‘Social scientific practice is an imaginative process of attempting to discover an
empirical world that is so complex that it often escapes attempts to comprehend it –
so researchers should be involved in the everyday lives of social actors.’
Critically evaluate this claim and the research strategies and approaches to
knowledge construction that endorse it.
This claim regarding the way social scientific research practice should be oriented could
be endorsed by several approaches, all of which are part of the current of thought known
as idealism. More precisely, the first part of this claim could be attributed to idealism as a
whole in the way it acknowledges the complexity of the social world, while its second
part suggests the pertinence of the use of qualitative research methods as advocated by
the interactionist, phenomenological or ethnomethodological idealist approaches, which
focus on the importance of the involvement of the social researcher with its object of
study, and could be contrasted with the detachment traditionally advocated by
empiricists.
Idealist approaches permitted the elaboration of new research methods for the
investigation of social life, based on a novel philosophical standpoint placing the role of
the human mind as central in the “processing” of experience. In the social sciences,
currents of thoughts such as phenomenology or ethnomethodology embrace this approach
unreservedly by proposing a range of theories and research methods acknowledging the
complexity of the social world and focusing on the subjective point of views of social
actors, which differ from other idealist currents of thought such as neo-Kantianism,
which have a more nuanced approach by trying to find a middle ground between the
development of general laws to explain causal relationship between social phenomena
and the central importance of subjective values in the study of social objects, or from
rational choice theory, which sees social actors as “minimaxers” solely motivated by their
subjective interests and pursuing those interests through the use of rational thinking.
These different visions of scientific practice could also be linked to the ideas of
sociologists of science such as Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, Barry Barnes or David
Bloor who focus on the study of science and more generally knowledge construction as a
socially and historically situated social process, challenging preconceived ideas regarding
the validity and supremacy of taken-for-granted types of knowledge construction.
Overall, the philosophical framework on which rely idealist approaches allowed social
scientists to gain a different vision of the relationship between theory and observation, as
well as new ways to tackle the problem of the separation of facts from values by
proposing a different perspective for tackling these dilemmas.
More precisely, Kant’s legacy to the social science could be seen as the new conceptual
framework he introduced by proposing to solve the tension between rationalist and
empiricist approaches to knowledge construction. For Kant, the mind makes sense and
organises human perceptions according to preexisting mental constructs. Henceforth, this
new perspective entailed a new attitude towards the practice of the social sciences in
terms of methods, with a particular focus on the subjective meaning of social phenomena
and on the subjective experiences, mental constructs and interests of social agents.
Interactionism, phenomenology and ethnomethodology embrace this new perspective by
considering as central the importance of subjective meanings and cultural values in the
study of social phenomena. These approaches consider that if the consequences of social
phenomena or objects are considered real by social actors, they are valid objects of study,
which provides a new perspective for a critical appraisal of the empiricist standpoints
(and particularly their advocacy of naturalism), by allowing us to consider them as
historically and sociologically situated attempts to make sense of the social world (this
particular statement could be linked to Kuhn’s conventionalist view of the history of
scientific knowledge construction, and more widely to post empiricist accounts of
science).
Phenomenology directly challenged the validity of the assumption that it is possible to
define objects of study, such as the family, as doing so would impose the imprint of the
researcher’s subjective assumptions about the concept of family on his or her results.
This entails a new vision of the practice of social sciences: instead of trying to achieve a
hypothetical detachment towards an object of study they defined under the influence of
their own values, researchers should be seen as being themselves social actors trying to
make sense of the world with their own subjective values, point of view and interests.
Moreover, the distinction between tacit, unconscious knowledge and “textbook”
knowledge made by thinkers such as William James or Harold Garfinkel, the father of
ethnomethodology, provided additional tools and concepts for the analysis of the daily
lives of social actors in the framework of novel research methods such as in-depth, semistructured interviews or ethnographic studies. However, although a certain connection
has been made between qualitative research methods and idealist approaches to
knowledge construction in the social sciences, the use of quantitative methods such as
surveys or more structured interviews could indeed be used as a way to gain a
complementary understanding of the object of study, as illustrated by Judith Okely’s
account of the life of Gypsies in Great Britain (Okely, 1994).
