Abstract
This paper elaborates on alternative versions of critique as produced in an ethnographic field work on the everyday life of a curriculum text in a Stockholm preschool. Assisted by Actor-network theory and Feminist New Materialist methodologies, the paper evolves around three empirical moments where the researcher is depicted as needing to rely on the relational efforts of children, Minecraft figures, concepts, teachers and conversations over coffee. In the paper, Actor network theory and Feminist New Materialist methodologies help to enact alternative versions of critique where dependency and vulnerability is taken as resource. Moreover, a focus on relations and overlaps among entities creates knowledge where for example children and texts are allowed to be strong and vulnerable at the same time.
Highlights
The limits of critique and the potential alternatives has emerged as a pressing issue in social science research (Braidotti, 2008; Juleskjær and Staunæs, 2016; Gorur, 2017; Latour, 2004; Moats, 2016)
In order to interfere with the excessive “trust in numbers” and quantitative measurement systems, he encourages researchers to share alternative visions of what counts, that is “alternative metrics” (p. 1)
Actor-network theory (ANT) and Feminist New Materialism will be approached as methodologies, indicating the kind of connections that are made among theory and empirical materials
Summary
The limits of critique and the potential alternatives has emerged as a pressing issue in social science research (Braidotti, 2008; Juleskjær and Staunæs, 2016; Gorur, 2017; Latour, 2004; Moats, 2016). Rosi Braidotti (2008), along the same lines, foregrounds an affirmative ethics which “enables the active engagement with the present, by being worthy of it and by combining it with the ability and the force to resist the negativity” (p 19) In connection to these discussions on critique in social science research, the present paper will explore alternative versions of critique in relation to an ethnographic study of the everyday life of a Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodology 2018, 9(1) Special Issue http://journals.hioa.no/index.php/rerm preschool curriculum text in a Stockholm preschool (Moberg, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c). With the pursuit of finding more ways of doing critique, rather than abandoning the concept, the paper aims to create knowledge of how Actor-network theory (ANT) and Feminist New Materialist (FNM) methodologies might assist in doing this. The paper will finish off with suggestions of what alternative potentially productive versions of critique that have been created throughout the paper
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