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    #16
    Re: Getting the most out of using sources

    [quote author=Tylluan Penry link=topic=1215.msg31073#msg31073 date=1296217389]
    All very true, de Corbin! One of the most telling things about Nero is the throwaway comment (off the top of my head not certain where it comes from - could be Suetonius???) that for many years after his death people always brought flowers to his grave. I found that rather touching.[/quote]

    Yes - it seems he was loved by the people, but hated by his opponents in the senate, which suggests that he may have been the subject of bad propaganda.

    However, since wealthy and powerful Romans made a particular point of gaining popular support by financing huge public entertainments and engaging in massive public building projects, it's also possible for a very bad ruler to be very popular.

    The whole thing gets so muddy that it all has to be looked at very carefully before any conclusions are drawn, and then those conclusions have to be reevaluated as new information comes in - which is the whole point of your thread, a point which always needs to be emphasised.

    Good scholarship isn't a sport for sissies or slouches . It's hard work.
    Every moment of a life is a horrible tragedy, a slapstick comedy, dark nihilism, golden illumination, or nothing at all; depending on how we write the story we tell ourselves.

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      #17
      Re: Getting the most out of using sources

      [quote author=B. de Corbin link=topic=1215.msg31085#msg31085 date=1296220248]
      The whole thing gets so muddy that it all has to be looked at very carefully before any conclusions are drawn, and then those conclusions have to be reevaluated as new information comes in - which is the whole point of your thread, a point which always needs to be emphasised.

      Good scholarship isn't a sport for sissies or slouches . It's hard work.

      [/quote]

      You're absolutely right - it IS hard work. And there is very rarely a 'Correct' answer, just a theory that seems feasible in the light of the evidence - which is changing all the time.

      Once we accept that, I think we get more satisfaction from our reading and research.
      www.thewolfenhowlepress.com


      Phantom Turnips never die.... they just get stewed occasionally....

      Comment


        #18
        Re: Getting the most out of using sources

        [quote author=Tylluan Penry link=topic=1215.msg31086#msg31086 date=1296220945]
        You're absolutely right - it IS hard work. And there is very rarely a 'Correct' answer, just a theory that seems feasible in the light of the evidence - which is changing all the time.

        Once we accept that, I think we get more satisfaction from our reading and research.
        [/quote]Quite true in quite a few aspects of life ... All of life methinks ... You see so many people getting so bent out of shape if someone says that their source is bad or wrong with only minimal exposure to that source and/or other sources ... Such can even be seen (on rare occasions ) here ...
        I won't be wronged. I won't be insulted. I won't be laid a-hand on. I don't do these things to other people, and I require the same from them ... John Bernard Books


        Indian Chief 'Two Eagles' was asked by a white government official; "You have observed the white man for 90 years. You've seen his wars and his technological advances. You've seen his progress, and the damage he's done."

        The Chief nodded in agreement.

        The official continued; "Considering all these events, in your opinion, where did the white man go wrong?"

        The Chief stared at the government official for over a minute and then calmly replied.. "When white man find land, Indians running it, no taxes, no debt, plenty buffalo, plenty beaver, clean water. Women did all the work, Medicine Man free. Indian man spend all day hunting and fishing; all night having sex."

        Then the chief leaned back and smiled; "Only white man dumb enough to think he could improve system like that."



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          #19
          Re: Getting the most out of using sources

          One thing I can add as a current college student, at least here in the US is how strict some teacher are getting about what counts as a reliable source. For instance, in a paper that requires 4 sources, on average only one can be online. All of our sources are supposed to come for scholarly works, like journals or books/papers/websites from reliable authors. This means that we have to look into each source deeply before even deciding if it's usable. We need to have an idea or the journal's, editor's, and author's reputation and reliablitly before we even really look into the source information itself. At least, that's been my experience in classes with writing assignments. I usually spend as much time finding scholarly and reliable sources as I do reading the sources and garnering the information from them that I need. Of course, since I started looking more deeply into my sources, my grades have gone up as well.
          We are what we are. Nothing more, nothing less. There is good and evil among every kind of people. It's the evil among us who rule now. -Anne Bishop, Daughter of the Blood

          I wondered if he could ever understand that it was a blessing, not a sin, to be graced with more than one love.
          It could be complicated; of course it could be complicated. And it opened one up to the possibility of more pain and loss.
          Still, it was a blessing I would never relinquish. Love, genuine love, was always a cause for joy.
          -Jacqueline Carey, Naamah's Curse

          Service to your fellows is the root of peace.

