Abstract
In this chapter I examine possibilities for investigating the structuring of modes of social organization with the help of retroductive processes of inquiry. I suggest that an appeal to (some version of) retroductive logic – as a form of logical inference – can provide a justification for proffering social-structural analyses of the kinds outlined in Chapter 2, Sections 2.3.5 and 2.3.6, and as pointed to through my discussions in other chapters too. (See in particular, Chapter 5, Section 5.2.3; Chapter 6, Section 6.1.2; and Chapter 7, Sections 7.3.3 and 7.6.2.) I point to various opportunities for forwarding what Marks calls “convincing theorizing” (2008, p. 49) in which analyses of, inter alia, racism are developed at the level of social structure. Before I address the question of how such research can be justified (or in my terms, accounted for), I start off by showing how retroductive logic has been conceived by Peirce (whose suggested definition hereof I cited briefly in Chapter 7, Section 7.4.2.2).
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Notes
- 1.
Like Chiassis (2001), Paavola comments that Peirce (1958) seemed to use the terms abduction and retroduction interchangeably – using “various names for this third mode of inference [over and above induction and deduction] throughout his long career” (2004, p. 16). While Chiassis argues that a different emphasis may be implied by the different use of the terms, Paavola sees the two terms as indeed interchangeable.
- 2.
Chiassis suggests that this is because abduction implies “moving away” from observables (toward generating a hypothesis) whereas retroduction incorporates the notion of “going backwards” to provide an explanation (Chiassis, 2001, p. 2).
- 3.
Paavola states that in Peirce’s argument, the event(s) do not necessarily have to be “surprising” – although a good strategy is to work from “anomalous or surprising phenomena.” As he explains, “although it is possible to start abductive [retroductive] inference from non-anomalous phenomena, it is often a good strategical point to concentrate on anomalous phenomena” (2004, p. 13).
- 4.
Sayer postulates the methodological unity of the natural and social sciences, arguing that the logic of retroduction properly guides the study of both natural and social reality.
- 5.
Keat and Urry put forward a similar argument when explaining their realist position as an alternative to positivism (1975, p. 54). They indicate that they do not wish to identify themselves with the positivist suggestion (including the Popperian argument) “that there is any specifiable set of logical relationships between theories and perceptual [observation] statements” (1975, p. 233). For a discussion of the debate between scientific realists endorsing Marx’s approach and Popperian-oriented authors who question the positing of unobservable entities as a way of explaining causality, see Romm (1991, pp. 64–66 and 92–93). And for more detail on the scientific realist argument in relation to various other approaches, see Romm, 2001, pp. 37–54.
- 6.
Layder refers in particular to those following Strauss’s grounded theorizing approach, which shies away from making claims about the way in which structural conditions necessarily become relevant to the “interactional/processual phenomena under study” (Strauss, 1987, p. 80, as cited in Layder, 1993, p. 56). As I explained in Chapter 5 (Section 5.2.3), Essed develops an approach that incorporates analytic induction with structural deliberation; and as I showed in Chapter 6 via my chosen examples, ethnography can also move beyond what Layder would criticize as “middle range.”
- 7.
Lincoln and Guba point to the affinity between constructivism and anti-foundationalism when they note that “constructivists … tend toward the anti-foundational” (2003, p. 273). (See also Footnote 132.)
- 8.
Paavola argues that Peirce’s understanding of the status of retroduction – more so than the views of Hanson – has scope to broaden our conception of human rationality so as to encompass a “distributed cognition” approach, which emphasizes that:
Human cognition is not confined to individuals and within individuals’ minds but is distributed in essential ways to surrounding physical, social, and cultural environments and to long-term temporal processes. (2006, p. 5)
According to Paavola a distributed cognition approach allows us to undercut the view that making inferences is a matter of “processes within one’s mind” in which one tries to make a connection with “nature” (or some posited external extra-linguistic world); and it opens up possibilities for instead developing “new kinds of conceptualizations concerning human activity” (2006, p. 12).
- 9.
Bonilla-Silva considers as “orthodox Marxists” those who “regard class and class struggle as the central explanatory variables of social life [and] reduce racism to a legitimating ideology used by the bourgeoisie to divide the working class.” He argues that neo-Marxists “share to various degrees the limitations of the orthodox Marxist view: the primacy of class, racism viewed as an ideology, and class dynamics as the real engine of racial dynamics” (1997, p. 466).
- 10.
He refers for example to Segura’s (1990) work on race, class, and gender as the primary axes of social hierarchy in modern societies, and Essed’s (1991) work on “gendered racism” (1997, p. 469).
- 11.
