University of Illinois at Chicago

Emeritus, Communication

President of the Society for Conceptual Logistics in Communication Research (SCLCR)

About

My research area is "conceptual logistics" 

  Logistics is usually associated with the maintenance of physical resources, e.g., “handling an operation that involves providing labor and materials as needed” (Wordnet).  Over time it has developed into “the science of planning and implementing the acquisition and use of the resources necessary to sustain the operation of a system”
  This conception of logistics can be applied to terminologies used in research where the "resources" are concepts.  Translated into the context of research, conceptual logistics is: the study of how conceptual frameworks (problematics) are developed, how they are applied to the situations under investigation, how they are adjusted to it so that they more accurately and heuristically describe the problem in order to facilitate its solution within the parameters of a specific research domain.  This process usually remains implicit in discussions of research methodologies and the actual experiences encountered by researchers are smoothed over so that the research will appear unflawed.

Prior to this research project, I completed a project on CONFIGURING: THE ART OF UNDERSTANDING PERSONS UNLIKE US.