Thus, Kant’s conceptual framework could be seen as a way to overcome the limitations
of empiricist theories about the way social science should be conducted by emphasising
the central role played by human imagination in the way we understand the social world,
as well as by challenging the idea that the paradigms of the natural sciences could be
adapted to the study of social phenomena. The assumptions underlying the empiricist
standpoint are challenged by idealists and post empiricist accounts of science for several
reasons, revolving around the topics of the complexity of the social world (and the
validity of the assumption that it can be modeled, or simplified using the concept of
closed systems, or by using theoretical devices such as “ceteris paribus” clauses), the
tension between explanation and understanding of social phenomena, and the
hypothetical detachment from the object of study advocated by empiricists. Moreover,
the concept of science itself could be put into question and seen as a social product,
which challenges both positivist and idealist assumptions such as the definition of
scientific progress as an iterative accumulation of scientific knowledge.
First, we could argue that in a hard science such as physics, the objects of study could be
considered as constant and relatively predictable: for instance, a planet will not decide
“out of the blue” to exit its orbit to travel around the galaxy, while it is absolutely
acceptable to expect this kind of erratic behaviour from a human being. This inherent
unpredictability of the social world greatly puts into question the scientific validity of the
use of man-made simplifications such as the empiricist use of closed system, or the
modeling of human behaviour performed in the framework of studies relying on rational
choice theory. In addition, post empiricist views of science, such as conventionalism or
epistemological relativism respectively argue that escape clauses are built in empiricist
theories in order to escape falsification and that when approached as a social product,
science reveals itself as socially and historically situated, which challenges taken-forgranted concepts such as ‘progress’ or ‘universal truth’, and brings forward the question
of the dominant position of science in the field of knowledge construction.
Second, we can argue that by acknowledging the intrinsic complexity of the social world,
idealist approaches seem to be more successful in providing deep understanding of a
particular social phenomenon. Judith Okely’s study of the Gypsy population in Great
Britain (Okely, 1994) is a great example of the richness and relative exhaustivity allowed
by the use of idealist research methods such as ethnography, although they could appear
to be more limited in providing precise explanations and predictions, which empiricist
approaches claim to be able to make. However, the assumption that clear-cut and precise
predictions or explanations of social phenomena from a hypothetically detached observer
are possible is greatly challenged by the flagrant impact the subjective values and
expectations of social researcher have on the definition of their object of study and on
their findings, greatly illustrated by the mere title of studies such as Hans Eysenck’s The
intelligence of American negroes (Eysenck, 1971). Therefore, we could see another
advantage in idealist approaches in the way they seem to resolve the empiricist
contradiction between the edification of general laws on the basis of value-laden accounts
of the social world.
Thus, by acknowledging the social world’s complexity, interactionists, phenomenologists
and ethnomethodologists limit their conclusions to the elicitation, explanation and
prediction of particular patterns in social life and/or a deep understanding of an
intentionally restricted object of study. Methodologically, this entails an inclination
towards a more qualitative approach to the collection and analysis of empirical data – in
contrast to the generally quantitative approach advocated by empiricists – taking the form
of innovative qualitative research methods such as in-depth, semi-structured or
unstructured interviews, participant observation and ethnographic studies, which can be
contrasted with empiricist methods such as structured interviews or the statistical analysis
of quantitative data, and to the neo-Kantian approach of using quantitative research in an
idealistic conceptual framework, acknowledging the important impact of subjective
values on the research process by using theoretical devices such as Max Weber’s ideal
types, or Heinrich Rickert’s concept of value relevance. This focus on qualitative data is
advocated by its supporters for several reasons: First, they argue that it allows the
collection of richer, more valid data. Indeed, qualitative data collection is less likely to be
shaped by methodological constraints as it is the case in the framework of traditional
empiricist studies, where structured interviews or questionnaire “mold” the results in a
particular way (Dey, 1991). In addition, the multiplicity of sources from which
qualitative data can be gathered makes it a much more fertile ground for analysis, as for
its practitioners, “all meaningful human actions or artifacts and all social practices are
legitimate sources” (Yates, 2003, p.139).
