Social Constructivist:

Knowledge and meaning are dependent on human minds and those mind’s interactions with each other and the world around them. All of our understandings are filtered through our consciousness and given meaning based on what is meaningful to us. For this project, we are not bounded by objectivism- the idea that truth and meaning live in objects independently of consciousness. Meaning is not discovered, it is constructed. It isn’t inherent to an object, it is waiting for someone to come along, interact with the object, and to construct meaning from it. Objects might contain potential meaning, but actual meaning grows out of the consciousness that encounters it. What is meaning without mind?

It might be your inclination that the world we experience exists with or without us, and that a flower would be a flower even if we were not present to experience it. Might a flower have all the meaning that a flower has if we were not here? It is human beings that name it, that describe and catalog it, and create associations with it. A flower might exist if humans did not, but the meaning of it would not, in the same way, exist. How does the meaning of a flower differ across cultures, to a florist, to an artist, to a lover, and to someone living in a tundra? 

Therefore, meaning can not be described through only a objective lens. Similarly, though, meaning is also not strictly subjective. Meaning is not without grounding in the world. We do not create meaning, we construct it through interactions with objects and others. Objects and others are to be considered and studied in order to construct meaning from and with them. If objectivity and subjectivity are on a continuum, as opposed to being mutually exclusive, constructivism is somewhere in the middle. 

No object can be described without the consciousness experiencing it. We all have human brains, with human contexts, constructs, and language with which to describe. To embrace constructivism is to embrace our humanness, particularly about human objects. While examining the diaries as objects of study, I am examining objects made by and given meaning by humans, which are then filled with meaning through their writings about their most personal lives. 

Still, constructivism is not self-reflective or self-conscious. When I use my own experiences and understandings to construct meaning with these women, I do so with myself as another object of study. I am socially constructing meaning along with the women in the diaries, given their insights, lives, and times. Meaning might have many origins, but a social origin is one. Culture is a source of meaning, allowing our human brains to give shape to thought and behavior, given our social and historical spacetime. This is true of any object of inquiry, but in my opinion, particularly true if trying to make meaning of human objects. 

Note: This is in contrast to the primary theoretical framework that I use in my research, which is critical. Critical theories are realist, first of all (while I would argue that constructivism is both realist and relativist), and are also suspicious of cultural constructions of meaning. These can serve hegemony; dominant social meanings can support structures of power and privilege. The construction of knowledge implies the construction of values, so one needs to be critical of how that knowledge is being generated, ie. from what culture and to serve what culture. Culture can be restrictive and blinding at best and oppressive and domineering at worst. 

So, how to reconcile these seemingly opposing drives- to embrace our human meaning-making about human objects in collaboration, while recognizing the tendency of culture to be hegemonic and to uphold the status quo? I am certainly not the first person to have wrestled with this… the pragmatists endeavored to be constructivist and critical, but suffered from criticism that they weren’t critical enough (although I’m inclined to think this is from later interpretations of their philosophy instead of the philosophy itself), Habermas tried to do it through a philosophy of communication, along with many others. 

Indeed, I see a lot of the goals of this work in the ideas from Mead, a pragmatist that was interested, among other things, in the formation of the self. For Mead, the self is social and cognitive, and only develops when someone interacts with others and the role-playing that happens when we anticipate other’s responses to us. It involves taking the attitudes and perspectives of others into account. Once we internalize these, we can view our own thoughts and behaviors as part of a whole, a community, a self in relation to other selves. I am certainly looking for a better understanding of self as I interact with the women in the diaries and imagine their perspectives, creating myself new.

Ultimately, I think the overlaps between these framework’s emphasis on pluralism, explanation, and their object being “[human beings] as producers of their own historical form of life” (Horkeimer, 1972) might provide some help for me. Critical theory is practical and pluralistic and rejects the need for objectivity or a single unifying understanding, as well as a single way of coming to meaning. If a theory or method of inquiry is to have practical significance in the world, as critical theorists (and pragmatists) would want, then it must also allow for the complexity of the world, and of self and culture. An understanding of history must also be complex and pluralistic; I would argue that there is not single best history to be discovered. 

