Download Morten Nissen: Objectification and Prototype

Morten Nissen: 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. It suggests 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 it is objectified (as both a “model of” and a “model for”), and its (contentious, distributed, variable) general
relevance. The designation and production of prototypes is far from a neutral, “technical” process, but
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, 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 anti-scientific embracing of everyday life. The idea of prototypes is displayed theoretically and illustrated
with examples from research in social work practices.
The problem of objectification of practices in research
The background to these considerations is discussions in Copenhagen in 2003 in a group of colleagues engaged in practice research cooperation with social workers1. The practice of doing research in what is quintessentially a social field – a field both the object and application of social
sciences – spurred not only considerations about how to conceive of the relations between ourselves
and the reflexive practitioners we worked with, but at the same time the need for a general epistemology that went beyond the basically hermeneutic-phenomenological idea of dialogue as a communication of experience, which, among others, underlay Kvale’s and Holzkamp’s suggestions
about postmodern and critical psychology (Holzkamp;Kvale). Our initial problem was to find and
articulate a way to steer clear of both eulogic advocacy and academic arrogance in dealing with the
apparently contradictory demands of practitioners and academia. To address this issue – beyond
simple notions of balance or compromise – it was necessary to inquire into the basic methodological categories of objectivity and generality.
Critical psychological practice research identifies itself as an approach from within and from below;
it is on the side of the subject of practice and refuses traditional notions of scientific objectification.
The qualities of objectivity and generality are often simply identified with mainstream science essentialism or methodological formalism, and either left aside or confronted. But this is only sustainable so long as practice research can remain in its negative phase of critique, that is, define itself as
an “alternative” to what everybody knows about as “traditional”. The moment practice research
becomes accountable as research – whether it is in order to be recognized among researchers or to
be able to specify to others just how research may be useful (rather than either eulogy or arrogance)
So – thanks to Line Lerche Moerck, Ida Schwartz, Liselotte Ingholt, and, in particular, Irene Højlund, for valuable
contributions to the core ideas in this paper. For those who read Danish I warmly recommend (Højlund)
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– there is no escape from addressing the issues positively: what do we mean by objectivity and generality – or what should we propose as the more fundamental quality of research which those concepts only insufficiently reflect?2
In Kvale’s and Holzkamp’s methodologies, this challenge is indeed met, and, as important steps are
taken towards contextualizing research in social practice and recognizing its intersubjectivity, criteria of scientific validity are sought established. Yet there is a way in which these accounts, in the
end, lead us back to our initial contradiction: on the one hand, validity means consensus (accommodating the views and perspectives of the subjects); on the other hand, research appears to produce
qualities beyond this consensus – qualities attributed to research by common sense, such as insight,
understanding (Begreifen), illumination, etc. – and, to some extent, the achievement of these qualities seems to require quite traditional academic virtues, after all.
I suggest we approach the problem by way of a closer analysis of the contradiction between the
subjectivity and objectivity of practice.
Practice research is an approach to research basically as a practice among others – and engaged in
exchange with those others, establishing forms of dialogue directed at development. The idea of a
“dialogue” is a recognition that practices are subjective and that humans are reflexive, so that the
relation between researchers and practitioners is an intersubjective relation in which both are participants. This appears to contradict turning practice into some kind of thing, an object called data or
empirical "material", that is, objectifying it, in order to be able to view it and handle it, deal with it
from the outside, according to certain external standards and with a view to a relevance defined
elsewhere.
In applied research, the contradiction is sometimes discussed as the dilemma of rigor or relevance
(e.g. (Argyris and Schön)). Rigorously maintaining external general standards in defining and describing objects appears to be the only way to achieve accountability as researcher, yet at the same
time the road to academic arrogance and “ivory tower” research. Recognizing practitioners as human subjects leads to accepting criteria of relevance internal to their practice, and this may appear
democratic, but it also threatens to reduce research to eulogic advocacy.
So - what is practice: subject or object? Should practice be objectified or recognized as subjective?
Or, how should we strike a proper balance?
The key to the answer, this article suggests, is to not only refuse the choice, but also refuse to accept
its terms in the shape of a “balance” or a compromise. For what is at stake, really? To be “on the
side of the subject” does not mean magically to occupy the consciousness or viewpoint of the subject; and to objectify does not mean to transmute living beings into inanimate objects like some
King Midas. Rather, what we refer to are linguistic references, exchanges, and models.
