WilliamsMemo4

Williams Memo 4 Questioning a Text __//**** //**What is the text “about” -- empirically and conceptually?**// ****//__ __//****What modes of inquiry were used to produce it?****//__ __//****How is the text structured and performed?****//__ __//****How can it circulate?****//__ __****What is the text about – empirically?****__ __****What is the text about – conceptually?****__ __****Modes of inquiry?****__ __****Structure and performance?****__ __****Circulation?****__
 * Fortun, Kim. 2001. __Advocacy After Bhopal: Environmentalism, Disaster, New Global Orders.__ Chicago: The University of Chicago Press**
 * 1) ** **What phenomenon is drawn out in the text? A social process; a cultural and political economic shift; a cultural “infrastructure;” an emergent assemblage of science-culture-technology-economics?** **
 * All of these can be seen, but the biggest is a cultural and political economic shift I believe. Before Bhopal no one really knew what a "gas leak" could mean outside of those few who had experienced them. After the "event" of Bhopal people around the world had an entire new set of concepts and ideas and language surrounding the chemical industry and its environmental effects**
 * 1) ** **Where is this phenomenon located – in a neighborhood, in a country, in “Western Culture,” in a globalizing economy?** **
 * This kind of refers back to scales, I will talk about the Meso level:**
 * Bhopal, India**
 * Ka--- Valley, near Charleston West Virginia**
 * US Congress/ EPA/ OSHA**
 * Indian government**
 * 1) ** **What historical trajectory is the phenomenon situated within? What, in the chronology provided or implied, is emphasized -- the role of political or economic forces, the role of certain individuals or social groups? What does the chronology leave out or discount?** **
 * xxx **
 * 1) ** **What scale(s) are focused on -- nano (i.e. the level of language), micro, meso, macro? What empirical material is developed at each scale?** **
 * Nano - recorded conversations, snippets of speeches, poetry and other performative materials (posters, excerpts from other narratives) by activists, advocates, congressmen and overpaid company executives**
 * Micro**
 * Meso (see questions 2 above)**
 * Macro**
 * 1) ** **Who are the players in the text and what are their relations? Does the text trace how these relations have changed across time – because of new technologies, for example?** **
 * ** Middleclass progressives/advocates (31) "conscientious watchfulness" **
 * ** Gas victims at Bhopal **
 * ** Ambulance chaser lawyers from the USA **
 * ** Indian government **
 * ** Texas judicial system **
 * ** U.S. Congress **
 * ** Union Carbide **
 * ** Union Carbide India Limited **
 * ** Environmental groups in USA and India (activists and advocates; I always thought they were the same thing, but I can see the difference through Fortun's articulation of the middle voice) **
 * 1) ** **What is the temporal frame in which players play?** **
 * In the wake of a particular policy, disaster or other significant “event?”****
 * YES, after the 1984 Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal, India**
 * In the general climate of the Reagan era, or of “after-the-Wall” globalization?****
 * YES, during the Reagan era, and after the fall of the Berlin wall, during the time popular music stars become social justice humanitarians**
 * 1) ** **What cultures and social structures are in play in the text?** **
 * India; caste system; working women; Hindu versus Bhuddist**
 * United States; environmental justice movement**
 * 1) ****What kinds of practices are described in the text? Are players shown to be embedded in structural contradictions or double-binds?** **
 * ** Middle class progressive: as advocate/ as poor representative of working class gas victims **
 * ** Middle class progressive: as advocate/ as power-less representative **
 * ** Indian government: as guardian of the Indian people (with 22% interest in Union Carbide India)/ as guardian of the gas victims at Bhopal **
 * ** Chouda (the plant worker) as authoritative on UCIL's inner workings/ Chouda as disgruntled gas victim **
 * 1) ** **How are science and technology implicated in the phenomenon described?** **
 * Geographic Information Systems**
 * Toxic Release Inventory**
 * Water shed theory v disgruntled worker theory**
 * Information technology and inventory systems to improve Union Carbide's profits in the early 90s**
 * 1) ** **What structural conditions– technological, legal and legislative, political, cultural – are highlighted, and how are they shown to have shaped the phenomenon described in this text?** **
 * ** Local/ BGIA and other advocacy groups working with gas victims and local police; but as discussed in the question on double-binds, their authority has been prempted by the government **
 * ** Other problems discussed in the question on "double-binds" **
 * ** Other structural conditions include  XXX **
 * 1) ** **How – at different scales, in different ways – is power shown to operate? Is there evidence of power operating through language, “discipline,” social hierarchies, bureaucratic function, economics, etc?** **
