Money and stringsThe Natural History of a Talk

Michael Agarwww.ethknoworks.com

July 1, 2010

Initial request

The history behind methodological innovations and the processes and mechanisms of their development and diffusion

Initial hypotheses

Linked to technological innovation

Cross disciplinary boundaries

Use of existing theoretical approaches and methods in reformed or mixed and applied ways

Academic and non, though most have academic backgrounds

Dead end #1So I figure, this’ll be easy, I’ve done dozens of projects over the years, and practically all of them involve some kind of methodological innovation because I’m an ethnographer, and a critical part of ethnography is that methodology at time t+1 is emergent contingent on what you just learned at time t. It’s one of the reasons why ethnos often don’t have or want a separate methodology section in their writing. It makes no sense, since methodology is part of the story.. Narrative of discovery, like an intellectual mystery. Normal science of course can be written that way, too, but isn’t much.

So I’ll just pick some examples from the long list of successes and failures and compare and contrast the “processes and mechanisms” and look for commonalities.

That didn’t work.

Dead end #2Then Maria asks me for an abstract. I figure it’s the money, honey, like Willie Nelson sang, words below, and so I come up with the title, “Money and Strings” that being the heart of the non-academic life. The academic life, too, though they’re usually in denial--not lately in California.

If you got the money, honeyI've got the timeWe'll go honky-tonkin'And we're gonna have a timeWe'll make all the night spotsDance to the music, fineIf you got the money, honeyI've got the time

I figured I’d look at the material base of projects I’ve done and see what sorts of funding and project constraint mixtures resulted in successful innovations. I’m a neo-post-quasi stock-owning Marxist. I can do that.

That didn’t work, either.

Dead End #3

Then I got stuck in the concepts. What counts as a “method?” When is one

method an “innovation” as compared to another? When does diffusion

happen? When an idea works twice? When an article is accepted? When the

citation index exceeds a certain number? When the tabloids pick it up

and they make a movie out of it? When you win a prize for it?

Back up

I need to work backward from some really obvious positive cases to get a

model

What counts as really obvious positive cases of methodological innovations that diffused widely?

Rethink methodology with a capital “M”

Methodology means?

Merriam Webster online dictionary

1 : a body of methods, rules, and postulates employed by a discipline : a particular procedure or set of procedures2 : the analysis of the principles or procedures of inquiry in a particular field

Compact Oxford dictionary, web version

a system of methods used in a particular field.

Cambridge online dictionary

a system of ways of doing, teaching or studying something

Example of a methodology with a capital “m”

Mental model contrast is the figure

...in terms of intentionality/sociality

......which we can learn ethnograph-ically

.........and translate

............and implement

...............with human universals as the ground to the figure all along the way

Technology?

Audio/video recordersDesktop/laptopQDA software

GPS/GISVirtual social worldswww.everything.com

Diffusion, no question. Helpful, no question. But what exactly is the innovation? Do they change the way I understand and explain and intervene in the human

situation?

I use them all. They help work faster, better, smarter. But social research, as opposed to say brain science,

innovates more because of concepts, I think, than because of technology.

Ways of seeing with consequences for action

So if it’s not just technology, what does make social research light up the humanscape?

Robert Redfield, 1948

“a glimpse of the eternal in light of the ephemeral”

Is that a method?

It’s a way of doing social research

Bright moments in social research

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiOGEvSgqaA

(Rahsaan Roland Kirk performing Bright Moments)at 1:45

Bright moments are concepts that change how people see things, lead to new ideas and practices in several academic compartments and in a lot of

other places as well.

Few examplesSchema

Grounded Theory

Presentation of Self

Fuzzy Sets

These are concepts that make a difference in how we see a problem and work on it

Sounds like the philosophy called pragmatism

pragmatism--jamesA glance at the history of the idea will show you still better what pragmatism means. The term is derived from the same Greek word pragma, meaning action, from which our words ‘practice’ and ‘practical’ come. It was first introduced into philosophy by Mr. Charles Peirce in 1878. In an article entitled How to Make Our Ideas Clear, in the Popular Science Monthly for January of that year Mr. Peirce, after pointing out that our beliefs are really rules for action, said that, to develop a thought’s meaning, we need only determine what conduct it is fitted to produce: that conduct is for us its sole significance. And the tangible fact at the root of all our thought-distinctions, however subtle, is that there is no one of them so fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference of practice. To attain perfect clearness in our thoughts of an object, then, we need only consider what conceivable effects of a practical kind the object may involve – what sensations we are to expect from it, and what reactions we must prepare. Our conception of these effects, whether immediate or remote, is then for us the whole of our conception of the object, so far as that conception has positive significance at all.

This is the principle of Peirce, the principle of pragmatism.

pragmatism--pierce

Pragmatism. The opinion that metaphysics is to be largely cleared up by the application of the following maxim for attaining clearness of apprehension: Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.

What does all this mean for the core questions of the workshop?

Method innovation = new concept with consequences for action

Let’s talk about Artificial Societies, Agent-Based Models, and Complexity

Diffusion = concept serves multiple interests

Assuming that social research is about how the human world works, and allowing for aligned

interests, diffusion of new concepts with consequences should be frequent and powerful. It

is not. Why not?

This has confused me since I left the university in the mid 1990s. I make a living talking about a

shared problem, in a common language, but in a different way. It’s not that hard to do, with positive

effects, but it is usually hard to implement.

History = enable evolution

The workshop hypotheses are right on. Cross-disciplinary (trans-disciplinary) and reconfiguration

of available material with outside university diversity. Evolution.

Fonseca’s complex responsive processes and Lane’s generative relationships are complexity org models

that show how this can work in day-to-day organizational discourse

How?Main problem: Universities and Governments are the last of

the hierarchical top down maladaptive dinosaurs, yet governments are the traditional source of funding and

universities are the traditional source of conceptual innovation

3 things

The Franklin principle--Long term thinking(Remember the time lag in the bright moment examples)

Think tanks containing fluid rather than concreteSocial action oriented support

Can structure follow strategy?

The end

Closing statement to be added