Hi all, hope everyone's projects are going well. My advisor's been in KY for a conference the second half of this week, so I got the day off these past couple of days. I took this as an opportunity to delve into a new book that I found a .pdf for online: Language and Power, by Norman Fairclough, who's one of the leading scholars in the field of CDA. I'm only up to Chapter 4, where he talks about discourse's reflection of what he calls ideology, ideology being the non-power-related assumptions about the world around us (he outlines the link between power and discourse pretty comprehensively in Chapter 3, but of course there's a lot of crossover). At the time of this writing I haven't gotten to the section devoted to discourse analysis methods (Chapter 5 I believe), so I can't share anything yet in the realm of application, but I assure you that's coming up (probably next week!). Another thing about the book: Fairclough's version of discourse, and the thing that he's analyzing the most is spoken word (recorded transcripts, spoken texts, speeches, etc.), however he devotes a lot of time to media discourse as well, which is of most relevance to my project. Media discourse, like conversational discourse, is different from a lot of written language in that certain linguistic structures are generally favored, and certain types of information are valued (or omitted), often making for interesting power dynamics as expressed by the piece in question, which Fairclough outlines very methodically in his book.
I've also been working my way, slowly but surely, through what's probably the most difficult (but also the most enlightening!) text I've ever read, Michel Foucault's The Archaeology of Knowledge. My advisor, Sarah, has herself never read the book so we're working on this one together, with her guiding me along and clarifying the parts I've found to be impenetrable when reading alone. There's a lot going on here! I'll talk about what I've found to be most interesting: first, in the introduction, he sets up a dichotomy between the "old" version of history and the "new" version it's evolved into, with the traditional one concerned with pinpointing various "discontinuities" (a term he's yet to clearly define, as of Chapter 4) and neutralizing them by defining each of their positions in relation to one another, in effect setting up a chronological series of causality. He argues that history's new role is one of not only defining the limits of each of these "horizontal" series (histories such as medicine, philosophy, religion, literature, politics, etc.), but of determining the "vertical" relationships among these series - as in, what dynamic of correlation (or domination!) exists between them. Foucault suggests, as a means of assessing this interplay, looking at the language used in certain historical documents, in what amounts to one of the earliest cases for CDA: language analysis in terms of looking not at the "what?" but the "why?" of discourse. Later on, he calls into question his own role as a discourse analyst. He insists he's not for an outright denial of all assumptions governing our thinking; despite his assertion that much of discourse is based not so much on a traditional "already-said" but rather a "never-said" (a "repressive presence of what it does not say"), he instead wants to unwind its innate assumptions, to show that they cannot just be commonsensibly, or as he puts it, "tranquilly" accepted. Lastly and quite helpfully, Foucault puts forth what I feel is a really great definition for discourse analysis, summed up by the following three questions:
1. "[A]ccording to what rules has a particular statement been made?"
2. "[A]ccording to what rules could other similar statements be made?" and
3. "[H]ow is it that one discursive statement appeared rather than another?"
These are the questions I need to be asking when I begin actual discursive analysis of media sources relating to Pascua Lama in the coming weeks.
I mentioned last week I'd talk a bit about Mike Carey's book In the Shadow of Melting Glaciers and how it relates to the field of Political Ecology as detailed by Paul Robbins. Not only a great introduction for someone like me, in terms thinking about the social, economic, and political implications of glacier retreat, Carey's book also addresses how all human ecological assumptions and endeavors have power-laden ideologies backing them, conscious or no. The book, which I've nearly finished, describes the social and political climates of towns in the Andes affected by glacier retreat throughout the 20th century, in which a host of actors, including local residents, rural farmers, various Peruvian regimes, and glacier experts interact to confront the issues posed by climatic change and the natural disasters in the region caused by that climatic change. Carey analyzes competing strategies regarding things such as glacial lake draining, hazard zoning, and dam construction as not just an allegory for but evidence and a result of the racial and class distinctions present in Peru. He explains how in the wake of numerous natural disasters in the area (outburst floods, avalanches, an earthquakes), government officials and government-backed capitalists descended upon the area to enact sociopolitical and economic agendas, respectively - things such as the construction of infrastructure, building of hydrological and hydroelectric frameworks, and even socialistic land redistribution. All of these implemented strategies are shown to be reflective of gains of political power - and too often for the locals most affected by the natural disasters, losses of it. These are trends to be on the lookout for when conducting discursive analysis on texts relevant to Pascua Lama, and how the language used in those (mostly media) sources suggests narratives different to or in line with these highly thematic struggles.
