Research and the Theoretical Field - Pauldowling.me

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distribution of these modes will reveal something about the activity that we are
engaged in, specifically, what is negotiable, what is less so.
Now in constituting pedagogic text, the authorial voice will deploy strategies
that serve to legitimate its authority; I am interested in the modes of strategy
that are available. Let me present some examples. Take a look at the
bibliography for this module. I want to make a distinction between two kinds of
reference. The majority are to publications in academic journals or in
academic books published by independent publishers. Now I want to suggest,
that, in referring to these independent academic institutions, here, I am
effectively locating authority in a practice that is independent of myself. The
other kind of reference is to items that are not published independently, but
are published, in essence, by their authors on their own internet websites. In
citing these items I am taking the whole load of the responsibility on myself,
because there is no other institution—no independent publisher, no academic
journal, no peer review process—to affirm the academic legitimacy of these
works—indeed, most of these references are to my own work. I want also to
make a division in the first category between references to my own work and
references to the work of others. This division is important because, by
referring to my own work that is published by independent publishers, I am
claiming that I am a recognised member of the community of academics; I
could do the same thing by referring to my academic affiliation (as a member
of academic staff of the Institute of Education) or my academic qualifications
(most pertinently, a PhD in the sociology of education). In marking out these
differences, I have defined two dimentions: authority may be located in the
author (in this case, me) or in the institutionalised practice (lets say,
educational studies), or both (me as an institutionally recognised authority in
educational studies). Putting this another way, the category of the author may
be open, where authority is located exclusively in the institutionalised practice
(anyone can cite The British Journal of Sociology of Education) or closed,
where either authority is identified exclusively with the author or where it is
located in the articulation of author and practice. Similarly, the category of
practice may be closed, where reference is being made to something that is
institutionalised, or open, where no such reference is being made. So, I have
two variables, ‘author’ and ‘practice’, each having two possible states, open’
and ‘closed’. The theoretical space that is opened up by these variables is
shown in Figure 8.1.
Now the first thing to notice is that there are four modes—the cross-product of
two binary variables is always going to open a space with four categories—
but I have introduced only three. This is because, in my illustrations, I was
referring to pedagogic text in which authorial authority is claimed. The liberal
strategy, in the bottom lefthand corner, closes neither the category of author
nor the category of practice, in other words, it establishes no authorial
authority at all. This, then is exchange text. The second point worth
mentioning is that the terms that I’ve used for the three pedagogic modes are
terms used by (the translators of) Max Weber (1964 edn) in his identification
of ideal types of authority. An ideal type is a category that arises out of
observation, but that is subsequently made theoretically explicit in terms of its
characteristics. Ideal types thus formed can be used in the analysis of
RESEARCH & THE THEORETICAL FIELD