Paisley Currah's Writing Guide
Below are some important guides for conceptualizing and writing papers for my classes.
(This guide is a work in progress.)
Words, concepts, and definitions
Stuck? The problem is the solution
The importance of precision
What is an argument?
The thesis or crux of an argument
Essay pitfalls
When and how to quote
How to cite sources
Academic integrity / plagiarism
The passive voice: enemy of humankind
Writing is revising
Links to other writing guides
WORDS, CONCEPTS, AND DEFINITIONS
When a word is just a word
The vast majority of words are not contested concepts in the social sciences -- you are not going to find social scientists or political theorists writing articles attacking some other scholar's definition of, say, "plethora," "ahistorical," "ignominious," "contumacy," or "puissance." When you're reading an article, and you come across a word that you don't know, you should look it up in a dictionary.
When a word is a concept:
Some words we use in the social sciences, however, are actually "concepts." That is, they are, as William Connolly has pointed out, "essentially contested terms," whose definition is subject to debate. Political theorists and social scientists spend a lot of time analyzing and unpacking the components of concepts such as "the state," "democracy," "liberalism," "gender," and "the underclass." For example, students in my Core Studies 3 class read an article by Stephen Steinberg examining how the meaning of the term "underclass" has changed in recent years. Below are some of the concepts that we look at in Core Studies 3:
authority / institutional racism / the power eliteclass / internal colonialism / race
consent / intrinsic racism / racism
democracy / liberal feminism / socialism
faction / liberalism / social class
feminism / marxism / status group
gender / patriarchy / the underclass
heterosexism / pluralism / structure
homophobia / power / agency
In my political science courses, other contested concepts, in addition to the ones above, that we study include:
discourse / identity / rationalitythe West / liberty / holism
the public sphere / negative liberty / fascism
the private sphere / positive liberty / totalitarianism
civil society / internal preference / Nature
essentialism / external preference / History
immutability / justice
utility / freedom
individualism / rights
The point is, you shouldn't rely on dictionary definitions of these contested concepts in your analysis because dictionary definitions won't be sufficiently layered and complex--most likely, dictionary or encyclopedia definitions won't refer to the battles over meaning taking place in the literature you're studying. Read W.E.B. DuBois's article on "The Propaganda of History" to see how the encyclopedias of his time defined racial terms with such absolute certainty--and yet appear horribly racist to us now. If you do want to look up the dictionary definition of a concept, go to the library and look it up in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).That dictionary will show you how the concept's meaning has shifted over time.
When you are writing about a contested concept in my class, you would be ill-advised to start your essay on theories of racism, on the underclass, on democratic participation, on status groups, or on any concept, with the dictionary or encyclopedia definition of the term.While this rhetorical gesture is common in high school essays, such pat definitions almost invariably fail to attend to the complexities required of college-level writing. Instead, you should focus at least part of your essay on the very battle over the definition.(See also "The problem is the solution" below.)
How? By identifying the components of each writer's definition of the concept you are examining. Sometimes these definitions will be explicit, sometimes implicit. These components, when "clustered" together, add up to concept. How do the parts that fit together to form one writer's concept of democracycompare with the parts of another writer's notion of that same concept? You'll soon find that the conflicts between theories in the social sciences and political theory are actually the results of disagreements over the precise definition of the term or concept at issue.
Once you've identified precisely how the cluster concepts differ, you can build on that work as you move on to the exciting task of figuring out why these concepts differ. When you analyze a concept, much of what you're actually doing is identifying and questioning the assumptions (components) that make its definition appear coherent. Below, Stephen Steinberg effectively analyzes the assumptions behind claims about the "underclass."
Claim: `an underclass individual is "someone in an underclass area who engages in various socially costly behaviors'" (Steinberg 1995, 156).
Analysis of the assumptions: "Although such an approach has all the trappings of objective social science, it is riddled with value assumptions. Furthermore, it obfuscates the historical and structural sources of the underclass, and in doing so, fudges over the significance of racism in the production and maintenance of this underclass. The term `underclass' implicitly accepts the established order as the starting point of analysis. We begin with the empirical observation that certain people languish outside--or "below"--the class system, and we want to know why. This class system itself is accepted as a given" (Steinberg 1995, 156).
By examining precisely how the components of a definition differ from one social scientist to another, you will start to pay attention to the more general differences in outlook that shape social scientists' analyses and conclusions. Below are some questions that might help you distinguish more finely the positions of two or more social scientists:
Does the social scientist have a primarily economic or political focus?
Does he or she engage in a process-oriented analysis or start the analysis by looking at the results of a particular system and work backward from there?
Which unit of analysis is fundamental to the writer's work (individual, family, class, status group, faction, interest group, power elite, etc.)?
Can you locate the perspective (time, place, position of relative privilege or disadvantage, etc.) of the writer and suggest how it might been reflected in his or her analysis?
Does the social scientist in question have a constructionist or essentialist view of human nature?
Does the writer ascribe importance to human agency or to economic or social structures?
(Many of these questions might not make sense to you at the beginning of the course. Don't worry--we'll get to them.) When you engage with questions like these (though not all of them at once!), your analysis becomes theory-building in itself. (Be sure to read the section on crux below.)
