Propen, A. D., & Lay Schuster, M. (2010). Understanding genre through the lens of advocacy: The rhetorical work of the victim impact statement. Written Communication, 27(1), 3-35.

OK. This is an original research article about the victim impact statement (VIS), which is a relatively new genre with a kind of colored history. It wasn't included in the courtroom at all, but then that led to silencing of the victims, which was problematic. Makes sense. Victims deserve a voice. But at the same time, judges and the judicial system don't want the statement to influence the outcome. Sounds weird putting it like that. Then why is it included in the first place? merely to give the victim a voice? what is the impact of the impact statement? I don't actually know if it's not supposed to influence the outcome. But it does sound like there is a victim advocate, and that this advocate helps the victim shape what s/he's going to say. It seems like the victim can't just say whatever s/he wants. Which makes sense. They, the judges, don't want this to turn into a vigilante justice situation. The thing that's interesting to me is, the genre is at the intersection of double bind, or is meant to assuage the presence of a double bind. It's unjust to include the victim's voice, but it's also unjust to exclude it. So this is a very delicate rhetorical situation. The word delicate even gets used. 

The term values comes up a few times. Genre change is a key phrase. Genre change isn't thought of in terms of influence but rather in terms of acceptance. And it seems like that's what this paper is, it's a qualitative study of judges and victim advocates, I think. P & S are going to ask them about their perceptions of the VIS, which I think cashes out as a relative acceptance. The word dissonance gets used. Bridge is a keyword. The genre is a bridge. But a bridge to what?

As a genre, the VIS not only represents individual action but also creates a bridge between public policy (by public policy, in this case, we mean the imposition of the VIS upon the legal system in response to the victim rights movement) and internal institutional activity systems such as those of the sentencing hearing that happens within the courtroom. 

Again genre change is a key phrase. Look how much space it gets. 

Although the notion of “change” could then be defined either by the out- come of the sentencing hearing or through possible feelings of catharsis on the part of the victim, it also can be measured by the acceptance of the resisted genre within the system of genres or the courtroom setting in which the genres interact. In this way, genre change can happen at the level of an individual genre instantiation in an individual context, while functioning within a larger collective or community. As a genre, the VIS not only represents individual action but also creates a bridge between public policy (by public policy, in this case, we mean the imposition of the VIS upon the legal system in response to the victim rights movement) and internal institutional activity systems such as those of the sentencing hearing that happens within the courtroom. Knievel (2008) noted that to refocus an internal genre as one of public policy could serve as a catalyst for dialogue between the public and the internal activity system, thereby influencing the intentions and relationships of these groups. Relative to our study, these sorts of dialogues are most related to judges’ and advocates’ perceptions of the role of the VIS.

In this article then, we identify genre change more in terms of judges’ rela- tive acceptance of the VIS within the sentencing hearing rather than influencing

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the sentence per se. As both judges and advocates describe, the genre must contain a delicate balance of features or qualities such that its reading is con- sidered acceptable to the court. We describe the dissonance judges’ experience with the VIS and the ways in which they are perhaps more inclined to at least accept its presence in hearings if it contains the specific features that they value—features that we are able to describe based on our interviews and obser- vations. We explore what advice advocates give to victims in writing a VIS and the outcomes that advocates perceive the VIS can accomplish. Finally, by understanding the VIS as an important genre within an activity system, we find the VIS, through the applied knowledge and understanding of the victim advocates, has come to be viewed as a credible and oftentimes persuasive rhetorical genre within courtroom proceedings. 

Devitt gets used, relied on. 

 Again, the VIS is a genre relatively new to the legal system, but as Devitt (2004) stated, such new genres could “fulfill new functions in changing situations arising from changing cultures, at times to fill widening gaps in existing genre repertoires” (p. 93), and this change could come about through “individual actions” that “must compound to create collective change” (p. 134). But how might the collective action of these victims in giving VISs lead to differences in the climate and culture of the courtroom? It is very difficult to measure precisely such dif- ferences, but perceived change, among the judges and victim advocates, is possible to capture. And, how have those advocates, who prepare victims and accompany them into the courtroom, had a hand in paving the way for the rhetorical work that this new genre can do? 

OK, interesting, this gets back to the new version of the pitch deck article. I just sent this to Spinuzzi. 

Rereading this Propen & Schuster again, but more carefully this time. It sounds like it's pretty much exactly what we're trying to do now with this new version of the genre paper. 

Again, the VIS is a genre relatively new to the legal system, but as Devitt (2004) stated, such new genres could “fulfill new functions in changing situations arising from changing cultures, at times to fill widening gaps in existing genre repertoires” (p. 93), and this change could come about through “individual actions” that “must compound to create collective change” (p. 134). But how might the collective action of these victims in giving VISs lead to differences in the climate and culture of the courtroom? It is very difficult to measure precisely such dif- ferences, but perceived change, among the judges and victim advocates, is possible to capture. And, how have those advocates, who prepare victims and accompany them into the courtroom, had a hand in paving the way for the rhetorical work that this new genre can do? 

I.e., we can't measure the change to the pitch deck exactly. We have no way to. But we can measure the perceived change through people whom it has impacted, its users, those who rely on it to get their jobs done. 

Note the terms climate and culture too. Maybe the outcome is a changed climate and culture. 

I thought this was an important quote:

In the case of the VIS, the relationship between the individual and the group is part of what defines the genre; the victim advocate is able to blunt the edges of this potentially dichotomous relationship by working both with the victim and within the legal system. Based on the perceptions of the advo- cates we interviewed, the VIS functions as a tool that may allow the victim to feel heard or acknowledged while also allowing the advocate to push for change on a systemic level. 

Gets to the activity theory edge too. The genre mediates, but there are also mediators. 

Never heard of this guy but he keeps coming up

Knievel, M. S. (2008). Rupturing context, resituating genre: A study of use-of-force policy in the wake of a controversial shooting. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 22, 330-363.

We understand genres as reflecting the ideology or values of particular dis- course communities or as playing a normalizing role as they reflect through discursive acts a community’s values or ideologies (Knievel, 2008). 

To answer these questions, we focus on the VIS functions as a rhetorical genre that may help accomplish particular activities related to victim advocacy or the social/political function of the genre. Such activities may be related to the changing relationships between individuals and groups and the ways in which particular groups or audiences come to understand or accept the functioning of the genre. Because the VIS is a relatively new genre within the legal arena,

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Propen, Schuster 9

we feel that any understanding of genre with which we align ourselves or that we build upon must consider the possibility for change, growth, and even rupture. Berkenkotter and Huckin (1995), for example, noted that genres may simultaneously stabilize and disrupt the communities in which they function. Knievel (2008) too has noted that genres might serve to reflect and sustain the ideologies of the contexts in which they exist, while also allowing room for expansion or growth. Social and political contexts are also subject to change and subsequently genres may reflect and/or sustain those changes. The legis- lated right to give a VIS, for example, constitutes a policy change imposed upon an activity system given a political climate. In this way, we understand genre as aligned also with activity theory. 

