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  • Interpretivism, social constructionism and phenomenology

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    Definitions

    Ontology—the branch of metaphysics that investigates the nature of being and the first principles or categories involved (The Macquarie Dictionary 1991).

    Idealism—the metaphysical view that all reality consists of mind and its ideas.

    Subjectivism—the view that meaning is imposed on the world by the subject independently of the object.

    Objectivism—the view that things are infused with meaning that exist independently of conscious experience (Crotty, 1998:5). 

    Relativism—the rejection of the view that there are universal truths about the world based on its essential characteristics. There are only interpretations of the world.

    Self-reflexivity—the view that knowledge relates to the identity of the subject that produces it.

    Pragmatism—the philosophy that takes directed action as the starting point for theory, and understands experience as a transaction between the organism and the environment that constitutes both the subject and the object of knowledge.  

    Social constructionism—'the view that all knowledge, and therefore all meaningful reality as such, is contingent upon human practices, being constructed in and out of interaction between human beings and their world, and developed and transmitted within an essentially social context' (Crotty, 1998:42). 

    Constructivism—(in education) the view that knowledge is constructed in the human being when information comes into contact with existing knowledge that had been developed by experiences (Wikipedia, 2013).

    Introduction

    In the topic on classical social theory we saw that the positivists Marx and Durkheim saw empirical evidence as a manifestation of underpinning laws similar to those operative within the natural world. They argued that these laws could explain and predict the social form in the same way that scientists predict and explain the natural world. For example, Durkheim read suicide data to theorise about the causal relations between levels of social integration and religiosity, and access to education and social mobility.

    In the last topic we saw that logical positivists had a different, but equally scientific approach to understanding society, asserting that only theoretical statements tied to objective observations can count as valid knowledge. Positivists like Marx and Durkheim aimed to explain the underpinning forces that shape the social form, while logical positivists aimed to ensure that theories about society were drawn purely on the basis of observable evidence. We also learned about realism, a philosophical stance like positivism which reads empirical data as evidence of underpinning social processes or structures. All three approaches seek to observe society, social phenomenon and individual behaviour from a scientifically detached distance, from 'the outside', or objectively, as it were. The social scientist in these approaches attempts to understand the forces, structures or processes that regulate the social world, a social phenomenon, or human behaviour. The aim of logical positivists and those influenced by Popper's critique of logical positivism was to test the accuracy of theories about possible causal relations that explain the social world and human behaviour.

    Interpretivism and social constructionism are often referred to as 'interpretive', although there are differences between them. Interpretivism and social constructionism revolve around the observation that human beings possess understandings of society, and actively create society and culture based on these understandings. Interpretivism and social constructionism aim to understand the way people make meaning, bringing a different emphasis upon empathic understanding of cultural context, for interpretivism, and upon the mediation of language and social interaction, for social constructionism.

    Phenomenology agrees with both that meaning is culturally given, but rather than aim to understand interpretation, phenomenology aims to get beyond culture to understand phenomena as they are directly experienced. The philosophical assumptions underpinning phenomenology are similar in many ways to the philosophy we will examine in the next topic on Critical theory.

    What makes all the approaches we will look at in this topic distinctive compared to positivism, logical positivism and realism is their focus on human beings as sources of social and cultural knowledge, and the way that human beings engage in, understand, and shape culture and social phenomenon. This leads to a methodological approach in which human interpretation and experience is placed at the centre of analysis. It is an analysis of society and of human experience from 'the inside out'.

    Interpretivism

    From Hughes, J and Sharrock, W 1997, The Philosophy of social research, 3rd edn, Pearson Longman, London, chapter 5, Cambridge dictionary of philosophy: second edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

    An interpretive approach in the social sciences grows out of the idea that the social world is ontologically different from the natural world, and/or that the social world requires specific methodological tools to be understood. This is outlined below with reference to the ideas of Dilthey, Rickert and Weber. For these thinkers, human interpretations are not subjective irrelevancies that must be screened off in order to observe phenomena and behaviour objectively (as for positivism, logical positivism and realism); human interpretations become critically important in understanding history and society.

    Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911)

    1. Wilhelm Dilthey was a German philosopher and historian deeply familiar with and influenced by the work of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804).
    2. He sought to establish a sound methodological foundation for the 'human sciences' that was distinct from, but equally as scientific as that used in the natural sciences.
    3. Dilthey argued that human phenomena, like institutions, laws, values, morals, literature, government, which do not exist outside of or before human society, and which are objectifications of the human mind, are not therefore like material things.
    4. Social phenomenon, unlike natural phenomenon, have a symbolic character, they express the features attributed to them by the human mind.  
    5. Because the social sciences deal with a different kind of phenomenon from the natural sciences, they require a distinctive methodology.
    6. Dilthey saw that the natural sciences attempt to explain natural phenomenon in terms of cause and effect, but that human consciousness is not determined by natural laws.
    7. Human thought and behaviour is shaped by the meanings attributed to it within a particular culture, at a given moment in time.
    8. The world is not simply observed, our relationship to the world and its meaning is socially mediated.
    9. In the human sciences there is a need to understand the typical structures of life given by experience as it is made meaningful by human beings within specific social contexts.
    10. Consciousness plays an active role in knowing; human beings are active meaning makers.
    11. Understanding requires not just rationality, but also intuition, creativity, and imagination.

    Heinrich Rickert (1863–1936)

    1. Rickert rejected Dilthey’s view that the world is made up of ontologically distinctive phenomenon, those belonging to the natural world and natural laws, and those belonging to culture and human experience.  
    2. For Rickert, reality is not divided into separate natural and cultural phenomenon. 
    3. All knowledge, whether natural or cultural, comes to us through the mind. We can never know things as they are outside of human consciousness, but only as they are constructed.
    4. Human beings select and abstract certain 'facts' from phenomenon according to given sets of interests.
    5. Rickert argues we need specific methods to understand the social world not because it is fundamentally different in kind, but because the social sciences aim to understand distinct instances, not general laws as for the sciences.
    6. The social sciences aim to understand the different historical and social elements that make up a significant phenomenon.
    7. So knowledge about society and human beings is not different from knowledge about natural phenomena, but the social sciences have different inquiries than the natural sciences, and the study of society requires a different method than the study of nature.

    Max Weber (1864–1920)

    1. Weber agreed with Rickert that there is no ontological difference betwen natural and social phenomenon, and that social science methodology is different from natural science primarily because it is interested in distinct cases as opposed to general explanations.
    2. However, unlike Rickert, Weber wanted to show that the social sciences could meet the standards of rigour and objectivity typically only associated with the natural sciences. 
    3. For Weber, both the social and natural sciences reach theory through concepts, but the natural and social sciences have different purposes.
    4. The natural sciences seek universal-general concepts or laws, but the social sciences seek to understand subjectively meaningful phenomena, and their studies are driven by cultural values.
    5. Verstehen, or reconstructions of the subjective experience of social actors, is the distinctive method of inquiry for the social sciences.
    6. In order to enable a scientific study of subjectively meaningful cultural conditions, Weber proposed two methodological principles: value neutrality and ‘ideal types’.
    7. Weber argued that social scientists can maintain value neutrality by refusing to claim that their value judgements are scientific truths.
    8. Social scientists can offer objective representations of the social world by seeking to identify ideal types, or abstractions (idea-concepts, like the protestant ethic) that simplify and exaggerate social phenomenon in logical patterns.
    9. Ideal types are not valid because they correspond with social reality perfectly, or because they never change.
    10. Ideal types are valid because they are grounded in rigorous empirical observation of the social world.
    11. All phenomena are caused by antecedent events, and while social phenomenon cannot be understood in terms of all-embracing laws, we can nevertheless distinguish within the complexity of the social form relations between antecedents and consequences and observed phenomenon.
    12. Antecedents and causes of social phenomenon can be discerned via this method, however the explanations offered are probabilistic, not deterministic.

    Interpretive objections to logical positivism

    In the last topic we learned about the logical positivists insistence that human mental states be captured through observations of outward bodily displays, or via questionnaires, attitude scales, or personality inventories. For realists, who assert the existence of real social processes, relationships between observable behaviour and mental states are posited and used to explain future actions. The assumption is that mental states cause, explain or are reflected in social action. Interpretive thinkers offer a different understanding of the relation between actions, motives and social phenomenon. The interpretive challenge is outlined below.

