This is an exercise for the course "Methodology for Urbanism" at the Urbanism Master Track at the TU Delft. This exercise is based on STAINTON-ROGERS, W. (2006), Logics of Enquiry, in Doing Postgraduate Research , Ed. Stephen Potter, London: Sage. The aim of this exercise is to clarify how different communities of practice conceive knowledge (and relevant knowledge, for that matter), discourses, questions and methodologies to answer those questions.

1. Miss
Lovely Legs
Understanding
Different Logics of
Enquiry
urbanism
SpatialPlanning
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AR2U090 Methodology for Urbanism
Prepared by Roberto Rocco

2. Miss Lovely Legs:
Understanding Different Logis of Enquiry
Exercise for AR2U090 Methodology for Urbanism based on an exercise by STAINTON-ROGERS, W. (2006), Log-
ics of Enquiry, in Doing Postgraduate Research , Ed. Stephen Potter, London: Sage.
In this exercise, you will need to discuss what is possible to deprehend (to see and understand) from an im-
age. Based on what you see, what kinds of knowledge can you formulate?
What are questions that can help us understand this picture and how can we describe what we see in a mean-
inful way?
Look at the picture below and discuss. What can you see? Who are the people in this picture? Where are
they? What is the meaning of the event?
Picture by David Goldblatt available at http://leclownlyrique.wordpress.com/2011/06/19/david-goldblatt/

3. Now read the following texts written about the photography and decide which one comes closest to the
knowledge gained previously? What are other insights you can have by reading these commentaries?
Last night, Charmaine du Preez was crowned
MissLovelyLegsNoksburgfor1974.Charmaine
is a 2nd year student at Sukses secretarial Col-
lege and says her hobbies are reading, watch-
ing films and [going to] the gym. Charmaine
said the she was thrilled that the judges chose
her out of so many deserving competitors and
would try her utmost to live up to everything
expected of her during her reign.
(Staff reporter, Boksburg Times)
Although one does not want to further deni-
grate the participants in such contests, nor as-
cribe personally malign motives to those who
consume those images, the political implica-
tions of such ‘cattle parades’ are inescapable:
women are turned into objects in a male-dom-
inated world. Such practices are the visible
manifestations of an all-pervasive patriarchal
culture.
(Patsy Smith-Collins, International Journal of Fem-
inist Studies)
In this photograph, Goldblatt again explores
the semiotic (and now perhaps even nostalgic?)
possibilities of 1970s suburbia, so fetching-
ly oblivious of the larger political forces play-
ing themselves out in the context of apartheid
South Africa. The careful juxtaposition of the
foregrounded white contestants and the pre-
dominantly black audience plays with the irony
of the white culture as an object of black con-
sumption.
(Mandla Nkosi, Art World)

4. Now discuss in groups:
1. What are the professional activities of the
writers? From which “point of view” do they
see the photograph?
2. Is there a “correct assessment” of the im-
age?
3. Can you describe the different logics of
enquiry playing a role here? (You can think
in terms of different “points of view” and the
knowledge necessary in each community of
practice).
4. What are relevant questions being asked by
the different writers? Write at least one ques-
tion that is being answered by the reporter,
the feminist and the art critic.
Notes:
In this exercise, we try to demonstrate that
logics of enquiry do no depend only on the
OBJECT being analysed. They depend on the
QUESTIONS one is asking about the object
and the type of knowledge one is seeking to
build.
In the first example, a reporter gives a factual
account of the event. She writes about facts
that can be verified and enriches the story by
including a personal statement from the win-
ner of the contest. It is difficult to say that
the reporter is “neutral”, however, because
the implicit position of the reporter is that
such kind of contest is positive and glamor-
ous, an opinion that others would strongly
oppose.
In the second example, the feminist writes
a strong piece about how such contests de-
grade and objectify women. The feminist is
interested in the political meaning of such
contests and in what they represent for the
emancipation of women. The position here
is that such contests are “cattle parades” and
belittles their participants.
In the third example, the art critic analyses
the image from an aesthetic point of view
and situates the image in its political and
social context, the South African Apartheid.
There is a discussion about the aesthetic
merits of the 1970s suburb. He sarcastical-
ly observes that white women seem to have
become the object of consumption of black
viewers, who are politically and economically
oppressed.
The point of this exercise is to demonstrate
that different logics of enquiry stem from
different communities of practice building
knowledge that is relevant for them and for
their audiences.
But another important point we want to
make is that knowledge produced by dif-
ferent communities of practice needs to be
communicated across communities and
audiences. Therefore, knowledge needs to
be clearly formulated and articulated in a
way that is understandable by others outside
one’s community. This means that concepts
and ideas must be explained in an accessible
language. Finally, knowledge must be validat-
ed across communities; otherwise one might
suffer from the “Humpty Dumpty syndrome”.
In Lewis Carroll’s book Through the Look-
ing-Glass (1872), Humpty-Dumpty tells a
mystified and perplexed Alice “When I use
a word, it means just what I choose it to
mean—neither more nor less”.
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