Reason giving, city icons and the culture of cities: data from a radical interpretive perspective [Full text]
Kieran Bonner [1]
| Abstract: From a radical interpretive perspective, the distinction between primary and secondary data is itself secondary. Taking as a case study sample newspaper accounts for the motive behind the famous hockey venue move in Montreal (from the Forum to the Molson Centre), this paper will demonstrate what is involved in treating this talk as a discourse. By testing these newspaper accounts, the paper will show that a sole focus on the empirical accuracy of such motive characterizations can fail to take up the way the accounts, when understood as a discourse, are themselves ways of accessing how social phenomena emerge as objects in the world. The latter analysis, it will be claimed, makes for a more grounded understanding. Specifically drawing on Blum and McHugh’s (1971) analysis of motive talk, the paper will demonstrate the insights into the culture of cities that a radical interpretive perspective can make in this case. Keywords: Radical interpretive sociology, analysis, motive, primary versus secondary data, culture, cities, Montreal Canadiens, Montreal Forum (Montreal, Quebec), The Molson Centre (Montreal, Quebec) |
[1] St. Jerome’s University in the University of Waterloo, Canada, kmbonner@uwaterloo.ca