Cultural ResearchCultural Research

Structures and ApproachesStructures and Approaches

Reality - what is it?• The debate over what reality is is a very long-

standing one in western philosophy (all the way back to the Ancient Greeks)

• For much of this time the focus was on whether reality was something outside us (realism) or was something we could only ever grasp internally (idealism)

Plato’s Cave

Reality is beyond our grasp - all we can ever see is its shadows

Plato’s Cave

Seen by some as an apt metaphor for today’s mediatised society

Reality - what is it?• The debate today is polarised along somewhat

different lines.• The main philosophical approaches are:

– Positivism– Relativism– Social Constructionism

• Despite this, “alternative” approaches such as historical materialism (Marxism and its offshoots) still retain some of their strength

PositivismPositivism

Positivism• Positivism is (part of) the legacy of the

French thinker Auguste Comte (1798-1857), who is widely believed to the be the first modern (western) sociologist

Auguste Comte

Auguste Comte• Comte believed that human society had

gone through three phases:– Theological– Metaphysical– Scientific

• He also termed the scientific stage the “positive” stage

Auguste Comte• Little of his hugely ambitious theories

remains, beyond a belief that mathematical approaches provide the basis for the most “scientific” study of society

Positivism• Research using positivist

methodologies tends as a result to be characterised by large-scale survey procedures whose results are subjected to quantitative analysis

Positivism• The resulting models do not claim to

represent reality exactly, but to be valid enough and reliable enough to allow useful and practical decisions to be made

Positivism• These approaches are characterised by

two kinds of “externality”:– “reality” is external to us all, and can be

counted, measured, modelled and so on– In an important sense the researcher is

also “external” to the research itself

Positivism– In principle, at least, the research can

always be replicated: in other words, it can be carried out by any researcher and, so long as the same procedures are followed, will produce the same results

– This allows positivist research to claim important levels of generalisability

RelativismRelativism

Relativism• Relativism shares with positivism the belief

that there is only one, “external” reality• However, it differs from positivism in

foregrounding the idea of differential experience

• In this sense, it is to some extent a much weakened continuation of phenomenology

The Founding Fathers of Phenomenology

Edmund Husserl M. Heidegger M. Merleau-Ponty

“Being-in-the-world”• In their different ways, the

phenomenologists insisted on “being-in-the-word” and the embodied nature of experience

“Being-in-the-world”• Relativism argues that, though there is only

one “external” reality, our experiences will differ according to factors such as:– Gender– Age– Class– Colour– Location– Occupation and so on

Relativism• Research carried out within this framework

uses so-called “ethnographic” methods, in other words methods which involve direct contact with those being “studied”:– Interviews– Focus groups– Participant observation

Relativism• Since it is about capturing their experiences

(rather than producing models of experiences in general), this kind of research insists on hearing others’ “voices”

• The “subject” speaks for him or herself rather than being integrated into a statistical model as a datum

• This (usually spoken) text is then analysed by the researcher

Relativism• Research within this paradigm can match neither the

scale achieved by positivist research, nor its claims to generalisability

• In the language of 19th C German hermeneutics, it is about “understanding” (“Verstehen”), i.e. the generation of insights, rather than “explanation” (“Erklären”), the generation of laws.

Relativism

Graph showing how the numbers involved vary depending on the level of personal involvement of the researcher, which is much higher in relativist

methodologies than in positivist onesSource: Peter Worsely, Introducing Sociology, Penguin Books, 1980

Relativism• Despite these limitations (if we accept

that that is what they are), this kind of research is capable, if carried out properly, of producing great insights

Social ConstructionismSocial Constructionism

Social Constructionism• The social constructionist (or

constructivist) paradigm was launched in 1956 by American academics Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann (the latter German by birth)

The foundational text

And a more recent contribution

by American philosopher John Searle

Social Constructionism

• Berger and Luckmann’s aim was to counteract the dominance of (though not necessarily to demolish) positivism

Social Constructionism“It should be clear, however, that our approach is non-positivistic, if positivism is understood as a philosophical position defining the object of the social sciences in such a way as to legislate away their most important problems. All the same, we do not underestimate the merit of ‘positivism’, broadly understood, in redefining the canons of empirical investigation for the social sciences” (p. 188-9)

