How
to do critical analysis
Introduction
One important skill that you have to demonstrate in your assignments is
to be able to critically analyse pieces of work, whether they are
published books and articles, or policy statements and presentations.
Critical analysis is so important than it usually features high on the
list of criteria for successful work. It is also one of the academic
practices that produces the most problems for students. Why do they
need to do critical analysis, and, more important, how do they do
critical analysis?
In everyday life, we try not to be critical of our friends, colleagues
or family. Criticism is seen as a personal attack, designed to make
someone feel bad about what they've done. Academic criticism is almost
the reverse, however. The convention says that it is never personal,
but focused on the work. Criticising authors of work personally is not
welcome, and for obvious reasons -- we do not know them as individuals
and so we often jump to outrageous conclusions about their motives or
their characters. This sort of criticism -- ad hominem criticism -- can
take forms such as arguing that Freud wrote about sex all the time
because he was kinky, or seeing Fraser's work as the hysterical
outpourings of a pre-menstrual woman. Even if any of these personal
characteristics were true, the main issue would be the arguments of
these authors and how valid and robust they are.
Nor is the point of academic criticism to make people feel bad. Any
piece of work can be criticised. There is no perfect argument, piece of
research or policy. The main point of academic criticism is to point
out problems and difficulties in order to do better. What actually
needs to be done to make things better might not be clear, of course.
You do not have to have some positive alternative to put in its place
before you criticise particular pieces of work.
There are other reasons for encouraging students to do critical
analysis, to do with the role of the university and the university
teacher. It is important for students to develop a critical capacity to
prevent them being persuaded or indoctrinated by particular lecturers.
This anxiety affects social sciences in particular. Lecturers
themselves do not want students merely to agree with them and reflect
back their own views. Finally, being able to be critical is the last
stage in several well-known notions of student development -- you learn
from other people at first, and then you need to be over to find your
own way forward after having critically reflected on the options.
Let us move on to how you actually do critical analysis. There is a
powerful myth that says that you just somehow do it automatically. You
look at a text, and suddenly start to see some problems with it. In
practice, this sort of ease with critical analysis does develop as you
gain more experience. Those who are able to do it immediately probably
have come from a suitable elite cultural or social background where
they have long become accustomed to being able to critically discuss
matters is a calm and detached manner -- any matters. If you are just
starting out, and if you have not come from such an elite background,
what can you do?
The suggestion here is that you borrow some techniques from other
critical approaches. In what follows, I will be explaining some very
basic principles developed by particular philosophical or theoretical
critical traditions in social sciences. These traditions are called
things like 'critical rationalism', or 'critical theory',
as we shall see. They are being developed mostly to be able to
criticise pretty abstract theoretical or philosophical positions, and
our aim here will be simply to strip out a few basic techniques. This
will probably deeply annoy traditional academics with long experience
in doing critical analysis at this abstract level -- but they are not
reading this material are they?
Your task is to look through some of these positions and see if you
can develop some basic techniques for the sort of critical analysis
we are asking you to do. You will not be expected to read all the major
works of Derrida and be able to follow word-for-word his critique of
Hegel. Instead, you might be able to gain the first glimmerings of
insight into what he means by 'deconstruction' and try out some
of the most elementary techniques on chunks of
policy, say in sports development.
Critical discourse analysis -- based
on
the work of Fairclough and one analysis of a management text, links to
other approaches
Critical rationalism -- Popper
and
Gellner on pushing arguments to the point where they can be tested to
destruction (falsified)
Critical Theory -- Adorno on identity
thinking and Habermas on distorted communication
Deconstruction -- some really
really
basic Derrida
Evaluation -- some preliminary
discussion on suitable techniques
Film Criticism -- how
'realism'
works to persuade us we have learned something without thinking too
much, and how we can criticise it
Ideology-critique -- focuses on
marxist
analysis. A few specific techniques but more to do with critical
concepts and themes. Features Althusser and Gramsci
Persuasive Communication --
examples of
persuasive devices in propaganda and advertising
You might also like to try out some arguments about philosophical
issues in social science here and
maybe listen to a podcast discussion here
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