Sense-Making Methodology Reader: Selected Writings of Brenda Dervin (Communication Alternatives) [Paperback]

Brenda Dervin (Editor), Lois Foreman-Wernet (Editor), Eric Lauterbach (Editor)

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Hampton Pr (December 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1572735090
• ISBN-13: 978-1572735095
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #593,645 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cutting, insightful, and thoroughly useful, October 21, 2008

By 

Laurel Gleason - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sense-Making Methodology Reader: Selected Writings of Brenda Dervin (Communication Alternatives) (Paperback)

I consider this a book in two parts. The first relates to how the philosophical commitments and assumptions that social scientists bring to an enterprise or inquiry shape and inform their methods. Dervin emphasizes this "linking" by addressing the difference between methodology and method. In so doing, she undermines the notion of a "value-free" social science and suggests that the way to promote true interdisciplinary dialogue (that cuts across critical-administrative schisms) is to bring our a priori assumptions to the fore of the conversation. As well, Dervin calls for us to unpack our disciplinary "nouns" - those abstractions that we have reified and calcified by failing to understand or acknowledge the dynamism of concepts and meaning across time/space.
The second part offers a theory of communication as communicatings in which the agency and social nature of individuals is counterposed against the atomistic, information-processing conceptualization offered in much of the extant scholarship. Although many communication researchers may believe we have "come a long way baby" from the traditional linear model of stimulus-response, Dervin exposes the lingering strains of this model and how it constrains our ability to develop effective communication practices.
This is a book that should be widely read - not only by communication scholars, but by anyone interested in social science, philosophy of science, or education.