    The philosophical problem with the logical positivist understanding of the relation between motives and actions for interpretive positions is that:

    1. motives cannot always be inferred from what people do;
    2. actions are socially interpreted, and the same action can often be interpreted in multiple ways;
    3. the motive of an agent performing a given act is not what determines how that action is interpreted by others;
    4. it is difficult to observe all relevant preceding factors, descriptions of social actions do not match phenomenon in a complete or perfect manner, research tools (observations, interviews and so on) cannot observe everything, but select out from an almost infinite number of possible observations those that are deemed to be relevant;
    5. it is not possible to separate out meaning and action—action is constituted by the network of social meanings which enable it to be 'recognised';
    6. if we really could separate meaning and action, it would only be possible to report upon actions which have no social significance or interest;
    7. to accept that all action is determined would be to deny whole categories, relationships and regions of language;
    8. the world is constituted by action-concepts, for example promise, praise, war, exploitation, deprivation, worship, which are not directly observable in the logical positivist sense, therefore a logical positivist science cannot observe many important phenomenon. 

    Instead interpretivism holds that:

    1. understanding motives and actions requires attending to interpretation, social context and local circumstance,
    2. reasons/mental states do not cause actions, they explain the point or purpose of an action—the reason elaborates the identity of the action, or what the action is.

    For interpretivism, the problem with logical positivism is that in limiting statements about the social world to observable actions and indicators, we risk failing to describe anything of real social or subjective significance.

    For example, observing the action of male tribal dancing does not in itself allow us to determine whether the dancing is caused by an imminent marriage ceremony, the approach of spring, a recent lack of rain, or the number of boys in the tribe approaching the age that marks entry into manhood. We might, following logical positivism, screen off the accounts of the male dancers themselves in order to avoid being influenced by subjective interpretation, and explore the relation of the dancing to the range of possible variables that might correlate with it or explain it, such as an upcoming marriage, onset of spring, drought, or the presence of adolescent boys (assuming we can correctly guess the relevant factor/s). Assuming we then carefully observe the occurrence of these phenomenon across time and find a correlation between marriage and dancing say, could we then conclude that we have corroborative evidence to support the hypothesis that marriage causes dancing? Similarly, assume we attempt to discover the motives of the male dancers by asking them to complete a questionnaire about the reasons for their dancing, and we find that the dancers are motivated by the desire to ensure that the marriage will be a happy one, can we then conclude that marriage or the desire for happy marriage causes men to dance? And, regardless of what the social scientist concludes, can we be confident that such a methodological approach will produce an understanding of the culture of the dancers or of the phenomenon of dance within that culture?

    The interpretivist would clearly answer these questions in the negative. They would probably point out that the scientific approach not only wrongly attributes causality, but misses all sorts of more interesting details, such as the significance of the gender of the dancers, the importance of the timing of the dance, the nature of the dance itself and the symbolism evoked in the dance. All of which assists the social scientist to understand the culture or the meaning of the culture for those who live in and make that culture.

    The interpretivist in this example will accept that in order to understand the action of male dancing we must refer to the motives and reasons that inform the actors in all their fullness and complexity and in the terms of the dancers themselves. But in doing so the interpretivist will not claim to have a hypothesis or theory that describes a real social process that possesses explanatory or predictive power (as for the scientific approaches). They would claim to have uncovered the terms within which the participants of the dance understand the point or purpose of the dance, and the social context to which the dance refers. Rather than explain the whole social context, interpretive research claims only to have understood the relations between particular antecedents and consequences, and limits its predictive claims about the likelihood of phenomenon appearing together within the given culture, or across similar cultures, in future. And for the interpretivist, this would not be the only or perhaps the main point of the research. Interpretive research aims to understand rather than explain or predict the life world.

    Social constructionism

    From Crotty, M 1998, The Foundations of Social Research, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, chapter 3, and Andrews, T. 2012. ‘What is social constructionism?’, Grounded theory review: An international journal. Vol. 11, No. 1.

