History Bump

Some questions:
(1) Does he describe his divisions of the field as "methodological" divisons?
(2) To what extent is his account of these divisions within the field a synchronic rather than diachronic account?
(3) North uses anthropology, participant observer, and ethnography as metaphors throughout, correct? It's been awhile since I've read this one, but I don't recall that North actually conducted an ethnography.

I'm really intrigued by your description. It seems that North is both writing about the field and writing about *how you write about a field*,
from your comments. Is that a fair characterization?
Beyond the anthropological,
what other methods is he naming as used in comp?
One comment beyond the questions:
under "disciplinary aims", you say that North sees only the third category of methodologically unaware work as a real problem.
Of the three: "inconsistent, not comparable, and largely unexamined ways", I think that each one is a considerable problem in its own right. Internal inconsistency within a study, or between the aims and methods of a study, can erase the validity of the work; not producing work that can be compared to other work *in
methodological terms* makes it difficult to evaluate the work, and of course, we know about
"the unexamined life" - or method.
clo

carolyn,
i should have said more about north--i've read the book so many times i've forgotten what's clear about it and what isn't. let me take these one by one...

1) your initial re-statement i like--i'm not sure he's specifically trying to instruct others in how to write about a field, but he certainly sets himself up as an example to follow, and he sees NOT knowing how to write about the field as the main problem he sets out to solve, so that looks like a fair characterization of what can only be an acknowledged intended-result, even if not a deliberate aim.

2) his methodological divisions are a classification-system for him very specifically of ways knowledge is made in composition. he identifies knowledge-makers as tending toward membership in the following groups (but you'd want to look closer if you're interested, b/c he doesn't define each group as simplistically as the names imply he might): practitioners, historians, philosophers, critics, experimentalists, clinicians, formalists, and ethnographers. (& any individual can belong to any number of these groups, although is likely to have preferences for one or two.)

3) i think i was paraphrasing his views about the field as a whole or from a distance in this last point, and you're thinking of a closer-in examination; inconsistency & incomparability within or between like studies is problematic, certainly. what i meant--what he identified as not-necessarily-bad--is that comp at the time of his writing had lots of research coming from such different directions that there was no real way to put it into conversation--and that he didn't think it advisable to stifle any of those sources or try to highlight or insist upon one method/approach over another, but instead was hoping to find some sort of framework through which, even if research was always being done by disparate people w/individually irreconcileable foci, at least they'd know who to talk to--because they'd have a recognized/recognizeable methodological community of other people also doing that thing.

i don't know if that made any sense at all. it's so clear in my head... >sigh

Yes, thanks - that's much clearer.
clo

to answer becky's questions, while i'm at it:

1) he's specifically making methodological divisions, yes. what he calls "modes of inquiry" are essentially methodological stances--they're the primary ways of going about or positions regarding research/data-collection/knowledge-making. he surveys some of the actual methods used by people in these "communities," but it's big-picture approach/prioritizing that guides his divisions, not the specific practices of different methods.

2) it's almost entirely synchronic. he talks about practitioners' knowledge-making as being the oldest because of how the field developed--writing teachers were sharing knowledge about teaching writing long before the practice had enough institutional clout to warrant scholarly interest of other types--so there's a degree to which he sees things being diachronically added to the collection of methodological approaches field-members pursue. but his purpose is to look at all of the different things going on right now together, to group them in ways that make all of that diverse work easier to understand & perpetuate.

3) north uses ethnographic/anthropological terminology as somewhat metaphorical in describing his own work, yes: he did not conduct an ethnography, but found ethnographic terminology & practice-habits the most descriptive of the observing & participating he had done & so the most useful way of categorizing his input. in later parts of the book, discussing others' use of ethnographic methodology, he's not being metaphorical at all.