Objectification and Prototype

Abstract

This article takes up the problem of how to reconcile research objectivity with the discovery in practice research that research, at least in the social sciences, is intersubjective. I suggest a return to critical psychology's roots in cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) in order to reestablish the concept of objectification as the production of cultural artefacts through which human subjectivity is mediated. This allows us to approach research as a practice among other practices, engaged in exchanges with other practices. Adopting theoretical resources from both CHAT and science and technology studies, the practices and artefacts of research are viewed as prototypes. A prototype in practice research is the unity of three aspects: the designated prototypical practice; the model artefacts with or in which this prototypical practice is objectified (as both a “model of” and a “model for”), and the (contentious, distributed, variable) general relevance of that modeling. The designation and production of prototypes is far from a neutral, “technical” process, but it is in itself both a critique of ideology and the production of ideology anew. It is contentious and situated in the struggles that transform history. This way, it is hoped that critical psychological practice research can escape the Scylla of objectivism, a danger always looming in activity theory when it fails to address subjectivity and ideology—and the Charybdis of descriptive subjectivism, the possible fate of any antiscientific embracing of everyday life. The idea of prototypes is displayed theoretically and illustrated with an example from research in social work practices.

Keywords:

• prototype
• action research
• practice
• practice research
• model

Notes

¹Thanks to Line Lerche M⊘rck, Ida Schwartz, Liselotte Ingholt, and, in particular, Irene H⊘jlund, for valuable contributions to the core ideas in this paper. For those who read Danish I warmly recommend H⊘jlund (2005).

²There is, of course, the option to silently concede to the traditional ideas (thus in fact assuming the role of the jester whose critique is not really serious) or to accept them explicitly in the form of stating a compromise between two incommensurable concerns (a dichotomy). Such pragmatic inconsistency is potentially an interesting field of study but not the topic of this paper.

³Emilie Gomart, writing in the ANT tradition, pragmatically accepts this alternative and embraces a eulogy, which, however, she presents as arbitrarily chosen (Gomart 2004). But I would claim that the choice is far from arbitrary, and Gomart seems unaware that her eulogy is ideology (in the sense unfolded below): more of a translation than she admits, and at the same time more of a hidden discipline.

⁴For the sake of completeness, it should be noted that there is in fact one kind of practice where turning subjects into objects is a desubjectification: violence. Otherwise, when direct violence is sublated into power, objectification is the mediation that realizes subjectification.

⁵See http://www.who.int/substance_abuse/terminology/definition1/en/index.html

⁶For a theory of what constitutes “disease,” see (Jensen 1987).

⁷Most publications on those communities have of course been written in Danish, some for readerships of social workers, officials, and so forth. See http://mnissen.psy.ku.dk/litlist.html (April 2008).

⁸The original title, “Hjerter i Sovs,” is a traditional Danish dish with calf or beef hearts. Read as a poetic metaphor, it conveys the image of loving and vulnerable persons in a messy, troublesome situation.

⁹The text of one such lecture is available in Danish at http://www.psy.ku.dk/mnissen/Udrykningsholdet.doc

¹⁰The ritual peek was when the Social Minister Karen Jespersen, warmly cheered although she was already then coming out as one of the leading political figures in the xenophobic surge that was to sweep through Danish politics in the years to come, declared that social policy must be built on dialogue and that she was planning to invite a group of the young people to meetings in her office.

¹¹Of course, in the space of this argument I cannot but sketch the theoretical work done nor explain in full how the diverse and contradictory references summoned in the article can be (partly) reconciled. Also, this work is far from merely the speculations of an individual. These are ongoing discussions in a heterogeneous community of theoretical practice that has as one focus point the journal Outlines – Critical Social Studies. For a (slightly more) systematic account, see Nissen (2005).

¹²Cf. (April 2008) http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hl/hlbeing.htm#HL1_81

¹³If we don't know what we are doing as “social engineers,” this is not only an ethical and political problem but also directly a scientific problem as well.

¹⁴The concept of prototype differs slightly from Wartofsky's use of the term (Wartofsky 1979a). Insofar as these model artefacts are not simply – like all artefacts – embodiments of the ideal procedure of their use, nor merely taken to represent this ideal (thus to regulate the production of similar artefacts, such as all “secondary artefacts”), but through the mediation in theoretical practice are temporarily “divorced” or “detached” from the practice they model, they should be viewed as “tertiary artefacts” in Wartofsky's meaning (ibid., p. 209).

¹⁵Corresponding to Hegel's logical moments of the general (das Allgemeine), the particular or singular (das Einzelne), and the special (das Besondere).

¹⁶Of course, in the world of social work practices, this commitment to research is open to negotiation. Why would research (such as my articles in English publications) help develop any particular institution or project (such as The Crew) better than nominal recognition or artful recreation (such as that obtained at the Grilled Hearts conference itself)? This question, fundamental to research methodology, but typically forming a taken-for-granted framework for researchers, is constantly reposed in practice research.

¹⁷In Zizek's methodology, it is precisely in socio-cultural forms that become obsolete that we can identify fundamental aspects, that is, the “vanishing mediators,” of the ideological constitution of societies. He advises us to learn from the perhaps naïve but nevertheless counter-ideological attempts to take communism seriously and establish a democratic socialism in Eastern Europe, just before global neo-liberalism, as realistically to be expected, took over. See Zizek (1993), 227 ff.

¹⁸In the field of ideology theory, the argument draws loosely on such references as Althusser (1994), Billig (1991, 1997), Haug (1979), Horkheimer & Adorno (1969), Hänninen & Paldán (1983), Laclau & Mouffe (2001), Latour (1993), Marx & Engels (1981), Osterkamp (1976), Wetherell & Potter (1992), and Zizek (1993, 1994, 1999).

¹⁹In the field of off-mainstream or critical psychologies, the two positions can be broadly identified: the first is the position (currently mostly derived from Foucauldian or Deleuzian approaches, but earlier based on structuralist Marxism), that critique of psychology does not and should not imply developing an alternative psychological theory. The latter is the position (mostly associated with varieties of activity theory) that, rather than ideology critique, the point is to conduct developmental research based on a more true theoretical foundation (see Nissen 2006b).

²⁰As mentioned earlier, aspects of these ideological workings of our designation of the community as prototypical of an interpellating cultural pedagogy have been the focus of M⊘rck's critical research (M⊘rdk 2007).

²¹Along the lines of the Alcoholics Anonymous motto “Fake it till you make it.”