    Social constructionism, social constructivism and constructionism are not the same thing as constructivism. Constructivism emphasizes that knowledge emerges through the individuals' interaction with the environment in the course of experience. Social constructionism, social constructivism and constructionism are often used interchangeably. Social constructionism has its roots in the work of Alfred Schutz, and was popularised in the US by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann in their 1966 book, The Social Construction of Reality. Social constructionism shares the view of interpretivism that meaning is created and negotiated by human actors, and it shares the same objective of understanding lived experience. However, social constructionism is distinctive from interpretivism, or more radical versions of it, in its emphasis upon language and interaction as mediators of meaning. It also brings the ambivalent sense that concepts, however socially constructed, correspond to something real in the world which are reflected in our knowledge.

    1. Social constructionism (also called social constructivism or constructionism) challenges the realist stance.
    2. Social constructionism is the epistemological ‘view that all knowledge, and therefore all meaningful reality as such, is contingent upon human practices, being constructed in and out of interaction between human beings and their world, and developed and transmitted within an essentially social context’ (Crotty, 1998:42).
    3. Social constructionism emphasizes the cultural and institutional origins of meaning. It is not that individuals make sense of phenomena in the world on a case by case basis. Culture brings some things into view and endows them with meaning, and leads us to ignore other things. Culture provides the lens through which we view phenomenon.
    4. Language does not transmit thoughts and feelings, but makes thought possible by constructing concepts. In this sense, language structures experience.
    5. There is no distinction between the construction of physical and social realities. Both are social constructions.
    6. This is not the same as saying that things have no independent existence beyond language. The point is that we cannot have direct access to reality, but must understand it as it is represented. Social constructionism does not deny the existence of reality; they argue it is socially constructed.

    In social constructionism, the world is interpreted through language and culture, and it is 'waiting to be discovered' or 'pregnant with meaning'. That is, the world and the things in it are seen to be not only social constructions, but also 'crucial participants' in the meaning making process (Crotty, 1998:42-65). They give something essential of themselves to the conscious subject so that what we come to know is not simply another subjective account of phenomenon, but an account that reflects both our culture and essential qualities about phenomenon. This conception of the interplay between society, culture, language and a conscious, meaning-making subject, and the objects that present themselves to our perception is what characterises social constructionism. A reciprocal and interdependent relationship is often implied within social constructionism between objects in the world and consciousness such that–‘no object can be adequately described in isolation from the conscious being experiencing it, nor can any experience be adequately described in isolation from its object’ (Crotty, 1998:45). So there is no essential meaning to be found within objects or the world that is independent of consciousness. All things depend upon human beings for their meanings. But on the other hand, objects are not completely irrelevant to the meanings that are made about them. While context gives rise to different meanings about the same object, the object, with its particularities, participates crucially in the meanings made about it. Social constructionism accepts multiple interpretations of an object none of which are objectively true or valid.

    Symbolic interactionism

    From Crotty, M 1998, The Foundations of Social Research, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, pages 72-78, and Cambridge dictionary of philosophy: second edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

    Symbolic interactionism:

    1. originated in the work of George Herbert Mead (1863–1931);
    2. was translated and disseminated by Herbert Blumer (1900–87);
    3. is informed by the North American philosophy of pragmatism;
    4. understands that both subjects and objects are constituted in the ongoing transaction of organism and environment;
    5. sees society, or the exchange of significant gestures, as what makes individuality, consciousness and self-consciousness possible;
    6. understands consciousness as being made possible via an internalisation of significant gestures;
    7. argues that children internalise social attitudes and institutions via role play in which they act out the roles of 'generalised others' and relate them to broader social institutions;
    8. holds that experience and social phenomenon must be understood from the perspective of the role of the actor in the situation;
    9. as a research methodology, is ethnographic and shares the idea that each culture is irreducible and incomparable;
    10. understands that we can only comprehend a culture from within, we need to take the place of the other or 'get inside' how the culture sees the world;
    11. focuses on roles, cultural scripts, interactions between roles or actors, social rules or games, players, rituals;
    12. human beings do not simply respond to social conditions mechanically or passively;
    13. human beings actively create, enact and change meanings and actions in a problem-solving mode that reflects social and personal values and goals; 
    14. has given rise to interactionist research including the dramaturgical approach (especially of Erving Goffman), game theory, negotiated order theory, and labelling theory.