That's all for now! I hope you enjoyed this post (I know I did - these blog posts are actually quite helpful for me in terms of distilling key points from my, frankly, all-over-the-place notes). I'm quite enjoying this project and where my research is headed!
Friday, February 28, 2014
Friday, February 21, 2014
Entry #3
Hi all, back again w/ another post for zee blog. Been doing more of the same with my advisor; working my way through various texts, producing write-ups on said texts, proofreading Sarah's work, etc. Shortly hereafter I'll be accompanying her for interviews of potential interns for her Confluencecenter Fellowship, which should be an interesting window into academic and community-minded endeavors. In the past week, I've worked with Michel Foucault's Archaeology of Knowledge, Mark Carey's book In the Shadow of Melting Glaciers, and Paul Robbins' essay The Practical Politics of Knowing: State Environmental Knowledge and Local Political Economy, an essay about the nuanced epistemological differences regarding ecological change held by local and bureaucratic actors in India's Kumbhalgarh Wildlife Sanctuary. Robbins is also the author of the book Political Ecology, which I've read several chapters from (and of course, produced extensive notes on for the purposes of my and Sarah's projects). The book has provided me with several sources of inspiration theme-wise for my upcoming final product, a narrative that will show my knowledge of critical discourse analysis as applied to glaciology, which field - as I've been reading in the book by Mark Carey - demonstrates some pretty serious overlaps with some of the issues discussed in Political Ecology. I'll elaborate on some of those overlaps in a different post, but for now, here are some of the ideas in I've found to be compelling in Robbins' book, taken from the two chapters I found to be most relevant to my project and this blog:
In Chapter 1, "The Hatchet and the Seed," Robbins begins by offering a variety of definitions for political ecology, including “a confluence between ecologically rooted social science and the principles of political economy” (Peet and Watts 1996). Political ecology is concerned with many lines of inquiry, such as contesting “apolitical” or Malthusian models of ecoscarcity, asserting they are resultant of political and economic dynamics rather than unchangeable natural laws. The field contests the argument that ecological crises occurring in primarily underdeveloped areas stem from inadequate adoption of “modern” economic techniques, a line of reasoning often used for political gains, such as the usurping of local controls over land. Political ecology accepts that environmental change has various costs and benefits which are distributed unequally among groups and individuals, resulting in or reinforcing social and economic inequities, which in turn hold political implications in terms of altered powers. Political ecology often functions as critique, devaluing ecological “myths,” or narratives promulgated about nature by hegemonic knowledge sources such as media or the state. Lastly, it exists as alternative development strategy: a re-understanding of how systems are constructed in order to reclaim traditional practices, or simply assert alternative, more sustainable and equitable ways of managing nature.
