Research and Inequality

Beth Humphries, Carole Truman

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781857289626
• eBook ISBN: 9781000159257
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Research & Methodology
• Index: Social Sciences

It has been noted by researchers from a variety of backgrounds that the dominant social research paradigms have frequently failed to represent the viewpoints of many marginalized groups. The authors of this collection confront this imbalance by looking at how issues such as ethnicity, sexual orientation and identity, disability, gender and ethnicity, and health and old age can be addressed in research conducted among groups who may often be the objects of research, but who seldom have control over what is said about them.

Containing sections written by contributors from a variety of backgrounds, cultures and nationalities, the chapters explore ways in which issues of social diversity and division within the research process might be addressed. While considering whether this might be done through an emancipatory research paradigm, the book also examines the philosophical tenets and methodological implications of such an approach.

Part I

The researcher–participant relationship

Chapter 1

Arguments for an ‘emancipatory’ research paradigm

Beth Humphries, Donna M. Mertens and Carole Truman

In recent years there has been increasing interest in and controversy around politically motivated research – research which questions the meaning of ‘objectivity’ and ‘elimination of bias’, but which has an explicit concern with ending inequality and with taking the side of oppressed and marginalised groups. Cameron et al. (1992) characterise research as ‘ethical research’ – research on – ‘advocacy research’ – research on and for – and ‘empowering research’ – research on, for and with. The additional ‘with’ implies the use of interactive or dialogic methods, as opposed to the distancing and objectifying strategies positivists are constrained to use. This volume has brought together a range of approaches in order to examine the issues raised and to reflect on their potential to ‘empower’.

The notion and aims of emancipatory research are not a recent development (indeed, the emergence of the age of Enlightenment was seen as a radical and potentially emancipatory break with the past). In the development of modern social theory, marxism, structuralism, critical hermeneutics, humanistic psychology, feminisms, Black perspectives and poststructuralism have all claimed to have emancipatory aims. Their various influences emerge in particular attempts to develop emancipatory social research.

As a result of the variety of critiques of positivist-influenced approaches to research, particularly with respect to the implications for power, a more recent movement has grown which has as a central aim the empowerment of research participants, which may include the sharing of decisions about the aims, methods, conclusions – indeed all aspects – of any study (although de Koning and Martin (1996) warn against adopting a purist attitude). To suggest a ‘movement’ is somewhat misleading, since the epistemological bases of different claims to emancipatory research are wide-ranging and often contradictory. In this chapter we examine the main approaches and attempt to uncover the knowledge assumptions which underpin them. We go on to outline our guidelines for the contributors to the book, in terms of the kinds of questions they might address in their chapters. Finally, we offer a summary of the contents of each of the chapters themselves.

The language used to describe ‘emancipatory’ research includes ‘participatory’ research, ‘empowerment’ research, ‘collaborative inquiry’ and ‘participatory rural appraisal’. Furthermore, emancipatory research methodology has not a single but a range of knowledge bases. Tandon (1996) identifies six theoretical influences in his discussion of contemporary tendencies. The result is a complex picture in which the elements all make claims to be ‘emancipatory’. In this discussion the approaches are categorised under headings which indicate the primary knowledge assumptions which inform them, although, as we shall see, they also draw on other traditions. We shall look at the major theoretical influences: humanistic psychology, critical/Freirean ideas, feminist theories and poststructuralism. We shall take each of these in turn.

Approaches based on humanistic psychology

The validation of experiential knowledge is at the heart of approaches informed by humanistic psychology. Their Enlightenment roots can be traced through the classical liberal tradition which underpins them. The subject is conceived as an autonomous and self-directing agent. Through co-operation, collaboration and dialogue, she/he is able, by reflection on her/his experiences, to come to a consciousness of her/his need for emancipation, and to enter into co-operative research with others in order to achieve this end. The best-known collections based on these ideas are to be found in Reason and Rowan (1981) and Reason (1988). A contributor to both of these collections, John Heron, in setting out the philosophical basis for what has become known as ‘new paradigm’ or ‘participatory’ research, does not reject the empiricist concept of the application to social research of causal laws in nature, but he posits a thesis of ‘relative determinism’, in that ‘there are creative acts of self-directing agents within that order’ (Heron 1981: 21). He suggests that the basic explanatory model for research behaviour (in both researcher and researched) is that of intelligent self-direction – commitment to purposes in the light of principles – combined with relative determinism. Subjects become co-researchers, since if they are not privy to the research thinking, they will not be functioning as intelligent agents. A central idea here is the notion of intentionality – in any action, people are conscious of their purpose in doing what they are doing, their meaning in acting. In collaborative research such intentions are available mutually to the researcher and research participants. The general explanation of human behaviour which is drawn from this is that human beings are ‘symbolising beings, who find meaning in and give meaning to their world through symbolising their experience in a variety of constructs and actions’ (ibid. 23). To fully understand this, one has to participate in it through overt dialogue and communication with those who are engaging in it.

