OK, I've just read a Dervin paper:
http://communication.sbs.ohio-state.edu/sense-making/art/artdervin83.html
AN OVERVIEW OF SENSE-MAKING RESEARCH:
CONCEPTS, METHODS, AND RESULTS TO DATE
by: Brenda Dervin
It comes with a proviso:
Notes:
This 1983 presentation of the Sense-Making approach is now out of date but
still provides a foundation for interested readers. For more up-to-date
works, see the various bibliographic listings on this on-line site.
As I read that paper it does emphasize the importance of active information
seeking by individuals, but omits any notion of their reaction to that
information.
Or from:
On studying information seeking methodologically: the
implications of connecting metatheory to method
Brenda Dervin*
Ohio State University, 3016 Derby Hall, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
Accepted 20 April 1999
http://communication.sbs.ohio-state.edu/sense-making/art/artdervin01.pdf
"Sense-Making mandates a focus on the hows of human individual and
collective sense-
making and sense-unmaking, on the varieties of internal and external
cognizings, emotings,
feelings, and communicatings that make, reinforce, challenge, resist, alter,
and reinvent human
worlds."
Funny how the word persuasion or self-persuasion could cover so much of that
list.
"Factizing, of course, is not the only verbing that creates what we
call knowledge. There are a host of other verbings involved (e.g.
consensusing, negotiating,
power-brokering, deŽning, hunching, muddling, suppressing). By focusing on
the verbings by
which sense is made and unmade, Sense-Making frees research from the
implicit assumption
that there is one right way to produce knowledge. Emoting, for example,
usually marginalized
as a non-useful strategy for sense-making takes equal footing along with
factizing. Sense-
Making conceptualizes every verb of collective and individual human
sense-making as useful
under some conditions and methodologically mandates research to unearth
those conditions."
Ditto.
"Sense-Making assumes that issues of force and power
pervade all human conditions; that humans are impacted by the constraining
forces of
structural power (both natural and societal) and that as individuals in
specific situations they
are themselves sites of power, to resist, reinvent, challenge, deny, and
ignore."
Ditto.
"Extrapolated from the above is a central assumption that ordinary human
beings are
theorists, not just potentially theorists, but theory-makers. Sense-Making
posits that theory-
making is a mandate of the human condition given pervasive discontinuity.
This discontinuity
manifests itself in multiple ways: in the gappiness of the human condition
with its gaps
between external worlds and internals, time, and space; in the gaps between
human mind,
tongue, heart, body; in gaps between people at the same time; in gaps in a
person across time;
in gaps between structure and person, structure and structure. The
assumption of pervasive
discontinuity leads to the assumption that no human movement, collective or
individual, can
be fully instructed or fully constrained a priori. The next step may be a
repetition, or an
invention; by design or by caprice; in conformity or resistance; a muddle or
a thrashing about.
Whatever the next move, whether it be a move by a single person, or a move
by one or more
persons on behalf of a collective, that move is made without complete
instruction or
constraint. The very idea of this incompleteness presents the possibility of
considering these
moves as at least in part designed (consciously or unconsciously,
repetitively or innovatively).
Being in part designed, they can be conceptualized as practices that are in
some way theorized
even if that theorizing appears mute and inarticulate or dominated and
constrained. It is in this
space that Sense-Making mandates the positioning of humans as theorists and
the study of
communication as dialogic."
Ditto.
So how come 'Sense-Making' seems only to stress the information seeking of
actors and not the power struggles, internal and external that are so
important in the picture? Why, when she's studied Michel Foucault, are her
actors so divorced from this struggle?
Could it be because there's a 'GAP' in there that shouldn't be there?
And so on...
Seems to me that good sense-making requires a little more coherence.
[Time for bed.]
Peter
----- Original Message -----
From: <albert.m.selvin@verizon.com>
To: <unrev-II@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2001 9:14 PM
Subject: Re: [unrev-II] Visual stimuli & IBIS methodology
>
> The text may have sounded that way -- my fault, if so. Take a look at the
> many years of field research, both in industrialized and developing
> countries, that supports Dervin's reseach, in order to judge its
> speciousness and pseudo-ness.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> "Peter Jones" <ppj@concept67.fsnet.co.uk> on 11/14/2001 03:15:35 PM
>
> Please respond to unrev-II@yahoogroups.com
>
> To: <unrev-II@yahoogroups.com>
> cc:
>
> Subject: Re: [unrev-II] Visual stimuli & IBIS methodology
>
>
> Al Selvin wrote:
> >Brenda Dervin, for example, contrasted a sensemaking
> >approach to the persuasion approach. For her, sensemaking is a process
> >where people confront obstacles or discontinuities in their progress
> >towards some goal; when they hit such obstacles, they cast about for ways
> >to understand their situation so that they can design effective movements
> >around, through, or away from the obstacles. It has little to do with
> >persuasion and much to do with figuring out what's going on and what to
do
> >in a situation where the normal rules are upset.
>
> Nope, I'm not persuaded. Based on the text above, it sounds like specious
> pseudo-intellectual meaning dodging.
>
> >much to do with figuring out
>
> Self-persuasion? Justified beliefs, new or old?
> It's still a form of persuasion.
> How rational and sophisticated it is is entirely dependent on the players
> and the context, but it's still persuasion.
>
> But then that's just my opinion, you don't have to be convinced.
>
> Cheers,
> Peter
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jack Park" <jackpark@thinkalong.com>
> To: <unrev-II@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2001 2:43 PM
> Subject: Re: [unrev-II] Visual stimuli & IBIS methodology
>
>
> > At 09:11 AM 11/14/2001 -0500, Al wrote:
> > >I studied communication in grad school in the early 80s. In that field,
> > >much of the newer and promising work going on was a reaction *against*
a
> > >model of communication as persuasion, which had dominated the field in
> the
> > >previous decades. Brenda Dervin, for example, contrasted a sensemaking
> > >approach to the persuasion approach. For her, sensemaking is a process
> > >where people confront obstacles or discontinuities in their progress
> > >towards some goal; when they hit such obstacles, they cast about for
> ways
> > >to understand their situation so that they can design effective
> movements
> > >around, through, or away from the obstacles. It has little to do with
> > >persuasion and much to do with figuring out what's going on and what to
> do
> > >in a situation where the normal rules are upset.
> >
> > As it turns out, I read TR 74 and was somehow primed for this response,
> > which also corresponds to my intuition that seeking truth or making
sense
> > cannot and should not involve persuasion. It is for this reason that I
> > have been thinking that keeping the participants (at least in the non
> > face-to-face) dialogs anonymous. I have observed a tendency to play to
> > whatever opinions the "expert" (read: big cheese) has to say, while
> > conducting meetings with QuestMap. It strikes me that a good
facilitator
> > ought to have some skills handy for deflecting the force of unwarranted
> karma.
> >
> > Jack
> >
> >
> >
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