theory from the quadrants · the episteme in the context of culture • the semiotic–the system...

Theory from the Quadrants

©2003-2013 JAA

?With Little Green as Your Guide

Components of Interpretive Research

• The interpreter – Culturally located acting agent

• Ontology of identity and subjectivity • Epistemology of truth making

– Performing some recognizable action line • Praxeology of conventions • Practices of research/scholarship

– To accomplish some member-approved goal • Axiology of research • Personal return

• The object of interpretation—Anything meaningful to the interpreter and the argument

– Encoded vs. extracted – Level of intentionality (e.g., autonomic to purposeful) – Level of collaboration (e.g., congregate to aggregate)

• The argument from interpretation – Master contract, forms, conventions, practical expression – Claims, evidence, warrants – Contribution and instrumentality

The Episteme

Experiential

Tribal

Authority

Arguments from authority, revelation, inspiration, local

practice, common sense

Arguments from ideation, social

construction, standpoint empiricism

Enlightened, Empirical, Realist Material, Causal, Deterministic, Reductionistic, moving toward

certainty and closure

Enlightenment

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What is the Episteme?

Characteristics of Transition • Failure of the “Unity of Knowledge” hypothesis

– Science no longer the single answer – Persistence of the semiotic distinction – Participation of scholarship in objects of study – Social sciences fail to (cannot) converge

• Recognition of multiple paradigms – Foundational/Reflexive – Methodological Individualism/Methodological Holism

• Development of disciplinary domains – New fields of study – Explosive fractioning of existing fields

• Contested ownership of knowledge – Value driven scholarship (closing Hume’s gap) – Rejection of the primacy of material science

• Knowledge as politically stitched together – What counts as knowledge depends on local conditions – Cultural studies, feminism, critical theory

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The Episteme in the Context of Culture

• The semiotic–the system of meaning in language and action

• The epistemic–the system of truth-making • The ethical–the system of right and wrong • The aesthetic–the system of beauty • The economic–the system of value exchange • The political–the system of allocation • The social--the system of self, other, and

relationships

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An Ontology of Theory • Theory is a tool for the creation of public knowledge • The truth of a theory rests in its instrumentality • Provides (more or less) systematic instructions for conducting scholarship

and other practical work • Does four kinds of work

– Ontological—Creates the object of analysis – Epistemological—Establishes the terms of knowing: claim, evidence, warrants – Praxeological—constitutes the methods of evidence production, reasoning,

argument – Axiological—Creates justification

• Theories reside in “epistemic communities” (communities of the episteme) of differing cultural principles and practices

• Episteme is the current domain of knowledge practice • Theory creation is also a principle activity of the practice of scholarship

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What is Theory?

Requirements of a Theory

• An object of its explanation (its ontology) – Explicit – Implicit

• An explanatory form (its epistemology) • A method of connecting evidence to claim (its

praxeology) • Consequence of value (its axiology) • It will generate characteristic explanations with a

scope of performance (its pragmatics)

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What is Theory?

Connecting the Dots

•Theory must have an object of its explanation (ontology), •an explanatory form (epistemology), •a method to relate evidence to claim (praxeology), •characteristic explanations (practical expression) •within a scope of performance (axiology), •and a consequence of value (political action).

Theory is a set of discursive propositions that provides instructions for the execution of its terms.

These instructions can accommodate both true and false executions.

The truth of a proposition appears in its performance.

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What is Theory?

Axes of Human Theory

Enlightenment Experiential

Authority Tribal

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The Quads

Axes of Human Theory

Axiomatic, causal

Objective, metric

Generalized, syllogistic

Grounded, Interactional

Subjective, hermeneutic

Local, enthymematic

Formal, logical

Authoritarian, Universal

Global, rational

Standpoint, constructed

Critical ideological

Cultural, political

Modernist:

Certainty

Causality

Closure

Postmodernist:

Agency

Erasure

Indeterminacy

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The Quads

Philosophical Communities in Communication ?

The Quads

Defining Characteristics ?

