Re/search and Re/visit

This shot shows me, sitting at my desk, with none of the usual toys, treats, fawning attention, and etc. [read numerous of the entries below] to distract me.

Today, I first revisited one of Mama's most significant, if underappreciated, works:
"The Dark Side of Comparative Research," Elli Lester-massman. In Journal of Communication Inquiry, 15:2

In it, she argues that [social] science is a rhetoric deeply embedded in culture and that comparative research in particular replicates, implicitly and often explicitly, a power structure that maintains a specific world system of dominance and exploitation.

Next I opened the current issue of the same journal. Imagine my surprise when amongst the table of contents the name Fred Vultee leapt out. Note the black and white photo above and you'll see the authors of the 3 articles of today's reading. [the third figure, centered, is Andy Lester: see entry, July 9, 06 below]

Mr. Vultee, a doctoral student at the University of Mississippi, authored: "Fatwa on the Bunny" News Language and the Creation of Meaning about the Middle East. [Journal of Communication Inquiry, 30:4] Vultee's article supports Edward Said's thesis that "a pervasive Western discourse" cements a "fundamental ideology of difference."

Thus I was reminded of Mama's article in 28:1:
"Chimera Veil of 'Iranian Woman' and Processes of U.S. Textual Commodification: How U.S. Print Media Represent Iran," Elli Lester Roushanzamir.
Here Mama investigates how U.S. print media construct a specific commodified version and vision of Iran by using consistent and iconic images of Iranian women....[how] Iran itself is gendered female....[and how the] veil, prolific of meaning, parsimonious of form, is a global product symbol.

Finally, exhausted but exhilarated by these three fine examples of scholarly arguments and insights, I retired to my seat on the porch to reconsider my own position on a number of the issues raised.