 * xxx **
 * 1) ** **Does the text provide comparative or systems level perspectives? In other words, is the particular phenomenon described in this text situated in relation to similar phenomenon in other settings? Is this particular phenomena situated within global structures and processes?** **
 * xxx **
 * 1) ** Is the goal to verify, challenge or extend prior theoretical claims? **
 * **Verify - **
 * ** Challenge/extend -instead of 'stakeholder model' as conflicting interests, the stakeholder model is redefined to show complexity **
 * 1) ** **What is the main conceptual argument or theoretical claim of the text? Is it performed, rendered explicit or both?** **
 * Main conceptual argument: 1. in this modern era of globalization, Bhopal synonymous with 'disaster' can happen here there anywhere because of the double binds inherent to modernity !?!?!?! ; 2. environmentalism after Bhopal is access to information without government sanctioned means of interpretation 3. the new order of xxxxx **
 * This is performed through the structure of the book, and, explicit through the author's comments on her intentions, how she cannot transcend her own biases, and how she thought about what she was writing**
 * 1) ** **What ancillary concepts are developed to articulate the conceptual argument?** **
 * Middle voice = location of progressive advocates and modality of disaster (38)**
 * What are rights? What is justice? (40)**
 * Categorization as a technology of the legal process (41)**
 * 1) ** **How is empirical material used to support or build the conceptual argument?** **
 * xxx **
 * 1) ** **How robust is the main conceptual argument of the text? On what grounds could it be challenged?** **
 * xxx **
 * 1) ** **How could the empirical material provided support conceptual arguments other than those built in the text?** **
 * This is a very important question but, I can't think of anything yet ... **
 * 1) ** **What theoretical edifice provides the (perhaps haunting – i.e. non-explicit) backdrop to the text?** **
 * xxx **
 * 1) ** **What assumptions appear to have shaped the inquiry? Does the author assume that individuals are rational actors, for example, or assume that the unconscious is a force to be dealt with? Does the author assume that the “goal” of society is (functional) stability?** **
 * xxx **
 * 1) ** **Does the author assume that what is most interesting occurs with regularity, or is she interested in the incidental and deviant?** **
 * xxx **
 * 1) ** **What kinds of data (ethnographic, experimental, statistical, etc.) are used in the text, and how were they obtained?** **
 * Ethnographic, interviews**
 * Fortun lived/worked in Bhopal for almost two years; she was part of BGIA and had access to many other actors**
 * 1) ** **If interviews were conducted, what kinds of questions were asked? What does the author seem to have learned from the interviews?** **
 * xxx **
 * 1) ** **How was the data analyzed? If this is not explicit, what can be inferred?** **
 * xxx **
 * 1) ** **How are people, objects or ideas aggregated into groups or categories?** **
 * By the settlement granted in the Indian courts, e.g.family with death, permanently disabled, temporarily disabled, severely injured, generally categorized (38)**
 * 1) ** **What additional data would strengthen the text?** **
 * <span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;">xxx **
 * 1) ** **What is in the introduction? Does the introduction turn around unanswered questions -- in other words, are we told how this text embodies a research project?** **
 * <span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;">xxx **
 * (please see my answer to the reflexivity question below.)**
 * 1) ** **Where is theory in the text? Is the theoretical backdrop to the text explained, or assumed to be understood?** **
 * Theory and theoretical backdrop are primarily in the footnotes. This allows for the assumption of understanding for some readers, and the clarification of understanding (by reading the footnotes) of other readers.**
 * 1) ** **What is the structure of the discourse in the text? What binaries recur in the text, or are conspicuously avoided?** **
 * <span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;">xxx **
 * 1) ** **How is the historical trajectory delineated? Is there explicit chronological development?** **
 * There is explicit chronological development in the Prologue, which is written as a narrative of the Union Carbide accident without many dates. Also, in the Prologue, physically located on the left side of every page, instead of toward the 'outside' or 'center' of the book was a list of important events that were all in 1984, the year of the chemical disaster.**
 * However, the chapters are not chronologically ordered in comp arison to each other (though inside each chapter, events described appear to be chronologically arranged).**
 * 1) ** **How is the temporal context provided or evoked in the text?** **
 * <span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;">xxx **