I think the answer to this issue lies in this project itself. I am taking a social constructivist view because I think that is what this project is trying to do. Actually, it is more like I started this project and then realized that I was socially constructing the meaning of my life and the lives of these women through the diaries. Here is one perspective, one interpretation of a particular set of objects, and my personal relationship to them, where I hope there is still room for critical claims. My critical perspective, one that I adopt in both my academic and personal lives, will inevitably bleed through my interpretations, as I’m sure you will see if you keep reading. This kind of statement would be frowned upon if this were an academic project (perhaps being seen as theoretically inconsistent or weak), but this isn’t an academic project; this is a personal one. That said, as I was doing the work, I found that I was also taking a feminist perspective per my usual critical stance. Hence…

Feminist:

Feminism is used over a wide range of research fields, for a variety of purposes, and with many equally complex definitions. For this project, feminist research creates knowledge about women’s lives, advocates for women’s issues, critiques gender oppression, and tries to bring about societal and cultural transformation and change. It focuses on meanings that women give to their own world, examines power and privilege, and values intersectional identities. Feminism has influenced every step of this process including the choice to engage in the project itself, and the methods, conclusions, and implications of it. 

I suppose I think there is a heavier weight to real stories of real women. Why do I focus on women? Many reasons… I’m a woman, for a start, which isn’t unimportant here. Also, the lives of women are so often forgotten, left out, or glossed over in the telling of history. As I stated previously, it is true that any researcher is collecting and constructing narratives based on their positionality, and most historians have been colonialist White men. Honestly, I think this is why the study of history has never resonated with me. These men tend to care about things like battles, kings, weapons and machinery, industrialization, conquest, glory, and bloodshed. Even the women that DO pop up in history books often do so because they led armies, contributed to war efforts, or married “important” men. I’m not too interested in all that. I’m interested in the counter-narratives and, in this project, that is regular women living regular lives and all the things we can learn from that. It is fitting for me to tell women’s stories both because they are underrepresented and because I am one of them. If I should construct knowledge, I choose this knowledge to construct. 

Note: As stated, I believe that feminist research should value intersectional identities. This implies valuing racial, ethnic, sexual orientation, and other forms of diversity too. Believe me when I say, I have looked and looked for the elusive diary from a woman of color, an Indigenous woman, a LGBTQ2S+ woman, a trans-woman, etc., but have so far failed. That’s not to say that I could possibly know all the identities of all the women in these diaries and I hope that my previous statement is actually incorrect, but I haven’t found much diversity in available diaries to the best of my knowledge. As to why that is, I can’t say and honestly have limited guesses- might it be something to do with who writes a diary? Which diaries get saved through time? Which diaries get sold or “have market value?” I really don’t know, but I will keep looking and hope to have a more diverse set of perspectives as soon as I can find them.

Historical: 

Obvious, right? These diaries are historic artifacts and they are the objects of this project. I am also benefiting from decades of hard work that the country, states, counties, and cities have done to record data about people, their relations, and their occupations, as well as all the individuals that kept letters, maps, yearbooks, and pictures of their families, neighbors, and friends, and then were good enough to post them online. I’m just storytelling from these disparate pieces of information and combining them in ways to make something new. 

Ethnography:

Ethnography is a research methodology that investigates cultural phenomenon from the point of view of the participants and what they value. This includes a holistic approach with richly detailed data collection about not just what the researcher observes, but also a look into the history and context of the participants as well. An ethnographic study looks to understand the complex socio-cultural systems and practices that may be taken for granted by the people within them, so that patterns of behavior are contextualised within the participants’ world. From this, ideas about human nature, gender, relationships, values, politics and other dimensions of social experience might be described. 

Using visual or digital materials to conduct ethnographies is fairly new. Traditionally, it requires the researcher to engage in long term, first-person observation of their participants to understand how they see themselves in the context of their society and how they make meaning from within. I’m sure there are some real ethnographers that would dislike me calling this historical study an ethnography since I can’t engage with my participants (the DWs) or their long-gone worlds directly. I would argue that my time observing my participants and their worlds is still rich and deep and perhaps much more intimate than if I just followed them around for a while. If the goal is to understand how my DWs make meaning of their worlds given their specific socio-cultural contexts, then reading diaries is a first hand account.

Auto-:

It’s mine too. As stated, I am as much an object of study as the DWs, as I make interpretations and assumptions about them and evaluate my own life as times as well. Autoethnography is an entire field of research methodology (as are all the theories and methods that I have already described briefly and probably poorly), and I probably won’t do it justice. Therein lies the freedom I have given myself in this personal-not-academic project, so… here we go…