Afterwards, in Chapter 6, "Construction of Nature," Robbins identifies the social factors at play governing our perceptions of nature, exploring the idea of natural objects as “expressions of human imagination, suffused with political and cultural influences.” Referencing Foucault, he understands the construction of different “categories of reality” to be politically charged, linked with “the emergence of new authorities and institutions.” He uses soil erosion as an example; while for the most part scientifically debunked, soil erosion continues to exist as a social construction affording colonial land managers and state bureaucrats control over others’ behavior, but in the name of “soil conservation.” Robbins details human classification systems as constructed phenomena, often arbitrary and serving narrow political interests; he notes that what is regarded as scientific truth is prone to change with “the political and social wind,” at times raising conflicts as to whose classifications, scientific or local, to accept as the dominant reality. Robbins identifies two main types of constructivism relevant to political ecology; the first, radical, or “hard” constructivism, sees social context alone as determining humans’ understandings of nature. Hard constructivism is hence seen as restrictive, because it “disallows reference to non-human actors in explaining outcomes,” maintaining the human symbolic and social orders to be unquestionably the dominant reality. The second, and more common type is known as “soft” constructivism, wherein political ecologists understand the objective world as not only extant but also free of human categorization, however “filtered through conceptual systems and scientific methods that are socially conditioned.” Soft constructivism is aware that theories regarding natural systems have “consistently reflected the prevailing social languages and assumptions of their times”; thus, it tends to place emphasis on the politically driven misunderstandings of objective facts - ideas like “race,” “desertification,” “soil erosion,” etc. Social institutional constructivism, a subset of soft constructivism, views these biases as necessarily a part of scientific practice, but not definitive of the conditions of the natural world; instead, the goal is to “purge,” over time, these wrong “social” theories about ecology. Robbins notes that evidence for the construction of nature is “rarely seen fully embodied or realized in a single form,” but rather communicated in parts by language used in media, music, conversation, and scientific documents. Further, he identifies cartography as heavily prone to social bias and contributing to this constructed version of nature, in which the act of choosing what natural features to emphasize involves power-laden assumptions, and can be used both in favor of or against native land rights. Lastly, Robbins addresses the competing narratives of ecological change held by different social groups, explaining that “rifts in environmental interpretation follow existing political divisions,” further emphasizing the extent to which ecology is an inherently political affair.
Myriad nexuses (nexi?) can be made between these elements of political ecology and the field of glaciology, which I'll elaborate on most likely next week, with probably some info of Foucault's thrown in for good measure. A heads-up for that then: think about the "construction" of natural disasters related to glacier retreat; think about the consequences; think something called disaster capitalism. That's all for now! In the next couple weeks I'll be turning towards actual discourse analysis methods, and demonstrating them here on the blog as applied to sources regarding Pascua Lama and the region's glaciers, so stay tuned (stay critical!)!
In Chapter 1, "The Hatchet and the Seed," Robbins begins by offering a variety of definitions for political ecology, including “a confluence between ecologically rooted social science and the principles of political economy” (Peet and Watts 1996). Political ecology is concerned with many lines of inquiry, such as contesting “apolitical” or Malthusian models of ecoscarcity, asserting they are resultant of political and economic dynamics rather than unchangeable natural laws. The field contests the argument that ecological crises occurring in primarily underdeveloped areas stem from inadequate adoption of “modern” economic techniques, a line of reasoning often used for political gains, such as the usurping of local controls over land. Political ecology accepts that environmental change has various costs and benefits which are distributed unequally among groups and individuals, resulting in or reinforcing social and economic inequities, which in turn hold political implications in terms of altered powers. Political ecology often functions as critique, devaluing ecological “myths,” or narratives promulgated about nature by hegemonic knowledge sources such as media or the state. Lastly, it exists as alternative development strategy: a re-understanding of how systems are constructed in order to reclaim traditional practices, or simply assert alternative, more sustainable and equitable ways of managing nature.