The Quads

Axes Scholars

Technically trained, has superior epistemological method, disconnected from theory/protocol, disassociated from participants

Technically trained, has specialized epistemological method, is the instrument, resonates with theory/protocol, seeks membership

Technically trained, uses essentialist epistemological method, has true consciousness, "voice in the wilderness" positioning

Technically trained, uses standpoint epistemological method, achieves critical consciousness, exercises political leadership of stakeholders

Modernist:

Certainty

Causality

Closure

Postmodernist:

Agency

Erasure

Indeterminacy

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The Quads

Axes Subjects

Naive, passive container, "less than," exploitable, subject/participant, innocent, vulnerable

Sophisticated, active agent, "more than," informant/guide, complicit, dangerous

Deceived, oppressed, "less than," to be emancipated, resistant, in false consciousness

Practical, subjugated, "equal to," member/soldier, supportive, accepting

Modernist:

Certainty

Causality

Closure

Postmodernist:

Agency

Erasure

Indeterminacy

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The Quads

Theory Types

Causal

Systems

Analytic

Critical

Interactive

Autopoietic

Cultural

Radical

Foundational /Empirical

Foundational /Analytical

Reflexive /Empirical

Reflexive /Analytical

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The Quads

Example of Cognitivism

• Foundational • Causal (no agency recognized) • Human Behavior is the effect • Cognitive structure is the cause • Methodological individualism • Static (does not reflect on process; does not

account for time)

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Basic Cognitivist Theory ?

Foundationalism > Cognitivism

Material Practices of Socialization

Operate on the Brain/Mind

Cognitive Structure Deterministic and Constructivistic Variants

Observable Behavioral Outcome

Empirical Barrier

Maps, Scripts, Schemata ?


A Simple Script: Two structures

joined by a causal connection

Predicts

A Simple Set of Behaviors:

Two behavioral elements joined by a

causal connection

Playing a Script ?


Cognitivist Mind ?


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Cognitivist Terminology

• Elements – Attitudes – Values – Expectancies – Aptitudes – Traits – Norms – Goals – Motivations

• Connections – Paths – Links – Chains – Constellations – Clusters – Dimensions – Scripts – Schemata – Maps

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Alternative Forms • Cognitive Maps • Constructivism • Schema Theory • Attribution Theory • Media Effects Theories • Uses and Gratifications • Message Production

Theories • Message Reception

Theories

• Expectancy Violations • Interpersonal Deception • Constructivism • Social Penetration • Uncertainty Reduction • Elaboration Likelihood • Agenda Setting • Cognitive dissonance • Media Equation • Uncertainty management

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Example from Critical Theory • Critical theories are emancipatory and often political (enter

political practice) • Called “Linchpin” or “Critical Issue” theories

– Marxism (class), Feminism (gender), Identity (race, ethnicity), Critical Theory (media)

• Typically non-empirical (but resonating); argue from philosophical authority (reasoning from universals)

• Characterized by essentializing descriptions, monolithic characterizations, etc.

• Static: uses formal analysis; rarely engages actual practices • Operates at societal or cultural level of explanation

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Basic Form of the Frankfurt School Dominant Interests

Means of Production and Media

Commodification of the Individual; massification of

consciousness

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Emancipatory > Critical Theory

Primacy of the Message

Ubiquity of media

Disguised interests

Story consistency and constancy

Resistance control

Passivity of audience

Reproduction of dominant interests

False consciousness

Commodified wants and needs

o Means of production establish the material and economic conditions of common life

o Media are principle means of distribution of sense-making symbols, meanings and narratives in society

o Media and production reproduce each other and are the message of society

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But independence of the critic

Critical Theory Terminology • Mass Society • Mass Media • Culture Industry • Dominant ideology (representing dominant interests) • Hegemony and apparati • Myth and ritual • False consciousness • Interpretive frameworks • Preferred, negotiated, and resistant readings • Situated meaning systems • The individual and the subject (interpellation) • Struggle over meaning

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Alternative Forms • Continental Cultural Structuralism

– Louis Althusser, Antonio Gramsci, Roland Barthes

• British Cultural Studies – Richard Hoggart, Raymond

Williams, Stuart Hall, Tony Bennett

• American Cultural Studies – James Carey, Larry Grossberg,

Michael Gurevitch, Fredric Jameson

• Australian Cultural Studies – Michael Hartley, John Fiske,

Graham Murdock, Gunther Kress

• Rhetoric • Dramatism • Technological

Determinism • Cultivation Theory • Genderlect Styles • Standpoint Theory • Muted Group

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An Excursion into Semiosis Entering Reflexivity