          Comment


            #20
            Re: Getting the most out of using sources

            Great thread!

            I'd like to add a word about using secondary sources. They're good for a number of reasons: giving historical/social/religious context to primary sources; exploring and commenting on the biases and motivations of primary sources (Tylluan, for example, just wrote us some nice secondary-source material on Tacitus); drawing connections among primary sources and discussing their interpretation with other secondary-source authors; etc. I'll have to expand this list later, but in brief it's important to

            -consider the author's agenda. This is always the case! Why is je writing?
            -consider the author's context--historical, social, political, geographical.
            -consider the author's academic context. What intellectual movements is je part of, and what theoretical structures and lenses does je base jer work within? A postcolonial writer is going to interpret something very differently than one who uses Jung as jer primary frame of reference.

            Comment


              #21
              Re: Getting the most out of using sources

              Originally posted by Shahaku View Post
              One thing I can add as a current college student, at least here in the US is how strict some teacher are getting about what counts as a reliable source. For instance, in a paper that requires 4 sources, on average only one can be online. All of our sources are supposed to come for scholarly works, like journals or books/papers/websites from reliable authors. This means that we have to look into each source deeply before even deciding if it's usable. We need to have an idea or the journal's, editor's, and author's reputation and reliablitly before we even really look into the source information itself. At least, that's been my experience in classes with writing assignments. I usually spend as much time finding scholarly and reliable sources as I do reading the sources and garnering the information from them that I need. Of course, since I started looking more deeply into my sources, my grades have gone up as well.
              You're absolutely right - not all sources are of equal value. This was something we were discussing over on the Heathen boards just before the new forum came in. Generally speaking, internet sources that are part of the open access of Universities tend to be acceptable, and it can be a good way of finding ancient texts online in good translations.


              There are sources and sources - once you learn to distinguish between them, you can spot hidden agendas and bias a mile off (well, much of the time )

              ---------- Post added at 08:12 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:07 AM ----------

              To the Mods In advance - I apologise for double posting. If anyone knows how to avoid this please tell me!

              Originally posted by Gwen View Post
              Great thread!

              I'd like to add a word about using secondary sources. They're good for a number of reasons: giving historical/social/religious context to primary sources; exploring and commenting on the biases and motivations of primary sources (Tylluan, for example, just wrote us some nice secondary-source material on Tacitus); drawing connections among primary sources and discussing their interpretation with other secondary-source authors; etc. I'll have to expand this list later, but in brief it's important to

              -consider the author's agenda. This is always the case! Why is je writing?
              -consider the author's context--historical, social, political, geographical.
              -consider the author's academic context. What intellectual movements is je part of, and what theoretical structures and lenses does je base jer work within? A postcolonial writer is going to interpret something very differently than one who uses Jung as jer primary frame of reference.
              Hi Gwen - your list above is very helpful especially with its references to postcolonialism. For those who haven't come across this before, this is most commonly encountered when a modern writer discusses ancient empires but does so from the point of view of modern empires. So a British writer might writer about the Romans in Britain, saying what a wonderful civilising influence they were when in fact what he is really saying is that the British Empire was a wonderful civilising influence in the 19th century. You get it a lot in older sources and this is one reason why tutors encourage students to pick more recent ones.