After reading a draft of my Chapter 8 (May 2009), Susan Weil suggested to me that – besides what she saw as the need to make my storyline clearer throughout (which I believe I have better accomplished now) – she found that she could find no bases for engagement with the kinds of statements that I was making here (in citing Bonilla-Silva). She found that my way of expressing Bonilla-Silva’s argument did not seem to tally with the terms of engagement that I set out in previous chapters. She indicated that in the way in which I was setting out his argument thus far, he had not “become a human being for her” – and she found this problematic. Readers may wish to consider her commentary here. Perhaps indeed I have not managed to show up the person “behind” the statements, as I am engaging too academically with the question of how we can reconstruct the logic of his approach to theorizing hierarchy and domination (which is my focus in this section).
- 12.
Bonilla-Silva makes a similar point when he suggests that the understanding of social science as a social product (rooted in political contexts) is becoming increasingly acceptable as a position (2006, p. 13).
- 13.
Weil notes, though, in her response to this draft chapter (May 2009) that “we don’t always know what ‘there’ is, or what else it might mean to try to forward some vision of ‘there’”. This is why, in her view, the principles of critically reflexive action inquiry (cf. Weil, 1997, 1998) need to be made more central.
- 14.
Weil in her feedback to me (May 2009) found this point made by Bonilla-Silva to be “immensely important” and suggested that it may be more important than “retroductive theory.” This fits in with her focus on rendering assumptions open via critically reflexive co-inquiry. McIntyre-Mills, however, found that my exposition of retroductive inference in the chapter (May 2009) was “splendid”; and she suggested in her feedback that she considers it very important that I was able via the chapter to highlight its relevance in social life.
- 15.
See my discussion in Chapter 4, Section 4.5, where I showed also how Morton, Hornsey, and Postmes (2009) interpret experiments suggesting that prejudiced people can invoke abstract principles of fairness and equality (and at the same time contest the meaningfulness of racial categories) especially when it is believed that White people may become excluded from a desired position for “being white.” They note, also citing the research of Lowery et al. (2006), that “people are likely to be particularly concerned about fair treatment when their ingroup may be the recipient of negative treatment, but are less concerned when an outgroup is similarly disadvantaged” (2009, p. 46). This can be seen as tying in with Bonilla-Silva’s argument that color-blind racism is slippery. (See also Chapter 3, Section 3.4.2.)
- 16.
Commenting on the way in which such arguments have also been used in Africa, Abimbola Olateju (originally from Nigeria) indicated to me in personal conversation (December 2008) that the problem is that when White people make blanket statements such as these, they fail to grant credibility to other reasons that can account for poverty – and they thus close off considerations around these possible explanations. It is in this failure that she sees their arguments as flawed. She made this point in the context of our discussing the substance of this book.
- 17.
In the same survey, 50, 20, and 53% of Whites had agreed with these respective stereotypes (2006, p. 158).
- 18.
In this regard, Obama indicates that when he made his speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, in which he stated that “there is not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America – there’s the United States of America,” he did not mean to imply that such a situation was already in place (2007, p. 231). He indicates that when he hears commentators interpreting his speech to mean that “we have arrived at a ‘postracial politics’ or that we already live in a color-blind society, I have to offer a word of caution” (2007, p. 232). He cautions that “to say that we are one people is not [and should not be] to say that race no longer matters – that the fight for equality has been won, or that the problems minorities face in this country today are self-inflicted” (2007, p. 232).
- 19.
Commenting on Bonilla-Silva’s, as others’, considerations around the “changing color/culture-line” in the USA and the social operation of the various distinctions, Kretsedemas suggests that:
It is not a matter of predicting which tendency will dominate but understanding how they will interact with each other, creating rationales for assigning differences and justifying exclusions that can vary by place and time. (2008, p. 827)
He states that in this conceptualization, he follows Omi and Winant’s (1986) treatment of racial-ethnic identities as “fluid and unstable complexes of meaning constantly contested and transformed through political struggle” (Omi & Winant, 1986, p. 55, as cited by Kretsedemas, 2008, p. 828).
- 20.
Collins makes similar observations when she notes that “unlike prior waves of European immigrants who could in fact become White, recent racial/ethnic immigrant groups can at best become ‘honorary Whites’” (2006, p. 47). She makes this point as part of her noting that “only White Americans can shed their racial and ethnic identities to stand for the generalized national citizen” (2006, p. 47).
- 21.
Collins has also commented that “the Latino population constitutes varying mixtures of all three ‘racial’ categories” (with the three being “White, native, and Black” in her description of the triangle) and therefore constitutes a challenge to the “racial triangle.” She points out that “actual population groups have never fit smoothly” into given categories, and that the “triangle” should be seen as constituting “benchmarks against which individuals and groups measure racial categorization” – rather than offering a way of predicting how particular individuals or groups might indeed become placed (2006, p. 35).