However, and although phenomenological or ethnomethodological research methods can
be very successful for gaining a significant understanding of a particular social context,
they are not exempt from problems inherent to the difficult balance one has to keep
between the necessary involvement with the social actors being studied and the need for
objectivity in the researcher’s analyses and conclusions. Moreover, it is useful to keep in
mind that the choice of a particular research method or the combination of several
methods is also quite dependant on the practicalities of a particular research context.
Indeed, one could argue that the advantage of idealist frameworks is the nonexclusiveness of certain types of research methods: although qualitative research is what
distinguishes idealist research strategies from empiricism, the study of quantitative data
can also be very meaningful and used to deepen the understanding of the object of study.
Another important point, as identified by Laud Humpreys in The Sociologist as Voyeur
(Humpreys, 1997), is the problem caused by the fact that presence of the researcher and
its interaction with the social group being studied could produce interferences which
disturb the normal activities of the actors being observed. Different strategies could be
devised to solve this problem, such as having a role in the activities of the social group,
thus striving to have as less of an impact as possible (in this case, Humpreys took the role
of a lookout in the framework of his participant observation of homosexual encounters in
public restrooms). In addition, the fact that researcher engaged in such studies deal with
issues that can be very personal to the social actors they interact with raises important
ethical issues that need to be carefully taken into account in the actual practice of the
researcher, and can cause some difficulties for the researcher to be accepted by the social
group he or she wants to study.
Overall, it appears from all of this that the practice of these qualitative methods of data
collection and analysis appears to require certain specific skills from social researchers,
entailed by the paradoxical aspect of qualitative social research, in which a certain
objectivity must be achieved through involvement with social actors. Moreover, the
analysis and presentation of the results of such research, although relatively straightforward in the case of empiricist studies, can be more demanding and difficult in the
framework of qualitative study. As noted by Okely (1994), communicating such results to
a wide public of non-specialist policy makers could reveal itself difficult, as qualitative
research may lack the apparent “scientificity” of more traditional empiricist studies.
In conclusion, we could argue that although empiricist and idealist approaches have
important differences, they both rely on a certain idea of science that finds itself
challenged by theories questioning the very foundation of the concept of progress and of
science in general. However, these theories are counterbalanced by Imre Lakatos’s
sophisticated methodological falsificationism, which accepts the sociological and
historical situatedness of science but emphasises the usefulness of falsificationism in
allowing the creation of valid knowledge. From a more pragmatic point of view, making
a synthesis of both approaches in the context of real-world social scientific research by
using the most appropriate tools in regards to a particular object of study could be a way
to tackle this dilemma.
References
Dey, I. (1993) Qualitative Data Analysis, London, Routledge, reprinted in Yates (2003,
pp. 147-53).
Eysenck, H. (1971) Race, Intelligence and Education, Maurice Temple Smith Ltd,
courtesy of Dr Sybil Eysenck, reprinted in Smith, M.J. (1998, pp.123-24).
Humpreys. L. (1997) The Sociologist as Voyeur [1970], reprinted in Redman et al. (2003,
pp. 91-106).
Okely, J. (1994) Thinking through fieldwork, in Bryman, A. and Burgess, R.G (eds)
Analysing Qualitative Data, London, Routledge, reprinted in Yates (2003, pp.193 - 96).
Smith, M.J. (1998) Social Science in Question, London, Sage/The Open University.
Yates, S.J. (2003) Doing Social Science Research, London, Sage.