Ok interesting. Maybe this is like a Jeff Rice, Catherine Knight Steele kind of thing, where what is empowering is also disempowering. What seems like it's super oppressive and purely ideological is actually liberatory. Or could be? This is Jason Read riffing off of 

This maybe the ideological function of individual difference, the role it plays according to the first order of knowledge, but the very existence of such differences attest to something else. The fact that some work situations are sites of solidarity, that some individuals strive for something other than consumer goods, or self-realization through entrepreneurship, that the metastable means that the former is always something more than the reproduction of the latter. Chantal Jaquet has turned her attention to this metastable dimension of reproduction, by examining non-reproduction, the points where individuals deviate from their place in the relations of production. As Jaquet argues these individual differences are not the product of some irreducible remainder of the individual in the face of social pressures, but of the complexity and metastability of these very social forces. Jaquet proposes to see individual differences, especially those differences of what she terms “non-reproduction” as the effects of the multiple and overlapping individuations, or affective compositions, within any existing social relation. The different affective orientations of the present, the fear that compels people to work, the pleasures of consumer society, and the drive of self-realization of neoliberal society, not only overlap, but do so in fundamentally conflictual and contradictory manners. These tensions sometimes function as the necessary condition of the reproduction of the system, keeping every worker caught between fear of unemployment, desire for consumer goods, and hope of some better career or dream job. The combined and uneven affective composition can produce an ambivalent but persistent reproduction. It can also be the metastable condition of non-reproduction. Every affective condition of reproduction is also a condition of non-reproduction. The fears of destitution and poverty that drive one to work can also lead one to seek a living outside of the commodity form—dropping off the grid; the pleasures of consumer society can drive one to refuse work rather than keep one working; and lastly, the imperatives of self-realization through work might just be the most unstable of all. The ideal of self realization through work, of “love what you do” sets a high bar for affective motivation and orientation that can backfire as much as it compels work. There are as many non-reproductive individuations as there are reproductive ones.

Not exactly, but kind of. 

OK, so it's not as though the VIS has no possibility for impact whatsoever. 

A victim might choose to work instead with a community advocate, who represents a nonprofit organization often connected to domestic violence abuse education, support, and shelter. In either case, the victim will be inter- viewed by the police and the County Attorney and, if the case is brought to trial, the victim may testify and be cross-examined in open court. Over 90% of all cases, however, are settled by plea negotiation and before the judge accepts such a negotiation, he or she relies on a presentencing report for a full picture of the facts of the crime, the perpetrator’s criminal history and ame- nability to rehabilitation, and the victim’s experiences and responses. In the Fourth District, for example, investigation probation officers from the Adult

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Propen, Schuster 7

Field Services Division of the Department of Community Correction gather information “from client interviews, family contacts, employers, victims and criminal records and prepare a report for the Court to assist in sentencing deci- sions” (Department of Community Correction, 2005). In the presentencing report, the victim’s words are reported and interpreted by the probation officer and the judge balances the presentencing investigation and recom- mendations with the state-mandated sentencing guidelines, which specify according to the degree of the crime and the criminal history of the perpetra- tors what range of disposition (prison, probation, or both) and duration should be imposed to maintain objectivity and uniformity in sentencing. If a victim chooses, she can offer a VIS before the sentencing hearing and/or speak at the hearing, without cross-examination or interruption, in her own voice and directly to the judge. The VIS becomes part of the court transcript, the official record of the case. If the victim introduces new facts into the case, however, the attorneys are likely to object and start the process over; if the victim speaks directly to the defendant in a VIS, the judge will admonish her to direct her comments to the bench. Although no other formal guidelines exist for how judges must respond to a VIS, judges usually decide whether to delay the imposition of sentencing to consider the victim’s requests, incorporate these requests immediately into sentencing, reject the plea negotiation and require that the attorneys respond to the VIS in a new agreement, or simply listen to the victim and impose an agreed-upon sentence. 

It's just interesting that they make the victim look away when reading the VIS, that s/he can't look her aggravator? persecutor? attacker? in the eye. 

But in any case, the genre or activity has the possibility to change the outcome, but not necessarily in an obvious way. The data is just taken into consideration (even though it's technically irrelevant [8]), but it is something to take into consideration. 

§

OK, so this was a three year study. They interviewed both judges and advocates, while also collecting documents and conducting observations, so this was a Spinuzzi-esque study. They were aided by a non-profit, it seems, WATCH, who collected the sensitive documents for them, with the sensitive information redacted. 10 sensitive documents, 8 non-sensitive models and heuristics, which P & S found on their own. They coded them together, kind of like the diachronic pitch deck database. It seems like P & S each coded them documents independently, then they merged and consolidated the codes, then recoded the whole thing with the consolidated and merged codes, thus enacting the Smagorinsky inter-rater reliability workaround.

I was a little confused about this.

We followed the same procedure of merged coding with the sample VISs and  then  merged  and  recoded  all  three  data  sets:  the  samples,  models,  and heuristics. Often the sample VISs departed from the models or heuristics, and so  they  greatly  expanded  our  categories  and  subcategories  and  represented how an individual might personalize a VIS. The models and heuristics, for example, illustrated or recommended the epistolary form to organize VISs, but several of our samples used diary or journal entry organization to trace the victims’ activities since the crime to the present. But again, in this qualita-tive and interpretive study, we created this list of features not to quantify our results, to analyze all categories that emerged, or even identify commonali-ties  among  sources  but  to  provide  the  most  comprehensive  foundation  for understanding the broader context of the judicial reactions to VISs, the work of advocates in helping victims prepare and present VISs, and the perceived possibilities that the VIS would bring change to the legal system.

So...are P & S just explaining how they got a foothold on the data? or rather, are they just trying to attune themselves so that they are able to share the same ideas about the data? like they're trying to get on the same page? because it seems like to me the idea would be to develop codes and then those codes would be used later in the analysis, thus enacting the whole Chekhov thing you were talking about--why would you generate codes and leave them unused?

It is kind of interesting that P & S didn't bring in any starter codes. They just jumped right into open coding. But they also say that they weren't doing a genre analysis per se, rather, a genre analysis was just one particular article to emerge from the data/coding. 

I'm also getting the sense that this was unbounded coding, as it were; it's not like there were document codes, which are separate from interview codes and observation codes, etc. It was just one big ol' context. 

All in all, P & S were basically looking for rhetoric:

we allowed topics  to  emerge  that  captured  a  sense  of  how  the  advocates  had  a  hand  in paving the way for the rhetorical work that the VIS might do (15)

Although we were interested in what advocacy groups felt were features that made a VIS persuasive, we also wanted to capture the perceptions of judges who have no formal guidance on how to respond to VISs but are required by statute to hear them before imposing a sentence. And we wanted some sense of what the judges felt made a VIS memorable or persuasive. (12)

we collected from eight printed or electronic sources various model  VISs  and  heuristics  designed  to  help  generate  persuasive  VISs.

Also a big part of this is advocacy work, namely, how can we make these impact statements such that they can be more persuasive and thus have a bigger impact? Kind of an Engestrom, let's make big changes sort of thing. But here, they're not changing the genre so much as making the implicit explicit in order to make things easier for novices, with the ultimate goal of changing the system. Very Swales. Applied linguistics. 

On a kind of different note, it's interesting to think that this study is trying to describe how an organism tries to incorporate something dangerous and foreign to it, yet something that is totally necessary for it. It's deconstructive. We're looking at the membrane, or rather, how the impossible yet necessary is folded into a system. 

The study presented here is part of a larger project in coopera-tion with WATCH, which also involved a study of the emotional expressions accepted  by  judges  in  VISs  and  their  courtrooms  in  general  (Schuster  & Propen,  in  press)  and  a  study  of  the  challenges  of  making  scholarly  work advocacy work (Propen & Schuster, 2008). (11)

§ 

Back. Haven't been back to this annotation in a few weeks maybe?

I was thinking again about Boltanski. Like, when P & S say this, 

The legislated right to give a VIS then becomes, to use the definition offered by Birkland (1998), a “focusing event,” or a nonpolitically neutral event that can “serve as important opportunities for politically disadvantaged groups to champion messages that have been effectively suppressed by dominant groups and advocacy coalitions” (p. 54). Again, the VIS is a genre relatively new to the legal system, but as Devitt (2004) stated, such new genres could “fulfill new functions in changing situations arising from changing cultures, at times to fill widening gaps in existing genre repertoires” (p. 93), and this change could come about through “individual actions” that “must compound to create collective change” (p. 134). But how might the collective action of these victims in giving VISs lead to differences in the climate and culture of the courtroom? It is very difficult to measure precisely such dif- ferences, but perceived change, among the judges and victim advocates, is possible to capture. And, how have those advocates, who prepare victims and accompany them into the courtroom, had a hand in paving the way for the rhetorical work that this new genre can do?