- 22.
McWhorter points out that those asking Whites to commit race treason are not pleading for them to commit treason in a legal sense. They are calling on them to commit “the much more personal and intimate treason that consists of all those subtle and not-so subtle acts of betrayal that imply a refusal to bow to the authority of the white power structure” (2005, p. 549). McWhorter comments that due to the way in which racism is built into the structures of society, “white power structures require so few gestures of fealty these days to keep themselves intact that one hardly ever gets a good opportunity to betray them” (2005, p. 549). She believes that the focus of those calling for race treason has been primarily on “negative acts of refusal on the parts of whites.” She stresses that in her view the “positive [act] of fighting injustice is more important” (pp. 550–551). Like Bonilla-Silva, she believes that a collective movement toward “justice or transformation” is crucial. (See Section 8.3.6.2.)
- 23.
Collins also provides an example of how two students in one of her classes, one African American and the other White, “told of how they switched names on their respective papers when they suspected that the Black student’s lower grades reflected the professor’s prejudice.” She notes that when the papers were returned to them “the Black student got her same old ‘C’ whereas the White student received her ‘A’, even though they had submitted each other’s work!”. She indicates that “coalition strategies such as these become especially important in integrated settings where differential treatment is hard to detect” (2000, p. 288).
- 24.
See also Flood and Romm (1996a, pp. 48–50) for a consideration of the relationship between Habermas’s and Foucault’s arguments.
- 25.
The question of the kind of “socialism” now gaining more legitimacy in the USA is discussed further at: http://greenpagan.newsvine.com/_news/2009/04/11/2669333-morning-skim-capitalism-vs-socialism.
- 26.
This seems to be similar to the stance adopted by Nelson Mandela in South Africa, when he stated in his opening address at the 50th National ANC conference held in Mafikeng (December 1997) that:
According to this thesis to which we must subscribe, success must also be measured with reference to a system of social accountability for capital, which reflects its impact both on human existence and the quality of that existence. (http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/mandela/1997/sp971216.html)
- 27.
Commenting on Obama’s election campaign, Shane indicates that Obama was calling for the creation of a “transparent and connected democracy” and that in terms of his innovative objectives, “Americans have within their grasp a host of communication tools that could sustain a robust democratic culture of sharing, creativity and participation. … . Senator Obama … is promising to lead a transformation in our political life” (2008). In December 2008 and January 2009, Christakis facilitated some SDDP dialogues (following the methodology that I discussed in Chapter 7) designed to consider the challenges that might be faced in employing technology to create a “connected democracy.” Some of the most influential inhibiting factors that emerged as needing to be addressed were, for instance, the insufficient attention given by the Obama administration toward capacitating facilitators of e-democracy; the problem of corporate control of the means of democracy, and the problem of the digital divide. (See http://obamavision.wikispaces.com for an account of how the partipants were chosen for this SDDP and how influence maps were generated and interpreted. An account is also offered here by Christakis and co-organizer Gayle Underwood of the SDDP logic and its use in this application.)
- 28.
See Romm (1998c) for my exposition of realist-oriented and constructivist-oriented understandings of processes of interpreting texts.
- 29.
Nascimento concurs with this account when she argues that in Brazil, as in other Latin American societies, a covert “whitening policy” has been at play, where “a Latin or Iberian identity is routinely applied to indigenous, black, or mestizo populations with pride, as if they were European” (2004, p. 871). However, “the racial democracy ideology created a taboo identifying the unmasking of its anti-racist pretense” (2004, p. 870).
- 30.
This is similar to Ali’s remarks on the terminology of mixed race that I mentioned in Chapter 4, Section 4.7.1, where she criticizes the implication of “mixing previously singular ‘racial’ identities.” The terminology of “mixed race” itself can serve to “re-inscribe and reify ‘race’” (2003, p. 6). That is, it can be seen as introducing a language that still “constructs and maintains” the idea of “race” (2003, p. 6).
- 31.
Bonilla-Silva and Zuberi indicate their concern that Wacquant (2002) made no reference in his argument to the work of authors contributing to the volume “The Death of White Sociology” (edited by Ladner, 1973). They find it “difficult to understand” why Wacquant chose not to make connections between his own work criticizing certain sociological practice in the USA and these authors’ exposition of the way in which “White Sociology” poses as science (2008, p. 16).
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Romm, N. (2010). Research Conducted in Terms of Retroductive Processes: Rethinking the Theorization of Racism. In: New Racism. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8728-7_8
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