Epistemology and ontology

Research Student Generic Skills Training Programme, College of Social Sciences, May 2012

Jo Brewis, School of Managementj.brewis@le.ac.uk

Introduction to the sessionWhat today will hopefully assist you to do:

• understand the various philosophical ‘continuums’ at work in social science research

• outline the key choices involved in research design as a result• explore the links between philosophical choices and research

practice

Today will also overlap with, build on and reinforce Dr. Taysum’s session from last November

Today will not provide a detailed and in-depth examination of all the various philosophical standpoints in social science

Why do I need to know this stuff?Pluralism in the social sciences: subcultures and deviance migration poverty the cost of living educational engagement vulnerable students civil security online and offline identities democratization humanitarian intervention well-being social inclusion and exclusion Corporate Social Responsibility brands and branding … etc. …

Why do I need to know this stuff?To identify your position within this contested terrain

To be able to articulate the nature, purpose and status of your project and the conclusions it will produce

To be able to present a cogent, considered and justified methodology in your thesis, and to have it considered on its own merits

“Understanding different traditions of scholarship can helpresearchers identify the match between their own intellectualpreferences and a particular mode of inquiry so that they candevelop a research style that is personally meaningful andsimultaneously meets the standards of a wider academiccommunity.” (Prasad, 2005: 8)

So what’s all this about the philosophy of social science then?Key philosophical question: to what extent, if any, can or should the study of ‘society’ be scientific?

is society the same kind of object as the natural world? is society governed by laws equivalent to the laws that govern events in the natural world? what does it mean to have knowledge about society? is knowledge of society equivalent to knowledge of the natural world? is knowledge of society objective? what is the goal of the study of society? how should we acquire knowledge of society?

So what’s all this about the philosophy of social science then?First order questions (RQs) – eg, how do social workers interpret professionalism and professionalization as it relates to their occupational practice?

Second order questions (philosophy of SS) – how should we study these interpretations?

The issues at stake here are ontological, epistemological andmethodological

What do these terms mean?

So what’s all this about the philosophy of social science then?Ontology: the question of “what reality is like, the basicelements it contains” (Silverman, 2010: 109)

Epistemology: “study of the criteria by which we can knowwhat does and does not constitute warranted, or scientific,knowledge” (Johnson and Duberley, 2000: 2-3)

Methodology: theories of gathering knowledge, how we canknow what we are able to know

Now back to slide number 5 …

So what’s all this about the philosophy of social science then?And, to summarize, “The way we think the world is (ontology) influences: what we think can be known about it (epistemology); how we think it can be investigated (methodology and research techniques); the kinds of theories we think can be constructed about it; and the political and policy stances we are prepared to take” (Fleetwood, 2005: 197)

Plus, the ‘if it looks like a duck’ adage

And a quick health warning’ before we proceed

The philosophical ‘continuums’Continuum number 1

From realism and unification of method/ monism/ scientism

And objectivism: “truth is defined as the accurate representation of an independently existing reality. Theaccumulation of knowledge is thereby considered to be theaccumulation of accurate representations of what is (independently) outside of us.” (Smith and Hodkinson, 2005:916)

And an emphasis on quantities/ preoccupation withmeasurement

… often bracketed together under the catch-all positivism …

The philosophical ‘continuums’

To idealism/ constructionism: “the assumptions guiding positivism derive from the study of largely inanimate or biological phenomena that lack the capacity for self-reflection and cultural production. By contrast the social sciences are inevitably concerned with social, economic and cultural worlds that are constituted by the human capacity for meaningful understanding and action.” (Prasad, 2005: 5)

Things behave, people experience (Laing, cited in Johnson and Duberley, 2000: 34)

The Thomas (1966) theorem: “if we believe something to be real, it is real enough in its consequences for we behave as if it does exist” (Smith, 1998: 161)

The philosophical ‘continuums’

“consensual beliefs and concerted practices give rise toobjective social institutions. Accordingly, institutional factslike the value of currency or the price of shares on a stockexchange depend upon collective actions that presuppose theobjectivity of those facts. These socially constructed facts arereal, in the sense that they are intersubjective, existindependently of the observer, and persist in time, but theirreality depends upon, and is continually sustained by,reflexive subscription to that very reality.” (Lynch, 2000: 29)

Also, when/ how does someone die? JFK, suicide statistics (Douglas, 1967), DNR orders, living wills, euthanasia etc.

