Philosophical Paradigms in Social Research

 Martyn Hammersley

The Open University

UK

University of Ghent, October 2013

Outline

1. What are philosophical paradigms and why should we give them attention?

2. Four paradigms and the philosophical assumptions they involve.

3. Competing practical assumptions.

4. Conflicting ontological assumptions.

5. Discrepant epistemological assumptions.

6. The issue of assessing research.

7. Navigating the field.

Why do we need philosophy?1. There are philosophical assumptions built

into:

a. the purposes of our research;

b. the questions we address, and

c. the methods we employ.

Some of these assumptions may lead us astray.

2. In writing up our research we need to locate it in relation to the range of conflicting approaches that is currently to be found in the field of social research.

Beware!• Philosophy can damage your health:

‘If the Sun and Moon should ever doubt, they'd immediately go out’

William Blake ‘Auguries of Innocence’

• And there is a great deal of erroneous and misleading philosophical discussion in the methodological literature concerned with the social sciences today.

[For some sources and guidance, see Hammersley 2012.]

How much philosophy do we need as social researchers?

No simple answer: some philosophical reflection on assumptions is surely desirable, but it is not possible to engage in ‘full philosophical reflection’. And trying to do this would lead us into deep, intractable problems.

Depends upon what is sufficient in doing your work, and on what you need to do in defending your work to relevant audiences.

Types of philosophical assumption

• Practical: what is the purpose and intended product of research?

• Ontological: what is the nature of social phenomena, or of particular types of social phenomena?

• Epistemological: how can social phenomena, of various kinds, be understood?

The concept of paradigm

The relevant sense of this term was developed by Thomas Kuhn (1970). However, it has come to be used by social scientists in ways that diverge from its role in Kuhn’s account of the development of the natural sciences.

It has come to mean a particular set of philosophical assumptions that provide a framework for research.

Four philosophical paradigms

Positivism Interpretivism

Constructionism Critical research

These are by no means the only labels used to identify approaches within social science, nor are they employed consistently.

Moreover, they refer to particular lines of thinking, to which the work of particular researchers will only approximate.

And what they each refer to is internally diverse.

Key positivist assumptions

• It must be possible to observe or elicit the phenomena to be investigated in a standardised and replicable way.

• These phenomena should be counted or measured to allow quantitative analysis.

• The task is to identify causal laws, of a deterministic or probabilistic kind.

• Hypotheses about such laws can be tested by applying experimental or statistical control to relevant variables.

Key interpretivist assumptions

• It is not possible directly to observe human social actions and the meanings that inform them: psycho-cultural interpretation is required which relies upon learning a culture.

• The social world involves processes that evolve and change, so the task is to document these processes e.g. through ‘thick description’

• The immediate focus must be upon the actions of particular people in particular places at particular times, but studying these may enable us to draw more general conclusions.

Key constructionist assumptions• The social world does not consist of real

phenomena that have stable characteristics and relationships, which can be documented.

• Rather, social phenomena owe their existence and character to constitutive processes (such as discursive practices) that generate them.

• Some constructionists seek to observe and document these processes in the world.

• Others focus on how research is itself a constitutive process, effectively fabricating the objects it studies.

‘Critical’ researchThe aim is not just to understand the world but to

change it: ‘the aim […] is better understanding of how societies work [to] produce both beneficial and detrimental effects, and of how [bad effects] can be mitigated if not eliminated’ (Fairclough 2003:202-3)

The task is to provide documentary evidence about inequality and oppression, and to evaluate and challenge current arrangements.

Ideally at least, research should directly serve political movements that are aimed at eliminating inequality or oppression.

Questions to ask about typologies1. Do the types rely upon the same set of underlying

dimensions of variation?

2. Do they conceptualise these dimensions in the same way?

3. Does each type give these dimensions the same relative priority as the others do?

4. Are the types exhaustive of the field they claim to cover?

a. Does the typology cover all of the relevant dimensions of variation?

b. Does it include types representing all of the positions on those dimensions?

Practical assumptionsIs the goal:

• To produce factual knowledge.

• To produce evaluations and/or practical recommendations – for example by documenting ‘what’s wrong’ or ‘what works’.

• To defend an institution or practice or to bring about change of some kind, to ‘give voice to some marginalised group, or otherwise to serve a form of practice, political, governmental, organisational or occupational.

‘Value-neutral’ social scienceThe task of social science is solely to produce

value-relevant factual knowledge, not evaluations and prescriptions.

It is necessary to minimise the risk of the researcher’s value-commitments, along with presuppositions associated with these, leading to erroneous factual conclusions.

So, from this point of view, there should be no claim that social science can provide a practical perspective on the world, diagnosing what is wrong or what should be done.

Normative social scienceIt is impossible to describe and explain the

social world in a factual way without engaging in evaluation through the concepts employed.

For example the sociology of art necessarily involves assumptions about what art is, the sociology of education about what education is. Describing in non-evaluative terms what happened, say, in concentration camps or in torture sessions would imply their legitimacy.

Social science must be explicitly geared to normative ideals, producing evaluations and perhaps also policy recommendations.

Activist social science

The purpose of research is not only to document or understand the social world, or even just to produce evaluations and recommendations. It should play a direct role in serving, defending or changing social arrangements, policies, and practices. Indeed, research affects these anyway, and should be directed towards the correct political or practical goals.

This means that it must be specifically designed to serve some form of practice, political, occupational, organisational, or charitable.