Viewed in terms of cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), human subjects do not necessarily
disappear or suffer when we are recreated as objects. On the contrary: this is at the core of the productive process in which we form our conditions and ourselves3. Objectification is the production of
(model) artefacts with which we can deal with ourselves and each other. Model artefacts do not
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Of course, there is 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 theme of this paper.
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For the sake of completeness, it should be mentioned that there is in fact one kind of practice where turning subjects
into objects means se-subjectifying them: violence. But otherwise, when direct violence is sublated into power, objectification is the mediation that realizes subjectification.
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simply reflect and leave subjects be as they are; subjects relate to them and change in the process. In
fact, this is how subjects come to be as subjects in the full sense, as not only agents and participants,
but also self-reflecting and responsible. Thus, in CHAT, objectification and subjectification are two
faces of the same coin. This is as true of research as of any other practice.
However, theoretical resources such as CHAT are not meant to make the contradiction disappear in
neutral universalities. Rather, it gives us a way of approaching it: what we need is to go deeper into
the process of objectification. This will take us to considerations of research as production and exchange, and to the concept of prototypes. Eventually, we will reencounter the problem - in the
shape, perhaps unexpectedly, of ideology.
Objectification as exchange: practice research as a joint transformation of references
Inspired by Marx' analysis of production and social exchange (Marx, 1974), we can approach research as a unity of exchange and transformation. As any objectification, research recreates subjective human practice as objects that are circulated, exchanged, and used. This objective relevance, at
once a social and a material force, basically disciplines the production of research, while those
products – given their specific relevances – themselves return to discipline other practices and coconstitute their subjects as disciplined practitioners. Although all phases in this movement are simultaneous (e.g. when practice is objectified into research it is from the very start with a view to relevance), they are also diachronic and realize transformations - e.g. the products of research still return as a surprise to recreate the practitioner, who in turn creates a novelty etc.
This power of research to return as a surprise has to do with the special objectivity characteristic of
research itself. More generally, objectifications "translate" meaning in a Latourian sense, they return what is objectified in a different shape that depends on the objective features of the mediational
object. E.g. when a person is sculptured, the features of the stone – its hardness, coldness, stillness,
grayness etc. – as mastered by the sculpturer, and to which the sculpturer must subject herself,
brings out new ways of seeing that person (Latour would say, with Serres, that a whole geology is
folded into the sculpture, and then into the person-as-sculptured, the idea of “form” derived from
sculpturing a person etc. (Latour 247-60)). This is also true of the special mediational objects of
research.
The mediational objects of research are specialized epistemological artefacts. They are made as
abstractions, that is, to purify the general in other practices (as "mediated simplicities" according to
(Hegel), p. 72). In other words yet, research may be approached as the "general labor" (in Marx'
terms), i.e. the specific kind of practice that contains and unfolds the general qualities of praxis
(Ruben, 1978), as well as deals with the general in other specific practices (Jensen, 1992).
In this aspect, that is, viewed in relation to and distinction from those other practices, research objects are “ideal” (Ilyenkov). This does not imply, however, that they are immaterial; their ideality is
realized in material objects specialized for this epistemological function, the function of “representation” or embodying “knowledge”. Such specialized objects (or any objects viewed in the light of
this function) we can call models (following Wartofsky, 1979).
Abstraction implies that each model object "represents" any given practice in a limited set of ways.
It is these ways which are made real in the object. While the practice itself is only "real" in its flow,
as a movement, an endless totality of transformations and reproductions, only aspects of it can be
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abstracted to exist as model objects, that is, in the form of the relation of representation of generalities.
Since generalities can be thus abstracted from any practice in infinite ways, the specific form of any
model is governed by the specific relevance of the knowledge it embodies; the good reasons for
modeling precisely these out of the infinity of possible aspects. Yet the model artefacts of research
are made to embody, not some pre-defined relevance, but a relevance of a generic kind; although
somehow articulated as the purpose or aim of the practice of research, it is precisely what is not
"known" in advance that matters. If abstraction is promise, research is the specialty of making unsubstantiated promises. To achieve that specialization, in a division of labor, research objects must
paradoxically move toward irrelevance, or, to be more precise, a “relevant irrelevance”, that is, a
transformation of relevances. Meaning is taken away from its direct indexical enmeshment with the
local practice of origin and estranged from it. In the specialized practice of research, when moving
away from the objectivity of the other specific practices, meaning acquires another relevant objectivity by relating to systems of meaning, taking these as its objective reference (reflexively objectifying them). In this moment, the relevant objectivity of meaning lies only with the consistency of its
relations to other systems of meaning, that is, the extent to which contradictions are modeled and
mediated (i.e. “known”, reflected)4. Thus, meta-reflection of relevances is a defining aspect of research.