Afterwards, in Chapter 6, "Construction of Nature," Robbins identifies the social factors at play governing our perceptions of nature, exploring the idea of natural objects as “expressions of human imagination, suffused with political and cultural influences.” Referencing Foucault, he understands the construction of different “categories of reality” to be politically charged, linked with “the emergence of new authorities and institutions.” He uses soil erosion as an example; while for the most part scientifically debunked, soil erosion continues to exist as a social construction affording colonial land managers and state bureaucrats control over others’ behavior, but in the name of “soil conservation.” Robbins details human classification systems as constructed phenomena, often arbitrary and serving narrow political interests; he notes that what is regarded as scientific truth is prone to change with “the political and social wind,” at times raising conflicts as to whose classifications, scientific or local, to accept as the dominant reality. Robbins identifies two main types of constructivism relevant to political ecology; the first, radical, or “hard” constructivism, sees social context alone as determining humans’ understandings of nature. Hard constructivism is hence seen as restrictive, because it “disallows reference to non-human actors in explaining outcomes,” maintaining the human symbolic and social orders to be unquestionably the dominant reality. The second, and more common type is known as “soft” constructivism, wherein political ecologists understand the objective world as not only extant but also free of human categorization, however “filtered through conceptual systems and scientific methods that are socially conditioned.” Soft constructivism is aware that theories regarding natural systems have “consistently reflected the prevailing social languages and assumptions of their times”; thus, it tends to place emphasis on the politically driven misunderstandings of objective facts - ideas like “race,” “desertification,” “soil erosion,” etc. Social institutional constructivism, a subset of soft constructivism, views these biases as necessarily a part of scientific practice, but not definitive of the conditions of the natural world; instead, the goal is to “purge,” over time, these wrong “social” theories about ecology. Robbins notes that evidence for the construction of nature is “rarely seen fully embodied or realized in a single form,” but rather communicated in parts by language used in media, music, conversation, and scientific documents. Further, he identifies cartography as heavily prone to social bias and contributing to this constructed version of nature, in which the act of choosing what natural features to emphasize involves power-laden assumptions, and can be used both in favor of or against native land rights. Lastly, Robbins addresses the competing narratives of ecological change held by different social groups, explaining that “rifts in environmental interpretation follow existing political divisions,” further emphasizing the extent to which ecology is an inherently political affair.
Myriad nexuses (nexi?) can be made between these elements of political ecology and the field of glaciology, which I'll elaborate on most likely next week, with probably some info of Foucault's thrown in for good measure. A heads-up for that then: think about the "construction" of natural disasters related to glacier retreat; think about the consequences; think something called disaster capitalism. That's all for now! In the next couple weeks I'll be turning towards actual discourse analysis methods, and demonstrating them here on the blog as applied to sources regarding Pascua Lama and the region's glaciers, so stay tuned (stay critical!)!
Thursday, February 13, 2014
Entry #2
Hi all, here's another blog post for those of you lucky enough to be following my *fantastic* blog. In the past week of my SRP I've begun setting up an Evernote database of sources pertaining to both my advisor's (Sarah's) project and my own, replete with write-ups communicating the texts' main points. Among these are three sources Sarah and I worked on cooperatively; they are, in chronological order: an excerpt of David Harvey's Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference; select chapters of Paul Robbin's Political Ecology; and the first section of Mark Carey's In the Shadow of Melting Glaciers. All of these books deal in some form with the ways in which we perceive nature, and what inherent biases are encoded in those interactions. For each of these, I'll do a breakdown of what I feel to be the most important/relevant points for my project, so those of you reading this can get a better feel for the ideas I'm currently toying with.
David Harvey (whom many of the seniors got to hear lecture, on a field trip earlier this school year) is known firstly as a Marxist scholar, but in Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference, he concerns himself with other discourses as well. In the excerpt I read, Harvey looks at different philosophical schools of thought (Marxian, Enlightenment, and the Frankfurt School) and their references of the idea of nature in their writing, analyzing the assumptions encapsulated by those different discourses' language regarding the environment. He concludes that Marxian and Enlightenment theory act as primarily dominative, anti-ecological forces in their language used, while the Frankfurt School was simply too abstract in this regard to be considered further. Of interest to me is his elaboration on Enlightenment thought's subjection of nature to the same internal (human) / external (environment)* "power asymmetry" as it does class, with its 18th-century political economy (more on this later) "making sense" of nature by viewing it in terms of capital, effecting a subjection of it to the "philosophies of mechanical systems." These theses, laden in the Enlightenment tenets of human emancipation and self-realization, in effect confine the environment as a whole to a managerial/institutional order; in other words: end-game for the Enlightenment = complete domination of nature. He goes on, asking the lofty question of whether "values inhere in nature," that is to say: are the "feelings" we derive from nature actually coming to us from the environment, are or they merely socially constructed phenomena - modern culture telling us to "feel" a certain way when we look out upon a landscape, or go on a walk through the woods? He fails to provide a concrete answer for this (most likely because there is none). But even further, he qualifies all scientific findings (far out) as "tainted" by these more or less constructed (also more on this later) social biases, which serve to color our perception of ecological data. He states: "If values reside in nature we have no scientific way of knowing what they are independently of the values implicit in the metaphors deployed in mounting specific forms of scientific enquiry," implying that a neutral, objective understanding of nature's "foundational moral principles" is basically impossible in the face of these discursively imbedded assumptions. Terribly abstract, but interesting nonetheless - and one of the major foci of my project.
