At the CCCC's conference in NYC last week, I went to a reception for the University of Illinois, where I met a graduate student who “loved” Latour and had just read Sharon Crowley's Toward a Civil Discourse. He didn't seem to see the disjuncture between Latour's preaching on the goals of sociology and Crowley's methods of rhetorical analysis of fundamentalism. I was pleased to see that Latour himself could almost be speaking specifically of Crowley's project when he asks: “Why is it that when faced with religion, we tend to limit our inquiry to its 'social dimensions' and take as a scientific virtue not to study religion itself?” (233) or later on “Why not take seriously what members are obstinately saying?” (235). Crowley, of course, might object that it's difficult to take seriously someone like Tim LaHaye . . . I also enjoyed Latour's plea for sociologists to “treat humans as things” (255).
Also, because my paper for this class is on autoethnography, I wonder what Latour might think of that research method. Would he label it as an instance of actors being able to speak for themselves?
1 comment:
I want to drop a name too actually. I went to the Central States Communication Association convention in Minneapolis over break. I got stuck with a 8:00am panel. Only three people showed up. But one of them was Bruce Gronbeck, so I didn't feel so bad. After the session, I clumsily transitioned into a discussion about the "Citizens Voices in Cyberpolitical Culture" article we read for class. Anyway, I really don't think I remember a word he said because one of my fellow panelists was about to get sick all over the ugly carpet in the conference hotel. I was distracted. But at least I tried to bring back some interesting tidbits for us. Oh well.
Post a Comment