How to understand what we are researching. Layer interpretation on interpretation.
positivism - value neutral - there is an objective world out there. The researcher needs to abandon any preconceptions.
interpretivist approach - social construction of reality. eg an ethnic group is not an ethnic group because of skin colour, behavioral disposition but because the people 'in it' and the people 'out of it' treat it as an ethnic group. ie the ethnic group emerges from the interactions and social practices that constitute social life.
Because everything is a matter of interpretation there is no way of deciding whether one set of interpretations are better than another. However, as a researcher we will still need to make judgements.
realism - there is an external world that is knowable.
neorealism - while there is a real external world, we can never actually step outside our interpretive practices to know it.
relativism - used to describe those who view the idea that there is an objective world out there as unhelpful
normative view of the world - meaning and community - reaching an interpretation of something involves orientating to conventions of existing practice and making sense of the world from the points of view that fellow community members do.
description or interpretation
'there are those who are reluctant to do much more than providing a description of an event, on the basis that going beyond the data involves substituting one view of the world for another (eg ethnomethodologists). On the other hand there are those who argue that description alone is not enough and that any detailed investigation must involve an attempt to 'get behind' the rationales for action provided by participants and to interpret the reasons why certain events occur in the way that they do. In this way theory plays a strong role in enabling researchers to extrapolate'
positivist steer between type 1 and type 2 error
interpretivist steer between over and under interpretation
re Hughes, E. (1993) The Sociological Eye for a good description of social construction
