Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill [72]
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Try This 4.6: Reformulating Binaries: Fieldwork
Locate some organizing contrasts in anything—something you are studying, something you’ve just written, something you saw on television last night, something on the front page of the newspaper, something going on at your campus or workplace, and so forth. Binaries pervade the way we think; therefore, you can expect to find them everywhere. Consider, for example, the binaries suggested by current trends in contemporary music or by the representation of women in birthday cards. Having selected the binaries you want to work with, pick one and transform the either/or thinking into a more qualified thinking using the extent to which formula.
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4. DIFFERENCE WITHIN SIMILARITY
When A & B are obviously similar,
look for unexpected difference.
When A & B are obviously different,
look for unexpected similarity.
Too often, writers notice a fundamental similarity and stop there. But ideas tend to arise when a writer moves beyond this basic demonstration and complicates (or “qualifies”) the basic similarity by also noting areas of difference, and accounting for the significance of that difference.
Step 1: Decide whether the similarities or differences are most obvious and easily explained.
Step 2: Briefly explain the relatively obvious similarity or difference by asking “So what?” Why is this similarity or difference significant?
Step 3: Then focus your attention on the less obvious but revealing difference within the similarity or similarity despite the difference.
Discussion The phrase “difference within similarity” is to remind you that once you have started your thinking by locating apparent similarities, you can usually refine that thinking by pursuing significant, though often less obvious, distinctions among the similar things. In Irish studies, for example, scholars characteristically acknowledge the extent to which contemporary Irish culture is the product of colonization. To this extent, Irish culture shares certain traits with other former colonies in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere. But instead of simply demonstrating how Irish culture fits the general pattern of colonialism, these scholars also isolate the ways that Ireland does not fit the model. They focus, for example, on how its close geographical proximity and racial similarity to England, its colonizer, have distinguished the kinds of problems it encounters today from those characteristic of the more generalized model of colonialism. In effect, looking for difference within similarity has led them to locate and analyze the anomalies.
A corollary of the preceding principle is that you should focus on unexpected similarity rather than obvious difference. The fact that in the Bush presidency Republicans differed from Democrats on environmental policy was probably a less promising focal point than their surprising agreement on violating the so-called lockbox policy against tapping Social Security funds to finance government programs. Most readers would expect the political parties to differ on the environment, and a comparison of their positions could lead you to do little more than summarizing. But a surprising similarity, like an unexpected difference, necessarily raises questions for you to pursue: do the parties’ shared positions against the lockbox policy, for example, share the same motives?
Looking for Difference Within Similarity: An Example
Notice how in the following example, taken from an essay on George Orwell’s book on the Spanish Civil War, Homage to Catalonia:, Lauren Artiles notes differences among political parties that shared an essential position.
The forces that united against Franco in favor of the government were ragtag and unlikely; the resistance was made up of a slew of different factions of the political left, anarchists and socialists and communists all fighting together against the threat of a Fascist Spain. As Orwell said of the groups and their various acronyms, “It looked at first sight as though Spain was suffering from a plague of