• Semiosis is capacity for one thing to stand for another • Without it there is only the eternal present • With it there is the past and the future • Without it there is only the phenomenal world • With it there is both a world of meaning and a meaningful

world • Semiosis is not language, although language is semiotic • Language is a social invention • The mind is a linguistic instrument • The mind is a social invention • The meaningful world is a social construction

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Semiosis to Reflexivity

The Semiotic Form The Saussurean Dyad

Sign SignifiedMaterial trace,

the signifier Material Object

Permits trustworthy representation and stable referentiality

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The Semiotic Form The Peircean Triad

Relationship

Sign SignifiedMaterial trace,

the signifier Ideational Object

(also a sign)

Constructed, maintained, and supervised in social

practices

Denies representation and referentiality and undermines the stability of the sign

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Knowledge Processes

Sentience Semiosis

Engagement

Perception

Interpretation

Integration

Formulation

Exchange

Example of Social Action

• Hermeneutic • Action embedded in a system of performance • Agency: Linkages are probabilistic • Interactive dualism: Rules motivate routine;

routines constitute rules. • Methodological holism • Dynamic: Focus on process; integrates time

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Reproduction Outside the Box ?

Hermeneutics > Social Action

Social Action Perspective

Cognitive Resources

Action Resources

Domain Resources Performing Resources

Agency Innovation &

Invention

Time

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Enacting a Performance Cognitive

Resources

Time

Agency Innovation &

Invention

Agency Innovation & Invention

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Social Action Terminology • Social construction of reality (knowledge) • Agency/agentry • Structurations • Paradigms and Syntagms • Action Routines • Improvisations • Action Lines • Performances • Subject Position • Enactment • Local/Global Distinction

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Alternative forms

• Weberian Archetypes • Symbolic Interactionism • Semiotics of Action • Dramatism • Narrative Theory • Performance Studies • Hermeneutic

Empiricism

• Symbolic convergence • Symbolic Interactionism • Coordinated

Management of meaning

• Relational Dialectics • Social Action

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Example from Deconstructionism • Rejection of Foundationalism

– All argument is from an ideological standpoint – All standpoints involve privilege (gender, racial, economic, political,

cultural) – Deconstruction reveals structures and operations of privilege

• Rejects referentiality, representation, secure meaning • Critique of the binary

– speech over writing, presence over absence, identity over difference, fullness over emptiness, meaning over meaninglessness, mastery over submission, life over death

• Returns to local, experiential knowledge • Priority of the signifier

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Everything is a Text ?

Ideological > Deconstruction

But not every text is made of words

From Dichotomies to Dualities

is not is not

are functions of

Every sign references a sign

is not

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An Example

• Masculine is not Feminine • Masculine is not • Masculine and Feminine are functions of

Gender • Gender is not Race • There is no independence in any term • Feminism is not Patriarchy

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Deconstructionist Terminology • Difference and différance • De-sedimentation (releasing the foundations)

• Presence (The presumed primacy of presence and speech)

• Logocentrism (The trustworthiness of language)

• Textuality and intertextuality • Grammatology (the study and science of systems of graphic script)

• Play • Erasure (strategic certainty)

• Originary lack (an absence that permits the binary)

• Trace • Supplement (fills the originary lack)

• Dichotomies to dualities

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Alternative Forms • Continentals

– Jacques Derrida, Maurice Blanchot, Michel Foucault, Lois Althusser Jacques Lacan, Jean Baudrillard

• Yale School – Paul de Man, Geoffrey Hartman,

J Hills Miller

• Second Generation – Barbara Johnson, Marjorie

Levinson, Andrew Parker, Michael Ryan, Gayatri Spivak

• Adaptive Structuration • Information Systems • Organizational Critical

Theory • Narrative Paradigm • Radical Semiotics • Semiotics of Action

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Does This Ever End? • Theory is a tool for systematic study, for the performance of

“scholar” • Theory is an invitation to membership

– Carries the rights, responsibilities, and disciplines of membership – Marks the user as a member – User is a player in an economy of scholarship

• Theory deceives as well as enlightens • Never consider (or act on) a theory as true • It is unethical to cheat on your theory • Always maintain a modesty of claim, a recognition of struggle,

and an awareness of the consequences to others • When you have said what there is to say, move on (or shut up)

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What is Theory?