These are ideas taken from phenomenology, but a model of participatory research takes this further in research practice in the attempt to share power and to aim for equality at every stage of the research process.

Within this scheme, language is viewed as the original archetypal form of human inquiry which enables people to state propositions about their particular experiences in terms of general concepts. In other words, agreement about the meaning of language is what gives it its peculiar symbolising power. So long as the rules governing a language are generally accepted, language is a channel for direct and clear communication.

A final assumption is that empirical research on persons ‘involves a subtle, developing interdependence between propositional knowledge, practical knowledge and experiential knowledge’ (Heron 1981: 31). The researcher’s experiential knowledge of the participants is most adequate when researcher and subject are fully present to each other in a relationship of reciprocal and open inquiry, and when each is open to construe how the other manifests as a presence in space and time.

In terms of the ‘truths’ which emerge from this process, it is accepted that the hope of effective research is to generate true propositions. The truth value of a proposition is partly a function of its correspondence with extra-propositional dimensions of the world as encountered. Where ‘truth’ purports to be about persons other than the researcher, it has indeterminate validity, no secure status as truth, until she/he knows whether those other persons assent to and regard as their own the norms and values of the researcher:

For an authentic science of persons, true statements about persons rest on a value system explicitly shared by researchers and subjects, and on procedural research norms explicitly agreed by researchers and subjects on the basis of that value system. Here again, the model of co-operative inquiry.

(Heron 1981: 33)

The assumptions described above raise a number of questions about, for example: the feasibility of power sharing and a goal of equality in the research process; the feasibility of dialogue (and implicitly consensus), the failure to acknowledge a wider social and political context; and about commitment to the ideal of participation (see Martin (1994) and Kent, this volume, for further discussion). Some of these problems have been tackled by theorists drawing into the idea of ‘emancipatory’ research other knowledge bases to inform and expand its potential. The main contributions have come from critical and feminist theories.

The influence of critical theory

Critical social research draws on marxist assumptions about social relations (though Harvey (1990) argues that it is not bounded by any single grand theoretical perspective). At its heart is the idea that knowledge is structured by existing sets of social relations, and it aims to challenge prevailing, oppressive social structures. As Bauman says, ‘Emancipatory reason does not struggle with common sense but with the social reality that underlies it’ (Bauman 1976: 75). It assumes that all social structures are oppressive, that they are maintained through the influence of political and economic power, and legitimated through ideology. These structures have their relevance in historically specific processes which provide a context for an examination of class (or gender or ‘race’) exploitation. Through a systematic questioning of how ideology or history conceal processes of control, it aims to reveal the nature of the exploitative relationships within concepts such as, for example, ‘work’. As a result of this process, knowledge is produced which gives insight into such oppressive structures. Such knowledge facilitates strategic planning towards the emancipation of oppressed groups. Traditionally these groups were perceived as class-based, but critical approaches have expanded to accommodate gender or ‘race’ as the primary oppressive mechanisms (see Harvey 1990).

Fundamental to the epistemological basis of this approach is the belief that knowledge has no (literal) objective status, but attention must be paid to the production of knowledge – the processural nature of knowledge. At the same time, however, critical approaches claim that critically informed knowledge is more ‘true’ or more objective than prevailing knowledge systems because they uncover the hidden aspects of reality around which other kinds of knowledge collude in order to conceal it. For critical methodologists, knowledge is a process of moving towards an understanding of the world and of the knowledge which structures our understanding of that world (Harvey 1990: 4). The methods used by critical researchers may not in themselves be any different from those used in other research approaches. The difference is that critical approaches begin with structured relationships and then pursue empirical inquiry in order to allow structural analysis (Willis 1977). Harvey describes the role of the critical ethnographer, for example, as

to keep alert to the structural factors while probing meanings: to explore, where possible, the inconsistencies between action and word in terms of structural factors; to see to what extent group processes are externally mediated; to investigate how the subjects see group norms and practices constrained by external social factors; to see how prevailing ideologies are addressed; to analyse the extent to which subversive or resistant practices transcend prevailing ideological forms.

