Understanding Research

Session 5: Theory and Research

This handout provides a very brief, very schematic overview of some of the contrasting
epistemological positions that inform social research. Epistemology is the philosophical
study of what it is possible to know.

Often people think that research is about finding things out, producing knowledge or getting
closer to the truth. However, the evidence or data we use in research is always limited, and it
always needs to be interpreted by a human being. Each individual researcher needs to decide
what evidence they think may help them to understand the issues and problems they are
interested in. They then need to decide what processes of interpretation they can use to make
sense of that evidence. They also need to work out a question that can be answered using the
evidence and methods of interpretation they have chosen

 There are lots of different kinds of evidence/data we might use.

 There are lots of different ways we might analyse the evidence/data once we have
collected it.
 There are lots of different questions we can ask about any one topic or issue.

When we choose between the different possible options we are also in some way talking
about epistemology – i.e. what we think counts as knowledge.

I don’t want to talk too much about epistemology in this session - because you don’t need to
read or talk directly about epistemology for your UR assignment or for your dissertation.
However, it can be useful to think briefly about some broad differences in the way
philosophers and social theorists have understood the problem of knowledge as background
for your own reading and thinking.

So, in the first half of this session I’m going to set out three different broad philosophical
positions that can be associated with different approaches to thinking about knowledge in
research.

 Philosophical positions associated with ‘positivist’ methodologies

 Philosophical positions associated with ‘interpretivist’ methodologies
 Philosophical positions that question the unity of the knower (or human subject)

One main point that it is helpful to understand is that a key difference in these positions is
whether they think the human subject (the knower) can stand outside the world and observe
it, to create objective knowledge; or whether they think that the human subject is always tied
into the world so it is difficult or impossible to formulate objective questions, to collect data
that is completely unaffected by the social conditions surrounding it, or to analyse the data
without bringing the social position of the researcher into the process.

Below is my argument about a range of theoretical positions. These positions could be

presented or categorized in many different ways. N.b. In the appendix at the end of this
handout you will find extracts from philosophical writings on these positions – Here for your
reference.
1. Philosophical positions associated with ‘positivist’ methodologies
Positivist methodologies generally aim at universalistic, objective knowledge. They tend to
assume it is possible to develop methods that make it possible for the human subject to stand
outside the object of knowledge. Positivist methodologies draw on two contrasting
philosophical ideas about what it is possible to know:

 Empiricism: we gain knowledge through our senses; our direct sensory experience of
the world are more certain than imaginary, confused and subjective systems of
thought
 Rationalism: knowledge is produced through processes of reason; the application of
reason can explain uncertain, insecure, subjective sensory experiences

Philosophers in each school of thought criticise the way the other is based on uncertainty –
information gathered through our senses is always uncertain; but our processes of reason are
also uncertain (see Hume and Descartes quotations in appendix of this handout). Positivism
acknowledges uncertainty, but thinks that it is possible to build methodologies that help us to
confirm sensory and rational processes to gain knowledge of the social world.

Despite many critiques of its claims to objectivity, positivist methodology continues to be

important in social research, as seen in the common use of surveys, experiments and
randomised controlled trials. Post-positivist approaches have taken the critiques into account.

2. Philosophical positions associated with ‘interpretivist’ or ‘subjectivist’ methodologies

Generally interpretivist philosophies foreground the difficulty of developing ‘objective’
knowledge and the difficulty or impossibility of the researcher constructing a position that is
outside or separate from the object of knowledge. For example:

 Phenomenology: The focus of phenomenology is the shifting structures of

consciousness, i.e. our subjectively positioned conscious awareness of the objective
world. From a phenomenological perspective, we gain knowledge through detailed
examination of our subjective experience – and we can understand the world by first
understanding our subjective, sensory perception, or consciousness, which can then
give us insights into the objective phenomena of the material world.
 Hermeneutics: A methodology for interpreting the meaning of texts. It foregrounds
the way the production and interpretation of any text is produced from a particular
point of view, a particular time and a particular place. It suggests that all attempts to
‘describe’ the world are context bound, constructed within, for example, culture or
language.
 Semiotics: The study of the different signifying resources (e.g. language, sound,
colour, space, movement) deployed in the production of meaning (e.g. speech, text or
digital media).