Here, I think that maybe P & S are trying to champion people, laypeople even, the ability to speak to power and change it and converse with it. Kind of like in Dryer (2008), how, if we take students seriously, then we can learn about our own practices: students can unlock an aspect of our own practice. Something like that. Like the Derrida article--"The University in the Eyes of Its Pupils."

Nonpolitically neutral, as in NOT politically neutral, biased. What did PRM have to say about bias? bias in the sense of ... well this is from Wikipedia:

The bias grain of a piece of woven fabric, usually referred to simply as "the bias", is any grain that falls between the straight and cross grains. When the grain is at 45 degrees to its warp and weft threads it is referred to as "true bias." Every piece of woven fabric has two biases, perpendicular to each other. A garment made of woven fabric is said to be "cut on the bias" when the fabric's warp and weft threads are on one of the bias grains.

Woven fabric is more elastic as well as more fluid in the bias direction, compared to the straight and cross grains. This property facilitates garments and garment details that require extra elasticity, drapability or flexibility, such as bias-cut skirts and dresses, neckties, piping trims and decorations, bound seams, etc.

The "bias-cut" is a technique used by designers for cutting clothing to utilize the greater stretch in the bias or diagonal direction of the fabric, thereby causing it to accentuate body lines and curves and drape softly. For example, a full-skirted dress cut on the bias will hang more gracefully or a narrow dress will cling to the figure. Bias-cut garments were an important feature of the designs of Madeleine Vionnet in 1920s and 1930s^[2] and bias-cut styles are revived periodically.^[3] Before her time, bias cut was rare in women's clothing and outré in garments for men, to the extent that the specially-designed clothing of the dandy and celebrity chef Alexis Soyer were remarked on by George Augustus Sala, on meeting Soyer in the Hungerford Market:

"...an extraordinary oddity was added to his appearance by the circumstance that every article of his attire, save, I suppose, his gloves and boots, was cut on what dressmakers call a "bias", or as he himself, when I came to know him well, used to designate as à la zoug-zoug."^[4]

In the Middle Ages, before the development of knitting, hose were cut on the bias in order to make them fit better. The old spelling was byas, or (less common) byess. ^[5]

And then relate this to the text or textuality. And look at this. "Woven fabric is more elastic as well as more fluid in the bias direction, compared to the straight and cross grains. This property facilitates garments and garment details that require extra elasticity, drapability or flexibility, such as bias-cut skirts and dresses, neckties, piping trims and decorations, bound seams, etc." So the bias adds flexibility. Without the bias, it's a rigid objectivity, a closed system. 

Ok. 

Activity theory may be understood as need-based and as taking place within a system in which groups of workers make use of tools or artifacts to work toward a particular goal or outcome (Spinuzzi, 1996). Moreover, these tools or artifacts do not merely help make connections between groups and the objects with which these groups might work (Spinuzzi, 2003). Rather, such artifacts, through their acts of mediation, qualitatively change the types of activities in which subjects engage (Spinuzzi, 2003). We understand the VIS to be a mediating artifact that then accomplishes meaningful advocacy work through the combined activities and interpretations of victim advocates, victims, and the court system. 

So it's not merely making a connection possible that would otherwise not be possible; it's qualitatively changing the connection in the process--again think of the wizard game. Or therapy. 

As Spinuzzi’s view of activity theory helps describe, artifacts such as the VIS contain “the traces of an ongoing activity, represent problem solving in that activity, and thus tend to stabilize the activ- ity in which they are used” (p. 39). As we will show, VISs trace ongoing activity through the narrative account they create of the crime that has taken place—an account that helps give the victim a voice in the court proceedings; VISs represent problem solving through the inclusion of content that advo- cates know to be persuasive to judges and that advocates also subjectively understand as helping victims to feel acknowledged and heard; finally, through their successful inclusion of persuasive strategies, we demonstrate that VISs have become more readily accepted by judges in sentencing hearings, thus stabilizing the idea that the VIS is a valuable genre within courtroom pro- ceedings. As Spinuzzi (2003) also noted, genres were sometimes referred to as “tools-in-use,” or understood as mediating certain activities. Thus, a genre is far more than an isolated artifact; rather, genres such as the VIS are products of specific cultural and historical contexts and activities and thus serve to reflect, perpetuate, and sustain those activities. In this way, we understand the VIS not only as a mediating artifact but ultimately as a rhe- torical genre that functions within the court system.

Problem solving. You could use this in the annotation. You could say that this article helps because it directs you to think of documents as being problem solving devices. 

But then there's this other role of the advocate, that you haven't really touched on thus far. The advocate helps shape the VIS, thus enabling a conversation to take place. S/he helps the victim to be heard while at the same time trying to change the system in place. Like a therapist. It's mediation in the technical sense, or actually in the mundane sense. 

You were trying to think of this the other day. "Knievel (2008) noted that genre change could happen at the level of an individual instantiation of a genre in a specific context. " Only you were trying to think of it in the context of Lilly Campbell. 

Interesting. 

Knievel (2008) noted that genre change could happen at the level of an individual instantiation of a genre in a specific context. In the case of the VIS, we will suggest that victim advocates often see their job as helping to give a voice to individual victims through the instantiation and function of that genre in that moment. Victim advocates also work to shep- herd through a genre imposed upon a system that initially resists the social/ political function of that genre. The VIS is, in a sense, a legal product that both delineates and meets the needs of several communities (Devitt, 1991). On one hand, it is a highly personal and individualized document; on the other hand, however, it is through continued production of the VIS that victim advocates are able not only to reinforce the authority of the genre but also to define their own membership within the community as well as encourage interactions across groups.

This is a very Walsh like sentiment. The genre is imposed, yet it could also function to subvert the functioning of the system if turned or troped in a certain way. 

But also like the Popham thing. It does the work of or rather for several different communities at the same time. This could maybe be another angle for your annotation. First of all, is there a document like this? That would be great. Maybe you could do it with the SPAC? It's not a spac, but the investment instrument thing. But like maybe the angel network itself does the work--the work? maybe just work?--for several different communities, for several different purposes. 

Tool. Control f tool. 

Earlier, you were talking? thinking about the double bind. It's unjust to include these voices, it's unjust to exclude them. This is a problem. See a couple of paragraphs up. 

"the victim advocate is able to blunt the edges of this potentially dichotomous relationship by working both with the victim and within the legal system." Note: the victim advocate, not the VIS. 

"Although the notion of “change” could then be defined either by the out- come of the sentencing hearing or through possible feelings of catharsis on the part of the victim, it also can be measured by the acceptance of the resisted genre within the system of genres or the courtroom setting in which the genres interact. In this way, genre change can happen at the level of an individual genre instantiation in an individual context, while functioning within a larger collective or community." Could be useful. 

Teston, C. B. (2009). A grounded investigation of genred guidelines in cancer care deliberations. Written Communication, 26(3), 320-348.

This is an original research article in Written Communication. In it, Teston's goal is to show that the standard of care document is rhetorical. That's way to simplistic but I'm leaving it for now. 

The research is in the context of cancer--oncological deliberations. Deliberation being the key word there. She's interested in how different doctors from different specialization make decisions about patient care. She never uses the word consensus. She also says that the patient is involved and that the standard of care document (SOCD) is a bridge between the patient and the experts (p. 33), kind of like the VIS for P & S. 

