I think I've finally chosen my topic and I really want to look at the women in Tonga. Specifically, through cultural social interactions during weaving and tapa cloth making groups. The type of study I want to do is an ethnographic/anthropological type research. I choose this because when studying culture and people, it shouldn't be a scientific approach like you would go about to study a plant or a microorganism. Doing such research only adds knowledge to the field as a paradigm*, and when I say paradigm in this context I mean that science is only a theory upon theory until an "end" of true pure knowledge is reached. An end that I would argue not only doesn't exist (how would we even know WHEN we reached it if we did?), but is unreachable when studying people. People are not objects and have the capacity to change don't exist as one entity that "are" but rather they are "being." The advantages to an anthropological study is this is that I will be able to interact with the group and the culture in order to understand them better. I really want to be able to get to know the culture and understand their way of thinking, as it is completely different then mine from values, in terms of how the they think and how they feel about their social surroundings. Also, I will be able to have more access to the people's knowledge and feelings through getting to know them, rather than just watching them or giving them a survey. I feel like this is really the best way to understand their culture.
As I am doing research, there is not a whole lot of socio-research concerning interactions between women. This is a bad thing for my literature review but a good thing for my project because I will be able to research something that hasn't really been looked at before. Some questions I have concerning my topic are as follows:
How do the women view themselves in terms of others?
Are Tongan people mostly individual or collective people?
Do women value their relationship with other women like them?
Do they ostracize women that are "different"?
How do they maintain relationships with other people or women outside of their weaving groups?
*paradigm- The word has come to refer very often now to a thought pattern in any scientific discipline or other epistemological context. The Merriam-Webster Online dictionary defines this usage as "a philosophical and theoretical framework of a scientific school or discipline within which theories, laws, and generalizations and the experiments performed in support of them are formulated; broadly: a philosophical or theoretical framework of any kind."[5] -Wikipedia
I provide this definition since the definition we have been using in class is something very different than how it is used in sociology.
I like the idea of matching methods to subjects (i.e. studying something that is "being" and fluid, by "being" and being fluid with it in your method to understand it). I wonder if such a principle has application for other research types and subjects, whether a formal scientific method is applied or not. Any ideas on this?
ReplyDeleteYour definition intrigued me so I thought I would throw out another couple of definitions of paradigm for the fun of it:
"A model or framework for observation and understanding, which shapes both what we see and how we understand it." (Babbie)
And from Wikipedia: "Another use of the word paradigm is in the sense of Weltanschauung (German for world view). For example, in social science, the term is used to describe the set of experiences, beliefs and values that affect the way an individual perceives reality and responds to that perception. Social scientists have adopted the Kuhnian phrase "paradigm shift" to denote a change in how a given society goes about organizing and understanding reality. A “dominant paradigm” refers to the values, or system of thought, in a society that are most standard and widely held at a given time. Dominant paradigms are shaped both by the community’s cultural background and by the context of the historical moment." - Wikipedia
The history of usage for the word "paradigm" is an interesting one in the context of different sciences (i.e. hard science, social science, etc.). I guess for our purposes in class we tend to refer to paradigm as more of a personal paradigm or framework that guides our individual perception. I hadn't thought much about it before, but I suppose a cultural value could be considered a dominant paradigm. I'll have to think more on the relationship between these two terms - let me know if you have any insight for me.
Ashley, this sort of principle doesn't realy apply in any other scientific setting. It really only applies to the study of people, and maybe even animals. Science has this positivist approach in that there is a method set in stone to discover "truth" which you must follow exactly. That is why it would never work for people. I just think that it can't apply to people since it assumes that people aren't changing or have the capacity to be different than that moment in which you studied them.
ReplyDeleteI guess paradigm can kind of mean both, I mean we have a paradigm within our culture, but it is changing constantly. Like Hegel would say, we have a thesis (what our culture is) and then along comes an antithesis (a deviant idea) and then the two come together to form a new thesis, or a synthesis.
It's kind of like science, where a long time ago we KNEW the world was flat until someone came along and proved it was round. This is why I have a problem with scientific and positivist approaches to knowledge, because we never know when we will reach the actual truth, since it keeps changing! Thanks Ashley!
Michelle, Thanks for replying. I agree that the principle is probably less-frequently applied in other scientific settings, but I still wonder if it could be; that perhaps the issue you take with positivism extends beyond trouble studying humans. If the issue is that people are constantly changing, then the problem ought to apply to other elements of the environment that are changing, right? Perhaps our inability to communicate as clearly with some of these things would make it impossible to apply a different method, but, I still wonder if we could piece it together conceptually. Or maybe there is some other component I'm not thinking of that would challenge my question entirely.
ReplyDeleteI like your thoughts on paradigmatic changes. When you say a paradigm is changing constantly do you mean essentially that it is influenced by experience? Previous studies on development have led me to question where the antitheses come from. How often do people bump into antitheses? To what degree can they be avoided or controlled? etc.
Thank you for writing with me, it has been fun to read your thoughts.