 * 1) ** **How does the text specify the cultures and social structures in play in the text?** **
 * <span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;">xxx **
 * 1) ** **How are informant perspectives dealt with and integrated?** **
 * Often Fortun uses visuals to bring in an informants perspective into conversation with her narrative. I say this because by doing so, she allows for the possibility that those materials may be interpreted differently by the reader than she does in her text, offering a contrast of perspectives.**
 * 1) ** **How does the text draw out the implications of science and technology? At what level of detail are scientific and technological practices described?** **
 * <span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;">I'm curious about the containment system for the chemical that killed so many…so far no indepth description. **
 * 1) ** **How does the text provide in-depth detail – hopefully without losing readers?** **
 * <span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;">xxx **
 * 1) ** **What is the layout of the text? How does it move, from first page to last? Does it ask for other ways of reading? Does the layout perform an argument?** **
 * <span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;">xxx **
 * 1) ** **What kinds of visuals are used, and to what effect?** **
 * Memos, Posters, Pictures, Proceedings, Letters to the editor, Other legal docs; usually they are directly related to the content of the narrative.**
 * <span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;">Exceptions include ... **
 * 1) ** **What kind of material and analysis are in the footnotes?** **
 * Here Fortun explains how certain theoretical terms are connected to but different from what other STS scholars have previously suggested. i.e. ennuciatory communities are neither epistemic communities (E. Haas 1990, P. Haas 1990) or inteprepative communities (Fish 1989) but are subject to the cumulative and local micro forces of power (Foucault ??, Deleuze 1989). Basically the footnotes have a lot of the theory in them so that the narrative account can flow. But they do not have ALL of the theory. Some of the theory rises out of the narrative, ie. That disaster is defined less by scientific facts and numbers of death and health, and more by the complex layers of human reaction and interaction to a singular event (that somehow seems to continue in time even though it is dated as 1984).**
 * 1) ** **How is the criticism of the text performed? If through overt argumentation, who is the “opposition”?** **
 * <span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;">This is not clear to me at this time... **
 * 1) ** **How does the text situate itself? In other words, how is reflexivity addressed, or not?** **
 * Fortun states explicitly in the introduction that in creating this text, she went back and forth between physical artifacts produced by the advocate community s he was observing, and, <span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;">XXX **
 * She uses seven questions in the introduction to "prompt ethnographic writing", and the seventh is a reversal of the sixth which is its own kind of reflection**
 * She also states specifically that she intends to be reflexive not just in her account of the Bhopal disaster and its ennuciatory communities, but also about her writing methodology and how it is politicized. 21-23**
 * 1) ** **Who is the text written for? How are arguments and evidence in the text shaped to address particular audiences?** **
 * Anthropologists - the text was shaped as a first person ethnographic narrative<span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;">xXX **
 * STS scholars - technology was very important in the text in terms of what the Indian government allowed Union Carbide to use (Bhopal was by those transportation centers, but, 'rural' enough so that a disaster could be 'contained'…and it was to some extent from a cost benefits point of view) which ended up as being exploitative of Indian health and infrastructure; but science was more important specifically the uncertainties in defining and categorizing health after the disaster**
 * political scientists<span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"> - xxx **
 * 1) ** **What all audiences can you imagine for the text, given its empirical and conceptual scope?** **
 * Law students, policy analysts, policy makers, environmental justice advocates, South Asian scholars**
 * 1) ** **What new knowledge does this text put into circulation? What does this text have to say that otherwise is not obvious?** **
 * <span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;">xxx **
 * 1) ** **How generalizable is the main argument? How does this text lay the groundwork for further research?** **
 * <span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;">xxx **
 * 1) ** **What kind of “action” is suggested by the main argument of the text?** **
 * <span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;">xxx **

This is a draft / placeholder ... I am not done with this memo yet. When I am finished, I will paste the 'completed' memo above this one.