That the Standard of Care document is referenced, more often than not, in between references to the patient’s background information and either relevant statistics and studies or typical practice again suggests that the document provides a conceptual bridge for medical professionals—a bridge between the patient’s experi- ences and the expectations of the medical profession as a whole. This is a necessary bridge, since attempting to provide a patient with the best care according only to the expectations of the profession and not the experiences of the patient may not yield favorable results. and the same holds true in the reverse—attempting to care for the patient based only on their signs and symptoms without also consulting the recommendations of the profes- sion at large may also fail to yield favorable results. (33) 

Sounds like she had her hands tied when conducting this research. She couldn't tape deliberations and she couldn't study the documents? Or no, they don't use any documents in the sessions... Maybe she could study the SOCD itself, but could she understand it? She's not a doctor... But anyways, they don't use any documents. They don't take notes. And she can't record the conversations. So what did she do? 

In the first analysis, which was kind of reminiscent of when I was trying to do the pitch deck analysis in the spring of 2020, it looks like she was in the deliberative meetings, and she flagged when the SOCD was discussed, by whom, to what end, and how. She tip toes around the content of the document. But then again, we're looking at meso-level phenomenon...

Her goal in the second analysis is 

to better understand how this document, through linguistic and nonlinguistic rhetorical strategies, does or does not

a. establish authoritative ethos, thereby organizing and authorizing work, and 

b. facilitate decision making based on the experiences not only of the medical professional’s scientific understanding of the disease but also

the patient’s experiences (as evidenced by their signs and symptoms). (334)<---this sounds like the bridge again

But now that I come to think of it, where was the gap? how did she situate herself in the literature? I don't remember that part...

Yea, there is no literature review, so weird... I'm not seeing a literature review or a gap. Maybe because it's 2009 and the rhetoric of health and medicine wasn't even there yet??

Ok, in this second analysis, she actually analyzes a document. There's a lot of different kinds of analysis in here. Textual. Qualitative. Observational.

In this second analysis, she uses Toulmin in order to analyze a CCSC, but she doesn't get into the content at all again but rather spreads out the document on her office walls, with the aim of showing how the document functions rhetorically. She attends to the algorithms embedded in the document, or webpage. I think it's a webpage. So I think she attends to how the arrangement of the CCSC echos the form of Toulmin's argument. 

So there's only two analyses in this. She doesn't have my OCD apparently. 

It looks like this was a purely observational study. There was a personal communication, but it doesn't say anything about interviews. Actually the word interview comes up a few times. There were a few interviews. But I don't think they were systematically collected.

You need to figure out what "freehanding" is. Isn't it just like notes?

And why is this a grounded investigation? what is grounded about it? like what is grounded about the two analyses?

Couldn't be audio OR video recorded. 

It looks like she made a kind of spreadsheet? But I don't know if she went from observational notes TO the spreadsheet... I'm talking about the observational heuristics right now. I'm unsure about whether she took the observational heuristic INTO the field or if she took notes and then those notes became the observational heuristic ... 

Oh... that's where the grounded comes in. She doesn't use a theoretical framework. There is no activity theory. There is no ANT. It's grounded, which is why she has to make her own heuristics. OK. I bet you it's iterative then.  Notes -> heuristics -> using the heuristics in the field. 

Which also explains the lack of literature review. I don't get it though. Wouldn't you still need to situate the argument in the field even if you weren't going to ground your argument with a theoretical framework? 

This was reminding me of Boltanski:

I have made the case that hyperlinks, footnotes, and explicit linguistic features afford conceptual links between medical professionals’ scientific understanding of, or experience with, the patients’ disease and the profes- sion’s expectations as a whole. and yet, with any rhetorical analysis, one has to ask the following: What is not here? The answer to that question in this case is any reference whatsoever—linguistically or nonlinguistically—to the patient’s understanding of or experiences with their disease. In fact, a word search for symptom in the PDF of the CCSC document yields only three results in all 67 screens—all located on one of the later pages in the manuscript section (a section Dr. Thomas acknowledged he never reads). Symptoms and feelings are obviously some of the few ways in which patients can express to their caregivers their experiences with an illness. The fact that the pathways section has as its primary step an assessment of the clinical presentation and not the patient’s signs and symptoms indicates the NCCN’s preference for scientific generalities as opposed to individual experiences. Herein lies the paradox of standards and guidelines: In their attempt at generalization, they run the risk of losing their generalizability.

Teston / grounded Investigation of genred guidelines 345

In other words, there exists a rhetorical tension between the assumptions implicit in generalizable guidelines and actual users’ unique, individual experiences. Beverly Sauer (2003), in her volume The Rhetoric of Risk, similarly seeks to understand how large regulatory industries manage the creation of generalizable policies and procedures amid individual experi- ences and expertise invoked when working in hazardous environments. She asked, “How can we reconcile the radical differences in individual accounts of experiences with the need to create generalizable policies and procedures that can be applied across diverse situations?” (p. 323). The research presented here suggests that the medical profession wrestles with a similar conundrum: How can a genred set of generalized, standardized guidelines bridge the gap between personal experiences and professional expectations? 

This just sounded like grammar in Boltanski, i.e., how is it the case that we can have hierarchy and equality?

When in its generalizable state, the CCSC attempts to streamline and standardize, but when specifically applied [engaged? I'm thinking now of Thevenot...like how the burner doesn't turn on and you have to giggle it], it is adopted and adapted by and for particular audiences and purposes. Schryer (1993) reminded readers that

a genre coordinates work from the simplest action of constructing a shopping list (Witte, 1992) to the complex activity involved in conducting scientific research (Bazerman, 1988). Thus a genre is a frequently traveled path or way of getting symbolic action done either by an individual social actor or group of actors. (p. 207)

This research suggests that even when material action (not just symbolic action) is required, genred, textual guidelines are still only as useful as the audience invoking them and the rhetorical situation deems necessary. Spinuzzi (2003), by engaging in what he called “genre tracing,” asked some similar questions in his investigation of the ways that work is mediated by information technologies. One of his key arguments is that workers find innovative and creative ways to do work within genred systems that can be overly rule bound and systematic. He noted that in some cases genred sys- tems can become “too officialized” or “inflexible and rule-bound” (p. 21). On the other hand, Spinuzzi noted, systems can also become “too unofficial” or “too flexible and chaotic” (p. 21). Spinuzzi argued, however, that most organizations “avoid these extremes” and “maintain a dynamic tension between centripetal and centrifugal impulses” (p. 21). Like Spinuzzi’s (2003) organizations, Tumor Board participants employ “unofficial . . . unarticulated work practices and genres” (p. 23) when making decisions about their patient’s care. In other words, while Standard of Care documents have a charter function, Tumor Board participants implicitly understand

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their limited applicability and are careful to augment them with additional evidence from specific patient and personal experiences.

The CCSC document as a genred set of guidelines for medical practice cannot, on its own, strike a balance between what Spinuzzi called rule- boundness and flexibility—even with its use of hyperlinks and a Toulminian- like argumentative structure. Users have a choice to follow a linear or nonlinear series of steps, but those steps are based, in large part, upon the profession’s construction of the patient’s disease through a variety of tests, procedures, and results—not the patient’s interpretation, understanding, or sense of their disease. While medical scans, tests, and clinical presentations are certainly necessary information for determining treatment plans and prognoses, so too is the patient’s position on the status of their health and wellbeing. This may be why Dr. Thomas reported that Standard of Care documents are “vague” and not “earth shattering” (L. J. Thomas, MD, per- sonal communication, February 16, 2009). They simply are not prescriptive or patient-specific enough to be anything more than vague.