This, in a word, is theory. But theory remains a moment in the larger movement. The indexicality of
meaning is reestablished in a new way when meaning, theoretically transformed, returns to realize
its renewed relevance – although it may return in a different time and place.
In other words, the construction of aspects of social work as generalized objects in research is made
with theoretical concepts whose meanings are given, reflected, and developed in a network of theories developed dialogically in scientific traditions.
This rearticulation provides new relations, new gaps and connections, new identities and differences, which in turn are taken back to social work as references which, in this sphere, appear as
abstract-general concepts, that is, hypothetical action possibilities that may (or may not) be taken up
and concretized in particular social work practices – including, but not limited to, the one that was
originally objectified – and thus create new practices. On the other hand, the empirical-practical
reference that makes out the way relevance is taken up to govern research practice calls for a
rearticulation of theoretical concepts whose possible implications resonate through the landscape of
theories and create new theories.
These are qualities of any research when viewed as a practice among practices. Viewed thus, “practice research” denotes, primarily, a general epistemology, a way of understanding research as such.
In addition, however, derived from this, “practice research” becomes a name for the special kind of
research which knows this about itself and takes the awareness of these qualities as a guide, a methodology. Finally, taking these qualities as a guide means realizing that the practice of research cannot be viewed in isolation. Thus, “practice research” can specify the qualities of a deliberately composite local practice that seeks to realize the junction or exchange itself, in the form of a joint ven-
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Thus, theoretical work is an effort to integrate ever new relevant experiences, and overcome the contradictions they
entail. This does not, however, mean that true theoretical concepts are free of contradiction. Rather, it means that they
are reflected as inherently contradictory – contradiction becomes the founding condition of concepts that can sustain
their irreducability. Overcoming contradictions means transforming dichotomies into dialectical relations.
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ture that transforms the practical experiences as well as the theoretical concepts that are taken up
and given meaning indexically as references.
The term “reference”, here, speaks of the distance and connection between that local “joint venture”
practice and the practices of research and of social work with which meanings are exchanged and
recontextualized.
Altogether, the transformations occur in a) a local cooperation, b) an exchange between different
practices (social work and research), and c) an appropriation by the different practices of concepts
as references – and of the practices by the concepts, in the sense that both practices are transformed
through the exchange mediated by the concepts.
The three moments of the prototype
The transformations that take place in a practice research joint venture can be regarded as the production of a prototype. The concept of prototype, here, is developed from U.J. Jensen’s theory of
knowledge (Jensen;Jensen 79-99) – basing, in turn, on Aristotelian, Wittgensteinian and above all
Hegelian-Marxist references (e.g. (Ilyenkov;Ilyenkov;Ruben;Wartofsky;Marx). Also, it is informed
by broadly pragmatist social studies of science (e.g. (Bowker and Star;Suchman, Trigg, and
Blomberg 163-79). In psychology, the Vygotskian “experimental-genetic method” can be viewed as
an early version of similar ideas: the “higher psychic functions” studied are cultural artefacts and
psychology partakes in their production.
In the context of a theory of knowledge, the concept of prototype is distinct in its anti-dualist implications. Thus, regarding natural science, production is inserted to mediate between knowledge and
nature; the natural objects which scientists deal with are only scientific objects insofar as they are
reconstructed and disciplined by the technical apparatuses of science (and relate as relevant, however indirectly, to production in a wider sense). In this view, they are similar to the objects of social
sciences in the sense that they are “socially constructed” (“facts” ethymologically means that they
are made, cf. (Latour)); and in the sense that thus, on the other hand, even the construction of natural objects is a “social engineering” (think of the social implications of the construction of the atom,
the species, or the heliocentric universe). The difference is displaced to another level: the social
conditions and implications of the prototypes in natural science are not immediately and directly
within the field of objects that constitute those sciences themselves. Indeed, they mostly occur “behind the backs” of scientists; and even to reflexive natural scientists it makes methodological sense
to neutralize and standardize, to push to the background as implicit dimensions, those socio-cultural
aspects, when referring to scientific objects. But matters are different in social sciences. Here, prototypes are directly within our object fields as “cultural elements” and “social engineering”5, and
the boundaries between object and context move and shift so persistently that neutralization or
standardization can never keep those aspects quiet for long6.