    Interpretivism and social constructionism research design

    Interpretivism and social constructionism have expanded conceptions of what constitutes a valid research design. Some of the research approaches now being used include:

    • Thematic analysis—looks for emerging themes in interviews or other data to understand a context or phenomenon.
    • Narrative inquiry—uses oral or written accounts of individuals to tell a story about people's understanding.
    • Discourse analysis—analyses the language in texts and transcripts to highlight the social relationships and cultural values through which individuals make meaning (esp social constructionism).
    • Ethnography—the researcher immerses themselves in the everyday life of the group or society to be explained in order to understand the culture 'from the inside'. Typically uses some combination of participant observation, research diaries and interviewing (esp interpretivism).
    • Action research—data is collected in collaboration with research participants, or by the participants themselves to understand the cultural context and to bring about direct and immediate practical change in the context of the research (esp social constructionism).

    Key characteristics:

    • rejects hypotheses, all-encompassing theoretical generalization and overarching world views;
    • gathers or portrays participant accounts of a phenomenon in order to understand how it is negotiated and understood by those directly affected;
    • distinguishes ‘invariant’ aspects or themes, common elements of experience, sequences, differences between sub groups;
    • reflects on the relationship of the research findings with theories and constructs in the literature.

    Validity and reliability

    From Smith, Robert. 2000. ‘”It doesn’t count because it’s subjective!” (Re)conceptualizing the qualitative researcher role as “validity” embraces subjectivity’. in Willis et al, Being, seeking, telling: Expressive approaches to qualitative adult education research. Post Pressed: Flaxton QLD.

    Threats to validity:

    • Accuracy of description—behaviour, objects, or events were not heard, transcribed or remembered accurately, comprehensively, or at all; or different methods and researchers came up with divergent accounts of the lifeworld.
    • Accuracy of inferred meanings—the intentions, thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and evaluations of participants were misrepresented, dismissed, distorted or concealed, and/or participants fail to recognize their own accounts drawn from the research.
    • Generalisability—the case or sample is too specific to be representative; sampling was not random; the description lacks evidence and argumentation that establishes the core themes, meaning or significance of the experience or context. 
    • Omissions—the research offers a partial account only.
    • Socio-cultural value of the research—the research is over-generalised, cliched, conceptually over-determined, lacks constructive humility, or privileges a comfortable view of phenomenon.

    Ensures accuracy of description by:

    • detailed recording, data saturation and comprehensive sampling;
    • verifying conclusions with other researchers/research participants.

    Ensures accuracy of inferred meanings by:

    • using participant language, concepts and ‘thick’ description;
    • ensuring extensive field time (esp interpretivism);
    • using multiple data collection and triangulation;
    • accessing all stakeholders;
    • repeating analytic approach;
    • using inter-subjective checks;
    • reviewing researcher affinity with participants and participant values.

    Ensures explanatory validity by:

    • weighing evidence,
    • checking or mapping concept consistency,
    • considering counter evidence and approaches,
    • ensuring progressive and continual maintenance and refinement of field notes,
    • presenting compelling argumentation/evidence.

    Ensure generalisability by:

    • showing that the research sample is representative of the context under study,
    • reviewing the sample against the purpose of the research,
    • discussing alternative accounts,
    • being explicit about the boundaries of generalisability,
    • using rich descriptions of the settings,
    • linking theorizing to aspects of settings found elsewhere.

    Ensures socio cultural value of the research by:

    • making the links between judgement and power transparent,
    • not blaming the victim.

    Phenomenology

    From The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Second edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and Crotty, R 1998, The foundations of social research, Allen and Unwin, Sydney.

    Phenomenology rejects the claims of interpretivism and constructionism that we cannot get beyond cultural consciousness in our experience of the world, aiming explicitly to understand phenomena as it appears to our conscious minds, or in our immediate experience.

