspect that the demands for theoretical "tightness" as empirical, almost positivist, and therefore "legitimate scientific neutrality", involves more than a desire for validity and reliability and is primarily political rather than academic. I believe that these demands for "objective knowledge", therefore superior truthful or untainted knowledge, are more than just taking one side of a theoretical divide that has been described as the pervasive dichotomy between the devil of objectivity and the deep blue sea of relativism. I am aware that this issue will not be new to most of you however, I would be very interested to hear form those who are successfully managing to negotiate their way through it without having to give way to, or suffer the inherent restrictions of the all powerful, dominant discourses or the political requirements (agendas) of controlling institutions.

  DJ

HTML VERSION:

I am a post-grad student currently engaged in writing a thesis involving social policy analysis. It appears that those "powerful"  forces to which I am attached (and subservient) are demanding implicitly, and to a much lesser degree explicitly, adherence to forms of theorising that will acknowledge (and perpetuate) the existence of a single, or (at the very least) sets of, "objectified realities".

My problem is this, the fundamental premise on which my research thesis rests is the assumption that certainties, as objective truths, have created dogmatic discourses as "realities", that has resulted in a set of particular public policies that have missed, become iatrogenic, or have become just downright brutal and destructive to those who have been subjected to them. It seems that I am expected to utilise an "accepted" objectified theoretical framework, as "the" tool of analysis and interpretation, when it is this that I am actually arguing against.

I suspect that the demands for theoretical "tightness" as empirical, almost positivist, and therefore "legitimate scientific neutrality", involves more than a desire for validity and reliability and is primarily political rather than academic. I believe that these demands for "objective knowledge", therefore superior truthful or untainted knowledge, are more than just taking one side of a theoretical divide that has been described as the pervasive dichotomy between the devil of objectivity and the deep blue sea of relativism. I am aware that this issue will not be new to most of you however, I would be very interested to hear form those who are successfully managing to negotiate their way through it without having to give way to, or suffer the inherent restrictions of the all powerful, dominant discourses or the political requirements (agendas) of controlling institutions.

DJ