(Harvey 1990: 13)

In addition, the emancipatory notion of praxis, what Harvey calls ‘practical reflective activity’ (ibid. 22), is engaged in critical social research. Knowledge is not only about finding out about the world, but about changing it. Therefore, not only are the participants of any inquiry analysed in terms of their potential for developing group action, but critical researchers themselves engage oppressive social structures, and their own inquiries thus embody praxiological concerns. According to Harvey, knowledge exists in our everyday lives; it is dynamic, changing as a result of praxis and of fundamental reconceptualisation of the world. The activity of engagement is at the root of further development and transformation of knowledge.

The general approach of critical research described above is taken further in some versions of participatory research. The work of Paolo Freire (1972) has been particularly significant in moving ideas of participatory research away from individualistic models to take account of the political context which directly affects people’s lives, whilst also bringing marxist ideas into participatory research. The volume edited by de Koning and Martin (1996) contains a number of contributions developed from the ideas of Freire. This emphasis has led to a stressing of the importance of education and social action as two important pillars in some versions of emancipatory research. Freire’s notion of critical pedagogy identifies ways in which traditional education has been ‘domesticated’ by the dominant order and does not address inequalities. It asserts that marginalised and oppressed groups need ‘education for liberation’; that is, an opportunity to develop a dynamic understanding informed by critical thought and action towards the goal of ‘critical consciousness’, where the person is empowered to ‘think and act on the conditions around her or him, and relates these conditions to the larger contexts of power in society’ (Shor 1993: 32).

In other words, people begin to recognise the ideologies – the myths, values, language – which serve to mislead and cloak reality, and which reinforce the status quo, where some social groups have power over others.

Although a Freirean model sees traditional research methodologies as problematic, it accepts fundamental Enlightenment assumptions about the rational individual, an essence of Being and a reality external to the person. Through a process of critical education, through reflection on her/his situation, the individual or group can move towards ‘conscientization’ and action for transformation. It is thus compatible with and has expanded ideas from humanistic psychology, and has increasingly informed the work of a number of researchers (for example, Fernandes and Tandon 1981; Tandon 1988). It also adopts a binary view of oppression, in that it assumes the ‘oppressed’ and the ‘oppressor’ are clearly identifiable groups.

On the other hand, as with critical approaches more generally, it manifestly rejects any notion of value freedom and neutrality, and locates itself in an emancipatory research tradition. It is ambivalent about ‘objective truth’ in that although it argues that all knowledge is socially and historically produced, it wants to ‘show what is really going on’ at a societal level.

Feminisms and emancipatory research

The range of feminist research approaches claim per se to be emancipatory – to create knowledge which improves the position of women in societies. The writings of Bowles and Duelli Klein (1983), Fonow and Cook (1991), Harding (1987), Mertens (1998), Mies (1982), Oakley (1981), Reinharz (1992), Roberts (1981) and Stanley and Wise (1983) have all developed differing versions of feminist research, but all premised on the knowledge of women’s oppression and the vision of her liberation through research activity as one of a range of strategies. A unique contribution of feminist research has been the exposing of the centrality of male power in the social construction of knowledge. Some versions of feminist research are exploring the contribution of poststructuralism to the development of theory. We discuss these in the next section.

Feminist research has challenged some fundamental binaries of traditional approaches, such as objectivity and ‘distance’ from the participants, hierarchies amongst knowers, both within research teams and between research and researcher, and universality and uniqueness. It also exposes androcentrism in research language which excludes women, which separates researchers from the people they are investigating and which facilitates elite male control. It has raised questions about how language is used in the subordination of women, though not all versions of feminism challenge the Enlightenment assumption of the potential of language to convey transparent meanings.

Although feminism has claimed to challenge, for example, the universalist assumptions which sustain traditional research, it becomes clear that White feminisms have themselves frequently adopted universalist and imperialist assumptions. Critiques from Black and Third-World women (for example, Bhavnani 1991; Mohanty 1991), and from lesbian and disabled feminists, expose the Eurocentric, heterosexual a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Part I The researcher-participant relationship I
• Part II The research process and social action
• Part III Premises and principles of emancipatory research
• Name Index
• Subject Index