These approaches explore the relation between the individual human subject, meaningful
experience or the production and interpretation of meaning, and an objective reality. These
ideas are closely interrelated, and any one theorist or researcher may combine aspects of each
of these perspectives on knowledge and interpretation.

A widely used approach combining some of these ideas is Interpretive Phenomenological

Analysis (IPA) (see http://www.ipa.bbk.ac.uk/).
Phenomenological and hermeneutic philosophies foreground the difficulty or impossibility of
separating out the human subject from their cultural and linguistic context. However, they
tend to maintain a notion of a unified human subject. Reflexivity, the researcher’s reflection
on the way their own experience might influence the research process, becomes significant
within these approaches, as a means of coming closer to something like ‘truth’ or
‘knowledge’.

3. Theoretical positions/methodological approaches that question the unity of the knower

These philosophies put into question the very idea that human beings can create a secure
foundation for knowledge. They also question the idea of a natural or universal essence to
human subjectivity. They focus on the way the human subject is always construcuted within
language/culture/discourse/society. This puts into doubt the claims of interpretive
approaches, which aim towards more objective knowledge based on the human subject’s
ability to reason or abstract from their context.

 Structuralism: The human subject is wholly constituted in material, social, cultural

and linguistic structures. We are subject to, or constructed within, these structures,
and this puts into question the idea of a knower who can be distinguished from the
objects in the world they want to understand or know.
 Post structuralism: Post structuralism accepts structuralism’s account of the subject
as constituted in discourse or language, but rejects its understanding of language or
discourse as an overarching totality or a unified structure. Post structuralism
foregrounds the multiplicity of competing and contradictory languages or discourses
that constitute the human subject.
 Deconstruction: The philosophy of deconstruction suggests that any attempt to
construct one finalist account of knowledge will in some way repeat the assumptions
that it rejects – deconstruction is an approach to textual interpretation that reveals the
way texts repeat modes of thought that they argue against. Deconstruction
foregrounds the way it is not just the subject that is formed from the social system that
precedes it, but knowledge is also formed from the linguistic and cultural heritage that
leaves traces or ghosts within social texts.

These philosophies foreground the dangers of authoritative knowledge. They point to the way
that knowledge is used to control other social beings, often from a position of power. They
are very sceptical of idealistic understandings of professional knowledge as something
unproblematic or good.

Within these approaches, reflexivity is more about recognizing the limits of our
understanding, working towards an acknowledgement of the limits and dangers of
knowledge, rather than about approaching something that we might call ‘truth’.

APPENDIX

Conceptions of the subject and relation between subject and world - Some short extracts
from philosophers and social theorists
Empiricism
Hume, D (1748) An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Section 2: ‘Of the origin of ideas’
10. Every one will readily allow, that there is a considerable difference between the
perceptions of the mind, when a man feels the pain of excessive heat, or the pleasure of
moderate warmth, and when he afterwards recalls to his memory this sensation, or anticipates
it by his imagination. These faculties may mimic or copy the perceptions of the senses; but
they never can entirely reach the force and vivacity of the original sentiment. The utmost we
say of them, even when they operate with greatest vigour, is, that they represent their object
in so lively a manner, that we could almost say we feel or see it: But, except the mind be
disordered by disease or madness, they never can arrive at such a pitch of vivacity, as to
render these perceptions altogether undistinguishable. All the colours of poetry, however
splendid, can never paint natural objects in such a manner as to make the description be taken
for a real landskip. The most lively thought is still inferior to the dullest sensation. […]
https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/747/hume.pdf

Rationalism
Descartes, R. Meditation I ‘Of the things which may be brought within the sphere of the
doubtful’
http://www.vahidnab.com/med.pdf

All that up to the present time I have accepted as most true and certain I have learned either
from the senses or through the senses; but it is sometimes proved to me that these senses are
deceptive, and it is wiser not to trust entirely to anything by which we have once been
deceived.

