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One of this week’s MGMT 590 Colloquium readings is Stinchcombe’s (1986/1966) essay about researchers getting “hung-up” during the course of the research process.

Stinchcombe’s core argument is that scholarly research is an identity project (pp. 274, 276, 278). As a result research struggles (i.e., “getting hung-up and other assorted illness” ) are really identity struggles (p. 278). For Stinchcombe the ultimate solution to this research-as-identity tension is an identity shift, from a self-absorbed perspective, to one which embraces “ultimate values” (pp. 276, 281). 

In the essay Stinchcombe conceives of researchers as producers of new knowledge, a process he describes as choosing an objective for oneself, and then motivating oneself by that objective alone. He sees these research decisions as “perfectly free choices” (p. 272). This freedom of choice produces an “identity problem,” as these choices are a reflection on the kind of person a researcher intends to be (p. 272).

Some specific examples of research struggles as identity struggles include:

• “Publication shyness or refusal to finish is clearly related to the problem of putting one’s identity on the block” (p. 274).
• Dissertations are particularly susceptible to such pitfalls because “graduate students are more often interested in their work for what it tells them about themselves… than for what it tells them about the world” (p. 276).
• More than intellectual identities are at stake.  “Ethnic, national, and sex identities usually become involved in the choice of research topics,” often limiting “the vision of scholars” (p. 278).
• The resulting identity “distortions” can even bring research to a complete stop when one’s identity “demands a kind of work which the environment will not accept” (p. 279).

Later in the essay Stinchcombe returns to the voluntaristic theme, “Many of us chose a research career because we wanted to choose our own intellectual identities, and would quit if we could not” (p. 279). He argues that the resulting credo of “academic freedom” implicates “sacred values,” invasions of which are vigorously resisted (p. 279-280). Here he finds another tension: the academic freedom scholars crave is simultaneously the source of the academic ambiguity they dread. The two are recursively linked. 

Stinchcombe also introduces, though leaves underdeveloped, “the relatively new role of the research entrepreneur,” defined as one who can keep research moving through the web of social-intellectual relations in which research projects are embedded (p. 276). These research entrepreneurs are managers “of promises and commitments, of emphasizing the different aspects of the product for different faculty and foundation clients” (p. 277).

Finally, while noting there are “various games one can play with oneself to alleviate some of the distress,” ultimately “the only solution to the problem… is to shift one’s basis of self-respect to ultimate values,” such as as scientific advancement, social justice, and artistic excellence (p. 281). 

In sum, Stinchcombe sees research-as-identity, a tension he proposes researchers may best resolve by finding their identity in ultimate values. 

Two comments:

• While Stinchcombe takes a highly voluntaristic view of researchers, I wonder if it is accurate to conceive of researchers as free to choose their research questions. What if such choices are subject to institutional constraints, historical path dependencies, and social dynamics related to one’s habitus, field and capital (ala Bourdieu)? Even if such “choices” are more deterministic than suggested by Stinchcombe does that invalidate his argument about research-as-identity? How might we reconcile a more deterministic view with the proposition of research-as-identity?

• What are the implications of research-as-identity for the very possibility of science? If research agendas are really about identity, what truth can researchers possibly hope to discover, other than truth about themselves? Might inconsistent findings between researchers signify competing identities rather than true scientific inconsistencies? What if research findings are really just an identity discourse, one which tells us more about the epistemology of the researcher than the ontology of the world?

Citation: Stinchcombe, A. L. 1986/1966. “On getting hung-up and other assorted illnesses,” in Stratification and organization: 271-281. New York: Cambridge University Press.

This week’s PHIL 557 readings started with Husserl’s “Phenomenology,” an article first published in Encyclopedia Britannica (1927).  The edition I read was from The Essential Husserl. 

I followed this reading with an excerpt from Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus and Deleuze’s chapter on “Foldings, or the Inside of Thought” from Foucault.  This latter reading considers Foucault’s confrontation of Heidegger and phenomenology.  Some passages of note:

‘There is’ light, and ‘there is’ language.  All intentionality collapses in the gap that opens up between these two monads, or in the ‘non-relation’ between seeing and speaking.  This is Foucault’s major achievement: the conversion of phenomenology into epistemology. For seeing and speaking means knowing [savoir]… Everything is knowledge… [T]here is nothing beneath or prior to knowledge.  But knowledge is irreducibly double, since it involves speaking and seeing, language and light, which is the reason there is no intentionality (p. 109).

In truth, one thing haunts Foucault — thought.  The question: ‘What does thinking signify?  What do we call thinking’ is the arrow first fired by Heidegger and then again by Foucault.  He writes a history, but a history of thought as such.  To think means to experiment and to problematize.  Knowledge, power and the self are the triple root of a problematization of thought…  Thinking is neither innate nor acquired.  It is not the innate exercise of a faculty, but neither is it a learning process constituted in the external world (pp. 116-117).

To think means to be embedded in the present-time stratum that serves as a limit: what can I see and what can I say today?  But this involves thinking of the past as it is condensed in the inside, in the relation to oneself…  Thought thinks its own history (the past), but in order to free itself from what it thinks (the present), and be able finally to ‘think otherwise’ (the future) (p. 119).

The world is thus knowledge…the articulable and the visible on each stratum, the two irreducible forms of knowledge, Light and Language, two vast environments of exteriority where visibilities and statements are respectively deposited (pp. 120-121).

Today was the start of the Fall 2008 semester.  My courses this term include:

• APLNG 581 — Discourse Analysis
  Covers various theories of and approaches to the analysis of spoken and written discourse, including speech act theory, conversation analysis, pragmatics, contextual analysis, functional/cognitive grammar, grammar and interaction, and critical discourse analysis.
• PHIL 557 — 20th Century Philosophy
  Covers central problems in works of twentieth-century philosophers such as Russell, Dewey, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Foucault, Levinas and others.
• STAT 501 — Regression Methods
  Covers analysis of research data through simple and multiple regression and correlation, polynomial models, indicator variables, step-wise, piece-wise, and logistic regression.

Additionally, I am taking MGMT 590 — Colloquium, doing an independent readings course on the philosophy of science which will cover Popper, Kuhn, Latour, Hull, Rorty and others, and working on two different projects as a Research Assistant.

Over the last 5+ years I’ve become a big fan of Spanish wines. 

When done right, these wines offer a lot of juice for not a lot of dinero.  However, not all Spanish wines are created equal, so a little research goes a long way.  Know what you’re buying.  I’ve also found that many value priced Spanish wines are released green, and are not quite ready to drink when you bring them home.  I’ve been amazed what 6 to 12 months in the cellar can do for these wines.  A little patience goes a long way.

Tonight we had the fabulous 2005 Capçanes Mas Donis – $12.99 at Pennsylvania Wine and Spirits, $11.99 elsewhere.  Robert Parker gives it 91 points.  Stephen Tanzer gives it 89 points. 

The wine is a blend of 85% Grenache / Garnacha and 15% Syrah/Shiraz.  It spent 8 months in a combination of French and American oak.  This wine is drinking very well right now.

Hello,
My name is Joel Gehman.  I am entering my second year of doctoral studies at Penn State.

This website allows you to learn a bit more about me and my research.