    Before looking at phenomenology in more detail a few caveats are necessary. Phenomenology:

    • is better understood as a series of ideas, or as a movement that has developed in different directions across time (there are interpretive, Critical and postmodern versions of phenomenology, all of which will be explored in this series of web resources);
    • is associated with the thought of Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–61), Max Scheler (1874–1928), Eduard von Hartmann (1824–1906), Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), and Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–80).

    Central shared tenets of phenomenology:

    1. arises in response to the observation that our meanings are shaped by enculturation;
    2. calls for us to 'get back to the things themselves', to arrive at new, more immediate meanings by allowing for a direct experience of the objects of our perception;
    3. seeks to offer a meaningful reflection on the nature of our world−not a subjective, idiosyncratic, or arbitrary account of phenomenon;
    4. talks about 'primordial phenomenon', 'immediate, original data of our consciousness', 'phenomenon in their unmediated and originary manifestation to consciousness', the importance of 'not being blinded by mental barriers, preconceptions and habits', 'opening ones eyes', and having a 'fresh perception of the world prior to acculturation';
    5. understands that cultural concepts narrow, delimit, and prevent a 'richer', 'fresher' experience; culture 'stands between' what we see, hear, feel, smell, taste or imagine;
    6. calls into question what we take for granted in order to construct new understandings;
    7. this is to be achieved by a 'reduction', a turning away from the realm of objectified meaning (as found in the sciences) to the realm of meaning as immediately experienced in the 'life-world';
    8. conscious phenomena or acts are intentional;
    9. finite consciousness originally has no world;
    10. human reality is intentional, it arises from being-in-the-world whose essence is to stand out toward the world;
    11. the main preoccupation of philosophers should not be the causes of human behaviour and human life, but to answer the question of the meaning and being of beings;
    12. philosophers should be interested in how the being of being and the being of the world are to be constituted;
    13. a privileged position should be given to subjectivity, or to that being which questions the being of beings;
    14. only the world as it is revealed in intuition, in its bodily reality, in its primordial form, is to be accepted.

    With phenomenology we find a suspicion of the beliefs and practices handed down to us by our culture, and the exhortation to penetrate beyond received versions of the world to get at something more authentic within human experience. Phenomenologists seek to distinguish between something that is culturally inherited, and, as a result, perhaps one-dimensional, predictable or 'stale', and something in our experience that is 'authentic', 'rich' and 'fresh'.

    Research design:

    • Typically qualitative—aims to understand or describe phenomena as they appear to people 'in themselves', as they appear to direct consciousness.
    • Participants are those who have experiences with the phenomenon being researched.
    • May use autobiography—the researcher reflects on the phenomena as it appears within their experiential immersion in the subject of the research.
    • May be arts based—using painting, sculpture, poetry, music, dance, storytelling to reflect on, understand and express the lived meaning or reality of a context or phenomenon.
    • Methods aim to elicit direct experience, feelings, beliefs, and convictions, 'bracketed' out from social constructs, interpretation, theoretical concepts, ideology, subjective judgements, and the researcher's presuppositions.
    • Analysis, particularly of interview text, delineates units of common meaning within the data that reveal phenomenon, clusters units of meaning to form themes, considers number of times meaning appears in data, as well as non-verbal cues, and notes exceptions to common themes. 
    • Uses creative or artistic judgement to reveal phenomenon.
    • Can use saturation (data collection ceases when no new information is revealed), and triangulation (more than one data source is used to ensure the same finding emerges) to validate findings.
    • Validity may involve checking with participants that experience is captured in data recording or analysis.  

    Self-reflexivity in interpretive research

    Self-reflexivity is the view that knowledge relates to the identity of the subject that produces it. The question of self-reflexivity often comes up in discussions of interpretivism, social constructionism and phenomenology. These approaches do not inevitably involve, as is sometimes thought, foregrounding analysis with descriptions of the researcher's personal motives, background and relationship to the research context. Nor do they imply that the knowledge produced by the research represents the unique perspective of the researcher, or the interaction or co-construction of the researcher and the research subjects.

