Discovering Alliances

My lecturer in my Academic Discourse Writing module told us about alliances, how you can refer the to reference section and know where an author stood on matters, and which academic discourse community he or she belonged to.

Today, I just spotted an alliance, in the most indirect of manners. *Sigh* I think these people have been citing one another, and I only just noticed.

I have a favourite book called Writing Up Qualitative Research by Harry F. Wolcott. I so love his writing that I bought two other of his books. They have equally interesting ideas, but not written in as easy a style as my favourite book. Okay, on the sideline, I somehow stumbled upon the book I talked about in my previous post by Tom Schram. I must have stumbled upon his book in the library. And he cites Harry F. Wolcott! No big deal, as Wolcott is quite a big shot. I happen to really like Tom Schram's writing and was upset for him that he's not as popular, because I think he ought to be, having written that very interesting book. I think anyone who can explain qualitative research that well, and make me fascinated, should be more famous, i.e., well-read! I really expected him to have multiple editions of his book, especially since edition 2 was published in 2006. That was 10 years ago! This book deserves to be updated and republished!

Okay, so I went to refer to Harry F. Wolcott's book because Tom Schram kept referring to him, and... Lo and behold, so many similar ideas... I was getting worried, thinking about plagiarism and stuff like that... Until, from the book The Art of Fieldwork, I realized Tom Schram was Harry F. Wolcott's former student and later on colleague... NO WONDER they had such similar ideas!

And so... I spotted an alliance! I... happen to like very much this alliance. :)