The concept of prototype, then, carries the awareness that research objects neither exist as pure nature nor as pure mental representations; it reinserts scientific objects in their real context of socio-
Thus, if we don’t know what we are doing as “social engineers”, this is not only an ethical and political problem, but
directly a scientific problem as well.
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Which, of course, does not mean that we cannot try – only that what we then do is create a specific ideological reification with varying and hidden implications. One way to conceive of this is what I have elsewhere termed “boundary
objectivity” (Nissen 332-49;Nissen 73-89;Nissen)
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historical practices and methodologically helps us retrace that contextuality when we reflect how
they achieve their abstract-general character.
This holistic awareness should not, however, prevent us from distinguishing its moments theoretically. In the above, we have considered these in terms of the defining characteristics of research as
one distinct practice among and in relation to others. In what follows, we shall go on to discuss the
prototype as the specific object of practice research.
A prototype, as a socio-culturally produced object, can be articulated as a triangular structure:
1. The prototypical social work practice – or the particular social work practice delimited
and approached as prototypical
2. The model – or the prototypical practice recreated as model object, as an artefact or a constellation of artefacts
3. The general issues, relations, problems, possibilities etc. for which the particular social
work practice is claimed to be prototypical
Observe that the three moments are internally related and define each other. The local practice does
not exist as such (as designated, circumscribed, as a unit) until it is modeled with a view to its general relevance. The model artefacts do not acquire the meaning of model until they are taken to refer
to both the local practice and its general prototypicality. Prototypical generalities do not reside in a
sphere of res cogitans but come to life in model artefacts with a reference to exemplars.
The point of this triangle is that it allows us to approach a number of issues that are often implicit or
even repressed in methodology because they touch the (constitutive) boundaries of the taken-forgranted standards of academia.
Firstly, the wide range of material conditions, forms, and use values of the artefacts that objectify
social work and may come to serve as model objects – the range of potential and realized “inscription devices” (Latour). As mentioned above, even the best scientific models do not simply and
seemlessly mediate simplicities, generalities, with reference to theoretical systems of meaning.
They are still material objects with objectivities of various other kinds "folded" into them – e.g. the
syntax of a language, the troublesome monopoly policies of software producers, etc. In addition,
obviously, academic texts, numbers and graphs are but a few of the many "inscription devices" that
exist – such varied media as offices, keys, one-way-mirrors, hair-styles, body postures etc. and a
wide array of spoken and textual genres such as jokes, narrative plots, websites, case files, TV programs, project blueprints, program evaluations etc. etc. all in varied ways objectify social work.
And all join in what we (with (Bakhtin;Bakhtin) may term the "intertextuality" of the prototype, the
endless ways in which they refer to, contextualize, contain, quote, oppose etc. etc. each other.
Thus, it makes a difference to a research interview with a “street kid” that she approaches the conversation with a wariness acquired from experiences with tabloid newspapers. Or, it may be vital
that the researcher recognizes in the social workers’ accounts a repertoire of circulating narrative
plots and styles which typically function as model artefacts far more directly and pervasively than
theory. Or again, the introduction of theoretical references in a dialogue with social workers works
differently if presented in a conference room, locked from clients, than if directly in an open space,
street-level café project. Or, think of the complex webs of authority (“ruling relations”, cf. (Smith)
in play when research dialogues refer to official program statements or evaluations to which program leaders, professionals, and users are committed in widely varying degrees and ways.
Secondly, the contradiction between the particularity of the prototypical practice and the generality
of its prototypical meaning, i.e. the aspects modeled. The idea of prototypes provides a way to
transcend the customary dichotomy between the particular and the general, and between the kinds
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of research that are believed to match those aspects, idiographic and nomothetic research (Windelband 5-22). On the one hand, we have such examples as Freud’s description of his psychoanalysis
with Dora or the Wolf Man, or Makarenko’s poetic account of the life and times of the Gorkij Colony in Ukraine in the early 1920s (Makarenko); on the other hand, epidemiological or sociological
surveys, or meta-reviews of double-blind controlled clinical trials. In the first case, any generality
appears absent, as if the depicted events remain inextricably bound to personal and historical circumstance; in the latter, any particularity seems stripped away. Yet of course, Freud’s and
Makarenko’s narratives are replete with pervasive cultural reference, and their texts have been
printed, distributed, translated, and referenced widely. In the production of the texts, unique events
were transformed into events referenced for a generalizing purpose, sustained by universalizing
ideals. And each survey, each meta-review, is a historically unique cooperative practice of assembling data, which, even if the local indexicalities of their origins are pushed aside, are transformed
as references of this particular research practice. What emerges is not simply a knowledge of many
identical objects, but a particular composite mediating object – a population, a procedure, or a formula (see also (Mol). Thus, it is only to zoom out a little, and it becomes apparent that, as research
objects are produced and used in practice, inherently, even generalities are historically situated, and
even particulars transcend their uniqueness. The universal and the unique, along with conceptual
distinction7, are dethroned from their methodological sovereignty to their proper place as dynamic
moments of the theoretical side of research, and the front seat is taken over by situated generality or
relevance.