              Of course, these attitudes are being challenged more and more, but it's still important to realise they exist within scholarship. There is a tendency to feel that mere mortals cannot challenge academics. Bunkum. We're as entitled to form our own opinions as anyone else, and the better we understand sources and how to use them, the more challenging our opinions will become.
              www.thewolfenhowlepress.com


              Phantom Turnips never die.... they just get stewed occasionally....

              Comment


                #22
                Re: Getting the most out of using sources

                Thanks, Tylluan! I tend to find something of value in most secondary sources that do sufficient primary research, even if the author worked within a framework that is now discredited (or simply out of fashion in academia--because yes, different lenses do rise and fall in popularity and not always as much based in reason as we'd like to believe). If I can identify the framework(s) in use I know what to filter out, what to question closely, and what is likely to be considered valid information today. A few examples of persistent ideas and frameworks, and what I watch out for if I notice them in use:

                -Social evolution theories of the Enlightenment era (1600s-1800s or thereabouts) are some of the most pervasive and most personally obnoxious ideas around. The basic idea is that in ancient times you have primitive peoples doing magic. As social orders begin to develop they begin to relate to spirits in a systematic way that becomes a codified polytheistic cult with a priesthood. Then at some point of further growth (especially the growth of rationality) monotheism develops. Depending on the scholar, the pinnacle of humanity and society is reached with the valorization of reason, science, and the mind, and either
                a) Christianity, or
                b) atheism.

                Forms of these ideas are really common in sources as late as the 1960s, and are linked with colonial doctrines. I see them lingering today in Western discomfort with polytheism and the carnal/bodily, as well as tendencies toward racism, sexism, exploitation of the earth. They were so pervasive in their day that they had children that tend to travel together, though they also appear on their own:

                ---the Noble Savage. Some colonial thinkers reacted against the idea that primitive man was the opposite of what modern man should be striving for. Instead they romanticized, well, anyone who they thought was more primitive than they. Colonized cultures became a mirror for the nobility, closeness to nature, and innocent goodness that colonizers felt their own cultures had lost. In its own way this idea is as demeaning and devaluing of the stereotyped people as the idea that primitive = bad. However, this one is more politically correct today, and still shows up all over the place. (I'm thinking about the recent American movie Avatar, which is pretty much based on the idea of the Noble Savage.)

                ---the Cartesian (as in Descartes) mind/body split can be explained by two equations:
                1. Mind = spirit = sky = white/European = male = rational = good (=Christian or atheist, depending)
                2. body = temptation = earth = dark = female = irrational/unpredictable = bad (= non-Christian)
                Sound familiar? I'm at a really progressive seminary in Berkeley and I still run into subtle iterations of this one from my classmates. The idea that God is separate from (implicit: above) the world is quite related to Cartesian dualism, as is the idea that sex is bad.

                -Great Goddess Theory goes something like this: in ancient times there was a golden age of matriarchy and Goddess-focused religion in which everyone was equal, sexuality and the earth were valued, and peace reigned. It all ended when men took over with their patriarchal monotheism, warlike tendencies, and our dear friend from above, the Cartesian mind/body dualism. If you've done much reading into our religious history you'll recognize this one, as it was quite popular in feminist scholarship in the 1970s-80s and today remains an integral part of the stories many of our elders tell about our own history. Trouble is, it's appealing but historically dubious. Everyone likes a good Golden Age onto which we can project all that we wish we had more of now. For the colonial Brits, it was the rule of ancient Greece and Rome. For modern feminism, it's our peaceful matriarchal past. Look out for idealization; it says at least as much about the writer as about the subject under discussion.

                aaand time's gotten away from me. If this kind of overview of intellectual frameworks common in secondary literature is useful lemme know and I can do some more this weekend!

                Comment


                  #23
                  Re: Getting the most out of using sources

                  It's extremelyl useful Gwen - thank you so much for posting it. Authorial bias is always a bit of a minefield, but whatever anyone chooses to believe it's helpful if they at least recognise some of the pitfalls that lay in wait for the unwary! Fashions change so much within scholarship - what is considered out on the fringe one decade may be mainstream scholarship during the next.
                  www.thewolfenhowlepress.com


                  Phantom Turnips never die.... they just get stewed occasionally....