But it may be that although the senses sometimes deceive us concerning things which are
hardly perceptible, or very far away, there are yet many others to be met with as to which we
cannot reasonably have any doubt, although we recognise them by their means. For example,
there is the fact that I am here, seated by the fire, attired in a dressing gown, having this paper
in my hands and other similar matters. And how could I deny that these hands and this body
are mine, were it not perhaps that I compare myself to certain persons, devoid of sense,
whose cerebella are so troubled and clouded by the violent vapours of black bile, that they
constantly assure us that they think they are kings when they are really quite poor, or that
they are clothed in purple when they are really without covering, or who imagine that they
have an earthenware head or are nothing but pumpkins or are made of glass. But they are
mad, and I should not be any the less insane were I to follow examples so extravagant.

At the same time I must remember that I am a man, and that consequently I am in the habit of
sleeping, and in my dreams representing to myself the same things or sometimes even less
probable things, than do those who are insane in their waking moments. How often has it
happened to me that in the night I dreamt that I found myself in this particular place, that I
was dressed and seated near the fire, whilst in reality I was lying undressed in bed! At this
moment it does indeed seem to me that it is with eyes awake that I am looking at this paper;
that this head which I move is not asleep, that it is deliberately and of set purpose that I
extend my hand and perceive it; what happens in sleep does not appear so clear nor so
distinct as does all this. But in thinking over this I remind myself that on many occasions I
have in sleep been deceived by similar illusions, and in dwelling carefully on this reflection I
see so manifestly that there are no certain indications by which we may clearly distinguish
wakefulness from sleep that I am lost in astonishment. And my astonishment is such that it is
almost capable of persuading me that I now dream.

Positivism
“Habermas (1972) shows that Comte’s varied usages of the term ‘positive’ can be translated
into a set of methodological rules which may be summarised as follows:
1. ‘all knowledge has to prove itself through the sense certainty of systematic observation that
secures intersubjectivity.’
2. ‘Methodological certainty is just as important as sense certainty … the reliability of the
scientific knowledge is guaranteed by unity of method.’
3. ‘The exactitude of our knowledge is guaranteed only by the formally cogent construction
of theories that allow the deduction of lawlike hypotheses.’
4. ‘Scientific cognition must be technically utilizable … Science makes possible technical
control over processes of both nature and society … the power of control over nature and
society can be multiplied only by following rationalist principles – not through the blind
expansion of empirical research, but through the development and the unification of theories.’
5. ‘our knowledge is in principle unfinished and relative, in accordance with the “relative
nature of the positive spirit”’.” [74-77]
Adorno, T. W., Albert, H., Dahrendorf, R., Habermas, J., Pilot, H. and Popper, K. R. (1976).
The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology. London: Heinemann.David Frisby: Introduction
to the English translation. (xi-xii)

Subjectivism/phenomenology
a. relation between the human subject, the body and space
Our body is not in space like things; it inhabits or haunts space. It applies itself to space like a
hand to an instrument, and when we wish to move about we do not move the body as we
move an object. We transport it without instruments… since it is ours and because through it
we have access to space … We find that perceived things, unlike geometrical objects, are not
bounded entities whose laws of construction we possess a priori, but that they are open,
inexhaustible systems which we recognize … although we are never able, in principle, to
explore them entirely…
(Merleau Ponty, quoted, p. 90 in Grosz, 1994, Volatile Bodies)

b. relation between human consciousness, possibility and action

It is necessary to reverse the common opinion and acknowledge that it is not the harshness of
a situation or the sufferings it imposes that lead people to conceive of another state of affairs
in which things would be better for everybody. It is on the day that we are able to conceive of
another state of affairs, that a new light is cast on our trouble and our suffering and we decide
that they are unbearable.
(Sartre, quoted p. 42 in Bourdieu, 1990, The Logic of Practice)