    As we've seen interpretivism aims explicitly to understand culture, and to produce knowledge about it that is not coloured by the subjective view of the anthropologist or sociologist, and both interpretivism and social constructionism are concerned that their research is generalisable, albeit within defined limits. Both phenomenology (most versions) and social constructionism aim to understand objects 'out in the world', or some aspect of an 'essential' reality as it is read from a specific cultural placement (social constructionism) or from an intuitive act of human consciousness (phenomenology). All insist that social research reflects upon socially mediated or essentially human understandings of the world. 

    This is not to say that interpretivists, social constructionists and phenomenologists should not reflect on the way their individual perceptions and social placement impact upon research and creative work. But when they do so, it is to better understand the context or phenomenon under study, perhaps by revealing and bracketing out how individual interpretation or stereotypes obscure the meaning or phenomena. For instance, interpretivists may reflect on how their own cultural frame contrasts with that of the participant culture in order to provide a contrast. Social constructionsists may reflect on how social placement influences what interview participants are willing to share, and to reflect on what this reveals about the phenomena under investigation. Age, social status in relation to participants, race, ethnicity, as well as any number of other factors, can influence what research participants will reveal. This does not make data invalid or a reflection purely of the interaction between the researcher and participants, but the data could productively be read by reflecting upon the influence of the social placements of the interviewer and the interviewees upon what was revealed to tell us more about the social context and its meaning. Phenomenologists may reflect on their own personal experience in order to reveal an essential or authentically held understanding of a phenomena. But there will be an attempt to bracket out what is cultural and what is authentic within their experience in order to get at phenomenon as they appear within direct experience.

    Conclusion

    For interpretive, social constructionist and phenomenological thinkers, realist and logical positivist research fails to offer in-depth understandings of social phenomenon because it treats them as objects of science, denying the meaning and creation of history and society by human beings themselves. According to the approaches examined in this resource, logical positivism and realism fail to account for the interpretation or social construction of the social world, or to explain the meaning of the social world, meanings which explain the significance of actions and motives. These researchers adopt a distinctive methodological approach in the social sciences compared to logical positivism and realism: a focus upon interpretation, the social construction of meaning and upon the experience of phemonena within the structure of consciousness. This enables social researchers to understand the social and human world on its own terms, or in the terms within which it becomes meaningful to social agents or beings. 

    Phenomenology is different from social constructionism because it holds that it is possible to arrive at authentic meaning about phenomena via an originary consciousness, or to understand phenomena directly, free of cultural bias. The phenomenological thought of Heiddeger will be considered further in the next topic. Phenomenology shares with interpretivism and social constructionism an interest in the active role of human experience and consciousness in knowledge production. However, phenomenology can take more or less culturally relativist stances in social theory, as we will explore in the topics on Critical theory and Deleuze.

    References used in the development of this web resource

    Andrews, T. 2012. ‘What is social constructionism?’, Grounded theory review: An international journal. Vol. 11, No. 1.

    Crotty, M 1998, The foundations of social research, Allen and Unwin, Sydney.

    Grant, A 1996, ‘A multi-storied approach to the analysis and interpretation of interview transcript data’, in P Willis and B Neville, Qualitative research practice in adult education, David Lovell Publishing, Ringwood.

    Hughes, J and Sharrock, W 1997, The Philosophy of social research, 3rd edn, Pearson Longman, London.

    Piantanida, NG and P McMahon 2000, ‘Crafting an arts-based educational research thesis: issues of tradition and solipsism, in Being, seeking, telling: expressive approaches to qualitative adult education research, ed P Willis et al, Post Pressed, Flaxton QLD.

    Smith, R 2000, ‘”It doesn’t count because it’s subjective!” (re)conceptualizing the qualitative researcher role as “validity” embraces subjectivity’, in Being, seeking, telling: expressive approaches to qualitative adult education research, ed P Willis et al, Post Pressed, Flaxton QLD.

    Schwandt. T 1994, ‘Constructivist, interpretivist approaches to human inquiry’, in Handbook of qualitative research, eds N Denzin and Y Lincoln, Sage, Thousand Oaks.

    Willis, P 2000 ‘Expressive and arts-based research: presenting lived experience in qualitative research’ in Being, seeking, telling: expressive approaches to qualitative adult education research, ed P Willis et al, Post Pressed, Flaxton QLD.

    This web resource was developed by Wendy Bastalich.


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