__ What is the text “about” -- empirically and conceptually?__ __//**What modes of inquiry were used to produce it?**//__ __//**How is the text structured and performed?**//__ __//**How can it circulate?**//__ __**What is the text about – empirically?**__ Nano Micro Meso Macro <span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;">Xxx <span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;">xxx YES, after the 1984 Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal, India YES, during the Reagan era, and after the fall of the Berlin wall, during the time popular music stars become social justice humanitarians India; caste system; working women; Hindu versus Bhuddist United States; environmental justice movement Geographic Information Systems Toxic Research Inventory __**What is the text about – conceptually?**__ Main conceptual argument: (1) in this modern era of globalization, Bhopal synonymous with 'disaster' can happen here there anywhere because of the double binds inherent to modernity<span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"> !?!?!?! ; (2) environmentalism helps everyone and (3) the new order of<span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"> xxxxx This is performed through the structure of the book, and, explicit through the author's comments on her intentions, how she cannot transcend her own biases, and how she thought about what she was writing Middle voice = location of progressive advocates and modality of disaster (38) What are rights? What is justice? (40) Categorization as a technology of the legal process (41) __**Modes of inquiry?**__ Ethnographic, interviews Fortun lived/worked in Bhopal for almost two years; she was part of BGIA and had access to many other actors By the settlement granted in the Indian courts, e.g.family with death, permanently disabled, temporarily disabled, severely injured, generally categorized (38) __**Structure and performance?**__ <span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;">xxx (please see my answer to the reflexivity question below.) There is explicit chronological development in the Prologue, which is written as a narrative of the Union Carbide accident without many dates. Also, in the Prologue, physically located on the left side of every page, instead of toward the 'outside' or 'center' of the book was a list of important events that were all in 1984, the year of the chemical disaster. <span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;">XXXXX Often Fortun uses visuals to bring in an informants perspective into conversation with her narrative <span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;">I'm curious about the containment system for the chemical that killed so many…so far no indepth description. Memos, Posters, Pictures, Proceedings, Letters to the editor, Other legal docs; usually they are directly related to the content of the narrative. <span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;">Exceptions include ... Here Fortun explains how certain theoretical terms are connected to but different from what other STS scholars have previously suggested. i.e. ennuciatory communities are neither epistemic communities (E. Haas 1990, P. Haas 1990) or inteprepative communities (Fish 1989) but are subject to the cumulative and local micro forces of power (Foucault ??, Deleuze 1989). Basically the footnotes have a lot of the theory in them so that the narrative account can flow. But they do not have ALL of the theory. Some of the theory rises out of the narrative, ie. That disaster is defined less by scientific facts and numbers of death and health, and more by the complex layers of human reaction and interaction to a singular event (that somehow seems to continue in time even though it is dated as 1984). <span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;">This is not clear to me at this time... Fortun states explicitly in the introduction that in creating this text, she went back and forth between physical artifacts produced by the advocate community s he was observing, and, <span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;">XXX She uses seven questions in the introduction to "prompt ethnographic writing", and the seventh is a reversal of the sixth which is its own kind of reflection She also states specifically that she intends to be reflexive not just in her account of the Bhopal disaster and its ennuciatory communities, but also about her writing methodology and how it is politicized. 21-23 __**Circulation?**__ Anthropologists - the text was shaped as a first person ethnographic narrative<span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;">xXX STS scholars - technology was very important in the text in terms of what the Indian government allowed Union Carbide to use (Bhopal was by those transportation centers, but, 'rural' enough so that a disaster could be 'contained'…and it was to some extent from a cost benefits point of view) which ended up as being exploitative of Indian health and infrastructure; but science was more important specifically the uncertainties in defining and categorizing health after the disaster political scientists<span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"> - xxx Law students, policy analysts, policy makers, environmental justice advocates, South Asian scholars
 * 1) What phenomenon is drawn out in the text? A social process; a cultural and political economic shift; a cultural “infrastructure;” an emergent assemblage of science-culture-technology-economics?
 * 2) Where is this phenomenon located – in a neighborhood, in a country, in “Western Culture,” in a globalizing economy?
 * 3) What historical trajectory is the phenomenon situated within? What, in the chronology provided or implied, is emphasized -- the role of political or economic forces, the role of certain individuals or social groups? What does the chronology leave out or discount?
