Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Travel

The pain of traveling--getting to airports, picking up rental cars, checking in to motels. All for the sake of a conference which may or not be interested in taking organizational writing into this century!!!!

Hopefully I have put this class in a position where everyone is starting to develop a comfort level with their proposals. Ultimately, writing and writing research have their solitary moments, and it seems like most of us are getting ready to enter that space!

Here is a link to J.D.'s We've missed him in class lately, but here is the link: http://windowclosing.blogspot.com



Thursday, October 21, 2004

Progress!

Today I took a step closer to actually getting this book project on track.

I turned in my proposal for a Purdue Summer Grant. If I receive this grant I will receive summer research support to work on the learning history project which will form a chapter in the book I want to write. A summer without teaching responsibilities would mean I would have more than three months to devote to the project. And while I will have to do some work to prepare for Fall classes, Most of this 13 weeks or so would be devoted to the project. A finished chapter would bring the book proposal one step closer to being ready for submission!

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

The Big Lie!

Why do I care about all this "systems thinking," all these analytical techniques? What does it mean to us as people, as writers trying to make meaning in the world?

As I mentioned when I began writing this blog, I am using it to answer the question, "what do I need to know?" Like my friend, who I mentioned early on, I have sometimes doubted myself, doubted whether I have anything to say. By searching for an answer to the question, "what do I need to know?," I have concluded that yes, I do have something to say. And I believe it is something of great importance to every human being. I need to say something about "the great lie."

We began talking about research with a consideration of time and space. Why? Because, very simply, we exist as individuals at the intersection of a point in time, and a point in space, what we might call the "here and now." We think we understand the here and now. But usually we do not. Einstein's relativity taught us that time and space were one, were part of a great continuum. But we don't think of that marvelous discovery as having any application into our life in the "here and now." It is just "Theory," with a capital "T."

Too often we see ourselves as anchored to a past, with a future determined by the limitations of the present. We don't understand that, while we lived through a specific past, there were virtually an infinite number of possible pasts, just as there are virtually an infinite number of possible futures. The here and now is a possibility engine. We choose where this engine will take us.

Why don't we go where we want to go? Why don't we do what we want to do? We don't control our futures because we have bought in to a great lie. The great lie is this: "You aren't free. You can't have your dreams. There is only one future to seize, so you must compromise your dreams." This is a lie. It is a lie that is used to enslave you. It is a lie which is promoted by an endless set of social structures-governments, belief systems, schools, social roles we are expected to enact. A subset of the lie is this--if you recognize that these systems are out to control you, then you are asked to believe the sub-lie--that you can't beat the system.

Another great thinker of the 20th century, Michel Foucault, exposed the truth about this lie. He studied they way in which society has set up systems of surveillance, how those systems are designed to control us. However, he also pointed out that those systems were not inherently evil, and monolithic. Those systems were made by people. They can be changed by people.

However, in order to change those systems, you must understand them. Those who do not analyze systems, those who do not practice their freedom on a daily basis, those who do not seek to understand and change the system, those who do not continually yearn towards their vision of the future, those individuals enslave themselves to the system.

We write for understanding. We write to create a vision. Since vision is the fuel of the future, the fuel of the possibility engine, you might say writing is the key which turns on that engine!

"But what about others?" If we follow our vision, aren't we imposing our will on others? Isn't this unethical? It certainly can be. Here is Foucault's answer:

"I do not think a society can exist without power relations, if by that one means the strategies by which individuals try to direct and control the conduct of others. The problem, then, is to try not to dissolve them in the utopia of completely transparent communication but to acquire the rules of law, the management techniques, and also the morality, the ethos, the practice of the self, that will allow us to play these games of power with as little domination as possible" (298).

It is "self-governance." It is the "practice of freedom." It is seizing the vision, the possibility, of understanding and questioning domination at every level of one's life.

Reference

Foucault, Michel. Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. Ed. Raul Rabinow. Tr. Robert Hurley and others. New York: The New Press, 1997.

Monday, October 11, 2004

Systems Thinking and Activity Theory

The best way for me to describe how Vygotskian activity theory can be used as a tool for genre analysis, is to take you to David Russell's classic essay http://www.public.iastate.edu/~drrussel/at&genre/at&genre.html from which I will quote:

"An activity system is any ongoing, object-directed, historically-conditioned, dialectically-structured, tool-mediated human interaction: a family, a religious organization, an advocacy group, a political movement, a course of study, a school, a discipline, a research laboratory, a profession, and so on. These activity systems are mutually (re)constructed by participants using certain tools and not others (including discursive tools such as speech sounds and inscriptions)...The activity system is the basic unit of analysis for both groups' and individuals' behavior, in that it analyzes the way concrete tools are used to mediate the motive (direction, trajectory) and the object (the "problem space" or focus) of behavior and changes in it"

Activity diagrams require the analyst to define the subject, or agent, whose writing is being considered; the exigency, or motive for the writing; the mediational means, or tools being used, including words and medium. Furthermore, activity analysis of a "genre" might include several such systems. In Russell's article which analyzes an "intermediate cell biology course" as a genre, or type of "course," the system includes three subsystems: a subsystem of researchers who are writing and reveiwing scientific articles on teh subject; a subsystem of teachers who are using textbooks, as well as the scientific article to teach the subject; and a subsystem of university administrators who maintain the infrastructure, the rules for grading and class attendance, and the accredidation of the course. Each of these subsystems are also related to other activity systems.

Activity diagrams such as those in Russell's article make visible the complex relationship between writer, audience, text, information, and tools which we call "rhetoric." When learning a new genre, they point us towards knowledge we need in order to gain expertise with the activity of the genre syste,.

Russell, David R. "Rethinking Genre in School and Society: An Activity Theory Analysis." http://www.public.iastate.edu/~drrussel/at&genre/at&genre.html

Sunday, October 03, 2004

The Fifth Discipline

The heart of Senge's book advocates using a "systems approach" to organizational decision making, rather than simplistic analysis strategies. Acoording to Senge: "The essence of the discipline of systems thinking lies in a shift of mind:
  • seeing interrelationships rather than linear cause-effect chains, and
  • seeing processes of change rather than snapshots" (73).

While I agree with Senge's conclusions, his use of the causal loops of system's engineering strike me as far more useful to analzing markets and supply relationships than it is to analyzing the kind of rhetorical relationships we see in writing.

So where does that leave me--do four of the disciplines apply to rhetoric and writing, but not the fifth--systems thinking?

I do believe that all five disciplines apply--just that for rhetorical situations, a more complex type of systems analysis is required. I think we need to understand the way texts function as parts of what Vygotskian psychologists call activity systems. I will discuss this in more detail in my next blog entry.