The nature, manifestations, and sustainability of change in individuals and communities have always fascinated me.
Most researchers in applied social sciences rely on the survey method using statistical techniques for analysis. In the recent past, there has been emphasis on qualitative research approaches, such as grounded theory, ethnography, case histories, and action research.
However, whether quantitative or qualitative in approach, language has been assumed to be a representational carrier of meaning, a receptacle that holds work in order to represent the world.
This concept of language reflects the basic tenets of logical positivism and derives, for the most part, from logic, the foundations of mathematics, and the paradigm for basic research in the physical sciences. The Cartesian approach is based on the presumed discovery of law-like generalizations that serve as the basis for deductive explanation and predictions.
From within a tradition of critical theory, many social scientists and philosophers over the last several generations have critiqued the positivist framework as a basis for research in social science.
Although few researchers will admit to being positivists, the legacy of logical positivism still pervades contemporary social inquiry today. For positivists, the relation of theory to practice is chiefly technical, because they seek to use general laws and manipulate a desired state of affairs. However, the question of which state of affairs should be produced is not to be resolved scientifically. Scientific inquiry is value-free within this framework, whereby the empirical basis of science is composed of observable objects or events that, in turn, serve as part of the program for a unity of science.
Many writers have critiqued this rationality and have demonstrated problems with using the logical positivist frameworks as the basis for social inquiry. The common element in all these traditions is the recognition that the positivist approach has neglected the meanings that are at the basis of social reality. This tradition opens the way to a more historically situated, non-algorithmic, flexible understanding of human rationality, one which highlights the tacit dimension of human judgment and imagination and is sensitive to the unsuspected contingencies and genuine novelties encountered in particular situations.
The difference between a positivist approach and an interpretive approach, most simply stated, is in how language is viewed – language as a tool representing the world or language as a medium through which we interpret and begin the change our selves and our conditions.
