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Sociological Practice: A Journal of Clinical and Applied Sociology, Vol. 4, No. 4, December 2002 ( C 2002)

Postmodern Research, Postmodern Practice: Studying the Barriers to Cyberliteracy Among Mentally Disabled Women
Ann Travers1 The conversation about the postmodern challenge to sociological practice is just beginning. Harding advocates a positive tension between the postmodern vision of an antiessentialist, antiepistemological future and the postmodern vision of successor science projects grounded in the epistemologies of marginalized communities. In this paper, I describe my study of barriers to cyberliteracy among mentally disabled women and how it has been informed by these two contrasting postmodern visions represented, respectively, by the work of Newman and Holzman (The End of Knowing: A New Developmental Way of Learning, Routledge, London, 1997) and Smith (Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, Zed Books, London, 1999).
KEY WORDS: postmodern research; cyberliteracy; mentally disabled women.

INTRODUCTION Postmodernism raises fundamental questions about the possibility of social science knowledge and the validity of social research practices. Given the criticisms by groups disproportionately targeted for social science research, such as ethnic minorities, women, indigenous peoples, the poor, this postmodern challenge to the social sciences is a good thing. However, can this postmodern challenge go beyond deconstructing the social science enterprise? Can it inspire intellectual and social activity that improves the life chances of marginalized groups?

1 Department

of Sociology and Anthropology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada V5A 1S6; e-mail: atravers@sfu.ca. 279
1522-3442/02/1200-0279/0
C

2002 Plenum Publishing Corporation

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In Postmodernism and the Social Sciences, Rosenau (1992) distinguishes between afrmative and skeptical postmodernists. The afrmative postmodernists are committed to advancing postmodern science and radical democratic politics. The skeptical postmodernists reject the social sciences and related research and activism. Rosenau adopts the afrmative position.
Post-modern social science . . . announces the end of all paradigms. Only an absence of knowledge claims, an afrmation of multiple realities, and an acceptance of divergent interpretations remain. (Rosenau 1992, p. 137)

Harding (1986), however, sees this tension between afrmative and skeptical postmodernism as positive. She is unwilling to abandon the political power of science and its modern epistemological strategies to elites. She insists successor science projects are central to transferring the power to change social relations from the haves to the have-nots. She argues that such projects are essential for providing the epistemological tools for social change (Harding 1986, p. 195). Harding proposes strong objectivity as a successor to traditional positivist understandings of objectivity as neutrality:
A stronger, more adequate notion of objectivity would require methods for systematically examining all of the social values shaping a particular research process, not just those that happen to differ between members of a scientic community. Social communities, not either individuals, or no one at all, should be conceptualized as the knowers of scientic knowledge claims. Culture wide beliefs that are not critically examined within scientic processes end up functioning as evidence for or against hypotheses. (Harding in Haraway 1997, p. 36)

Hardings notion of strong objectivity is aimed at providing practical guidance for an approach to the process of knowledge-making and research that embodies the positive tension between epistemologically driven successor science projects and the postmodern attack on the possibility of knowledge. Is it possible to distill an approach to the social that embodies this tension? In this paper I discuss my current research on barriers to cyberliteracy among mentally disabled women in order to explore the terrain mapped by two articulations of the afrmative and skeptical postmodernist perspectives. One articulation consists of Newman and Holzmans post-postmodern text The End of Knowing (1997). It eschews epistemology altogether in favor of performance as a dialectically embodied enactment of theory/practice. The other is Smiths critique of western science and research and presentation of an indigenous research alternative in Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (Smith 1999).