Conflicting ontological assumptions

• Objects are governed by causal laws• Social actions are produced by people’s

perceptions, interpretations, intentions and plans

• Phenomena are generated by constitutive practices, for example by discursive or rhetorical strategies of various kinds

Epistemological assumptionsMust we rely upon:

• Observational data, keeping inferences from these to a minimum (behaviourist psychology, conversation analysis);

• Standardised procedures of elicitation and statistical generalisation (survey research);

• Comparative analysis of cases (AI, QCA);

• Empathic understanding and/or cultural interpretation (much qualitative research);

• Interventions in situations and observation of the effects (experiments, action research)

An Example: NatCen on the August 2011 Riots in England

1. Purpose and intended product?

2. What are the phenomena being investigated and what character are they assumed to have?

3. What methods were used and what sorts of inferences were made from data to conclusions?

4. On what ontological and epistemological assumptions did this NatCen study rely?

Range of possible political opinions

1. There was no genuine problem that rioters were reacting against: they were irrational and irresponsible.

2. Their behaviour was a product of a moral vacuum in society.

3. They were reacting against poverty and inequality but in an expressive and ineffective way

4. They were the first stirrings of a counter-hegemonic, revolutionary movement.

Actual range of political positions‘people allowed to feel the world owes them something,

that their rights outweigh their responsibilities…’ (Cameron 2011)

‘This was not a rebellion […] of famished and impoverished people or an oppressed ethnic or religious minority – but a mutiny of defective and disqualified consumers…’ (Bauman 2011)

‘The UK is deeply economically divided and severe and entrenched poverty exists…’ (Shildrick 2011)

‘In Marxist terms [this was not] the emergence of the revolutionary subject; they fit much better the Hegelian notion of the “rabble” who can express their discontent only through “irrational” outbursts of destructive violence’ (Žižek 2011)

Implications for research

Should researchers adopt one or other of these political positions in carrying out their research?

Should researchers be neutral towards these positions in how they do their work?

Is this possible?

The sociologist as spy ‘Sociologists stand guard in the garrison and

report to their masters on the movements of the occupied populace. The more adventurous […] don the disguise of the people and go out to mix with the peasants in the "field", returning with books and articles that break the protective secrecy in which a subjugated population wraps itself, and make it more accessible to manipulation and control./ The sociologist […] is precisely a kind of spy’ (Nicolaus 1968).

Key aims

‘The core question we sought to answer was […]: “Why did young people get involved in the riots?” To address this, the report describes:

- what occurred in five affected areas and two areas unaffected by rioting?

- who was involved in the riots?

- why and how young people got involved’? (Morrell et al 2011:??)

More detailed objectivesThe research had five key objectives:

‘To understand the motives of young people who were involved in the riots.

To gather the perspectives of young people from affected areas who chose not to get involved.

To elicit the voices of other community members – residents, parents, business owners and community stakeholders – to capture their views about what led to the riots and why young people became involved.

To engage young people in areas unaffected by the riots to get their perspectives on why rioting did not break out in their areas

To bring these different perspectives together in a summary of the key factors triggering and underpinning involvement in the riots, supported by evidence from the research encounters.’

The case of interviewsInterviews are used as a source of:• witness accounts about events and settings in

the social world. • self-analyses by informants. • indirect evidence about informants’ orientations. • evidence about the constructional or discursive

work engaged in by informants (and perhaps also by the interviewer) through which interview data are produced.

The ‘radical critique’ of interviews• Rejection of the idea that what people say

somehow represents, or simply derives from, what goes on inside their heads.

• Scepticism about the idea that accounts can ever represent reality at all, whether this is ‘external’ or ‘internal’ reality.

• Severe methodological caution.

• A person's responses in interviews are so heavily shaped by the context that reliable inferences about the validity of the information they provide or about their attitudes and behaviour in other situations are impossible.

The issue of assessing research

Assessment depends upon practical, ontological, and epistemological assumptions.

There are conflicting sets of criteria for assessing research design and research practice.

Practical judgment as the bedrock.

Navigating the field

Dealing with philosophical assumptions is not just about finding the best way to carry out your research.

It is also about locating your work within the field to which it is designed to contribute, and being able to defend what you have done to audiences who may not share your assumptions.

Bibliography

Bauman, Z. (2011b) ‘The London Riots – On Consumerism coming Home to Roost’ Social Europe Journal. Available at: http://www.social-europe.eu/2011/08/the-london-riots-on-consumerism-coming-home-to-roost/

Cameron, D. (10 Aug 2011) ‘UK riots: David Cameron's statement in full’, Daily Telegraph. Available at (accessed 20.6.12): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8693134/UK-riots-David-Camerons-statement-in-full.html.

Fairclough, N. (2003) Analysing Discourse, London, Routledge.Hammersley, M. (1995) The Politics of Social Research, London, Sage.Hammersley, M. (2012) ‘Methodological paradigms in educational research’. Available at:

http://www.bera.ac.uk/resources/methodological-paradigms-educational-researchHammersley, M. (2013) What is Qualitative Research? London, Bloomsbury Academic.Kuhn, T. (1970) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago, University of Chicago PressMies, M. (1983) ‘Towards a methodology for feminist research’. In G. Bowles & R. Duelli Klein

(Eds) Theories of women's studies (pp.117-140). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul..Morrell, G., Scott, S., McNeish, D. and Webster, S. (2011) The August Riots in England.

Understanding the involvement of young people. Prepared for the Cabinet Office, UK Government, London: NatCen.

Nicolaus, M. (1968) Fat-Cat Sociology: Remarks at The American Sociological Association Convention, Boston. Available at: http://www.colorado.edu/Sociology/gimenez/fatcat.html

Shildrick, T. (2011) ‘The riots: poverty cannot be ignored’, BSA blog: http://tinyurl.com/672delx/ Žižek, S. (2011) ‘Shoplifters of the World Unite’, London Review of Books, 19th August 2011.

Available at (accessed 23.5.13): http://www.lrb.co.uk/2011/08/19/slavoj-zizek/shoplifters-of-the-world-unite