* Harvey does something interesting in this text; when interrogating the different discourses' relationships with the idea of nature, he moves fluidly between the concepts of "internal" and "external" nature, presumably to counteract the notion that these two things are somehow separate or distinct categories. Critical discourse analysis is all about taking apart assumptions, and Harvey evidently alludes to this facet by structurally blurring the two "natures", and very possibly as intra-textual reference to his later point that the heterogeneity of discourses is very much welcomed in the field ecology, much as we as humans welcome the heterogeneity of flora and fauna in our interactions with "wilderness" (constructed or no).
This became quite long (I tend to do that!) so expect a follow-up on the Robbins and Carey pieces probably tomorrow. A heads-up (and possibly a relief to some), Robbins-wise, is that Political Ecology grounds itself more in material implications and empirical research; that is to say, it's not the head-in-the-clouds conceptual thinking that Harvey tends to gravitate toward. In any event, the themes addressed by the Harvey piece, obviously not all of which were covered in this blog post, will be useful in providing inspiration for my final product, a fictional short story relating discourse analysis to the field of geography. Also, some of my terminology might be unclear, which tends to happen when working for long hours with academic reading - that being said, if anyone needs clarification for anything I write, hit up the comments section! I'd be glad to help (to the best of my ability).
David Harvey (whom many of the seniors got to hear lecture, on a field trip earlier this school year) is known firstly as a Marxist scholar, but in Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference, he concerns himself with other discourses as well. In the excerpt I read, Harvey looks at different philosophical schools of thought (Marxian, Enlightenment, and the Frankfurt School) and their references of the idea of nature in their writing, analyzing the assumptions encapsulated by those different discourses' language regarding the environment. He concludes that Marxian and Enlightenment theory act as primarily dominative, anti-ecological forces in their language used, while the Frankfurt School was simply too abstract in this regard to be considered further. Of interest to me is his elaboration on Enlightenment thought's subjection of nature to the same internal (human) / external (environment)* "power asymmetry" as it does class, with its 18th-century political economy (more on this later) "making sense" of nature by viewing it in terms of capital, effecting a subjection of it to the "philosophies of mechanical systems." These theses, laden in the Enlightenment tenets of human emancipation and self-realization, in effect confine the environment as a whole to a managerial/institutional order; in other words: end-game for the Enlightenment = complete domination of nature. He goes on, asking the lofty question of whether "values inhere in nature," that is to say: are the "feelings" we derive from nature actually coming to us from the environment, are or they merely socially constructed phenomena - modern culture telling us to "feel" a certain way when we look out upon a landscape, or go on a walk through the woods? He fails to provide a concrete answer for this (most likely because there is none). But even further, he qualifies all scientific findings (far out) as "tainted" by these more or less constructed (also more on this later) social biases, which serve to color our perception of ecological data. He states: "If values reside in nature we have no scientific way of knowing what they are independently of the values implicit in the metaphors deployed in mounting specific forms of scientific enquiry," implying that a neutral, objective understanding of nature's "foundational moral principles" is basically impossible in the face of these discursively imbedded assumptions. Terribly abstract, but interesting nonetheless - and one of the major foci of my project.
