Different tribes

Things have been pretty slow these past couple of days. Went to the OU Social Science Students Praxis seminar today. Very interesting. Someone from SA talked about spaticality and the informal sector (I'll come back to this in a moment). I thought the seminar would focus on research methodologies etc, but the main focus seemed to be a 'space' where students could present their findings.

Reflecting on some of the work I've been reading around academic disciplines and how knowledge has been compartmentalised into different 'tribes' (not sure who first used this term in this way) it was interesting to see all of this being played out as students did their presentations. Also viewed from a academic literacy practice perspective the 'practices' evident in the room clearly delinated the group as 'social scientists' and in particular are Human Geography researchers. I was amazed at the nomalisation used and how everyone in the room seemed to automatically agree with the usage of certain terms. They were'nt contested althought I was saying to myself  "What the hell does governmentality mean?" Two of the presented were used ethnography methodologies and often these sounded like autoethnographies - yet no questions were raised about the methodologies or indeed the problems or concerns associated with participant observation or research reactivity/reflexivity. It was almost as if the methodology was taken as given. Another interesting issue was how their work was framed by a 'grand' (for want of a better word) social theory or philosophy (all three presenters drew extensively on Foucault) whereas my work and the work in my field, while acknowledging these ideas or base theoretically views, have used them to formulate theories about education or learning or literacy practices in education. These students are certainly doing research for research sake - producing knowledge for the purpose of understand a phenomena in more detail and adding to what is already known about it. Taking me back to a debate I had with a tutor last year - the very distinquished Martyn Hammersley - about the purpose of research and what its purpose should be. I am of the opinion that research needs to be directed by some purpose beyond simply doing it to enhance knowledge, rather there should be some practical outcome. Research for research sake is something of a luxury that very few of us can pursue - as a practitioner I feel the power of research lies in its ability to provide insights into practical everyday problems or dilemmas face by ordinary people.

The socio-cultural ways of using reading and writing in this context though was the most interesting to see and I'm pleased that I can look at these situations and almost automatically consider the literacy practices at play and what the 'sakes' are for those able to draw on and engage with the necessary practices. Also interesting is the issue of contextual influence of the discipline, the discourse, the field, the tribe that acts to regulate what knowledge is acceptable, recognised and sanctioned - and of course who gets left behind when not conforming to the social norms that governing the social interaction.