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Where
Are You Comin' From, Where Are You Goin' To:
CHAPTER 2: How We Get There Introduction Critical theorists focus on the interconnections among ideology, social theory, and political practice (Hall, 1994; Hamnett et al., 1984; Ono & Sloop, 1995). Hamnett and his colleagues (1984), in their examination of the ethics of social science research, note that "how one views social science research, its relations to political practice, and how one assesses responsibilities, relationships, and appropriate conduct should be thought out in terms of one's underlying assumptions and ideological presuppositions" (p. 54). Critical theorists conceptualize social theory and social science research as political and interested, with practical consequences. They do not interpret the research process as neutral. One of the key concerns of critical theory, according to Hamnett et al. (1984), is encouraging a reflexive self-consciousness such that subjects are active, critical decision-makers. Equally important is that critical theory and research is "emancipatory social action directed at radically improving human existence" (p. 64). Stuart Hall, a leading scholar from the Centre for Cultural Studies in Birmingham, England, agrees that critical cultural studies is "an activity of intellectual self-reflection . . . [It] insists on the necessity to address the central, urgent, and disturbing questions of a society and culture in the most rigorous intellectual way we have available" (1992, p. 11). What critical scholars have found particularly problematic and disturbing is the taken-for-granted notions associated with positivist, essentialist social science (Hall, 1994, Hamnett et al., 1984). According to Hamnett and his colleagues (1984):
The control/domination orientation of positivist social science is examined by critical scholars who envision a society--and a research process--that is more participatory. Stanley Deetz (1994), one of the most influential critical theorists in the field of speech communication, challenges the control-oriented communication research that presumes a "value-neutral faith in the 'reality' of the object" (p. 570). To Deetz, communication research should be "about the creation of more participatory communication practices and the critique and/or deconstruction of control practices" (p. 578). Furthermore, he argues, the "professed fear of making the communication process and its study political has hidden the ways it is already political and the real fears of what the public would do if they understood the current politics" (p. 584). Indeed, dominant groups tend to be the most ardent supporters of social science research based in philosophies of control and social order (Deetz, 1994; Hall, 1992, 1993). Critical scholar Edward Said, in Rosaldo's (1993) words, illustrated "how seemingly neutral, or innocent, forms of social description both reinforced and produced ideologies that justified the imperialist project" (p. 42). Likewise, Renato Rosaldo (1993), an anthropologist, criticized the "classic norms" of ethnography, "dominated by the concepts of structures, codes, and norms," that "reinforced the slippage from working hypotheses to self-fulfilling prophecies about unchanging social worlds" (p. 42). In the following passage, Hall (1992) illustrates eloquently the connection between the theory and practice of domination:
Deetz (1994) claims that most researchers still practice a version of positivism, which he refers to as "normative" research. Furthermore, this codified, quantified, normative research is privileged as objective versus subjective. Deetz (1994) counters, however, that normative practices are actually the most "subjective," since "their concepts and methods are held a priori, are unknown projections of their own way of encountering the world, constitute the world as observed, and are not subject to the 'objection' of possible alternatively constituted worlds" (p. 590). The fundamental assumptions accepted by most critical cultural researchers are summarized by Kincheloe and McLaren (1994):
Critical cultural scholars attempt to do emancipatory research rather than research that serves to maintain asymmetrical relations of power. In order to do such research, critical scholars must examine, reflexively, their position in existing relations of power and prevent relations of power from remaining unacknowledged, unchallenged and invisible. This chapter on the methodology of this study begins an examination of the power relationship between the researcher and the researched, and the power relationship based on race. A focus of this chapter is Whiteness as a racial category, and as a category situated in the context of other social relations such as gender, class, and educational level. The second section in this chapter describes the ways in which the researcher can attempt to challenge power differentials through the use of a dialogical approach (including dialogical interviews), and through an interrogation of the researcher's position. The chapter concludes with a specification of the research design and procedures used in this study.
Next: The Researcher and Power
Placing and Black Students' Discursive Construction of Community Copyright (c) 1996, Corinna J. Moebius |