interested in looking at the applications of ideas about economic deter-minism, the task would be too large: it would prevent you from getting on with the job of empirical work. Therefore, a certain amount of ignorance is inevitable. Practical considerations mean some texts cannot be closely read, while others can only be read selectively and casually. Some texts might not be read at all. It is for these reasons that Anderson et al. (1985) make a number of recommendations, of which one is maintaining an attitude that allows us to recognize our own limitations and to approach a work with the modesty and understanding characteristic of good scholarship.
This really means 'playing fair' when assessing the strengths and weak-nesses of other people's ideas. Although this might sound like an old notion, fair play is an important part of scholarly activity. Having an inquisitive attitude to different ideas and seeking other ways of looking at the world and approaches to researching the world means you are exer-cising an intellectual attitude from which differing ideas can be syn-thesized into new and exciting ideas. The value of this attitude repays many fold the effort needed to exercise it. One major benefit is that it can save us from making victims and fools of ourselves. Social science is replete with articles claiming discovery: a new idea has been developed or a new breakthrough made enticing us to dump existing ideas and follow this new one. All too often we find that the breakthrough is another case of what Anderson et al. (1985) call (after Sorokin) the Christopher Columbus Complex: going to Disneyland and believing one has discovered America.
The main causes of this complex are laziness and an inflated ego, making us believe that as part of the contemporary world we have a greater degree of insight and intellectual understanding of society. As a consequence, the works of now dead, social theorists such as Sorokin go unread or are only understood through derivative sources. Ideas by predecessors are therefore glibly criticized for what is perceived to be their weak purchase on current issues or problems of the discipline. As Anderson et al. point out: 'victims of such a complex tend to overestimate our contemporary achievements because they underestimate those of our predecessors, the tasks they faced and perhaps failed at, largely because victims of the complex have not tackled those tasks themselves' (1985: 70). We need to remember that, done properly, argumentation analysis and evaluation is not only a rewarding, but an intellectually stimulating activity, resulting in genuine develop-ments of which a research scholar can be justifiably proud.
EXAMPLE A KARL MARX: LOGIC OF ARGUMENTATION Based on Marx (1950).
The following extract is from Marx's 'Value, prices and profit' (1950). It is an argument well known to scholars of Marx. It has been used extensively
100 Doing a literature review
to demonstrate the impeccable logic of his argumentation analysis:
especially the kind of analysis he uses in much longer and sophisticated texts like Capital. The target for Marx's analysis is the assertion that working people act irrationally when they combine (i.e. unionize) in the pursuit of higher wages. Marx attributes this assertion to 'Citizen Weston'.
Marx skilfully dissects Weston's argument. He shows how Weston's premisses do not follow from each other and how his conclusion does not follow from the premisses. Added to this, Marx takes Weston's own premisses and recasts them into a logical argument to show the rationality of unionization for higher wages. A possible way to approach this extract is to read it through first. Afterwards read the notes, adapted from Fisher (1993), that accompany it. Note that Marx's analysis is not linear but combinational: Marx expects his reader to re-read the argument, moving back and forth through its different sections.
Argumentation analysis 101
102 Doing a literature review
As you can see, Marx's main conclusion is 'the working man ... ought .. . under certain circumstances . . . to combine and struggle for a rise in wages'. The clever thing about this is that Marx bases this conclusion on Weston's own premise of the constancy of wages. Following through the reasoning of the extract one can see not only the systematic logic but the impeccable style of Marx's argumentation.
Although the exposition of this extract (in the right hand column) has worked in a linear direction, one could have started from the conclusion
and worked in multiple directions. From that conclusion, 'working men .. . would act rightly in enforcing a rise in wages' working backwards will reveal how Marx came to this conclusion. To do this we read deductively, looking for a structure of reasoning that supports this main statement or conclusion. However, whichever way you read Marx's argument it reaches the opposite conclusion to that of Weston.
There is another point also to note in this short example — the ways in which Marx's methodological assumptions underpin his analysis of Weston's argument. In Chapter 3 we outlined what are generally taken to be the methodological assumptions Marx developed. We can use these to show once again (Table 4.5, p. 104) the importance of methodological assumptions and how they are used as the starting point for a challenge.
EXAMPLE B DEBATE OVER METHODOLOGICAL FALLACIES
Analysis from Francis (1986).
In his analysis and subsequent critique of Judith Williamson's Decoding Advertisements (1979), Francis (1986) provides a good example of the kind of debate over fallacies and understanding that arises in the social sciences.
His analysis also shows an example of the use of the phenomenological reading technique. Before we look at the debate we need to understand two things: why Francis chose to look at Decoding Advertisementsand what we mean by phenomenological reading.
Francis chose to look at Williamson's book because in the early 1980s it was a major development in feminist analysis of advertising; it showed the kinds of work that could be produced using a feminist standpoint within the methodological assumptions of structuralism and psychoanalytical analysis. Choice of which works to critique is therefore important;
especially if you are making a critique of a major argument. Francis chose a