The thesis -- NUS Sociology Honours

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Subject: The thesis

Author:
Chee Han

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Date Posted: 01:44:46 01/15/02 Tue
Author Host/IP: palo14.pacific.net.sg/192.169.41.46

I think a useful way to pass judgement upon the progress or quality of a thesis, would be ask oneself "Could a journalist have written a better version on the same topic than what I have done in my thesis". If one feels that indeed, one has managed to go beyond the journalistic nature of reports, I believe then, that there shouldn't be any worries.
A couple of important things to note:
1) To seek the stripping of rather than the mere reflection of reality. The social both guides and mystifies; it guides through mystification of alternative vision. The thesis is that challenge to the social, it investigates the excretion of the social, it provides that alternative vision to that of the social. The social reflects, the sociologist strips.
2) To attempt the conceptual precision rather than the descriptive vastness. This is not to undermine ethnographic works. Ethnographic documentation is not only representing what one observes in words. It is the pursuit of acute agonizing intimacy between those very words and what they stand for; and sometimes even what they stand up for.
3) To constantly believe that one is living in a lie. To stubbornly seek to transcend that lie, through hitching a ride on imaginations that assert more than what is present-at-hand. Just like how one hypothesizes if one's spouse is cheating on oneself, one tries to guess beyond the words and appearances of that spouse. The social is the spouse. Am I THE cuckold? How do I find out? What the hell is going on? Something along this line.

And keep it simple.

Regards,

Chee Han.

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