On 24/09/2008, at 7:37 AM, Edgar Rodriguez-Ramirez wrote:
> In this post I rebut Parag's claim and give epistemological reasons
> for my argument.
Hi Edgar and all,
I don't think, Edgar, that what you give is either reasons or
arguments. What you do is a make a series of assertions and support
them with other assertions. But that is probably just a minor matter
of scholarly nit picking on my part.
The arguments for a constructionist position are well made by many:
John Shotter in social science, W Barnett Pierce, in communication, to
mention two of the most lucid.
If you look at some of my own work and that of my colleagues at CRI,
we have regarded constructionism as the 'mainstream' in our work since
the 1980's, and it was by no means new when we came to it.
imho it is not sufficient to simply assert the constructionist
position. You have to go a few steps further and work through the
practical implications of this position for design methods and
research. In our own case this resulted in what we call 'the logic of
positions' and a re-articulation and rewriting of how we go about
designing and communication research. One of the consequences of this
rewriting has been a opening up of the political aspects of designing,
and a development of methods for working within this political space.
It has also led us to rigourous methods for measuring design outcomes.
Others in design, and in other fields, have gone down this
constructionist path and developed new methods and ways of
articulating practice.
So, my point is that the debate between 'objectivist' and
'subjectivist', (at least in the little corner of the world that I
inhabit with other like minded people) is no longer current, though I
can accept that there is always a need to rehearse the arguments anew.
The question for me, and many others working in a constructionist
tradition today, is not whether I am being objective or subjective as
a designer or researcher, but rather whether or not I can usefully
articulate the position from which I speak or read the world as I find
it, and what methods I can use to do so in measurably better ways than
I have done in the past.
David
--
blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog
web: http://www.communication.org.au
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