With such a wider conception of research practice, into our purview come forms of generality that
are often overlooked or disdained as irrelevant to research methodology, but which nevertheless
spill into (social science) research.
One such form is the social recognition of (the subject of) a particular practice by its name. For instance, the relevance in Denmark of my research on the social work development project “Sjakket”
(“The Crew”) in the 1990s (Nissen 229-40;Nissen 73-89;Nissen;Nissen;Nissen 286-94;Nissen) was,
to a large extent, carried by the fact that this particular name was famous nation-wide, among other
things because of the ability of these social workers to deal with media and politics. Here, my “representation” of “Sjakket” as prototypical was, inevitably, diplomatic as much as epistemological.
The logic of generality, and the relations between the singularity of the name and the heterogeneity
of what it represented, included the readiness of my readership to either accept or reject the face
value (in a sense, the “brand”) of “Sjakket”. The fact that prototypicality (in distinction from typicality) implies the naming of a unique practice / collective as potentially widely relevant means that
the reverse workings become apparent: the recognition and entailed interpellation of the subjects
appointed. To generalize is to educate (as we shall discuss further below).
Another form is the work of art. Including Makarenko’s above-mentioned novel (Makarenko) as an
example of social work research speaks of this interface. Once famous, Anton Makarenko would
write and speak many texts on pedagogy in a more conventionally academic genre. But these never
achieved the wide reception of his novel (and with good reason). Probably he was not himself
aware of the many obscure ways in which his novel had become relevant. Characteristic of art is the
primacy of multiple and mutable (aesthetic) relevances over their systematic (i.e. contradictionsresolving) reflection. Purifying this quality, then, would lead us away from research (which, as
mentioned above, in its theoretical moment is meta-reflective of relevance); conversely, purifying
systematic reflection (in the direction of “ugly” schematic systems) would lead us away from any
Corresponding to Hegel’s logical moments of the general (das Allgemeine), the particular (das Einzelne), and the
special (das Besondere)
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artfulness. But most social sciences research (not to mention humanities) is far from pure. In fact,
since research is transformative / productive of relevance, reflection necessarily lags behind, and in
some phases of the modeling of prototypes, it makes sense to indulge in aesthetic creativity. In order for the whole to achieve the character of research, however, reflection must continuously try to
catch up with creativity8.
Thirdly, conceived as prototypical relevance, generality flags its heterogeneity, variability, temporality, and contentious morality. With this statement, it is not intended to simply neutralize the
meaning of generality (as mediated simplicity) by adding a dose of complexity and thereby in effect
refuse to address the issue. Rather, it is to reflect just how simplicity, in its mediation, involves the
complexity it denies on the one dimension it displays. We can say with the ethnomethodologists
that the seen-but-unnoticed conditions of any generalization must be kept in good repair – and that
methodology is where this repair activity is highlighted. What emerges is a picture far from the utopia of a harmonious community of scholars working smoothly to reveal and copy the invariables of
a static and homogenous environment. As an aspect of practice, as prototypicality, generality appears as a differentiated, volatile, contentious relationship of reference, in a flow of time, rather than
a simple, neutral and instantaneous relationship of identity (or "reflection").
As for the temporal aspect, the point is to recognize research and its artefacts as cultural-historical –
prototypical models are made and used in real time and they point toward past, present, and future
(Wartofsky). Thus, for instance, life-course epidemiologists struggle (at rare points of selfreflection) with the fact that their cohort data refer to an historical era often substantially different
(in terms of life-styles, disease patterns etc.) from that of their publishing and distribution – so that
it becomes evident how even the most solid of empirical grounding subtracts nothing from the ideological character of the relevance of their research (Kogevinas, Andersen, and Olsen 1173). Conversely, a prototype may be the first ever of its kind, and yet generally relevant if corresponding
conditions are eventually provided (just as the automobile's relevance – as against that of, say, trains
and bicycles – was and is still expanded and developed [concretized] with the infrastructure of motor roads). A prototype can be ahead of its time; or, it can lose its relevance if conditions change
adversely; or again, its lost relevance can be reclaimed at a different level. Thus, Stalinism redefined and reduced the relevance of Makarenko’s (account of the) Gorkij colony, until it was reclaimed by post-hippie social workers in Western Europe in the 1970’s9. Freud’s tale of the Wolf
Man was reclaimed by a psychoanalysis reinterpreted for an anglo-american middle class, but has
since become obsolete to a biological or cognitive-behavioral clinical psychology that (in the present) is constituted with its neo-scientistic future horizon of an “evidence-based” clinical practice.