How, then, is a balance struck between what Spinuzzi (2003) called “rule-boundness” and “chaos” (p. 21) in the care of cancer patients like Lori? The above analyses indicate that during deliberations medical profes- sionals make plain what could not be made plain in the Standard of Care document. That is, medical professionals make explicit, linguistic links between the patient’s experiences, the Standard of Care, and the medical profession’s expectations (evidenced by the illustration of the ways in which references to the Standard of Care document are flanked by refer- ences to the patient’s background information and the overall medical pro- fession in Table 4). On its own, the CCSC document is successful in that it establishes its authority and legitimacy through its scientifically sound, hierarchical, Toulminian-like organizational structure; it accomplishes its charter-like purpose. However, outside the context of Tumor Board delib- erations, the CCSC document simply does not, and perhaps cannot, link the patient’s experiences and understanding of his or her cancer with the pro- fession’s guidelines for how to act. When yoked to patient-specific refer- ences made during multidisciplinary deliberations, Standard of Care documents can function as symbolic guideposts for “frequently traveled paths” (Schryer, 1993, p. 207) on the way toward material action. 

x 

The method section as conceptual epicenter in constructing social science research reports

Smagorinsky, P. (2008). The method section as conceptual epicenter in constructing social science research reports. Written communication, 25(3), 389-411.

In this position paper, Smagorinsky argues for a renewed attention to the methods section. He bases this argument off of many years reviewing qualitative manuscripts both officially and unofficially, both on and off of the clock. He points out that not everyone appreciates the methods section to the extent that he does, and he doesn't understand why because, to him, the results are unintelligible without a proper rendering of the methods section. He says,

Increasing  attention  to  the  social  complexity  of research  begat  a  greater  need  to  implicate  method  in  results,  presenting authors with new obligations as they wrote their articles. ... The Method section, then, has evolved to the point where, in order for results  to  be  credible,  the  methods  of  collection,  reduction,  and  analysis need to be highly explicit. Further, the methods need to be clearly aligned with the framing theory and the rendering of the results" (392) 

They key word there, I think, is "implicate." In his history of the methods section, he reviews how the research article in writing studies used to be positivistic, but then, after the social turn, which he points to as occurring earlier than you might think. Hmmm, I'll walk that back. The methods section became more important around that time because people like Flower and Hayes (1981) were importing methods like protocol analysis from cognitive psychology. 

But then same thing happens now. And in fact, Spinuzzi is really passionate about this idea and even wrote part of an article on it, that is, this idea that you can't just import a theory from elsewhere. Where it comes from has consequences. Smagorinsky says something similar about coding. Don't just take someone's coding scheme. 

In  particular, the  outline  of  the  analytic  approach—for  me, usually  the articulation of a coding system—sets the terms for what I need to talk about elsewhere in the manuscript. If my codes reflect a sociocultural orientation to the data, then I need to frame the study from this theoretical perspective, and  the  same  goes  for  information-processing  theorists, postcolonialists, phenomenologists, and everyone else. Ultimately, I need to ensure that if I claim this perspective, the language that I employ for naming my categories needs  to  be  grounded  in  the  terminology  and  constructs  of  the  framing theory. For this reason, borrowed coding systems can be highly problematic because they were developed by someone else for, in all likelihood, other purposes and certainly for other data. Rather, codes need to be developed in a dialectic relation among the data, the theoretical framework, and whatever else a researcher brings to the analytic process. (See Bracewell & Breuleux,1994, for a counterperspective on the value of universal coding systems.) (405-06)

You could probably critique rhetoric's importing of philosophy as a theoretical framework with this logic, and you know of several places in which Scott G certainly has. Same idea. The framework needs to be modified or changed or related to differently... There needs to be a sifting or selection that takes place, which is to say, there needs to be activity on the importer's part. 

Which gets to a different point. A lot of this is simply about co-creation. So there needs to be selection and sifting on the importer's part. But part of the reason of going to all of this trouble to be transparent about coding--which is to say, transcending the "I read, I coded, I found themes" (407) method of reporting on coding--is so the reader can participate in the activity. For example, there was this part: 

Describing a data collection is probably the most straightforward part of accounting for method. Generally, this section includes a description of the data  sources  and  how  they  were  collected:  field  notes,  interviews,  audio394Written Communication recordings of discussions, ancillary artifacts, samples of writing, and so on.But  merely  listing  sources  in  a  general  way  is  typically  insufficient.  AsChin (1994)  has  argued,  simply  announcing  that  data  are  composed  of“interviews” overlooks the fact that interviews may be conducted in manyways,  obligating  the  researcher  to  be  explicit  about  who  conducted  theinterviews, whether  or  not  multiple  interviewers  were  involved  and  if  so,how  consistency  across  interviewers  was  achieved  (e.g., relying  on  a  uni-form  interview  protocol  or  set  of  prompts  and  providing  the  text  of  suchscripts), and other factors that help to reveal the specific nature of the datacollection. I use interviews here for illustrative purposes; virtually any qual-itative research method benefits from explication of this sort.Limitations and cautions about the data collection procedures also meritattention.  Interviews, to  return  to  this  example, are  not  benign  but  rather involve interaction effects. Rosenthal (1966) examined researcher effects in behavioral research and identified a myriad of characteristics that can affectthe  relationship  between  a  researcher  and  participant,  in  turn  helping  toshape the data that emerge from the collection process. For instance, femaleparticipants tend to be treated more attentively and considerately than men,female  researchers  tend  to  smile  more  often  than  their  male  counterparts,male  and  female  researchers  behave  more  warmly  toward  female  partici-pants  than  they  do  toward  men  (with  male  researchers  the  warmer  of  thetwo), White participants are more likely to reveal racial prejudice to a Whiteresearcher  than  to  a  Black  one, gentile  subjects  are  more  likely  to  revealanti-Semitic  attitudes  to  a  gentile  researcher  than  to  one  whom  they  per-ceive as Jewish...the list seems endless. Making some effort to accountfor these phenomena helps to explain the social construction of data in stud-ies involving researcher-participant interactions. (394-95)

If you know that women conducted the interviews rather than me, then you have something to talk about, a point of critique. This is not to say that you'd be giving reviewers a foothold to reject your article. It's about dialogue. As Davida says, there is no single elimination? Sudden death elimination when it comes to reviews. I think. Weaknesses make you relatable. 

Just before I forget, Clay uses the phrase "chain of custody," and I think that's what Smagorinsky is talking about. You need a chain of custody from the methods to the results to the implications, and so on. Everything has to be relatable. Like that Chekhov quote with the gun, which Spinuzzi has actually used btw...

Oh, there's the part about inter-rater reliability, which is not a big surprise, since Smagorinsky is so into the socio-cultural stuff. If you value activity and co-creation so highly, then it's going to follow that you're not going to like trying to get one rater to corroborate another, since that will silence one of the conversational partners. It's bidirectional. My grad students and I code collaboratively, since it's not merely the case that they learn from me; I also learn from them. 

Is this a form of holism? I am related to or in conversation with my grad student, the two of us are in conversation with the method, which is in conversation with the results, etc. Or is it just a network or networking?

Do methods first, everyone says that I feel like. But I liked how he was saying (or implying?) that he just starts coding and then figures out later which framework this is. Oh, because I Xed and Yed and Zed when I was coding, I should probably use framework A to explain it....

Trust and credibility came up a lot, but that's what I was talking about via co-creation.  Faith too...

I also see this connecting to the interview with Spinuzzi with McNely in which the former was bemoaning about how people always think qual research is subjective and quant objective. Smagorinsky is saying, if we do these things I am talking about, people will start to think of qual research more objectively. 