Between ‘structure and agency’ or ‘subjectivism and structuralism’

Pierre Bourdieu
Objectivism constitutes the social world as a spectacle offered to an observer who takes up a
‘point of view’ on the action and who, putting into the object the principles of his relation to
the object, proceeds as if it were intended solely for knowledge and as if all the interactions
within it were purely symbolic exchanges. This viewpoint is the one taken from high
positions in the social structure…
(p. 52 in Bourdieu, 1990, The Logic of Practice)

Jenkins, R. (2002). Pierre Bourdieu. (Revised ed.). London: Routledge.

‘Bourdieu suggests a means … for avoiding the false choice between the unreal intimacy of a
subjectivist position – an essentially descriptive model of the social world as it is believed to
be experienced – or the equally misleading superiority of objectivism … On the one hand,
there is the desire for explanatory pattern and order in the recognition that people have only
an imperfect knowledge and understanding of the world and their place in it. Hence the need
for a view from ‘above’. On the other hand, there is the importance and value of what people
know as a resource for social science and the undefined human capacity for making life up,
from moment to moment. Hence the need for a view from ‘below’. In terms of Bourdieu’s
intellectual history there is, on one side structuralism (objectivism) and, on the other,
existentialism (subjectivism).’ (49)

Structuralism / Poststructuralism
… [T]here is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge’
(p. 27, in Foucault, 1977, Discipline and Punish)
Additional extract: ‘The Role of Theory in Positivism’

The obstetrician, Ignaz Semmelweis (1818-1865), worked in a Viennese hospital where

women knew that they were more likely to die in the maternity ward staff by doctors (around
16 percent), than in the one staffed by midwives (around two percent). The two wards
opened for admission on alternative days, and many women gave birth in the street to avoid
being admitted to the first ward. Semmelweis researched why the second ward was safer,
even for women who stayed there after a birth in the street. For years he kept detailed
records and tested every possible variable; his methods included a small controlled clinical
trial. He concluded that puerperal fever, a septicaemia/blood infection, was somehow spread
by doctors’ unwashed hands, often stained with putrid matter from the autopsy rooms. When
he introduced the routine washing of hands and equipment in chlorinated line, maternal
mortality rates fell almost to zero. Semmelweiss’s work was rejected, opposed or ignored by
obstetricians internationally and, despairing, he died in a mental asylum of septicaemia.
(De Costa 2002 eMJA, The Medical Journal of Australia, 177 (11/12), 668-671)

The second theme concerns the power of theory and the limits of research methods.
Semmelweis applied respected research methods with impressive results and his colleagues
were avowed positivists, but they refused to accept his conclusions. They could not
recognise an underlying mechanism, logic or theory that might explain and validate his
findings. Still influenced by Galen (circa 131-217 CE) with his medical theories of the
internal rebalancing of the four humours in each unique patient, and vague notions of bad air
that are echoed in ‘malaria’, they had no theory or methodology of germs or of living micro-
organisms that could transfer, invade and multiply. Joseph Lister succeeded with his anti-
sepsis regime so soon after Semmelweis had failed because theories of germs and cleanliness
had become respectable, albeit before they were fully understood.

Simmelweis and Lister illustrate how new paradigms, patterns or frameworks of thinking
have to be recognised and accepted, and theories have to change, before new knowledge can
be recognized. … Semmelweis’s meticulous research evidence and methods were necessary
but not sufficient to change understanding, and they showed the essential power of theory and
makes sense of research and its connection to practice. Whereas the scientific theories
explain the underlying mechanisms of the findings, theories are also often moral and
political. Simmelweis’s colleagues could not accept that, as respectable, professional,
healing men, they were the sources of disease

Alderson, P. (2013). Childhoods Real and Imagined. Vol. 1, An introduction to critical

realism and childhood studies. London: Routledge. (p.5)