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Barriers to Cyberliteracy Among Mentally Disabled Women I am currently engaged in a project focusing on barriers to cyberliteracy2 among mentally disabled women. The site of my work is a community service organization for mentally disabled people. This organization provides a drop-in center, meals, advocacy and information on health, and housing. Located within the building is a special lounge for women only. This lounge was created to address the special needs of women clients for a space free of harassment and intimidation. It is well used by the women of the Center. With grant money I bought a computer and provided high speed internet access. Once a week for 2 h I go in and provide loosely structured tutorials for any woman who is interested in learning how to use the computer and the internet. Fifteen different women have participated in the tutorials, many of them more than once. The computer is available for women to use anytime the Center is open, regardless of whether or not they participate in the tutorials. To this point I have interviewed six women who participated in the computer tutorials, six women who use the Center but not the computer, and several staff members. Before beginning the project, a special meeting was organized for any interested woman for me to explain what I wanted to do and to allow for individual and community empowerment. A number of issues emerged. These include conicts over computer access among the women, the role of the computer in increasing incursion by men into a space designated for women only, the need for pedagogical exibility, the impact of recent and radical changes to social welfare policy on the women and the Center as a whole, and my personal growth as a result of the engagement. I briey discuss each of these below. Conicts Over Computer Access Several months into the project I discovered that despite a sign-up procedure, several women were monopolizing the computer and obstructing access. A number of participants complained to me that they were being bullied. Two noncomputer users corroborated the complaints and conrmed that some were using intimidation tactics to bump other women off the computer or refused to yield when their time was up. I asked the women what they thought we could do about this problem. They were surprised to be asked but were enthusiastic when I suggested that we could have another meeting to discuss the problem and come up with solutions. Staff cooperation
2 The ability to critically navigate and participate within the social spaces fostered by computer-

mediated communication; see Gurak (2001).

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will be necessary to make such a meeting possible and it remains to be seen if it will occur. In the meantime, staff have addressed complaints with specic individuals and the conict seems to be reduced. Is the Presence of a Computer With High Speed Internet Access Compromising This Women-Only Space? Two days after I installed the computer with a high speed internet connection, I found a male client of the Center sitting at it and surng the internet. I asked him to leave and he did. However, men continue to enter the lounge to use the computer from time to time. When staff are alerted they insist the individual leave and warn them that a second offense will result in being banned from the Center for the day. But the ability of the staff to supervise the lounge is compromised by its location. Technical problems are also an excuse for men to be in the lounge to work at the computer. Also male staff enter the lounge as necessary. Some of the women defend their space by telling men to leave (even if the men are staff and therefore entitled to enter the lounge) or complaining to the staff. Many are too intimidated to do so. On occasion some women encourage men, particularly their boyfriends, to enter the lounge to exchange cigarettes or other items, much to the consternation of other women. The practice of male staff entering the womens lounge is not without tension and is indicative of the extent to which the status of women-only space in the Center is contested not only by male clients but by institutional norms as well. I must ask to what extent has the computer with high speed internet access compromised the space, as an unintended consequence of the project? I am committed to teaching without taking the mouse. This can be challenging. Some of the women lack handeye coordination to wield the mouse and type on the keyboard. Problems with vision create difculties navigating the screen. Some lack the basic ability to spell or read. My general approach has been to be as constructive and as positive as possible. I try to avoid taking the mouse. I do not always succeed. Recently I failed completely only to achieve success on a different levelgetting a woman, who I shall call Ellen, interested in the computer for the rst time. Ellen came to the rst meeting of the project. I connected with her instantly. She informed me right away that she had no interest in the computer and was not interested in learning anything about it. She said she lacked patience and in spite of my friendly encouragement remained rm. I have respected this position but wrote in my notes that I expected she would eventually show interest. As the months went by her resolve remained. One day, however, I was having a particularly bad day (I was exhausted and had been