                  Comment


                    #24
                    Re: Getting the most out of using sources

                    Just a couple FYI's...I merged this thread, and another thread that is similarly on evaluating source materials so if you are having trouble with the *flow* of the thread, check the title of the post!

                    Also, Tylluan, you are in luck--the software here auto-merges your posts for you! If you post in the same thread within 120 min or something like that, it will merge...more than that, and don't worry about it!


                    And, on topic....

                    Something to keep in mind along the lines of bias, in terms of primary literature and interpreting what people are really doing and saying means that you need to understand the context in which an event took place or a person lived. I spend alot of time reading 19th century material, particularly in the fields of natural history, but diaries, magazines from the time, deportment manuals, etc--even cookbooks and children's school books...when you read (no matter what you are reading) you have to factor in not only the difference in time period, but regional differences, the type of source, and their specific world view, etc... Its very easy to read that someone did X or thought Y or whatever and not understand its relevance because we lack the conditioning of having lived in that time--its also very easy to impart a meaning or importance to something that it would not have had, for that same reason.

                    For example...in science today, the emphasis is on experimentation as a means to support theories which give us insight and predictability into how things work. 150-200 years ago, suggesting a theory would ruin one's reputation and standing. At that time (and part of the reason for the popularity of natural history) "science" was the collection of "facts"...which was pretty much something anyone could do, regardless of class, education, gender, etc. Most people today think of Darwin only in terms of evolution---but Darwin wasn't the only one to come up with the idea (even his specific idea of natural selection--not only did he share the "discovery" with the lesser known Wallace, but actually, their idea was preempted in a treatise on logging, published decades earlier, though virtually unknown and unread...and that is without including ideas suck as Lamarckian evolution). Really though, the greater significance of Darwin wasn't that he developed a theory of evolution, but that he backed that theory up with a huge body of evidence, and the purpose it gave to biology (leading to the death of natural history) as a whole.
                    Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of HistoryPagan Devotionals, because the wind and the rain is our Bible
                    sigpic

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                      #25
                      Re: Getting the most out of using sources

                      Great thread, would have been very useful when studying for my History Degree. A couple of things to bear in mind when reading books written by historians, although I may be repeating what has already been said;

                      What a historian is doing is putting forward his or her interpretation, based on scrupulous research in the sources. It is only a contribution to knowledge and will be subject to evaluation and criticisms by other historians. In order to know your history, it is important to also know your historian as they will all, to a greater or lesser degree, be taking up personal positions. Search engines are great for this, I will often google an author to get an idea of who they are and other writer/historians views on them.

                      Also, try to read as many different things about one subject as you can get your hands on. This will help you form an idea of where many different writers agree and where someone may be way of the mark as far as others are concerned.
                      http://thefeministpagan.blogspot.co.uk/

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                        #26
                        Re: Getting the most out of using sources

                        Currently taking Intro to Islam and writing a paper on zakat. The main source I've found is over 50 years old. It's a first addition of the book. I'm almost afraid to touch it. And it's one of the few sources I've been able to get my hands on so I have to use it. At least my instructor okayed it. I'm not allowed to use any online sources.
                        We are what we are. Nothing more, nothing less. There is good and evil among every kind of people. It's the evil among us who rule now. -Anne Bishop, Daughter of the Blood

                        I wondered if he could ever understand that it was a blessing, not a sin, to be graced with more than one love.
                        It could be complicated; of course it could be complicated. And it opened one up to the possibility of more pain and loss.
                        Still, it was a blessing I would never relinquish. Love, genuine love, was always a cause for joy.
                        -Jacqueline Carey, Naamah's Curse

                        Service to your fellows is the root of peace.

