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I didn't organise the day and its not my seminar series but I don't think it was set up with the intension of limiting the opportunity to speak. I think it was intended to do the opposite, i.e. give those who felt they couldn't ask a question a chance to write it down. Some people said they preferred writing questions down. It seems others would have preferred the chance to speak. I suppose there are pros and cons to be ways of doing this. Bogusia Bogusia Temple Professor of Health and Social Care Research 01772 895461 >>> Tom Wengraf <[log in to unmask]> 03/28/07 4:33 PM >>> Ursula s email does help to clarify what happened especially if, like me, you weren t at the seminar. It is interesting that some people attack BNIM because it is seen as taking an objective observer stance and accepting the notion of, or even one particular model of, an objective reality out there , and that others attack it because it is seen as requiring them to adopt a model of subjectivity, even one associated with people not being capable of full transparency to themselves. Full objectivists are happier with the lived life strand on its own because it apparently deals only with facts experienced as hard ; full subjectivists are happier with the telling of the told story strand on its own because it apparently deals only with the life as subjectively experienced and expressed . Both would be happier with BNIM if the other strand were hallucinated out of experience. Part of the value of BNIM is that it does enable both sides to be thought about separately and then asks the researcher to think about both aspects together. The formal properties of BNIM are such that it is quite compatible with nearly all epistemologies and nearly all ontologies, and with all models of the external world and all models of the internal world that any particular researcher (and their panel members) may wish to bring to the task ((or exclude from formal consideration)) of understanding. Such formal models that people believe in and bring to the task of interpretation are tested by their relative capacity to deal with the data that BNIM provides in the procedures with which BNIM organizes their presentation. BNIM is as compatible with, say, a psychoanalytic model of behaviour and experience as it is with a conditioning model or an economic man model ., or any other folk or social-science model. It doesn t require or exclude any explicit model or any of the multiple implicit models we carry around and make sense of the world with. It does provide a context in which the carriers or advocates of any set of model or models are asked to make the best sense they can of incoming data, , irrespective of any formal model they choose to use to make that best sense. The great advantage of a BNIM panel is that you aren t asked or required to give the theoretical model you are supposed to have used to come up with your experiential, following or structural hypotheses: you are just asked to have a hypothesis (from wherever, who cares?), have it written up on the board (with no references), and then to have yourself or somebody else come up with a counter-hypothesis or tangential hypothesis. This procedure avoids theb not very fruitful paradigm wars with their anxious attacks on each other s defenses .. Best wishes Tom 24a PrincesAvenue Muswell Hill London N10 3 LR UK 020-8883-9297 For a free copy of the current 'Short Guide to BNIM (biographical narrative interpretive method) research interviewing', please send me details of your institutional affiliation and for what research or teaching purpose you might wish to use BNIM. I'll mail you a copy right back. _____ From: Ursula Murray [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: 28 March 2007 14:47 To: Tom Wengraf Subject: Edinburgh Dear Tom and Prue, The Edinburgh seminar was interesting not least for the very strongly negative stance of two speakers to psychoanalysis. They equated it with an anxious and defended subject and BNIM was referred to on several occasions as their main target. In fact I think their psychoanalytic understanding was equated with BNIM. The seminar was constructed in such a way that very few opportunities arose to speak. We didn t get chance in the morning but were invited to put questions on paper over lunch which were collated. I think there was a lot of strong feeling around and the major question then emerged around psychoanalytic thinking. One person in the audience was invited to put the case and charged the speakers with trashing psychoanalysis etc., plus making the argument that I would have raised which is how narrow a definition and limited an understanding is in play here. Anyway thought you would be interested ... Ursula -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.446 / Virus Database: 268.18.20/736 - Release Date: 27/03/2007 16:38 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.446 / Virus Database: 268.18.20/736 - Release Date: 27/03/2007 16:38