But it also seems like something was lost in the move away from the experimental article in writing studies. Back then, it was common to reference the method from the results. We've lost that (407). Now, of course, we've come a long way, and we're lucky to have realized all of these social facets of research. Reporting is stronger now, more objective? more accurate? more reliable? Smagorinsky doesn't say this, but I take him to mean that it would be great if we acted like these old experimental guys in just this one way, while continuing to do all of this stuff that we're currently doing.

When reading this, I got the impression that data reduction could mean going from interview transcripts to, say, transcripts. Interview transcripts. Like typed out. But then again, how were they typed out because that says something. Just typed out, no applied linguistics or linguistic markings, no marking for intonation or pauses or whatever. We just coded for meaning. That says something about your assumptions. Is this a meaningful detail? how does that bear on the results? Why do care about knowing that? Is it just that it gives the reviewer the opportunity to say, yes, that was meaningful, thank you for including that. Is this about empowering the reviewer and maximizing the opportunity for publication? 

You were also thinking about the relationship of coding to the research questions, and how that would be a good idea for a papers going forward. You always have to be able to ask yourself, how is the coding pass related to the research questions? and is that relationship simple enough for the reader to follow? and how have you gone out of your way to make that visible through design? 

Cezar M. Ornatowski & Linn K. Bekins, What's Civic About Technical Communication?

Cezar M. Ornatowski & Linn K. Bekins, What's Civic About Technical Communication?

In this dialectical synthesis paper (Gold), O & B respond to problems conceptualizing the concept of community in the study of technical communication--which, I might add, is not just a problem in that field. At the beginning of the article, they bring up the example of San Diego, talking about how there's not just one community--whatever that means--but many. Different communities with different values. The military community. The anti-growth people. The business people. Etc. This examples and examples like it pose a problem for conceptualizing community, esp when we think of community as a thing underpinned by consensus and shared values. They also give the example of work. When you're working at a firm these days, the firm will issue stock in place X, have an office in place Y, draw employees from place Z, and so on. They never ask, what underlies community?

Another problem they respond to is the service learning problem. If we send students out into the community, so to speak, they'll become better people. O & B criticize Huckins on this point. Faber gets criticized later. But O & B point out that even the Nazis had service learning projects. So then why send students out to do service learning? O & B don't argue against service learning per se, but they want it to be more infused with rhetoric? That's the best I can do on a quick read. Hauser also gets brought up. Students need to realize that they don't speak for communities but rather construct them, and probably have to construct multiple at different points in time. O & B never say as much, but I got the feeling like they wanted to teach students to be able to construct different communities at different points in time during the same project, while simultaneously being aware of doing so. 

But where do they get such a repertoire? How do they get so good? Or are they just supposed to be aware that community is complex and that they have to speak differently and vis-a-vis different value systems as they speak to different stakeholders? The word discourse gets brought up several times, and I think that's what they mean by that. But I'm not sure. 

Service learning is a point of contact. Service learning gets criticized via Huckin. 

They bring in concepts of community from sociology? but I don't know how sociology helps them. Does Hauser help them?

There are lots of examples in the middle-end. They go over what this would look like. 

Consider an example from a medical writer’s workplace: a document with which most of us are familiar, the package insert that comes with pharmaceutical products. Such inserts, usually small, densely printed and multiple folded sheets, provide information for both the prescriber and the patient for the safe and effective use of the drug, as well as a basis for the uses (and limitations) for a drug’s promotion to medical industry communities and the general public. This document addresses four distinct primary audiences: the physician, the phar- macist, the patient, and the regulatory agency. The insert is a summary expression of all the experimental data in the New Drug Application (NDA) collected up to the time of submission of the application to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

However, the construction of the insert and of the claims it makes about the drug often begins before any research has been performed—in fact, before the drug ac- tually exists. The initial claims may not in effect describe what the drug does or how it works; they are claims that the company would like to be able to make, and they in turn drive the research and development effort. The construction of the in- sert is shared among the marketing staff, who construct the claims in light of the projected interests and values of the drug’s (also projected) publics; the medical staff, who eventually supply the research that bears out the claims; and the regula- tory affairs and legal staff, who ensure that all government requirements are met. The pharmaceutical company’s medical writer who writes the insert and the volu- minous documents required by the process of FDA approval must meet the expec- tations and respond to the concerns of various “communities” she constructs through the claims she makes: the medical community represented by users, such as physicians and pharmacists; the potential patients; the insurers; as well as the “public” as represented by the FDA. Looking over her shoulder are the company’s shareholders and employees. The writer is, in fact, a member of at least two of these communities, in each of which she has a potentially vital stake, although she may contrive to manipulate the boundaries of these communities in ways that lessen or obscure her burden of choice. In summary, the package insert is initially constructed to discursively project the interests of imagined stakeholders; then it is revised continually as the research effort begins to direct which (if any) of the ini- tial projections can be developed or supported. The final draft of the insert attempts to mediate several “community” interests, which remain in continual tension.

The matter gets further complicated once the package insert receives FDA ap- proval and is listed on various drug directories used by insurers for coverage deci- sions. Consider a writer whose job it is to write guidelines for a primary audience of medical directors at an insurance company to assist them in their coverage deci- sions. The writer is asked to research, document, and sometimes even make insur- ance coverage recommendations about drug indications that have received FDA approval, as well as any off-label listings in the drug directories used for authoriz- ing coverage under Medicaid and other insurers. The guidelines include an over-

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view of the drug and its indications, a section with clinical study summaries to demonstrate efficacy and safety, and recommendations, including patient selection criteria. It is important to note that drug directories play a key role in supporting brand-name drug use by listing off-label uses as well as FDA-approved indications for insurance reimbursement, and that some directories include more off-label in- dications than others. Thus, besides the primary audience of a medical director, the writer must also consider a secondary audience of physicians and pharmacists, as well as the FDA, other insurers, various drug directories, and perhaps even the pharmaceutical company whose drug is being documented. According to a recent report in The Wall Street Journal about drug directories (10/23/03), if a prescribed drug is listed in a drug directory used by an individual’s insurance, it is likely to be reimbursed, regardless of whether it is an off-label or an FDA-approved drug indi- cation. This simple fact gives rise to multiple considerations about what should be listed in the directories. On the one hand, the American Medical Association sup- ports insurance coverage for any prescription representing “safe and effective ther- apy,” as long as physicians pay attention to the scientific evidence and medical opinion. On the other hand, the rise in off-label prescriptions for uses not approved by the FDA raises insurers’ costs and potentially reaps significant financial benefit for the pharmaceutical industry. Such a scenario calls to question what should be included as scientific evidence and medical opinion for off-label indications and represents a potential Pandora’s box. What constitutes scientific evidence? Sin- gle-patient observations? Open or uncontrolled studies? How much of this infor- mation should make it into the drug directory? How, finally, does a writer mediate between the stakes of multiple communities to address the general public’s need for “safe and effective therapy”? The medical writer’s problem illustrates the plu- ralistic contexts in which the writer constructs communities (albeit dynamic and changing ones) as part of a documentation process. 

It just seems like something in the Susan Popham article. Communication is high stakes. When you communicate, you have to appease various audiences. You have to make it work for diverse stakeholders simultaneously, stakeholders who occupy different epistemological? worlds. 

How is what O & B are selling different from audience? What does the concept get us that audience doesn't? 

And at the end of the day, so what? are we just selling an awareness? 

our purpose in this article has been to argue that we abandon redemptive conceptualizations of community as a founda- tion for civic approaches to technical communication and envision alternatives that would account for the complexity, integration, interdependence, and technologi- zation of the world in which all of us, including technical communicators, actually live and work. 

So do we keep community at all?