The prototype as ideology production
When a model is a model for as well as a model of something (Goffman, 1986; Wartofsky, 1979),
this is not a neutral future-orientedness, but an ideological function. Relevance has “value”, not just
in terms of absolutes (the relevant is better than the irrelevant), or quantity (the more relevant the
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Of course, in the world of social work practices, this commitment to research is open to negotiation. Why would research help develop any particular institution or project better than nominal recognition or artful recreation? This question, fundamental to research methodology, but typically forming a taken-for granted framework for researchers, is
constantly re-posed in practice research.
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In Zizek’s methodology, it is precisely in socio-cultural forms that become obsolete we can identify fundamental aspects – the “vanishing mediators” – of the ideological constitution of societies. Thus he recommends 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 neoliberalism, as realistically to be expected, took over. See (Zizek),
227 ff.
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better), but as moral qualities, directions, or preferences as well. The idea of prototypes helps us
ask: which specific constellation of relevances, for whom, leading where, under just what kinds of
circumstances?10
This does not mean, however, that methodological reflection must end in a politicizing relativism,
or a sociological reductionism, to which given agents’ values, preferences, or interests are taken as
metaphysical reference. This would be the conclusion if the usual dichotomy of science vs. ideology
were maintained, where values, interests and subjectivity are the constitutive Others of science.
While the methodology of prototypes does open to a politics or sociology of science, it also maintains, as mentioned, that research is (reflexively) productive / transformative of relevance. This is
the crucial point that breaks open the dichotomy and reassembles it dialectically. The implication is,
to put it succinctly, that if one accepts ideology as something other and more than a vanishing moment of error (to be eradicated with the newest formal scientific procedure), and if one does not
forget that research is a human practice, then the only way to avoid reducing research to subjectivism or particularism is to see it as a production of ideology11.
Production, here, has a negative and a positive moment. In the negative moment, research is “ideology critique”. The prototype is something new, something which in its prototypicality differs from
all given typicalities; the very orientation to newness implies the systematic negative referral to existing theory (which constitutes the “other side” of innovation in a way specific to research) and
thus opens the gap for a critical moment. The raison d’ètre of the prototype hinges on its inherent
objectification and transformation of contradictions which would otherwise structure relevances
(and, by implication, organize subjectivities) unreflected, that is, in the form of dichotomies. In the
positive moment, research becomes “ideology”: the prototype is established, accomplished, recognized; in order to achieve closure, it glosses over contradictions and organizes hegemony. Thus the
two moments are directly opposites; yet of course, the negative moment is only realized in the positive, and the positive is only required because of the negative.
This point marks an important opposition to the dichotomization of the innovations in research into
two extremes: on the one hand, critique as exclusively negative, as a deconstruction, an opening of
abstract possibilities etc. – which amounts to a misrecognition of the model artefacts and of the constellations of relevance with which it is realized (as if critique were immaterial) – and, on the other
hand, innovation as positive technicalities built from scratch in a virgin land of resources and without ideological implications12. In both cases, an Enlightenment belief in a radical break with History
is discernible – whether it leads into a Cartesian res cogitans or on to a Brave New World.
Yet even if the production of research prototypes does not take us out of the real world, it is important to recognize that it creatively reconfigures ideological constellations. Production of ideology
is not only a matter of creating legitimacy for given agents, but one of constituting, sustaining and
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Here, ethics should economize its defining universalizing drive. It may be that the concern for the highest good points
in the same ultimate direction as that for the deepest insight; but there is a long and interesting road to walk before “we”
may eventually reach that featureless nirvana.
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In these issues, the argument draws loosely on such references as (Althusser 100-40;Billig;Billig;Haug 178205;Horkheimer and Adorno;Hänninen and Paldán;Laclau and Mouffe;Latour;Marx and Engels;Osterkamp;Wetherell
and Potter;Zizek;Zizek 1-33;Zizek)
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In 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 30)
10
transforming those agents themselves as subjects, as collectives and participants – precisely in the
productive processes of objectification to which research belongs as a participant that throughout
Modernity has become increasingly central.
