Have to remember my new role

Let me set this up first.  Here's a typical scenario:

In studying and analyzing social inequality, people tend to adopt a critical social theory approach.  This is just a general term to incorporate all sorts of "non-traditional" paradigms, such as feminist theory, marxism,etc etc.  So far so good.  I get that.  A common feature of said theories is that they all reject positivism.

Books and articles that discuss social inequality tend to begin with a whole bunch of statistics which show the reader how bad things are.  You know, how income is unevenly distributed, how women and men have income disparities, etc etc.  You got the picture.

I guess stats sell, as we know.  Give people a bunch of numbers, and they think it's real.  You know, like we are ranked #xyz in this survey, or your GMAT score is in the 99th percentile.  That sort of thing.

So here's Chunski, putting (as usual) his academic reviewer hat on.  WTF!  If your theoretical basis rejects positivism, why are you using statistics to justify your claim?

Those who know me and how I react to muddled thinking will now be expecting very heavy sighs.  Or very loud swearing.  Or, if you were in 416, a big question mark and WTF.

But that's not my role now.  Unfortunately, most profs don't expect or want their undergrads to trash the books and articles designated for the course.

So dear old Chunski is reduced to going through this material hoping to the heavens that there will a question asking him to reflect and analyze the material, rather than just regurgitating it.  Probably not going to happen.

I just hate it when people speak from both sides of their mouth.  You CANNOT have the f**king and eat it too!