Social Constructionism• From a social constructionist perspective reality is multidimensional, consisting of a material (objective, measurable) dimension, and a symbolic (intersubjective) dimension, as well as a dimension of personal (subjective) experience• The symbolic dimension (the domain of meaning) is not an add-on: we live simultaneously in all three dimensions and they are inextricably intertwined

Social Constructionism• The physical world we inhabit is not just a realm of objects (houses, cars, foods and so on), it is simultaneously a realm of meaning• Our houses, cars and food (if we have these) say something about us: though we may appropriate and inflect these meanings, we do not create them ourselves - they are created intersubjectively

Social Constructionism• Dominant meanings tend to become objectified in institutions, their structures and processes• Resources flow to these institutions allowing them to reproduce themselves, thereby bringing about the continuation of those meanings• Meanings, however, are always the object of struggle: as positions of dominance change old institutions die away and new ones appear

Social Constructionism• Language is of particular importance to Social Constructionists as the primary mechanism through which the struggle over meaning takes place on a day-to-day basis (violence in general being reserved for “critical” situations or what are seen as gross transgressions)

Social Constructionism• Social Constructionist approaches can be found in a wide variety of fields:

– History of institutions– Organisational theory– Management theory– Political theory– Communication theory– Leisure research– and so on

Social Constructionism• Research carried out within the Social Constructionist paradigm can use a wide range of methods:

– Ethnographic methods (interviews, focus groups etc.)– Interpretative methods (Discourse Analysis, Conversational

Analysis)– Semiotics

• But the focus is always on the dimension of intersubjective meaning

A personal note• All my own research is located within

the social constructionist paradigm

• If you find yourself reading something by me, you should, therefore, read it with that in mind

MarxismMarxism

Marxism• Though now deeply unfashionable

(having enjoyed a period of dominance in the sixties and seventies), approaches based on Marxist theory continue to offer useful insights for cultural analysis

Marxism• As is well known, Marx believed that

the driving force behind “history” was the class struggle

• Marxist analyses therefore focus on:– The political economy of cultural

production– The ideas and values “inscribed” in the

products

Marxism• There is no precise set of techniques

which could be described as “Marxist”• It is more a question of overall focus

and the attempt to link cultural production to larger social and historical processes

Hegemony Theory• Hegemony theory, developed by the

Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1892-1937), has escaped the more general loss of prestige of Marxist theory overall, and is much used in certain fields of cultural analysis

Antonio Gramsci

Hegemony• Hegemony is leadership by consent rather

than by coercion• It takes the form of a struggle for the

constitution of “common sense”, of what is “too obvious for words”

• This struggle takes place primarily in civil society rather than in the political arena

Hegemony• Popular culture is a key site of

hegemonic processes

• Gramsci encouraged the analysis of detective novels, the sporting press and so on

Hegemony• He was interested in how these

“harmless” products nonetheless reproduced the values of the dominant classes, and ways in which they might be “appropriated” to express counter-hegemonic views

Mixed MethodsMixed Methods(Triangulation)(Triangulation)

Mixed Methods• Mixed Methods (also known as triangulation)

is becoming an increasingly common way of approaching research

• The idea is not in itself new: in the early 20th C the German sociologist Max Weber claimed to bring “understanding” and “explanation” together to form “explanatory understanding”

Max Weber

A founding figure of European sociology

Mixed Methods• Although Weber used (very) large scale

survey techniques, he was not located in the positivist paradigm

• He is in fact viewed as the father of “interpretative” sociology

Mixed Methods• For example, some kind of large-scale

survey can be used to provide an initial map of the broad contours of the field

• On that basis, decisions can be made as where best to carry out ethnographic research

Mixed Methods• This can work well, so long as the premises

of the overall methodology (research paradigm) are not breached

• Using statistics is not in itself equivalent to a positivist approach, and these can be integrated within a relativist framework, so long as it is the assumptions of that framework which dominate overall

Mixed Methods• It is not (philosophically) possible to reconcile

the positivist and the social constructionist paradigms, so while Mixed Methods offers interesting possibilities, make sure you do not try to combine assumptions which are mutually contradictory

Many thanksMany thanks