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too rushed to have lunch or that mood-lifting cup of tea before the tutorial) and I found working with the women that day particularly challenging. My patience was being taxed by the womens need for instruction at the most basic level. I was seriously underresourced. I felt like I could not remain positive and encouraging, but was clear that failing to do so was simply not acceptable. My basic priority in this project is to treat the women with respect and interact with them in a positive manner. In desperation, I took over the keyboard and the mouse and asked if they wanted to see pictures of my dogs. They said yes. I took them to my university course webpage and showed them photographs of my dogs. Ellen, who was sitting in the lounge, came over to the computer. It was the rst time, I believe, that she had ever seen the internet. She was excited about the pictures of my dogs and wanted to know if we could nd more pictures of dogs. She said she wanted to see pictures of Newfoundland dogs. I found her some. She asked me to click on pictures and I did. She told me about a Newfoundland dog she had known. The other women were just as interested and asked me to nd pictures of other things and I showed them various sites. I left the tutorial that day thinking to myself that I needed to avoid being underresourced and maintain my patience in the future. Hours later it occurred to me that Ellen had joined me at the computer and shown an interest in it. Abandoning pedagogical correctness out of necessity produced the success of including another woman in the lesson in a way that was comfortable for her. Changes to Social Welfare Legislation In the midst of the project a provincial election produced a change of government. The new government prepared a budget featuring radical cuts to social services in the province. These cuts would be particularly threatening for the women who use the Center. Many of them survive on disability benets. These benets would be sharply reduced. There is a great deal of uncertainty and fear among the women. The Center as well is bracing for cuts that will have signicant implications for its clientele. As of this writing, the exact implications of the new legislation are unclear but there is serious cause for concern. Whos Teaching Whom? As a result of this project I am learning as much as I am teaching. Before I began my work at the Center I harbored stereotypical images of mentally ill people and was nervous about being around them. My outlook has changed

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dramatically. While some of the clients at the Center are obviously disturbed, most behave quite normally and if they do stand out it is more likely to be due to their poverty than their unusual behavioral characteristics. Identifying and addressing barriers to the cyberliteracy of mentally disabled women would be impossible without their willingness to work with me and familiarize me with their lived reality. The differences I now feel with the women I work with relate to the class and race privilege I enjoy rather than to any superior mental state to which I might lay claim to. TWO POSTMODERN PERSPECTIVES In the following sections I explore postmodern perspectives (one afrmative and one skeptical) and the implications for my study on the barriers to cyberliteracy among mentally disabled women. Newman and Holzmans Post-Postmodern Replacement of Epistemology With Activity Aimed at Social Change In The End of Knowing: A New Developmental Way of Learning, Newman and Holzman (1997) challenge postmodernism to achieve its revolutionary potential by eschewing the epistemological bent characteristic of modernity and its engine, modern science. Focusing on the psychology of learning as it relates to efforts aimed at social change, they advocate the centrality of activity to generate social change. They argue for the replacement of modern science and all epistemologically driven approaches with an emphasis on activity or performance (Newman and Holzman 1997, p. 11). Drawing on insights from Marx, Vygotsky, and Wittgenstein, they present an alternative to epistemology organized around the key concept of performance, or in Vygotskyian terms, the practice of method. The most obvious place to begin, as they do, is with Marxs condemnation of the gap between theory and practice, most effectively communicated in his statement that The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it . . . (Newman and Holzman 1997, p. 13). Like Marx, Vygotsky points to the fundamental social nature of human beings in opposition to liberal individualism. They are joined by Wittgenstein in viewing social life as one of the most important material bases of human experience. The only way we can learn more about social life, and this is directly relevant to the business of the social sciences, is by learning the way children do, Newman and Holzman argue, rather than through an epistemologically biased scientic method. There is nothing in the realm of human social life that

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can be agreed upon as indubitably real because we have no conceptual distance from ourselves as there is nothing about social life that is independent of our creating it. Instead, we should study performances as revolutionary activity that transform social life because, as the authors emphasize, The total environment is not a place but an activity (Newman and Holzman 1997, p. 111).
Our concern is to practice method, to create new forms of life, to build environments that are at once the context for revolutionary activity and revolutionary activity itself. To the extent that sense-making is at all relevant to this task, it is activistic rather than epistemological. It is not, nor does it depend upon, a knowing of any kind but is created through (and simulteanous with) practicing method rather than being an appraisal generated from hypothesis. (Newman and Holzman 1997, p. 21)