To move on, we have argued for a symbolic/rhetorical view, which regards “community” as a discursive construction whose creation or invocation is always expedient in a rhetorical sense (the myth of disinterested “public” service notwith- standing). Philippe-Joseph Salazar has argued that “[e]xpediency is the heart of deliberative politics” as well as the heart of rhetoric (11). “To expedite,” he sug- gests, “is to act with a specific use in view. Rhetorical acts, because they engage values, activate deliberation and are conducive to action, must be carefully devised and conceived and delivered so that they reach...their maximum effect” (11). Ex- pediency here means that rhetorical acts are purposeful and calculated for practical effect.  

So we keep community. 

Re-listened to this.

All communities are constructed, in many cases in and through writing. It is not, then, necessary to leave one’s campus, company, or church to begin to learn to be a civically aware communicator. The (symbolic) boundary between communities, as well as between communities and something else—like the boundary between na- ture and culture—cuts in complex and not always apparent or predictable ways. For instance, one can see the interweaving of such boundaries (between public and private, work and nonwork, corporate and social, as well as between different types of relationships that mark these domains) in the following comment by a medical writer.

When I write [medical] disease backgrounders, I feel a little more like I’m doing something useful; the people who read my materials (sales people, clinical scien- tists) will understand the disease better, and their understanding will inform their discussion of it with customers (medical professionals), but also with family and friends who ask their opinions about health questions. I recently had an experience with my sister-in-law, who had lymphoma. I edited a disease backgrounder I had written to take out technical detail and sent it to her. Then, when she started treat- ment, I sent her a copy of the New England Journal of Medicine article about a new therapy (which she was receiving). I was able to show her, in the article, that the side effects she was having were common and did not predict a bad outcome. (I didn’t write the article, but I understood it as a result of my work.) That’s not general public discourse, but it’s “one person at a time” communication that I believe is amplified into a general public impression when it’s repeated. (Susan Hudson, e-mail to authors, 1 Sept. 03)

Such boundaries are further confused and complicated by electronic communi- cation technologies (Rheingold; Kolko; esp. Wise).  

Not quite getting it here. Are we talking about kairos? about how you need to be sensitive to what you send people and when? like, if you're going to send someone something technical, when you send it to them matters?

Also, when she says, "That’s not general public discourse" that makes it sound like that was in the email via a  question. 

Are we supposed to then stay small? to lower our expectations and only try to help individuals?

"Technical communication scholars need to research and the- orize the complex relationships between rhetorical actions performed by technical communicators in their various roles and the impacts that those roles may have on the various communities." OK, so boundary crossing. Situational communication? 

I just don't see how this is more than phronesis. Technical communicators should have phronesis. Ok, sure, who would argue against that???

Oh, and check out this guy Cohen. Look at how much proportion was allocated to this guy:

A “sym- bolic” view of community that seems most useful from a rhetorical standpoint has been proposed by Anthony Cohen.

In his analysis of the concept of community as one of the “key ideas” of the modern social sciences, Cohen seeks to capture the meaning of community, a la Wittgenstein, not by trying to describe what it inherently may be as an object, but rather by examining the way community functions as a concept both for those who live “inside” it as well as those who deploy it for a variety of purposes.

Cohen suggests that community is a relational concept based on a perceived rela- tion between putative members in contrast to nonmembers and/or other communi- ties. Thus, a defining characteristic of community is the boundary between inside and outside. To the extent that this boundary is typically not physical but perceived (by members and/or others), communities can be viewed as “symbolic.” Cohen sug- gests that the symbolic boundaries of community are largely constituted by peo- ple-in-interaction. He also suggests that the idea of community itself is largely sym- bolic, in the same sense in which all relational concepts are symbolic: they allow us to freely delimit areas of reality in relation to each other and to ascribe relative values to them (see also Bauman). In turn, these values underpin our attitudes and actions as long as the boundaries on which they depend maintain their salience in our con- sciousness, which largely means that they remain useful for some practical purpose. According to Cohen, the “quintessential referent of community is that its members make, or believe they make, a similar sense of things either generally or with respect

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to specific and significant interests, and, further, that they think that that sense may differ from one made elsewhere” (16). The “community itself and everything within it, conceptual as well as material,” Cohen argues, “has a symbolic dimension, and, further,...this dimension does not exist as some kind of consensus of sentiment. Rather, it exists as something for people to ‘think with’” (19). In addition, communi- ties imply not only meanings and interpretation, but also vocabularies: “People put down their social markers symbolically, using the symbolic vocabulary which they can most comfortably assimilate to themselves, and then contributing to it creatively. They thereby make community” (28, emphasis added).

To make matters more complex, Cohen points out that even sharing a vocabu- lary is no guarantee of actual unanimity of meaning or attitude; two Catholics pro- fessing “I believe in God” may have quite different things in mind. He notes that a “community can make virtually anything grist to the symbolic mill” of collective identity, “whether it be the effects upon it of some centrally formulated govern- ment policy, or a matter of dialect, dress, drinking, or dying” (117). From the sym- bolic perspective, it thus becomes difficult to impute “beliefs” and “values” to communities. Rather, community-formation and change appear to be a function of strategic symbolic (including discursive) action conditioned and constrained by multiple factors. As Cohen points out, “[W]hether or not people behave within the ‘community’ mode or in some more specialized and limited way is less a matter of structural determinism than of [symbolic] boundary management” (28). 

Seems just like attribution a la Miller--social action as attribution, a we-intention as an attribution to the other. I think then that symbolic just means attribution, imagined (Anderson), delayed. 

I wonder if that gets us to a rhizomatic image of thought. Kind of like the electrons on that show you were watching the other day, since in the rhizome too electrons orbit in one orbit then disappear and appear again in another orbit and are only able to switch orbits by an increase or energy. Community as ephemeral, but also delayed. A promise. 

Edward Fullbrook, intro, Intersubjective Economics,

 intro to Intersubjective Economics

This intro chapter sketches how neoclassical economics is rooted in the idea of methodological individualism, although Fullbrook never uses that term. 

Just by the way, this guy Fullbrook writes or participates in some really cool looking books, like edited collections called pluralist economics and what's wrong with economics. You'll def have to read a lot of these. 

The intro compares or rather contrasts intrasubjective economics, which is seen as compatible with neoclassical economics, and intersubjective economics, which is not.  I'm guessing that the intra- is because it assumes the boundedness of individuals. Between subjects. 

Oh that's interesting. Between subjects versus within subjects. Like with Davida. 

I did have a few questions after reading this. 

• why does intersubjectivity explode the idea of supply and demand?
• why was the idea of intrasubjectivity considered OK? that is, when people were living at subsistence levels?

First one. Supply and demand. I think that one can be answered by the one example with the TV. 

The conversation value of a television program approaches nil for the viewer when no one else watches it. In the television industry everyone knows that a prime reason for choosing to regularly watch a particular program is that other people, especially people one knows, are watching it. This hypothesis, that an agent’s demand for a product may depend positively on the number of other people demanding it, though uncon- tested throughout the media industries, remains out of bounds for neo- classical, that is, intrasubjective theory. In Chapter 8 Hargreaves Heap, beginning with the case of television, argues that this variety of demand interdependence operates also in non-media industries, but that because the origin of the interdependence may be different in those industries, it is for them not necessarily a common cause of market failure. Hargreaves Heap, therefore, seeks to develop an understanding of the various ways in which demand is intersubjectively constituted. 

Again it comes down to boundedness. Methodological individualism, if I'm using that term right, means that my desires have to be my own, that I'm capable of rationally making decisions for myself, that I'm not leaky, so to speak. 

Or there was the conspicuous consumerism idea too. I'm leaky, and you can tell because I want to buy this flashy car, not necessarily because I want the car, but because I want to be seen by others as the kind of person who drives this car. The demand for the car then stems from its ability? to be used as? bolstering the power of others, for increasing? the power that individuals' have????? 