* Harvey does something interesting in this text; when interrogating the different discourses' relationships with the idea of nature, he moves fluidly between the concepts of "internal" and "external" nature, presumably to counteract the notion that these two things are somehow separate or distinct categories. Critical discourse analysis is all about taking apart assumptions, and Harvey evidently alludes to this facet by structurally blurring the two "natures", and very possibly as intra-textual reference to his later point that the heterogeneity of discourses is very much welcomed in the field ecology, much as we as humans welcome the heterogeneity of flora and fauna in our interactions with "wilderness" (constructed or no).
This became quite long (I tend to do that!) so expect a follow-up on the Robbins and Carey pieces probably tomorrow. A heads-up (and possibly a relief to some), Robbins-wise, is that Political Ecology grounds itself more in material implications and empirical research; that is to say, it's not the head-in-the-clouds conceptual thinking that Harvey tends to gravitate toward. In any event, the themes addressed by the Harvey piece, obviously not all of which were covered in this blog post, will be useful in providing inspiration for my final product, a fictional short story relating discourse analysis to the field of geography. Also, some of my terminology might be unclear, which tends to happen when working for long hours with academic reading - that being said, if anyone needs clarification for anything I write, hit up the comments section! I'd be glad to help (to the best of my ability).
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Entry #1
Hi everyone! My name's Craig Nielsen, and welcome to the first installment in the chronicle that is my senior research project! For my SRP, I will be working under the guidance of Sarah Kelly, who is currently working on preliminary research for her PhD in Geography. That will entail her going to South America later this year and investigating the ongoing controversy surrounding the prospective Pascua Lama mining project, which lies on the border of Argentina and Chile - and in particular, the mine's potential for impact on glaciers in that region. Unfortunately, I will not be going to South America with Sarah; instead, I will be immersing myself in a field of enquiry known as critical discourse analysis (CDA), methods of which Sarah plans to use on media sources concerning her subject while abroad. At a glance, critical discourse analysis is the process by which linguistic trends are assessed in order to show the hegemonic assumptions underpinning our very lines of thought, speech, and writing. Similar to the Derridean deconstruction many of the seniors learned about this year in Critical Theory, this topic, along with various glacial ecology- and political economy-related texts, will occupy much of my individual reading time throughout the project. In the time leading up to my advisor's research proper, I will be concerned with producing a database of news sources related to not only my advisor's topic but myriad glacier- and ecology-pertaining texts as well, complete with write-ups and applications of CDA methods (as I begin to research them).
At the moment, my advisor is also involved as a coordinator for the joint Tucson-Nogales Confluencecenter Fellowship, working with social and natural/physical science students from both Arizona and Sonora to produce bilingual multimedia materials relevant to the region and conduct community-based projects and research. My responsibilities in this regard will be to produce write-ups and photos for a host of Google Tours destinations on the U.S. side of the border, however I do not expect this to take up as much time as the database component. Lastly, and in a bold step outside of my comfort zone, my final product for the project will consist of a short story (20-40 pages) demonstrating my knowledge of how CDA interfaces with elements of glaciology and ecology, as in, what assumptions are conveyed by the language used in those geographic discourses? Transposing this more abstract theory into a narrative format will be difficult, but I'm up for the challenge - and of course, I'm excited to see where this project takes me!
At the moment, my advisor is also involved as a coordinator for the joint Tucson-Nogales Confluencecenter Fellowship, working with social and natural/physical science students from both Arizona and Sonora to produce bilingual multimedia materials relevant to the region and conduct community-based projects and research. My responsibilities in this regard will be to produce write-ups and photos for a host of Google Tours destinations on the U.S. side of the border, however I do not expect this to take up as much time as the database component. Lastly, and in a bold step outside of my comfort zone, my final product for the project will consist of a short story (20-40 pages) demonstrating my knowledge of how CDA interfaces with elements of glaciology and ecology, as in, what assumptions are conveyed by the language used in those geographic discourses? Transposing this more abstract theory into a narrative format will be difficult, but I'm up for the challenge - and of course, I'm excited to see where this project takes me!
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