                        Comment


                          #27
                          Re: Getting the most out of using sources

                          @Thalassa- and it wasn't just the death of natural history,. but also the beginning of the end for regarding theology as a science. I seem to remember that Darwin actually studied theology at University. Wallace (born in Wales - had to get that in somewhere! ) tried to meld together his belief in Spiritualism with his scientific interests which put something of a strain on both!
                          www.thewolfenhowlepress.com


                          Phantom Turnips never die.... they just get stewed occasionally....

                          Comment


                            #28
                            Re: Getting the most out of using sources

                            Originally posted by Tylluan Penry View Post
                            @Thalassa- and it wasn't just the death of natural history,. but also the beginning of the end for regarding theology as a science. I seem to remember that Darwin actually studied theology at University. Wallace (born in Wales - had to get that in somewhere! ) tried to meld together his belief in Spiritualism with his scientific interests which put something of a strain on both!
                            (Thankfully) the natural theology aspect of natural history did take quite a drubbing with the publication of the Origin of Species...not as much from Darwin himself, but those such as T. H. Huxley (who had the nickname "Darwin's Bulldog), Asa Gray (an American botanist...I'm a big fan of Mr. Gray, when I reenact, his text is my essential tome of botanical wisdom) and his other supporters...Huxley himself is attributed with the creation of the term agnosticism (I've seen it referenced in a few texts, but I've never looked into it beyond that). But the attachment of religion to science...I honestly think it was moving in the direction of disconnection already, Darwin was just the big shove it needed to get over the top of the hill.

                            I will say this though...I've started reading up on the Spiritualist movement (because it was somewhat popular--as popular as any alternative among the upper/middle classes in the North during the latter half of the 1800's), particularly its connection to the early Feminist movement...and its really quite interesting...which in a round-about way can get me back on topic (I could seriously talk about natural history and early biology forever, I was born in the wrong century!).

                            Sometimes its hard to find sources. Seriously. Unless its a journal article, my university doesn't have it. Hell, they don't even have JSTOR anyhow. And after I graduate in May, I won't have access to their computer library system to find articles anyhow...and most people are probably somewhere where they don't have university access. When I was younger, I could go to the library at the uni where my mom was getting her masters degree (this was in the early days of the internet), look something up, and go find it in the stacks. Today, you have to have a password for their computer system to even look something up, and they probably don't carry it any longer, because it can be had online.

                            And books--I actually prefer secondary sources, since they've sort of done their work for me, and then I can (try to) track down the primary sources for them...but its hard to know if its good or not when you can't flip thru it (sure Google books can help there), but a lot of what I read up on has not been the biggest area of research, much less book publication. Most books are university publications, and that can be expensive. For example, I recently paid $50.00 for an e-book (the hard copy would have ran me $70 either used or from the publisher directly), and no library in the state had a copy, so I couldn't get it on loan...it was extremely useful, but was it really *worth* $50?
                            Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of HistoryPagan Devotionals, because the wind and the rain is our Bible
                            sigpic

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                              #29
                              Re: Getting the most out of using sources

                              Academic books can be horribly expensive - and as you say, it's not always easy to get hold of good sources. I hadn't realised that some Universities didn't offer JSTOR - that must be awful. Depending on what you're after, there are a lot of good ancient sources available free online though. If it's anything specific, Thal, do let me know and I'll try and help.
                              www.thewolfenhowlepress.com


                              Phantom Turnips never die.... they just get stewed occasionally....

                              Comment


                                #30
                                Re: Getting the most out of using sources

                                My seminary library doesn't have JSTOR, much to my dismay. I bum articles from my sis sometimes as she's at a university that does.

                                Another note on secondaries: glance over the footnotes/endnotes. Sometimes these are simply lists of sources, which lets you know and evaluate what the author was reading and basing jer opinions on. However, often they contain additional information that the author didn't think was important or relevant enough to put in the body of jer text. Often they also contain arguments with other scholars on the topic, which (besides occasionally being snarky and amusing) tells you a lot about other perspectives and how your author is situation jerself within the wider field.

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