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(Post-)Positivism, Social Constructionism Alvesson 2e-3878-Ch-02:Gergen(2e)-3810-ch-06.qxp 4/7/2009 8:54 PM Page 15 2 (P OST -) POSITIVISM , SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM , CRITICAL REALISM : THREE REFERENCE POINTS IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE In this chapter we will discuss three overarching philosophies of science: positivism and post-positivism, social constructionism, and finally, critical realism. We take up the three orientations as a conceptual, terminologic, and thematic general background to the qualitative methodologies that follow. All three cut across the quantitative/ qualitative dividing-line. Although the main thrust of positivism is quantitative, there have been cases of qualitative positivism, for instance in historiography. Conversely, social constructionism is mainly qualitative, but quantitative social constructionist studies do exist. Finally, critical realism bridges quantitative and qualitative studies – there is no tendency for critical realists to favour either of these type of studies. During the twentieth century, positivism became, and remained for a long time, the dominating philosophy of science. Theory and data, induction and deduction, law-like statements, verification and falsification, were key words. In the second half of the century, positivism came under increasing attack from internal sources – the post-positivists – as well as external opponents; and in the last third of the century, philosophical positivism rapidly deflated. Positivism has some similarities to the data-oriented methods discussed in Chapter 3, especially grounded theory; what is perhaps less well known is that it has also been alluded to by Foucault, and has some paradoxical traits in common with postmodernism; important ideas in post-positivism have been influential to postmodernist thought (see Chapter 6). Social constructionism has increasingly emerged as an important perspective within social science and has even become predominant in some areas. Generally it can be said that for social constructionism, in contrast to positivism, reality is pre - cisely socially constructed . (What this means in more detail, we will return to.) The important thing for research therefore becomes to explore how these social con - structions happen. This approach is not particularly theory-oriented; the focus is rather on the ‘disclosure’ of how social phenomena are socially constructed. As we shall see, social constructionism is very rich and multi-faceted, so what has been said thus far is only a first indication of direction. Social constructionism has quite often been associated with postmodernism, and this may be true at a more superficial plane, although their roots and basic tenets are different; social constructionism has also made an inroad in grounded theory, and has been linked to hermeneutics and Alvesson 2e-3878-Ch-02:Gergen(2e)-3810-ch-06.qxp 4/7/2009 8:54 PM Page 16 critical theory (sometimes called ‘critical hermeneutics’) as well. Feminism often emphasizes gender as a social construction. According to critical realism , both positivism and social constructionism are too superficial, unrealistic and anthropocentric. For social constructionism, all knowl - edge is linked to our social constructions and should not rise – at least not too high – above these. For positivism, all knowledge comes to us as single sense-data, and the ories are just human-made linkages between these single data. Critical realism, in contrast, asserts that there is a world independent of human beings, and also that there are deep structures in this world that can be represented by scientific theo - ries; the latter therefore become central for this orientation. Critical realism has been presented as a possible successor to social constructionism, but if this will tran - spire remains to be seen. In its emphasis on underlying patterns, critical realism shares some tangential points with hermeneutics and critical theory; in its searching for some kind of scientific laws, and in its view of the commonality of social science and natural science research, it shares ground with positivism. Rooted in other traditions, social constructionism and critical realism constitute two important alternatives to positivist and post-positivist conceptions of science. In particular social constructionism but also critical realism presently draw great and increasing attention. They are often used as contrasts and as points of departure for debate and criticism. In what follows, we present the orientations in chronological order. Initially launched in the nineteenth century, positivism was first out; social constructionism was introduced in the late 1960s; and critical realism in the 1970s. We shall give the most space to social constructionism since this is by far the most utilized orienta - tion of the three in social science. Positivism and beyond The concept of ‘positivism’ has been central in the philosophy-of-science debate since the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Comte (1844) introduced the term, and through the twentieth century when logical positivism (later called logical empiricism) was topical. The sense of the positivism concept has often varied depending on who was doing the describing. The term ‘positivism’ has often been used in a derogatory sense, serving as a general invective. There is, though, a concep - tual core. More concise and inclusive is perhaps Nietzsche’s (1901: 267) description of the approach as the doctrine that ‘halts at phenomena: ‘‘there are only facts ”’. To which Nietzsche promptly retorts: ‘No, facts is precisely what there is not, only inter - pretations’. A little more elaborately, Feyerabend (1981: 16) describes positivism as ‘any interpretation of science (and of theoretical knowledge in general), which applies an assumption equivalent to’ the statement by the well-known positivist Hempel, ‘Science is ultimately intended to systematize data of our experience.’ Etymologically, the word positivism comes from the Latin positum ,1 the supine form of pono , put, set, place or lay. Thus, something is put, set, placed or laid; this something is given facts or data, and the one they lie in front of is the researcher. REFLEXIVE METHODOLOGY 16 Alvesson 2e-3878-Ch-02:Gergen(2e)-3810-ch-06.qxp 4/7/2009 8:54 PM Page 17 Data are consequently something that exists, is (already) there, and the task of the researcher thus becomes to gather and systematize them. The underlying harvest metaphor is palpable. The researcher, as it were, collects the crops of the earth which are already there, and then prepares them into a tasty dish. Various positivist approaches have put different emphasis on these two processes, the gathering and the systematizing, and have also described them in different ways. For positivist his torians in the nineteenth century, data collection was more important than sys tematization, a systematization that was never allowed to lead as far as to theory, since this would mean the abandonment of facts in favour of speculation. In contrast, for Comte and also for the logical positivists in the twentieth century, theory, the systematization of data, was central. Current social science positivists focusing on statistical analysis are found some - where in between these positions: theory, seen as a summing of data, is accepted, but the theoretical propositions are both less encompassing and less systematized than the logical positivists’ prescriptions of universally valid, formalized axiomatic systems (prescriptions that the positivists’ later inheritors in the philosophy of sci - ence have sharply criticized, see Suppe (2000)). Data or facts should, according to positivism, be observable, and here is the link to empiricism (Harré, 1981). For modern positivism, what is observable also includes what is measurable or possible to register through some kind of instrument (Braithwaite, 1953: 8n). One approach within positivism, operationalism, even went as far as to reduce facts to measurable phenomena. A critical point against identifying observability with measurability is of course that this is all right when we talk about telescopes or microscopes; but even for these, a lot of interpretation beyond normal seeing is required. For other instruments, for instance a survey, the element of observation appears more distant or problematic. The logical positivists made a sharp distinction between theoretical language and observation language (reflecting the dichotomy between theory and empirical facts). The former was sup posed to be translatable to the latter through so-called correspondence rules. As we shall see, this distinction was put in doubt by critics of positivism, who pointed out that all facts are theory-laden. If we talk about results of measurements, this already presupposes both theories about the instruments that measure and theoretical preconceptions of what we measure (otherwise we would not know what to measure). For surveys, for instance, statistical theory lies at their basis, and the variables that are part of the measurements presuppose various social-scientific theories. The correspon - dence rules were also criticized for being a ‘heterogeneous confusion of meaning rela - tionships, experimental design, measurement, and causal relationships, some of which are not properly part of theories’, while on the other hand more vague or diluted interpretations were criticized for being logically inconsistent (Suppe, 2000: 103). Critics of positivism In the post-war era, the positivist approach, and particularly logical empiricism, long dominated the scientific-philosophical
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