This paper argues that the question of whether the researcher's life influences one's research is an empirical problem, not a theoretical one. One can not resolve the issue by arguing variants of either 1) that all reality is subjective, therefore research can not be objective or 2) that there is a subjective and an objective reality, such that appropriate methods can separate the subjective researcher from the objective reality studied. It is incumbent upon the researcher to show that one's life experience has not influenced one's research. Specifically, one should explain how the application of one's research variables to one's own experiences of them has not influenced the stages of the research process such as the choice of research topic, theories, methods, research questions, data collection, results and interpretation. To improve the accuracy of reporting, it is further recommended that postgraduate work include training in the topic and that dissertations contain a self-application section.
There follows a theoretical discussion of the problem focusing on 1) arguments for both sides of the subject - object issue in the work of Marx, Durkheim and Weber and 2) the non-researcher reflexivity claims of Bourdieu, Giddens and Foucault. These authors address the problem by revealing how what is claimed to be objective is often found to be socially produced subjectivity which has been proclaimed to be objective by the unreflective researcher. This is not to say that they argue against access to a more mediated objective reality. The problem is that they do not apply these critiques of other to themselves. They assume but do not show us how they have achieved the only objective vewpoint. They have not addressed the problem empirically through self-application of their own concepts to themselves. The point is that this issue remains unresolved because it has been approached as a theoretical and not as a self-empirical problem.
The third section discusses the issue in terms of 1990s debates concerning the return of positivism and the rise of desubjectivism. It extends Gouldner's critique ofpost-war sociological practice by situating the debates in the context of the rise of conservative regimes, the collapse of communism and technological changes in the global economy. The return of positivism relates to the need of social researchers to rejustify their work in the fact of budget cuts for liberal social programs and greater funding for business, technological and natural science projects. To compete in this new market, social researchers must reemphasize practical results based on quantitative methods.
This paper aims to present the methodological perspective developed by Gerhard Kleining to an English-speaking audience. This methodology attempts to locate qualitative and quantitative approaches within a single framework, as differing degrees of abstraction from everyday methods of understanding. It also claims that qualitative work can be understood as discovery and not simply interpretation, and hence that it can offer at least an approximation of intersubjectively valid knowledge of the world; this, however, is not a positivistic but a dialectic approach in which the separation between subject and object is (at least partially) overcome. These steps may make it possible to resolve some at least of the more familiar problems associated with methodology and the question of sociology as a science; they may also hold out the possibility of a research approach which would be more appropriate to the integration of a historical understanding of change in social reality. I will attempt to identify some ways in which key concepts such as research, rationality and science can be understood more fruitfully in terms of such a perspective, as well as to identify potential problems with Kleining's methodology. Lastly, I shall use the methodology to examine a number of practical research problems such as relevance in the selection of subjects and sources of information in qualitative work, the issue of the active as well as receptive role of the researcher and the problem of the researcher - researched relationship, particularly in relation to the ontological status ascribed to the understandings of the research subjects.
Sociologists keep asking why it is necessary to employ feminist research methodologies in a sociological world which offers so many other, perfectly adequate, methodological paradigms. This paper offers an unabashed apologetics for a reflexivity as stemming from the feminist sociologist's "double consciousness" as both knower and known, observer and observed, in and of our society, yet in important ways also not "of" it. The paper examines feminist reflexicity and its discontents and argues that far from being circularly impossible (as in "asserting reflexivity authoritatively obviates real reflexivity"), it is a pre-requisite of emancipatory research and, as such, a true "feminist issue".
The changing environment after the fall of the Berlin wall has had profound impact in the study of international relations theory. The study of international "systems" has become increasingly complex. In the light of European integration studies reassessment is well timed. None of the integration theoreticians have come with a suitable answer of exactly how one can analyse a subsystem of the world. The emergence of a new world order - or "post-international world order" puts the old question on the agenda: How can the social scientists come to terms with an ever-increasing world? and, more specifically: How can the political scientist study political systems which are constantly undergoing change?
By sketching on the theoretical highlights of both international relations theory and integration theory, the paper argues, that there is just no "one simple" solution and approaches should be seen as complementary. For as each research approach is unique, so should the research methodology be. To establish a concise tabulation of the new conditions of what constitutes integration and what the goals of it are and what a theory of integration consists of, would be ideal, yet "... one cannot simply observe everything, even in a delimited segment of space and time ... one needs a sense of what one is to look at, and which features of the environment are to be noted ...."(note 1) Reviewing integration and international relations theory should be done with a Popperian vision that we are seekers of truth, that all should recognise the extent of our ignorance and the uncertainty of their knowledge. (note 2) It should also be kept in mind that, as Goodman pointed out, two sets of people could approach exactly the same evidence with different categories and come to different conclusions on the same type of thing (note 3) (even though they might both be right in their own terms). Rather than stressing evidence in favour of theories or (the scientific method) to depict counter-evidence of the theories offered, it is proposed that both strategies should be applied. That is, not to start anew again but to accept a patchwork of accepted, non falsifiable (or not yet falsified) for use as skeletons or for the creation of a concept.
It is accepted that these assumptions may be disproved in the empirical research, but such results evidence a step forward for "the truth".
(note 1) Discussions of the Baconian principle of induction in A. O'Hear, An introduction to the philosophy of science. Oxford, Clarendon Press: 1989 (p. 20)
(note 2) Cited in O'Hear 1989. See also K. Popper, Conjectures and refutations. London, Routledge and Kegan Paul: 1972.
(note 3) N. Goodman, Problems and projects. New York, Bobbs-Merrill: 1972 (p. 338)
This paper is based on my work as a member of a multi-disciplinary research group at the Centre for Innovation and Cooperative Technology at the University of Amsterdam, under the programme "Support, Survival and Culture". What combined us was the aim of developing new research methods which go beyond the quantitative approach. In our group we've tried to develop a different approach which can be highlighted with the following concepts: