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: As for the name of the "Department of Ideological Deprogramming," I named it to get the readers attention vis-a-vis the need for radical change in the way people think. I see your point, and agree whole-heartedly. I just can't help being overly cautious, you understand, I'm sure.
:How about if we call it the "Department of Deschooling", and put Ivan Illich in charge?
ROFL, thanks.
: As for the Department of Ethnographic Studies, the important point to remember is that ethnographic study should be the primary vehicle of social-scientific knowledge-gathering, that quantitative methodology exists as a (sometimes necessary) supplement to such research but that without such research, the social sciences risk vacuousness.
Point taken, and again, general agreement. My only real discomfort then is that there seems to be, as yet, no single unified (or unifying) theoretical basis for ethnography (i.e. how it is to be done). Here at UW, there is a Po-Mo faction, an evolutionary ecology faction, a linguistics (e.g. Saussure, Eco, et al) faction and so forth. I agree that ethnographic analysis is the appropriate methodology for anth, sociology, econ, and the rest of the "social sciences" (and possibly many of the humanities?) but the theoretical factionalism is still pretty severe.
My personal hypothesis is that the reason for the lack of a "unified theory of societies" (other than the pedantic arguments you mentioned) is that we, as yet, don't really have a unified goal for social sciences. What are we, as a group, really trying to do? If it's just description of "the other" (or even "the self," for thatmatter) then a unified methodology is sufficient and we don't really need a unified theory. However, and I'm sure you agree, simple description is not sufficient, no matter how detailed, and an explanation is called for. I have to admit that I'm not really sure if there is a single common goal for the social sciences (other than the trite "to study humans") so I'm not sure we can develop a unified explanatory theory (sensu Popper).
This also ties back to our goal of starting an institute for research into historical processes. The explanation of things that change through time and the ways and reasons for change is a central focus that cross-cuts traditional departmental specializations (historians, biologists, geologists, political scientists, ethnologists, and archaeologists all have this one common theme, despite their differences in approach).
:So, you see, I am not arguing for a "separate" department of Ethnographic Studies, but rather the abolition of "separate" departments of sociology, anthropology, communication studies, economics, politics etc., many of which duplicate each others' work anyway,
Right, that's pretty much what I took you to mean, and again, I can see your point. It's a good idea.
: The modern university, as David F. Labaree (HOW TO SUCCEED IN SCHOOL WITHOUT REALLY LEARNING) has become a mere mechanism for reinforcing the class culture of capitalist society having only a tangential relationship to actual learning.
This is indeed true, and you'll get no argument from me. I don't really think that we can place all the blame on the Uni though. I personally feel that it starts much earlier in the educational career, and the university is more a symptom than a cause. The way universities are set up is simply an extension (historically speaking) of the way primary and secondary schools are set up. High schools were basically developed to produce semi-skilled factory workers, and universities were designed to take the most skilled high schoolers and train them to be semi-conscious white collar and managerial drones. Graduate school was basically designed to skim the "cream" of the university students and turn them into the next generation of instructors in the self-perpetuating system.
The entire system was set up to enable the industrial economy to persist, and it was quite effective at doing so. Since the de-industrialization of the US economy, the education system as a whole no longer serves any real function, but it self-perpetuates regardless.
: ... Please read an essay from Ben Agger's THE DECLINE OF DISCOURSE titled "Academic Writing as Real Estate,"
Will do, thanks for the reference.
:At any rate, the departmental differentiation specified in the elementary-school term "social studies" is enough for the universities, too, and in this regard the "Department of Ethnographic Studies" merely tells us where we stand.
OK, I can see your point, thanks for the clarification.
: My comment: I'm not sure I outlined what a department of Critical Theory would do in sufficient detail. Pushing momentarily aside the issue of the significance of Floyd's experiences, one can nevertheless say (especially considering Labaree's above quote) that the university can no more escape the "institutionalization of ideological goals" than direct sunlight can escape being bright. The point of a Department of Critical Theory would be to create an academic public sphere for debate about the appropriate ideological purposes of the university, the workplace, etc., given the governing influence of theory in directing observations about the world.
OK, that's muchmore clear. The phrase "critical theory" has been somewhat usurped by a small group of (post-) modern anti-rationalists, at least here. Journals such as Critical Text and so on use the term "critical theory" in a way that is much different than the way you are using it, and I suppose I reacted to the connotations of the term rather than the denotations. As long as the term is taken to mean a space for open debate of the purposes of the university, rather than mere anti-rationalism, I'm all for it.
: ...Once we get past our conceptual resistances to the notion of intersubjectivity as the basis for social theory, we then need to explain how intersubjectivity works.
Well, there's a potential "chicken and egg" problem here, in that it's going to be difficult to get past our resistances until we really know what we're looking at. I suspect that this is going to be an iterative process-a slight willingness to experiment with intersubjective analyses, resulting in an improved understanding of the phenomenon, leading to further research, and so on.
:So, frankly, I believe such a department would make us masters of an institutionalized ideology, rather than making us slaves to one.
The way you're explaining it here, I can see what you mean. I'll think more about this. Thanks.
-Floyd
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