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 | | Sense-Making Methodology Reader: Selected Writings of Brenda Dervin (Communication Alternatives) by Brenda Dervin (Editor), Lois Foreman-Wernet (Editor), Eric Lauterbach (Editor) ISBN-10: 9781572735095 ISBN-10: 1-57273-509-0 ISBN-13: 9781572735095 ISBN-13: 978-1-57273-509-5 Paperback 2003-12 Hampton Pr Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description This work is used for studying users, audiences, patrons, patients, and clients in a variety of fields such ascommunication, cultural studies, library and information science, environmental studies, arts policy and education, and nursing. | ||
Reviews | ||
Cutting, insightful, and thoroughly useful I consider this a book in two parts. The first relates to how the philosophical commitments and assumptions that social scientists bring to an enterprise or inquiry shape and inform their methods. Dervin emphasizes this "linking" by addressing the difference between methodology and method. In so doing, she undermines the notion of a "value-free" social science and suggests that the way to promote true interdisciplinary dialogue (that cuts across critical-administrative schisms) is to bring our a priori assumptions to the fore of the conversation. As well, Dervin calls for us to unpack our disciplinary "nouns" - those abstractions that we have reified and calcified by failing to understand or acknowledge the dynamism of concepts and meaning across time/space. The second part offers a theory of communication as communicatings in which the agency and social nature of individuals is counterposed against the atomistic, information-processing conceptualization offered in much of the extant scholarship. Although many communication researchers may believe we have "come a long way baby" from the traditional linear model of stimulus-response, Dervin exposes the lingering strains of this model and how it constrains our ability to develop effective communication practices. This is a book that should be widely read - not only by communication scholars, but by anyone interested in social science, philosophy of science, or education. | ||