STUCK? THE PROBLEM IS THE SOLUTION
A conceptual analysis of a specific empirical problem (your "topic") demands that you first have a solid grasp of the concept -- its history, the battles over its meaning, even its "politics." Sometimes when you apply a conceptual approach to the analysis of an empirical problem (an actual situation), your analysis will lead you to conclude that the theorist's or social scientist's definition of the concept is inappropriate or needs refining. Often, however, when student writers reach this point in the road, they take the wrong turn: instead of relying on the results of their own careful analyses and locating the problem in the definition of the concept, they assume that the problem stems from their own analysis. So they get stuck, hit the wall, discover the joys of writer's block.But here's the thing: it's (probably) not your fault! When you come up against some kind of conceptual problem, always keep this simple formula in mind:
Instead of seeing a problem as a problem, as a wall you cannot get beyond, think of it as an opportunity, as a knot you get to untangle; instead of crashing and burning when you hit a conceptual roadblock, use it as fuel to move your analysis forward. (Aside: to see an example of a "tortured metaphor," reread the previous clause.) In this way, the problem becomes the actual subject of your paper, or at least the starting point of your analysis.
Ask yourself why the concept doesn't work when applied to phenomenon x. Or why the two concepts don't mesh with each other. Or why x doesn't result in y, when a conceptual model predicted that it would. Often this kind of analytical reasoning involves questioning the assumptions behind the theories. This is the kind of analysis that Manning Marable works through in "The Paradox of Integration." Marable begins his article with what appears to be a contradiction:how can we explain "the emergence of a successful black middle class and the acceptance of black participation in cultural, political, and social institutions, within the context of a deepening crisis in racial attitudes and social behavior"? In the process of untangling this paradox, Marable develops a complex argument with two important conclusions: first, only by uncoupling the concepts of race and ethnicity can we understand the paradox outlined above; and second, the assumption that equality before the law would eventually lead to a race-blind society was flawed.
THE IMPORTANCE OF PRECISION
What is society?
Sometimes students identify "society" as the cause of a social problem they are analyzing, or the potential solution to that social problem. As term of analysis, however, "society" is so vague that it serves no useful purpose in this kind of analysis. For example, consider the following sentences:
Society has treated women differently than men for hundreds of years.
Until society comes to grips with racism, we will always have racial discrimination.
But who, or what, precisely, is "society" in these sentences? Institutions of government? People? And if society means people, which people precisely? Naming "society" as the cause and/or solution to a social or political phenomenon means that the writer doesn't have to actually name the specific agents, policies, structures, historical patterns, or ideologies--this list of potential agents could go on forever--as the cause of the problem. The term society also suggests a false unity: society in fact is comprised of many many different groups of people, and thus its use masks important disagreements and conflicts between groups in society.
Who is "the government"?
Similarly, students are often too quick to pin the blame on "government" as the cause of some social ill, without being more specific about what they mean by "government."
The government decided to intern Japanese-Americans during the Second World War.
While the sentence above is technically true, it's not very helpful. Which institutions of the government carried out the policy? Which institution found it constitutional? And more importantly, what other factors played a role in supporting this decision? (For example, why did most Americans not protest the internship of tens of thousands of fellow citizens even though they had committed no crime?)
In general, government is too broad a term to be very useful. It would be better to speak more specifically to particular policies and then identify the particular institution that supported those policies. Not only is our federal government divided into three branches--the executive, the judiciary, and the bi-cameral legislature--at least the legislature is also divided ideologically, between Republicans and Democrats, between centrists and right-wing extremists, for example. Furthermore, every policy initiative has a set of interested private parties lobbying for or against it. Who are they? What role did they play? In addition, those working to change the laws or create new policies also often deploy ideological arguments to the people through the media. What arguments do they make? (For example, an anti-enviroment lobbyist or politician might argue, "Environmental regulations are unjust intrusions on the part of the federal government, undermine the right to private property, and are contrary to the Fifth Amendment.") How and why is a particular argument effective? What ideologies does it rest upon? What chords does it strike with at least some of the American people and why? As you can see, "the government" is not a static idea, but a fluid constellation of interacting institutions and interests.
Most importantly, identifying "government" as the source of a problem also tends to minimize or skip over completely the fact that the government's authority and legitimacy ultimately is based on the decision of the majority of voters, a decision exercised through the franchise. So it was not just the government that was ultimately responsible for the internship of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
Writers who use these type of shorthand words lack of precision in their argument. They're not taking the time to think more carefully about the actual identity of the causal agent of the social problem they're trying to explain, and so their analysis suffers as a result. (See also the section on the passive voice below.)
WHAT IS AN ARGUMENT?
Evidence and analysis make an argument
Many students ask if they are allowed to write about their "opinions" on a subject. In fact, informed opinion is fundamental to any argumentative paper; uninformed opinion, however, will fail to convince your reader. One develops an informed opinion by finding evidence and then analyzing that evidence.
Example of an argument:
What does an argument look like? Here is a sample beginning to a coherent argument:
"The Metropolitan Transit Authority and Governor Pataki discriminated against the subway and bus riders of the City of New York when they decided to favor suburban commuters more than the city bus and subway riders in the allocation of mass transit subsidies. Because the majority of bus and subway riders are black, Asian, and Hispanic, and the vast majority of suburban commuters are white, this policy has had a disparate impact on black New York city residents (cite source). In this paper, I argue that this type more subtle discrimination, "institutional racism," has replaced the blatant prejudice of the Jim Crow era.
This student has a real reason to write her paper because she's motivated by an argument: she has something important to say about an issue. The student has collected information and evidence on her topic, analyzed it, and then developed an argument (informed opinion). Moreover, she has begun to analyze her topic conceptually -- in this case, by referring to the difference between old-fashioned Jim Crow type individual racist prejudice and more insidious modern-day institutional racism.