This review of research literature on the language practices associated with the production and circulation of scientific knowledge documents four discourse-ideological processes: data/theory enregisterment, objectification, visualization, and entextualization. I argue that these processes cause the stabilization of scientific reference by imposing a conventionalist language ideology that opposes language and the objective reality of the world that it references.
AbstractThis article documents the practices of pharmaceutical creativity in Ayurveda, focusing in particular on how practitioners appropriate multiple sources to innovate medical knowledge. Drawing on research in linguistic anthropology on the social circulation of discourse—a process calledentextualization—I describe how the ways in which Ayurveda practitioners innovate medical knowledge confounds the dichotomous logic of intellectual property (IP) rights discourse, which opposes traditional collective knowledge and modern individual innovation. While it is clear that these categories do not comprehend the complex nature of creativity in Ayurveda, I also use the concept of entextualization to describe how recent historical shifts in the circulation of discourse have caused a partial entailment of this opposition between the individual and the collectivity. Ultimately, I argue that the method exemplified in this article of tracking the social circulation of medical discourse highlights both the empirical complexity of so-called traditional creativity, and the politics of imposing the categories of IP rights discourse upon that creativity, situated as it often is, at the margins of the global economy.
This article documents and analyzes autoethnographic engagement in participatory action research (PAR)—a reflective, irritative, and dialogic writing and team-discussion process which documents researcher-activist experiences and contextualizes them within the action research process. We document autoethnography as implemented in a research partnership between HMoob American college student activists and education researchers, to study the systems of oppression and inform advocacy to support HMoob American students at a predominantly white university. Autoethnography informs all aspects of the PAR project, from the development of research questions, to data collection, analysis, and writing, to the implementation of plans for action. We provide evidence from selections of the team's autoethnographic journals, of the role of autoethnographic engagement as a PAR research technique that can facilitate and bear witness to the developmental transformations for emerging PAR activists—specifically, the cultivation of critical consciousness, the critical re-framing of issues of cultural-community identity, and the formation of an identity as a researcher-activist. We argue that autoethnography provides a practical technique for PAR teams for engaging in iterative cycles of critical self-reflective praxis (Freire, 2011), facilitating the development of critically-engaged researchers and the formation of analyses that are epistemologically grounded and action-oriented, addressing issues of power asymmetries within research.
