CRITICAL PARADIGMS OF

SOCIAL RESEARCH
LOUIS COHEN, LAWRENCE MANION
& KEITH MORRISON

STRUCTURE OF THE CHAPTER

Critical theory and critical educational
research
Criticisms of approaches from critical theory
Critical theory and curriculum research
Participatory research and critical theory
Feminist research
Post-colonial theory and queer theory

CRITICAL THEORETICAL
A deliberately political reading of education and research
IDEOLOGY
CRITIQUE

FEMINIST

PARTICIPATORY
RESEARCH

POLITICAL
RESEARCH

PARTICIPATORY
ACTION RESEARCH

CRITICAL
ETHNOGRAPHY

POST-COLONIAL
THEORY

QUEER THEORY

CRITICAL APPROACHES
(MACRO AND MICRO)
EQUALITY

INTERESTS

POWER

FREEDOM

NORMATIVE

EMANCIPATION

SOCIAL
JUSTICE

HABERMASS KNOWLEDGECONSTITUTIVE INTERESTS

TECHNICAL
INTEREST

Prediction
& Control

HERMENEUTIC/
PRACTICAL
INTEREST

Understanding &
Interpretation

EMANCIPATORY
INTEREST

Emancipation
& Freedom

IDEOLOGY CRITIQUE
DESCRIBE
EXISTING SITUATION
UNDERSTAND REASONS
FOR EXISTING SITUATION
INTERROGATE LEGITIMACY OF REASONS
FOR/CAUSES OF EXISTING SITUATION
SET AN AGENDA TO IMPROVE THE
EXISTING SITUATION

PARTICIPATORY RESEARCH
(Bottom-up research)
Groups (e.g. community groups) themselves
establish/implement interventions to bring about
change, development and improvement to their
lives, acting collectively rather than individually.
Research with people and communities rather than
doing research to or for people and communities.
Ordinary people are entirely capable of reflective
and critical analysis of their situation.
Research with a practical intent, for transforming
lives and communities, making the practical more
political and the political more practical.

FEMINIST RESEARCH
The asymmetry of gender relations and
representation must be studied reflexively;
Womens issues, their history, biography and
biology, feature as a substantive agenda/focus
in research;
Raising of consciousness of oppression,
exploitation, empowerment, equality, voice and
representation;
Challenge the acceptability and notion of
objectivity and objective research;
Substantive, value-laden dimensions and
purposes of feminist research are paramount;
Research must empower women;

FEMINIST RESEARCH

Research need not only be undertaken by academic

experts;
Women must collectivize their own individual histories
if they are to appropriate these histories for
emancipation;
Commitment to revealing core processes and
recurring features of womens oppression;
Insistence on the inseparability of theory and practice;
Insistence on the connections between the private
and the public, between the domestic and the
political;
Concern with the construction and reproduction of
gender and sexual difference;
Rejection of narrow disciplinary boundaries;

FEMINIST RESEARCH

Rejection of the artificial subject/researcher dualism;

Rejection of positivism and objectivity as male
mythology;
Increased use of qualitative, introspective
biographical research techniques;
Recognition of the gendered nature of social research
and the development of anti-sexist research
strategies;
The research process as consciousness and
awareness raising and as fundamentally participatory;
Primacy of womens personal subjective experience;
Rejection of hierarchies in social research;

FEMINIST RESEARCH

The vertical, hierarchical relationships of

researchers/research community and research
objects, in which the research itself is an
instrument of domination and the reproduction and
legitimation of power elites, must be replaced by
research that promotes the interests of dominated,
oppressed, exploited groups;
Recognition of equal status and reciprocal
relationships between subjects and researchers;
Need to change the status quo, not just to
understand or interpret it;
Research as a process of conscientization, to
empower oppressed participants.

POST-COLONIAL THEORY
After-effects, or continuation, of ideologies and
discourses of imperialism, domination and repression,
value systems (e.g. the domination of western values
and the delegitimization of non-Western values);
After-effects of colonialism on the daily lived
experiences of participants;
Regard in which peoples in post-colonial societies
are held;
Valorization of multiple voices and heterogeneity in
post-colonial societies;
Resistance to marginalization of groups within postcolonial societies;
Construction of identities in a post-colonial world.

QUEER THEORY
Queer theory explores the social construction and
privileging or denial of identities, sexual behaviour,
deviant behaviour and the categorizations and
ideologies involved in such constructions.
Halperin (1997: 62): Queer theory acquires its
meaning from its oppositional relation to the norm.
Queer is by definition whatever is at odds with the
normal, the legitimate, the dominant.
Queer theory explores, problematizes,interrogates
gender, sexuality and also their mediation by other
characteristics or forms of oppression, e.g. social class,
ethnicity, colour, disability.