Different approach. The hidden hand of the market, a phrase not used in this intro, means that supply and demand balance themselves. Or no maybe that has to do with price too. 

Equilibrium was used in this intro, but I don't really understand the theory--that is, general equilibrium theory. Equilibrium. Balance.   

Demand also. Gunn. 

Consumption. Marx. Baudrillard. Consumption got used a lot, and Fullbrook also mentioned how neoclassical economics didn't take into consideration consumption. 

Oh structure and agency. 

Ideally, the concept development required for this undertaking falls into two categories. First, concepts of non-atomistic agents must be formed, concepts subtle enough to capture the ambiguity and complexity of the intersubjective agent. Second, social, cultural and economic struc- tures created by such agents must be identified and analyzed in terms of the way they in turn shape and reshape the agents. Hence, the division of this collection’s chapters into two parts: agents and structures. But of course intersubjectivity means that agents and agents, and agents and socio-economic structures are interdependent, so that conceptualizing one level inevitably involves concepts relating to the other. In all the chap- ters, therefore, you will find considerations of both kinds of concepts. 

Here is the quote from which my first question emanates:

In terms of economic model building, the difference between intra and intersubjective relations is fundamental. Neoclassical economics’ two basic functional concepts, supply and demand, are predicated on the assump- tion that no intersubjective relations enter into the determination of market supply and demand. They are conceived as simple additive aggregations of the supplies and demands of the individual subjects. These conceptions preclude any intersubjective relations between economic agents influenc- ing the determination of their supplies and demands, because such inter- dependencies would void the definition of market demand and supply. This formalistic imperative has meant that, for more than a century, inter- subjectivity has been taboo in mainstream economics. 

There was the math part too, the one person in this collection who was like (will be like?) the reason neoclassical economists went with the intrasubjective model is that they wanted to use math. But now with increased computing power, we can use math to model intersubjective economics. 

Second question. Why was intrasubjective economics OK when we? were living at subsistence levels?

There was also that person mentioned in this, the person who was talking about how social constructionism only really applies to ... higher level or... let's just find it. 

In Chapter 3 Anne Mayhew challenges a foundational idea, not just of neoclassical economics, but also of the classical and Marxian traditions. She argues that an agent’s subsistence needs, beyond basic nutritional and shelter requirements, are socially constructed. In all societies, she writes, “what is ‘surplus’ and what is needed for survival is defined socially.” Neoclassical theorists, she argues, have had to deny, ignore or play down the social determination of consumption patterns and the significance of advertising in order to continue with their definition of the rational con- sumer. Mayhew notes that economists are the only social scientists who treat the social role of consumption as trivial. She then takes apart the two arguments that mainstream economists have used to justify their eccentric position. 

Also you forgot, there was the Diane Davis cheating part:

In Chapter 2 Ernst Fehr and Armin Falk arrive at conclusions similar to those of Davis, but by radically different means. Fehr and Falk belong to the small but growing number of experimental economists. In their Zurich laboratories they attempt to unravel the enigmas of economic agency. One such is that, despite the ubiquity of material incentives for cheating, most economic actors most of the time do not cheat other actors. Some of these choices to forgo rewards are explainable by game theory models of repeated interaction. But most are not. For these Fehr and Falk hypothesize that, given favorable social conditions, there exists a procliv- ity for agents to be willing to sacrifice resources to be kind to those who are being kind and to punish those who are being unkind. They call their hypothesis, which is confirmed in laboratory experiments, reciprocal fair- ness. Fehr and Falk review the empirical evidence. They also explore the relationship between reciprocal fairness and socio-economic cooperation and explain how social structures aimed at deterring cheating may have the opposite effect, so much so as to induce the majority of people to cheat. 

Yes on that last part "social structures aimed at deterring cheating may have the opposite effect, so much so as to induce the majority of people to cheat"--modes of writing assessment bear this out. 

You had no idea what this was. 

Geoffrey Hodgson’s ambitious essay, which comprises Chapter 10, develops the concept of “reconstitutive downward causation” in the con- text of individual agency. It, in fact, addresses the agency–structure problem head on. Reconstitutive downward causation involves the proposition that individuals are formed as well as constrained by their sit- uation. Hodgson briefly discusses the genealogy and basis of this idea, and argues that this concept or one very like it is necessary if social sci- ence is to avoid inconsistent or incomplete arguments. He also contrasts reconstitutive downward causation with other approaches found in the social sciences. 

It's probably just rhetoric--like they're trying to theorize rhetoric without rhetoric as a field. 

You've strayed from the second question. Does it have to do with care? like, if I'm hungry, then I don't care about or can't attend to what others are attending to?

Scarcity is important in economics. When resources are NOT scarce, shit gets weird. Where was the surplus quote? "all societies, she writes, “what is ‘surplus’ and what is needed for survival is defined socially"--but doesn't the last part contradict what she said earlier? "what is needed for survival is defined socially"--you're thinking about the phone argument. A phone is necessary for survival. No it's not. Etc. I just feel like this sentence "She argues that an agent’s subsistence needs, beyond basic nutritional and shelter requirements, are socially constructed" is at odds with this one "what is needed for survival is defined socially"

Here's the quote that you're getting the second question from:

From the vantage point of a high-tech, instantaneous mass communica- tion consumer society, the notion that economic agents are autonomous subjectivities and that, therefore, economic phenomena are exclusively intrasubjective appears as a palpable absurdity. In our age we all know that what we think, desire and decide as economic actors depends a great deal on what other actors are seen to think, desire and decide. But this was not always so much the case. When neoclassical economics was in its forma- tive stages (1870–1890), economic activity was primarily about satisfying material needs in a pre-electronic world. Prior to the last century, most people in the West lived at or near subsistence level. Inter-subjectivity does not enter directly into the determination of the biological requirements of sustaining a human life and of providing it with basic physical comfort. So at the time of economics’ founding and through much of the nineteenth century, basing the concept of homo economicus on atomistic individualism and sensationalist psychology, although limiting the scope of its inquiry, left it with a wide field to cover. In other words, it was an age when intra- subjective economics could arguably claim as its domain the greater part of economic phenomena. But in our age, outside of the poorest countries, the economic realm to which intrasubjective economics pertains grows smaller and smaller every year. 

I feel like this is at odds with Wynter, who would argue that "Inter-subjectivity does not enter directly into the determination of the biological requirements of sustaining a human life and of providing it with basic physical comfort" is wrong? or maybe at odds with how

Sylvia Wynter argues that humans are a “hybrid-auto-instituting-languaging-storytelling species” & that we are a product or our origin stories. What else should be a praxis instead of a noun? This question has been an amazing frame for my work on multimodality.

— Dan Martin (@danmartin_7) July 6, 2021

Back to question two. Fullbrook does use the phrase pre-electronic. This is probably a methodological split, like in rhetoric we would use the phrase always already, like even the ancients were digital. But I don't think Fullbrook is doing that. But I def see how digital technology exacerbates what's already there, kind of like the Carolyn Miller claim that the blog doesn't so much invent? a relation? but amplify one that's already there. Networks as amplifiers. Like with the TV example earlier. Conspicuous consumption. All of this turns on excess. Surplus (what what counts as surplus, of course). But I can definitely see a direct relationship with excess and intersubjectivity. The more excess, the more? intersubjectivity. The logic of more has to be shit though (cf. Boyle and Rivers). But we're bumping up against field values. Like Bataille would argue that there was excess pre-digitally (via the sacred?), but I think I still get Fullbrook's point nonetheless, that neoclassical economics could get away with the intrasubjective model when most of what most people were buying was linked to subsistence necessity--food, clothing, maybe a book here and there, the bible, rent, etc. I get it.