Nthu research methodology 3:17:17

NTHU Research Methodology

March 17, 2017

Agar, Chapter 4-5

Lab vs Courtroom

• Both lab and courtroom work by excluding other possibilities

• The lab attempts to demonstrate a law of nature that applies to all similar cases: ceteris paribus, other things being equal.

• The courtroom attempts to find the best possible explanation for some particular case: given the available evidence.

Deduction, Induction, Abduction

• Deduction: Only logic. If the assumptions are valid, the conclusion is necessarily true.

• Induction: Generalizes from multiple cases to assert a general principle.

• Abduction: Attempts to find the best explanation for some particular case

The Safety Officer's Problem

• Why did the plane fall out of the sky?

• Deduction: All other things being equal, if the law of gravity is valid, the plane should never fly

• Induction: Air flowing over wings generates lift strong enough to overcome gravity

• Abduction: Which is most likely, pilot error, mechanical failure, bad weather, or a bird flew into the engine?

Intersubjectivity

• Truth: A relation between a statement and the world

• Intersubjective validation: A relation between two or more observers who agree on what they have observed

Warren McCulloch

• Automata theory

• Design electronic circuits to work like neurons

• Embodiments of Mind

• People say no machine can do that. I build a better machine.

Rich Point

• In anthropology rich points are cultural moments, or in some cases certain words and phrases that tap deeply into the context and psyche of a group of people. In particular, rich points are often where the insiders and outsiders of different cultures meet.

• Schmäh

Ethnicity Inc.

Really?

Something strange is happening to the thing we call “ethnicity,” the taken-for-granted species of collective subjectivity that lies at the intersection of identity and culture."

• Is it really strange?

• Is it really a "thing"?

The Invention of Tradition

The invention of tradition is a concept made prominent in the eponymous 1983 book edited by British Marxist intellectual E. J. Hobsbawm and T. O. Ranger.[1] In their Introduction the editors argue that many "traditions" which "appear or claim to be old are often quite recent in origin and sometimes invented."[2] They distinguish the "invention" of traditions in this sense from "starting" or "initiating" a tradition which does not then claim to be old. The phenomenon is particularly clear in the modern development of the nation and of nationalism, creating a national identity promoting national unity, and legitimising certain institutions or cultural practices

• The concept and the term have been widely applied to cultural phenomena such as the Bible and Zionism,[4] the martial arts of Japan,[5] the " highland myth" in Scotland,[6] and the traditions of major religions,[7] to mention only a few. The concept was influential on the use of related concepts, such as Benedict Anderson's imagined communities and the pizza effect.[citation needed]

• One implication of the term is that the sharp distinction between "tradition" and "modernity" is often itself invented. The concept is "highly relevant to that comparatively recent historical innovation, the 'nation,' with its associated phenomena: nationalism, the nation-state, national symbols, histories, and the rest." Hobsbawm and Ranger remark on the "curious but understandable paradox: modern nations and all their impedimenta generally claim to be the opposite of novel, namely rooted in remotest antiquity, and the opposite of constructed, namely human communities so 'natural' as to require no definition other than self-assertion."[8] Another implication is that the concept of "authenticity" is also to be questioned.

Imagined Communities

• An imagined community is a concept coined by Benedict Anderson to analyze nationalism. Anderson depicts a nation as a socially constructed community, imagined by the people who perceive themselves as part of that group.[1]:6–7

• Anderson's book, Imagined Communities, in which he explains the concept in depth, was first published in 1983, and reissued with additional chapters in 1991 and a further revised version in 2006.

• The media also creates imagined communities, through usually targeting a mass audience or generalizing and addressing citizens as the public. Another way that the media can create imagined communities is through the use of images. The media can perpetuate stereotypes through certain images and vernacular. By showing certain images, the audience will choose which image they relate to the most, furthering the relationship to that imagined community.

Of course Kyoto, Let's Go

Discover JapanIn Discourses of the Vanishing, Marilyn Ivy describes the creation of Discover Japan, an advertising campaign created by Dentsu

Incorporated for what was then the (as yet unprivatized) Japan National Railways. Her description of how the campaign was created is taken from an account by Fujioka Wakao. In 1970, when Discover Japan was created, Fujioka was the account executive in charge of the campaign. Ivy's synthesis of Fujioka's description of how the campaign was developed proceeds along the following lines.

We learn first that the planning began with discussions about the meaning of travel. The starting point was the word tabi, an indigenous Japanese term associated with Edo-period pilgrimages.

Tabi brings up associations of solitary pilgrims traversing remote mountains; it is a word appropriate for describing the journeys of Japan's famous spiritual poet-travelers, the monk Saigyô and the haiku master Bashô (Ivy: 1995:37).

The Dentsu team concluded, however, that in the Japan of the 1970s, few Japanese had ever had the chance to embark on a tabirashii tabi, a true journey of self-discovery. Then they realized that while their Edo prototypes were men, the only people in Japan with the time and money for travel were young, unmarried women.

After market research confirmed that young women who travel imagine themselves as 'just like movie heroines', the team developed commercials in which pairs of young women appear as if on stage at travel destinations that represented the very essence of traditional Japan. Modern young women would see themselves leaving home and traveling into the Japanese countryside where they could discover their true selves. The ultimate destination not shown in any commercial was, of course, home again. There these young women would eventually assume their proper roles as Japanese wives and mothers, reproducing the essential Japan of which they would now be the true embodiment.

From John McCreery (2001) "Creating Advertising in Japan: A Sketch in Search of a Principle." In Brian Moeran, ed., Asian Media Productions.

Burns Supper

And It Being March 17