One methodological option, then, is to turn attention toward the subject-positions that are objectified in research, through mechanisms such as the voices, hidden rules, compulsory statements, absences etc. that regulate authorship and readership etc. An important contemporary example in social work research is the production of various kinds of "user perspectives" (Cruikshank;Houborg
Pedersen 33-52;Howe;Nissen 229-40;Nissen 73-89;Nissen;Nissen 286-94) that has come to replace
the silencing of clients and patients which was almost as predominant just a couple of decades ago.
While the position of “subject” in traditional psychological research practices (Danziger) effectively
withdrew the democratic entitlements of citizenship in a supposedly a-political space in order to
objectify a psychological body beneath (with Milgram’s famous obedience experiments as the epitome where the form is driven to absurdity), the “user perspective” turns it upside down: a voice
without substance. Here, research no longer realizes relevance by providing a key reference to nature as the case of the real thing; rather, it directly embodies neo-liberal governance by providing
polls and elaborating preferences. And like in earlier generations, this social science research is not
only a child, but also a parent of its time: the kind of governance that relies on a legitimacy of “user
perspectives” is co-constructed by its research prototypes.
But, for the very same reasons, a practice research can break with it and seek to align “user perspectives” in alternative democratic constellations, such as the ones described in (Mørck 61-84;Nissen
332-49;Nissen 73-89;Vinum and Nissen), where users are interpellated as participants of collectives
that not only define themselves as “boundary communities” on a margin that disturbs and develops
the given structures of social work, but also embody potential models for ways of living that in new
ways include the experience of the deviant. The distinction from neo-liberal inclusion, here, lies in
the substantiality of the voice that is recognized: the prevalent “user perspective” achieves its generality by appealing to a purely formal equality, by “forgetting” the difference that had organized
exclusion (“why not give the mentally ill the same rights as other people?” etc.). Democratic prototypes, by contrast, take that very difference as the “symptom” of contradictions in the general way
of living, so that the voice of the excluded becomes a challenge to social order (cf. (Zizek), pp. 174
ff.).
A connected issue that is as relevant as ever is to regard any announcement of a prototype – supposed to be "alternative", "best practice", "critical practice", "democratic" etc. – with some suspicion as possibly the expression of the "repressive tolerance" of a practice field that reproduces power relations in the form of distribution (Mol). Thus, social work has a long tradition of idealizing
"authentic" community work or cultivating certain "free spaces" that appear to contradict the overall
instrumental rationality, oppressive power relations, or dehumanizing stigmatization in society; and
one classic ideology critique holds that this very distribution is at the core of the ideology that objectifies social exclusion in modern capitalism (Bader;Castel, Castel, and Lovell;Cohen;Donzelot;Foucault;Prior;Harvey). The ideality of prototypes thus directly coincides with
the given ideological form, even if (or perhaps especially when) the practice studied is supposed to
be critical or alternative. In other words, the abstraction that is inherent to the prototypical model
comes to blend with the governance by abstract spaces (classrooms, therapeutic spaces, clinics, offices etc.) that is characteristic of modern social engineering13. As in Foucault’s introduction of the
concept of heterotopia (Foucault 22-27), one should maintain that when utopia is realized in a des13
Maybe this is what is reflected in the spatial metaphors of most psychological theories (zone, space, field, layer, domain etc.), cf. (Nissen)
11
ignated and delimited space (and time), what emerges is heterogeneous and volatile in specific
ways. A social work interview, for instance, may manage to be simultaneously a dialogue that recognizes the client as a subject, in distinction from e.g. mental or penal institutions, and a policing
(much like in psychiatry or in prisons) of the required conditions for that recognition (Philp 83112;Stenson 42-76); the management of that contradiction may result in subtle shifts and turns between moralizing appeal, implicit regulation, and attempts to recruit the client to political opposition. Such contradictions do not evaporate if the social work is proclaimed to be prototypical of
dialogical or empowering methods. More likely, research models will spontaneously feed into the
already prevalent form of handling them, by pushing aside awareness of aspects that contradict the
ideals. Yet, rather than providing arguments against a methodology of prototypes, this speaks to its
relevance, since it includes (as mentioned) a crucial awareness of the contextuality and “repair
work” that abstract generality requires. It does not seek to deny that research (as child and mother of
its time) produces ideology in the form of particular model practices, but it puts them to the test, so
to speak, of a historical contextualization (see, as an example, (Nissen))14.