And crime statistics (Kitsuse and Cicourel, 1963)

The philosophical ‘continuums’

And subjectivism/ interpretivism: “Something called subjectivity could be demonstrated in all research programmes … One’s own life history, belongingness to a specific research community, and everyday experience inform how one thinks and acts in relationship to the subject matter. These have an impact on the questions asked, the language used and, by implication, the results produced … Questions of determining which problems to study, the relevancy of findings, and the translation back to the subject’s world have always posed constitutive and value-laden issues at the very heart of any ‘objective’ research that intends to have a social effect.” (Alvesson and Deetz, 2000: 63, 65-66)

The philosophical ‘continuums’Which is linked to Weberian value relevance

And the general belief that social science is different from natural science

So we need to emphasize qualities, using “an array ofinterpretive techniques which seek to describe, decode,translate and otherwise come to terms with the meaning, notthe frequency, of certain more or less naturally occurringphenomena in the social world” (Van Maanen, cited in Alvessonand Deetz, 2000: 70)

The philosophical ‘continuums’Continuum Number 2

From explanation

And deductivism: “Deductive research starts with existingtheories and concepts and formulates hypotheses that aresubsequently tested; its vantage point is received theory.”(Gummesson, 2000: 63)

And generalization (Aristotle’s episteme)/ external validity

To exploration

The philosophical ‘continuums’

And inductivism: “Inductive research starts with real-worlddata, and categories, concepts, patterns, models, andeventually, theories emerge from this input.” (Gummesson,2000: 63)

And reluctance to generalize (Aristotle’s techne)/ transferability

Continuum Number 3

From fixed and ‘artificial’ research design

The philosophical ‘continuums’

To flexible and ‘natural’ research design: “Once one relaxesthe ontological assumption that the world is a concretestructure, and admits that human beings, far from merelyresponding to the social world, may actively contribute to itscreation, the dominant methods become increasinglyunsatisfactory, and indeed, inappropriate.” (Morgan andSmircich, 1980: 498)

Links to the idea of ‘re-search’ and the Russian dolls(Gummesson, 2000: 22)

Continuum Number 4

From validity understood as accurate measurement

The philosophical ‘continuums’And reliability as consistent measurement

To validity understood as plausibility: “Can our cocreatedconstructions be trusted to provide some purchase on someimportant human phenomenon?” (Guba and Lincoln, 2005:205)

Here, validity “cannot be determined by following prescribedformulas. Rather its quality lies in the power of its language todisplay a picture of the world in which we discover somethingabout ourselves and our common humanity.” (Buchanan, cited in Silverman, 2010: 304)

And reliability as dependability

The philosophical ‘continuums’Links to methodological awareness: “a commitment to showingas much as possible to the audience of research studies … theprocedures and evidence that have led to particularconclusions, always open to the possibility that conclusionsmay need to be revised in the light of new evidence” (Seale,cited in Silverman, 2010: 274)

And/ or reliability as irrelevant: “once we treat social reality as always in flux, then it makes no sense to worry about whether our research instruments measure accurately” (Silverman, 2010: 289, summarizing Marshall and Rossman)

Continuum Number 5

From macro (scope)

The philosophical ‘continuums’ To micro (depth): “seek[ing] clarity and insight by closelyexamining apparently ‘small’ objects … eschewing emptyaccounts of ‘big’ issues in favour of elegant analyses that makea lot out of a little” (Silverman, 2007: 29)

Continuum Number 6

From data gathered/ expressed numerically and analysedstatistically

To data gathered in words and analysed thematically

What are the preferences and trends in social science research?Although attempts to generate scientific, authoritativeknowledge about society have “been increasinglyquestioned since the middle of the twentieth century … [theyare] something that many social researchers would like to forget“ (Smith, 1998: 75)

… and there has been a “distinct turn of the social sciencestowards more interpretive, postmodern, and criticalistpractices and theorizing” (Guba and Lincoln, 2005: 191) …

“[such] assumptions [still] remain pervasive and continue toprovide the general rationale that underpins most theory andresearch in the social sciences … ” (Johnson and Duberley, 2000: 11), especially in the US

What are the preferences and trends in social science research?Plus the ‘constellation’ idea: “In the material world of actualresearch practice, the tidy abstraction of the paradigm as ahermetic domain of shared assumptions and world-viewsquickly begins to give way to the messy reality of contestedideas, multiple ongoing influences, and constantexperimentation.” (Prasad, 2005: 8)

So social science research is rather like The CelestialEmporium of Benevolent Knowledge ...