 * 4) **What scale(s) are focused on -- nano (i.e. the level of language), micro, meso, macro? What empirical material is developed at each scale?**
 * 1) **Who are the players in the text and what are their relations? Does the text trace how these relations have changed across time – because of new technologies, for example?**
 * Middleclass progressives/advocates (31) "conscientious watchfulness"
 * Gas victims at Bhopal
 * Ambulance chaser lawyers from the USA
 * Indian government
 * Texas judicial system
 * U.S. Congress
 * Union Carbide
 * Union Carbide India
 * 1) **What is the temporal frame in which players play?**
 * In the wake of a particular policy, disaster or other significant “event?”**
 * In the general climate of the Reagan era, or of “after-the-Wall” globalization?**
 * 1) **What cultures and social structures are in play in the text?**
 * 1) <span style="background: lime none repeat scroll 0% 0%; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; color: black; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;">**What kinds of practices are described in the text? Are players shown to be embedded in structural contradictions or double-binds?**
 * Middle class progressive: as advocate/ as poor representative of working class gas victims
 * Middle class progressive: as advocate/ as power-less representative
 * Indian government: as guardian of the Indian people (with 22% interest in Union Carbide India)/ as guardian of the gas victims at Bhopal
 * 1) **How are science and technology implicated in the phenomenon described?**
 * 1) **What structural conditions– technological, legal and legislative, political, cultural – are highlighted, and how are they shown to have shaped the phenomenon described in this text?**
 * Local/ BGIA and other advocacy groups working with gas victims and local police; but as discussed in the question on double-binds, their authority has been prempted by the government
 * Other problems discussed in the question on "double-binds"
 * Other structural conditions include <span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"> XXX
 * 1) How – at different scales, in different ways – is power shown to operate? Is there evidence of power operating through language, “discipline,” social hierarchies, bureaucratic function, economics, etc?
 * 2) Does the text provide comparative or systems level perspectives? In other words, is the particular phenomenon described in this text situated in relation to similar phenomenon in other settings? Is this particular phenomena situated within global structures and processes?
 * 1) Is the goal to verify, challenge or extend prior theoretical claims?
 * <span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;">Verify -
 * Challenge/extend -instead of 'stakeholder model' as conflicting interests, the stakeholder model is redefined to show complexity
 * 1) **What is the main conceptual argument or theoretical claim of the text? Is it performed, rendered explicit or both?**
 * 1) **What ancillary concepts are developed to articulate the conceptual argument?**
 * 1) How is empirical material used to support or build the conceptual argument?
 * 2) How robust is the main conceptual argument of the text? On what grounds could it be challenged?
 * 3) How could the empirical material provided support conceptual arguments other than those built in the text?
 * 1) What theoretical edifice provides the (perhaps haunting – i.e. non-explicit) backdrop to the text?
 * 2) What assumptions appear to have shaped the inquiry? Does the author assume that individuals are rational actors, for example, or assume that the unconscious is a force to be dealt with? Does the author assume that the “goal” of society is (functional) stability?
 * 3) Does the author assume that what is most interesting occurs with regularity, or is she interested in the incidental and deviant?
 * 4) **What kinds of data (ethnographic, experimental, statistical, etc.) are used in the text, and how were they obtained?**
 * 1) If interviews were conducted, what kinds of questions were asked? What does the author seem to have learned from the interviews?
 * 2) How was the data analyzed? If this is not explicit, what can be inferred?
 * 3) **How are people, objects or ideas aggregated into groups or categories?**
 * 1) What additional data would strengthen the text?
 * 1) **What is in the introduction? Does the introduction turn around unanswered questions -- in other words, are we told how this text embodies a research project?**
 * 1) Where is theory in the text? Is the theoretical backdrop to the text explained, or assumed to be understood?
 * 2) What is the structure of the discourse in the text? What binaries recur in the text, or are conspicuously avoided?
 * 3) **How is the historical trajectory delineated? Is there explicit chronological development?**
 * 1) How is the temporal context provided or evoked in the text?
 * 2) How does the text specify the cultures and social structures in play in the text?
 * 3) **How are informant perspectives dealt with and integrated?**
 * 1) **How does the text draw out the implications of science and technology? At what level of detail are scientific and technological practices described?**
 * 1) How does the text provide in-depth detail – hopefully without losing readers?
 * 2) What is the layout of the text? How does it move, from first page to last? Does it ask for other ways of reading? Does the layout perform an argument?
 * 3) **What kinds of visuals are used, and to what effect?**
 * 1) **What kind of material and analysis are in the footnotes?**
 * 1) **How is the criticism of the text performed? If through overt argumentation, who is the “opposition”?**
 * 1) **How does the text situate itself? In other words, how is reflexivity addressed, or not?**
 * 1) **Who is the text written for? How are arguments and evidence in the text shaped to address particular audiences?**
 * 1) **What all audiences can you imagine for the text, given its empirical and conceptual scope?**
 * 1) What new knowledge does this text put into circulation? What does this text have to say that otherwise is not obvious?
 * 2) How generalizable is the main argument? How does this text lay the groundwork for further research?
 * 3) What kind of “action” is suggested by the main argument of the text?