The Process of Communication

Obligation, Relationship, Discourse, Action and Intention

© J. Anderson, 2002-2013

Starting With the Three “S’s” Sign, Self, and System

• The sign – The move from sentience to interpretation; from the

eternal present to the past and future; from the material to the ideational

– The Medium of Communication • The self(other)

– From aggregate to congregate; independent to dependent; essential to social

– The Agent of Communication • The existential systems

– From separate to embedded; creation to improvisation; new to already given

– The Method of Communication

The Sign

• At least 3 million years old • Composed of three elements

– The material cue, the ideational referent, the relationship between the two

• Punctuation of continuous experience – Sameness and difference – Liberation from the eternal present

• Creates the ideational world – Respond to material world through sensation; the

ideational world through interpretation – We function in the duality of the material and

ideational--acted upon by the material; enact the ideational

Significance and Meaning

• Significance is the potential of the sign to achieve meaning

• Meaning is the sign in action • Significance is global; meaning is local • Both significance and meaning are rule-governed,

social practices of interpretation – Language training, grammars, dictionaries are part of

those practices – No literal meanings; both significance and meaning are

excessive – Signs are encyclopedic--webs of significance--not

lexicographic

Interpretation and Communication • Interpretation and communication are separate processes • Interpretation is a conferral of status, “an acting as if,” an

engagement of the will – Creates an intentional object

• Communication is an exchange between two sentient agents (sentience is responsiveness to environment) – An exchange is any reciprocal accounting of the other – Involves intentionality – Always includes relational exchange

• One can “not communicate” (be innocent of an exchange), but one cannot resist interpretation (no cloak of invisibility)

• Consider a letter found

The Self as Sign

• The signified individual • An ideational object that is cued by the material

body • Composed of identity and subjectivity

– Identity consists of the persistent characteristics of the self--the instrument, naturalized practices, images, durable relationships and membership

– Subjectivity consists of cultural marks, subject position, action routines and discourses

Type Sources Persistences Contribution The Instrument Materiality of the body; physical

structure, mechanical and biological operations and functions

Material properties, size, shape, color, physiognomy, voice, physical capabilities

The unity of the material object in a material world

Naturalized Practices Socialization into cultural and societal action forms, family memberships, muscle memories, regular performance

Discourses and action routines, vocabularies, skills, abilities

Characteristic ways of being in the world

Images Practical texts of personality formation, aptitudes, cognitive configurations

Sense of self Coherence of the self

Durable Relationships and Memberships

Terms of obligation, membership practice, recognition of and by the other

Social location, social closure, connectedness, emblematic memberships

Place in social worlds

Sources of Identity

Type Source Production Vocatives Enacted Marks of Différance

Physical, biological, societal, identity differences

Cultural location Calls forth race, gender, age, ethnicity, caste, memberships

Subject Position

Hegemonies, apparati, paradigmatic figures–hero, virgin, manager, student, etc.

Privileges and prohibitions of discourse and action

Calls forth presumptions of authority, competence, significance, control, rights, and duties

Action Routines and Discourses

Semiotic systems of action and language use, disciplines, syntagms

Intentions and governances of actional and discursive texts

Calls forth the acting agent as a representative of actional and discursive forms

Systems of Subjectivity

The Self(other) as Enacted duality

• An enactment rather than an essence – The self appears in a line of action (including “doing

nothing”) • No substantive core that directs everything else • Duality of self and other • Appears in reference to other

The Existential Systems We enter at Birth

• A system of relationships (sodality) – Cultural, societal, social, familial, personal – The praxeological system

• A system of action – From enactment to routine to performance to being in the world – The epistemological system – Sodality and action are co-temporal with the sign (3 MYA)

• A system of language – Socializes semiosis and the mind – Produces signs, sentences, codes, narratives, discourses – The ontological system

• A system of intentionality – What we attend to as a culture, society, member – The axiological system – Language and intentionality are co-temporal (50,000 years ago; archaic

forms of our own language 5-8,000 years ago) • A system of communication

– The enactment of sodality, action, language, and intentionality

The Sodality System • The sodality system inserts us into a nexus of relationships

– Provides for your “subject position” in the world – In every stage you are already accounted for

• Roles, rights, privileges, duties prohibitions, expectations, valuations – First from the need to reproduce (extended dependence; not monogamous)

then from need to know • Cultural hegemonies

– System of social contracts that define rights and obligations • Apparatuses

– Systems of hegemonic enforcement—legal, scholastic, ecclesiastical, regulatory and contractual