What are the preferences and trends in social science research?… where animals are apparently classified as: “(a)belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d)sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h)included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j)innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush,(l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n)that from a long way off look like flies.” (Borges, cited inFoucault, 1973: xv)

Some food for thought, thenThere is no ‘one best philosophical way’: “there are no secure or incontestable foundations from which we can beginany consideration of our knowledge of knowledge – ratherwhat we have are competing philosophical assumptions that lead us to engage with [social phenomena] … in particular ways.” (Johnson and Duberley, 2000: 4)

Methodology is not an end in itself: “Strategies ofinquiry put paradigms of interpretation into action.” (Denzinand Lincoln, 2005: 25)

Some food for thought, thenDie-hard/ unacknowledged ontological and epistemologicalcommitments may also blind us to alternatives because theymean that we “view the world in a particular way” (Burrell andMorgan, 1979: 24)

We may even argue that “for he who has a hammer, everyproblem is a nail” (Gummesson, 2000: 66, often attributedto Abraham Maslow)

Summary1. The ontological, epistemological and methodologicalquestions of what it is that social scientists study, what we can know about our object of enquiry and how we should undertake this knowledge gathering are highly contested

2. We can view the various debates as a series of continua, where individual researchers might be located at different points on each

3. As doctoral students it is crucial that you develop an in-depth understanding of the various debates and controversies

ReferencesThe following are the sources which were used to compile this lecture. Chapters and/ or page numbers are specified where appropriate to suggest material which should beespecially relevant to issues covered in the lecture.

Alvesson, M. and Deetz, S. (2000) Doing Critical Management Research, London: Sage.Burrell, G. and Morgan, G. (1979) Sociological Paradigms and Organizational Analysis:Elements of the Sociology of Corporate Life, London: Heinemann.Denzin, N.K. and Lincoln, Y.S. (2005) ‘Introduction: the discipline and practice ofqualitative research’, in N.K. Denzin and Y.S. Lincoln (eds) The Sage Handbook ofQualitative Research, third edition, Thousand Oaks, California: Sage, pp. 1-32. Douglas, J. D. (1967) The Social Meanings of Suicide, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.Fleetwood, S. (2005) ‘Ontology in organization and management studies: a critical realistperspective’, Organization, 12 (2): 197-222.Foucault, M. (1973) The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, New York:Vintage.Guba, E.G. and Lincoln, Y.S (2005) `Paradigmatic controversies, contradictions, andemerging confluences’, in N.K. Denzin and Y.S. Lincoln (eds) The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, third edition, Thousand Oaks, California: Sage, pp. 191-215.Gummesson, E. (2000) Qualitative Methods in Management Research, Thousand Oaks, California: Sage.Johnson, P. and Duberley, J. (2000) Understanding Management Research: An Introductionto Epistemology, London: Sage.

ReferencesKitsuse, J.I. and Cicourel, A.V. (1963) ‘A note on the uses of official statistics’, Social Problems, 11 (2): 131-139.Lynch, M. (2000) ‘Against reflexivity as an academic virtue and source of privilegedknowledge’, Theory, Culture and Society, 17 (3): 26-54.Morgan, G. and Smircich, L. (1980) `The case for qualitative research’, Academy ofManagement Review, 5 (4): 491-500.Prasad, P. (2005) Crafting Qualitative Research: Working in the Postpositivist Traditions, NewYork: M.E. Sharpe.Seale, C. (ed.) (2012) Researching Society and Culture, third edition, London: Sage.Silverman, D. (2007) A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book AboutQualitative Research, London: Sage. Silverman, D. (2010) Doing Qualitative Research: A Practical Handbook, third edition,London: Sage.Smith, M. (1998) Social Science in Question, London: Open University Press/ Sage.Smith, J.K. and Hodkinson, P. (2005) ‘Relativism, criteria, and politics’, in N.K. Denzin and Y.S.Lincoln (eds) The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, third edition, Thousand Oaks,California: Sage, pp. 915-932 .Thomas, W.I. (1966 [1931]) `The relation of research to the social process’ in Janowitz, M.(ed.) W.I. Thomas on Social Organization and Social Personality, Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, pp. 289-305.

NB the fourth edition of the Sage Handbook is now on order in the library