Grappling with the qualitative approach
[An excerpt of a message I sent to my committee chair.]
Let me share with you some thoughts about the comp. question I’m writing for Peter. I’m supposed to compare and contrast positivism, hermeneuticism, and postmodernism. You’ll recall our conversation where I talked about the difficulty I was having with the quantitative-qualitative distinction, and whether qualitative research could be construed as empirical. I think I’ve got that now; empirical research relies on an epistemology of experience as the ground of knowledge. As you pointed out, qualitative research is certainly empirical in the sense that our ground is still that which is experienced (not necessarily measured, at least in the quantitative sense, but experienced nonetheless). I would hesitate to identify qualitative research as postivist research, though there are some who do, because there is no attempt, either explicit or implicit, to derive, or prove, some covering law, or so it seems to me. Rather, the attempt is more to explain an (isolated) event. Maybe in the case of grounded theory research we’re trying to build theory, but it would be theory in the sense of Merton’s middle-range theories (though of course, Merton holds out the hope for covering laws eventually).
As I look at hermeneuticism and postmodernism, it seems to me that we have two projects that are more friendly to qualitative research, but go beyond that. In hermeneuticism, where we treat society, or events in society, as a text-analogue to interpret, the coherence of the interpretation is contigent upon its context. In other words, an interpretation of an event can only be coherent when viewed and interpreted within the context of the society in which it occurs. In order to do that, it seems to me that the researcher must give weight to beliefs (among other things) that exist in a society which are “real” to that society’s members in (possibly) some metaphysical sense, but which would be rejected by a positivist researcher as being immaterial. A hermeneuticist would engage in empirical research, but not necessarily. The hermeutic project allows for empirical and non-empirical research. But it can’t be positivist.
Postmodernism also clearly exlcludes a positivist approach in two ways. First, it does so by denying that anything like complete truth can be obtained (it doesn’t deny its possible existence, just that we can’t get to it). Second it does so by stating that what we observe does not possess a reality independent of the observer. Every social interaction we observe is in fact a construct of society. In Foucaultian terms, the interaction is the result of the expression of power, which power is used to *create* “truth”. Lyotard calls it a productive power, and ties it to the use of language.
This is what I’m coming up with so far. Do you think I have characterized these things correctly? I should probably send the same type of message to Peter, but I would really like to get your feedback too.