Newman and Holzman locate themselves, materially and explicitly, as activists rather than academics. Their intention is to bring about a democratic reorganization of society through the de-emphasis on epistemology and the privileging of activity. Instead of trying to acquire knowledge about social life, they are trying to change it. They speak, therefore, as activists, much as they and others believe Marx did. Smiths Indigenous Research Perspective In Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, Smith criticizes western science and outlines the parameters of a successor science for indigenous peoples. Her critique of western science and research, focuses on the relationships among knowledge, research and imperialism, particularly as it relates to indigenous peoples. Grounded in her experience as a Maori of New Zealand, Smith locates the emergence of modernity and modern science within a context of imperialism and colonialism. Scientic rationality as the mode of knowledge has been used to justify the racialized othering of indigenous peoples and to usurp and appropriate indigenous knowledges. In presenting the general features of an Indigenous Research Agenda and Kaupapa Maori, a research process specic to the Maori, Smith describes an alternative research framework for indigenous peoples. The primary purpose of such research is not of what alternatives indigenous peoples offer the world but of what alternatives indigenous peoples offer each other (Smith 1999, p. 105). The specic attributes of an indigenous research agenda are 1. The need to spell out in detail the likely benets of research; 2. The need for research ethics that go beyond individual consent and condentiality, given that the individual as the primary unit or subject of research is as western construct;

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3. The related understanding of the community as the unit of research and the necessary undermining of the notion of the necessity of distance between the researcher and the community; in contrast, the preeminence of process in the research; 4. Indigenous researchers are insiders and have to live with the consequences of their processes on a day-to-day basis for ever more, and so do their families and communities (Smith 1999, p. 137). This is a good thing and encourages greater accountability; 5. The need to spell out limitations of a project and acknowledge things that are not addressed; 6. The awareness of community resources required to participate in research; 7. The requirement that researchers be respectful to all community members and be humble. Smith identies 25 activities that properly characterize indigenous research. These include, e.g., claiming, story telling, revitalizing, democratizing, protecting, and sharing. These activities are constructed not as goals but as projects. Kaupapa Maori specically and indigenous research more generally is not just about alternative research practices designed to achieve social justice through a tool-and-result emphasis on appropriate process as an end in itself. It is also about validating alternative epistemologies and exerting control over the knowledge such communities produce (Smith 1999, pp. 187188). While identifying Kaupapa Maori as antipositivist, Smith does not buy into the postmodern antiessentialist notion of indigenous identity, particularly as indigenous peoples are located in communities with meaningful historical ties to land and place. While modern and colonial social structures remain, postmodern and postcolonial positions are untenable for indigenous peoples. Our colonial experience traps us into the project of modernity. There can be no postmodern for us until we have settled some business of the modern (Smith 1999, p. 34). Indigenous research cannot fail to engage with positivist notions of identity and social structure while the assumptions of and superiority of positivist science remain part of the taken-for-granted belief system (Smith 1999, p. 189). COMPARING NEWMAN AND HOLZMAN WITH SMITH: POSITIVE TENSION OR ABSOLUTE ANTIPATHY? In spite of Newman and Holzmans dismissal of epistemology, they share commonalities with Smith. These commonalities can inform the social sciences reecting Hardings claim that the tension between them is both