Both in terms of voice and space, ideology critique aims to reconnect the links of mutual presupposition that have been cut into dichotomies. In the place of formal entitlements, totalized domains
and absolute distinctions (appearances that anyway require a constant keeping-up), practice research
looks for the movements, transformations, mediations, and sublations of which we are ourselves
inevitably part. But the concept of prototypes also helps us understand that any critique of ideology
is itself inevitably ideology, since it points to how it, too, is realized in mundane, real-life practices,
the manufacture of communities and participants, and the artefacts with which we are objectified.
Not in order to make us despair in ironic relativism or return to the illusion of immaterial ivory towers – but to help us reflect what we are doing.
What we are doing, as mentioned above, is not least to educate. The practice of critique is to subject
people to a generalizing standard, while at the same time recognizing them as both actual and potential subjects of collectives that define themselves by such standards. True critique interpellates
(Nissen 332-49;Nissen). This does not cease to be the case when standards are at the same time created, rather than merely applied. Quite to the contrary, a teleological, transcendental (or even utopian) dimension is intrinsic to ideological interpellation; thus, the meta-critical question to put to research is not whether it reproduces the given institutional structures, habits etc. or transcends them
(creatively, critically etc.), but just how it forms that transcendence, and specifically, how that, in
turn, is related to reproduction. As in the classical example of religion, the “celestializing” alienation of tranformation (that is, dichotomizing it into two timeless realms only related temporally by
an act of will on the part of the subject and of a sovereign power – e.g. earthly vs. heavenly, capitalist vs. socialist, prejudice vs. scientific enlightenment15), is connected with the constitution of collectivities with differentiated (classes of) positions for their subjects of knowledge. It is in the quest
for the common potential good that license is given to revise standards and at the same time reproduce the inequalities in spite of which it is a common good. So, the form of knowledge of the ubiquitous public health questionnaires co-creates the structure of health privilege since present health
behavior is connected with the utopia of an absence of risk only through acts of will in the shape of
In a way, this refusal to dichotomize prototypical relevance from historical contextualization comes close to Badiou’s
understanding of ethics as a loyalty to the universalizing political and metaphysical implications of an “event”, that, at
the same time, avoids a totalization that washes away its historical specificity. Cf. (Badiou). The prototype, we might
say, is an event that comes to life with its nomination as at once universal and unique.
15
Or, for that matter, Althusser’s own realms of knowledge, the timeless always-already of ideology vs. the achronous
structures of concepts in theory
14
12
“life-styles”; while the inequality of privilege is itself reproduced, its specific object and standard is
repeatedly revised. Or, in the kind of research that recommends the employment of particular methods in practices such as psychotherapy or organizational consultation (like, e.g., (Argyris and
Schön;Engeström;White and Epston)), it is the decision to apply the method that is supposed to
bridge the gap between the given state of affairs and the utopian image of rationality of conduct and
manageability of environment that emerges from the careful editing of a text in “applied social science”; and this very decision structures subject-positions of users, practitioners, and experts. “Education”, as is evident in these examples, is simultaneously the appropriation of / by a power structure of subjectification and a language of (mis-) representation; the crucial question, the point where
a meta-critique should set in, is whether the latter mystifies the former by dressing up transformation as a subjective choice of “salvation”, a fantasy of transmogriffing the subject into a sphere
where contradictions are resolved.
The problem revisited
Returning to our initial dilemma, we can see that eulogic advocacy is rarely a mere reproduction
and distribution of an already existing ideology. Rather, when a local (social work) practice is announced as prototypical, research is appropriated and appropriating as a productive ideological objectification (although usually as one among several).
Academic arrogance, on the other hand, is just as far from simply leaving things be – typically, it is
a powerful attempt to recruit and align practices claiming the "immutable mobiles" (Latour, 1987)
of research as a copyright to the prototype, provided the practical transformations that take place
can be kept unnoticed.
Finally, our ideal of a participatory critique, as the third and transcendent position, must be equally
viewed as exchange and transformation, as the production of prototypical models the relevances of
which are hypothetical, contentious, and constitutive of our communities and ourselves as participants.
But I must warn you: this is a far from innocent statement. In the following words of Paulo Freire,
the significant space for academic hope lies in the quotation marks that mitigate the radicality of
death – in fact, perhaps, not too bad as an image to conclude these remarks on the “thissidedness” of
research:
"In the revolutionary process there is only one way for the emerging leaders to achieve authenticity: they must "die", in order to be reborn through and with the oppressed" (Freire, 1996; 127).
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