• Economies – Systems of value exchange—monetary, labor, power, sexual

• Disciplines – Practical requirements of membership – E.g., Epistemic communities

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The Action System

• An on-going system of action (not trial and error) – Action is the first language – Aggression/desire

• Consists of enactments routines, performances, lines of action, practices

• Provides for the enacted self--the “being in the world”

• Local performances are improvisations of an already existing cultural form back

The System of Language

• An on-going system of language • Begins in semiosis; consists of

phonemes/graphemes, words, sentences, codes, narratives, discourses, grammars, syntactics, semantics

• Provides for the “mind in the world” – The mind and its cognitive processes are a

social invention • Language mediates experience--speaks

identity into the world back

The System of Intentionality

• The grasp of consciousness – Physical foundation; local practice; cultural

governance • Constitutes the intentional object

– Unities and differences – From difference to differánce

• Provides the pre-existence (the always already) of what is and should be back

Language and Action • No appearance of language without action • Relationship appears in improvisations and protocols;

conversations and textualizations – Improvisations and conversations are the practical enactment of action

and discourse – Protocols and textualizations are the sedimented structurations of action

and discourse – Conversations and improvisations become textualizations and protocols

through the social action of authentication – Authentication creates a material trace in environments and texts that

can be archived and activated

Sodality and Intention • Constitute the “nexus of obligation”

– Terms for accounting for the other – Rights, privileges, duties and requirements – System of value

• Constitute the structures of relationships – Types – Practices – Membership

The System of Communication

• The expression of sodality, action, language and intention – Initiated in the obligation of self and other – Enacted by sentient agents – From some relational subject position – Performing an exchange – Embedded in and activated by action – Through discursive forms, conventions and

practices – Often incorporated in and mediated by technology – Under the intentionality of performance – Of a pre-existing communicative routine

Characteristics of Communication

• Communication is one set of semiotic practices entailing a relationship between self and other

• Communication is a process rather than a state or a thing – Occurs over time and action, involving multiple

resources • Communication is performative, relational,

and instrumental

Characteristics of Communication

• The character of communication changes according to the sphere of obligation and its subject positions, the enactment domain, nature of the exchange, terms of its performance, the relationship that sustains it and the intentions of the members and the text – Sphere of obligation issues—cultural requirements of agency and

agentry – Subject position issues—cultural location of agents – Enactment domain issues—forms, conventions, resources of the

theatre of performance – Exchange issues—co-orientation of agents and objects – Relationship issues—accounting for other as subject position and

person – Intention issues—requirements of quality of performance – Performance issues—the actuality of enactment

Obligation Issues

• Ties that bind – Race, gender, ethnicity, class, age,

memberships, relationships • Local, material practices • Under Agency and Agentry • Improvisational and multi-modalities • Complicit and implicative • Systems governance

Subject Position Issues

• Cultural and societal location of the self • Node in the cultural web of significance • Enabled and constrained • Invoked and Evoked

Enactment Domain Issues

• The material and ideational theatre of performance

• Physical and technological conditions of exchange

• Forms and conventions implied by location

Exchange Issues

• Concept frees communication from being everything

• Co-orientation of agents and objects

– Communication requires semiosis, cooperation (even if hostile), and co-orientation

• Ditransitive (movement across two conditions) Non-existence to existence; present to future; one state (condition) to another

• Diagentive (the call for and answer of meaning)

Relationship Issues

• The accounting for the other as subject and person

• Terms of obligation • From anonymity to intimacy • Commitment to relational membership • Relational goals

Intentionality Issues

• Proper performance of: – Obligations, exchange, enactment, relationship

• Paradigmatic—what cultural role is enacted?

• Syntagmatic—what cultural line of action is attempted?

• Genre demands • Correspondence of enactor and subject

position

Performance Issues

• Real time, real place, real people, performance • Authority (right to perform), competence (ability to

perform), modality (expressive character) and resources (material and ideational)

• Performance demands, local criteria, supervision, facilitation

• Performance conditions—reciprocity, synchronicity

The Occurrence of Communication

Communication occurs inside a nexus of obligation from some relational subject position, within some line of action, effecting an exchange, through a discursive or actional form often utilizing a mediating technology under the intentionality of an improvisational performance of an pre-existing communicative routine.

theory from the quadrants · the episteme in the context of culture • the semiotic–the system...

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