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necessary and positive. Is this opposition between the dismissal of epistemology and the promulgation of alternative epistemologies by marginalized communities an unavoidable impasse? Or can it be understood as a positive tension that might inform a research practice? I believe the two are compatible. Both articulations share a critique of western epistemology as embedded in and reective of hegemonic power relations. Both articulations share an emphasis on democratic participation. Both articulations, and this is key, share an emphasis on processin Newman and Holzmans words, research would be understood as both tool-and-result. In Smiths view, the research process must be emancipatory as the end result. Both articulations share a commitment to social justice although how this is envisioned may be significantly different. In many ways, these two articulations inhabit the positive tension that Harding identies between successor science projects and the revolutionary potential of postmodernism. How do the commonalities that we nd between the two articulations inform an understanding of research as the performance of social change? What might research as the performance of social change look like? WHERE THE RUBBER HITS THE ROAD: IF RESEARCH IS PERFORMANCE? Process is Outcome Unlike conventional action research that is dened in terms of its emancipatory goals or outcomes (Baker 1999, pp. 240241), research as performance emphasizes the process of research. The process is understood as the outcome.
In all community approaches processthat is, methodology and methodis highly important. In many projects the process is far more important than the outcome. Processes are expected to be respectful, to enable people, to heal and to educate. They are expected to lead one small step further towards self-determination. (Smith 1999, p. 128)

A commitment to social justice and democracy as goals requires social justice and democracy in the research process. My research at the Center fullls the performance criterion of both tool and result in at least one way: I am learning about barriers to cyberliteracy by attempting to address them. The most signicant barrier is material access and that has been minimally addressed by the provision of a computer and high speed internet access in the womens lounge. Less obvious barriers, such as low levels of literacy and gender-related feelings of lack of entitlement, are identied and addressed. My research emerges from a desire to see public

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resources shared more widely and reects an effort to do so. Overall I hope that my research will contribute positively to the struggle for social justice by problematizing the ways in which the information revolution excludes signicant segments of the population and by increasing the cyberliteracy of even a small group of mentally disabled women. Understanding Research as a Series of Activities Rather Than as Producer of Knowledge With the conation of process and outcome comes a need to be specic about research activities as democratic and inclusive. How this is done depends on the population and the nature of the research. My primary activity while working with women as a researcher has been listening, supporting, responding, and caring. It is possible this aspect of my research might be the basis of an effective teaching model for addressing barriers to cyberliteracy among this population. But how do I know if my approach works? Teachers in many contexts are pressured to prove that they are teaching effectively in terms of skill outcomes; many of us know we are teaching effectively by gauging the personal response of our students. This interpersonal knowing is not privileged by traditional scientic approaches but we would be helpless in social relationships without it. Various successor science projects have incorporated this interpersonal gut-level knowing (Hill Collins 1990) and focusing on research as performance highlights its importance. Community as Unit of Reseach Postmodern research ethics challenge social researchers to consider the impact of research on communities and to involve communities in articulating concerns. Researchers should address issues of social justice explicitly and engage with the communities that are being researched about social justice. This poses a challenge to the typical academic construction of research as a specialized and elite activity. This is consistent with Hardings notion of strong objectivity as knowing is recognized as a community rather than an individual activity. My primary orientation to ethical concerns in the form of informed consent is directed at individuals. My initial meeting with all interested women to talk about my research and address concerns was an attempt to treat the community as the unit of research. But this does not go nearly far enough. The impact of the presence of the computer on the women who use the womens lounge and on the Center as a whole has become a component of

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the research as conicts have emerged. My research was initially too narrowly constructed to attend to this unintended consequence. I need to push for the women who use the lounge to have opportunities to voice their concerns on an ongoing basis about the impact of the computer on the space. I need to incorporate the community of women who use the womens lounge into my understanding of informed participation in the research. This understanding has emerged through research as performance, as has my personal growth with regard to stereotypical views about the mentally disabled. Tenuous Role for Outsider Research/Academic Research How can an outsider achieve these postmodern criteria for research? How can Newman and Holzman set up show in disadvantaged communities and provide leadership without seeming to have the right answer? I suggest that you need to have something of value to trade with terms of trade being fair. Aware of the often exploitive nature of research, I began my project recognizing that access to research is a resource and that I need to trade for it; I need to trade for it with the Center as a whole and with the women who participate. I dealt with this immediately in my meeting with the women. I promised to provide a computer and high speed internet access for at least a year. I promised to provide 2 h of no-pressure computer instruction per week. I promised to pay women standard academic wages for interviews. The terms of trade were as fair as I can make them. I am convinced that by being explicit about research subjectivity as a commodity I am reducing the exploitive nature of research. But the extent to which the women can negotiate the terms of trade are quite limited since as a researcher with resources I am in a far better position to set the agenda. The role of the staff as advocates for the women as a group is somewhat helpful in mitigating this imbalance but only partially as service organizations such as the Center are strapped for funds. Research as Performance for Social Change As an interview with one woman was drawing to a close I asked her if she had any questions for me. She rst asked me why my university was interested in the women at the Center. I explained I am concerned about groups of people not being included in the information revolution; I want to nd ways to increase the inclusion of mentally disabled women; and I intend to use my research to criticize social practices that leave groups out. I asked her if she had any more questions for me. She asked me what I had learned

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so far. I shared with her my changed perceptions of the mentally ill; I told her that I had been a little afraid of mentally ill people and that my research had given me the opportunity to understand that this fear was based on stereotypes. I told her how much I enjoyed working with the women and that I had come to understand there was no need to be afraid. I asked her if she had anything else she would like to ask me. Yes, she said. I expected her to ask me for more information. Instead, she asked me to share my changed perception of the mentally disabled with other people so that she and people like her would be less harshly treated by society. She asked me to act on what I learned to contribute to social change. I promised to do so. CONCLUSION The conversation about the postmodern challenge to sociological practice is really just beginning. Newman and Holzman make a welcome contribution. Translating their concept of performance into use, however, is extremely difcult given their antiepistemological, antiacademic perspective. For Newman and Holzman, there can be no social research without knowing and therefore there should be no social research but only social activism. Smiths indigenous research agenda is a welcome counter to Newman and Holzmans annihilation of social research with her understanding that research is activism. Both Smith and Newman and Holzman share hostility to the academy. Smith emphasizes, however, that knowledge and research still have a place especially for marginalized communities. It is the purpose, nature, and locus of research that needs to change. The tension between the afrmative and skeptical perspectives may be a place for social researchers/practitioners to inhabit when considering the postmodern challenge. My starting position is summed up by Haraway: the point is to make a difference in the world, to cast our lot for some ways of life and not others (1997, p. 36). ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I take this opportunity to thank Simon Fraser University (Presidents Research Grant) and The Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada (Health and Home Project) for funding this research. Dara Culhane, Elaine Decker, and the students of SA 850 (Theory Rocks) and SA 358 provided greatly appreciated intellectual challenges, advice, and encouragement in the writing of this paper. Robert Dotzlers editorial assistance was incredibly valuable. Vancouver Community Net was most helpful in providing e-mail accounts for the women participating in the project. My most heartfelt

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appreciation, of course, extends to the staff and clients of the Center for letting me into the building and their worlds. REFERENCES
Baker, Therese L. 1999. Doing Social Research, 3rd ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Gurak, Laura. 2001. Cyberliteracy: Navigating the Internet with Awareness. New Haven: Yale University Press. Haraway, Donna J. 1997. Modest Witness@Second Millenium. FemaleMan Meets OncoMouse: Feminism and Technoscience. New York: Routledge. Harding, Sandra. 1986. The Science Question in Feminism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Hill Collins, Patricia. 1990. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. Boston: Unwin Hyman. McCarthy, E. Doyle. 1996. Knowledge as Culture: The New Sociology of Knowledge. London: Routledge. Mills, C. Wright. 1959. The Sociological Imagination. London: Oxford University Press. Newman, Fred and Lois Holzman. 1997. The End of Knowing: A New Developmental Way of Learning. London: Routledge. Rosenau, Pauline. 1992. Post-Modernism and the Social Sciences: Insights, Inroads, and Intrusions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Smith, Linda T. 1999. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books. Spivak, Gayatri. 1990. in The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues edited by S. Harasym. New York: Routledge.