Perspectives

Katrine Miller

Perspectives
Post Positivist Perspectives
Interpretive Perspectives Critical Perspectives

Post Positivist Perspectives

Use of the scientific method: develop theory and

accumulate knowledge about the world through the process of empirically testing theories The evolution or Revolution of Research Programs

Barbara Wilson (1994)

I believe that childrens interpretations and responses

are as richly individualistic However, I also believe that there are common patterns that characterize a majority of young viewers and that those patterns are as predictable and explainable as the basic process by which all those unique snowflakes are formed from water

 Ontology position:

Emphasized both the patterned nature of the social construction process and the regular and predictable effects that reified social constructions have on social actors

 Epistemology position: knowledge can best be gained through a search for regularities and causal relationships among components of the social world Regularities and causal relationship can best be discovered if there is a complete separation between the investigator and the subject of the investigation This separation can be guaranteed through the use of the scientific method

 Axiology Position:

Though no claims to absolute thruth and value free inquiry are made, the belief exist that progress can be made if researchers exercise care in their theorizing and research and are critical of theoretical assertions and empirical justifications

Interpretives Theories
Reflect the complexity of both the social world and the social construction process Foundational Theoretical Positions: Hermeneutics: Does not blindly interpret the text which he or she presented, rather involves a process of tacking, going back and forth between theory, tacit knowledge the researcher takes into the project, and the textual data Phenomenology: Knowledge is not found in external experience but in individual consciousness Symbolic Interactionism

 Ontological Issue:

Realities exist in the form of multiple mental constructions, socially and experientially based, local and specific, dependent for their form and content on the persons who hold them

 Epistemology Issue - interpretive theorists advocate a subjective epistemology - there are no universal laws or causal relationship to be deduced about the social world - Reality is socially constructed, interpretivist believe that this understanding can be reached only from the actors point of view

 Axiological Issue

should try to minimize the influence of values on the research process

Critical Perspectives
Ontologi: Emphasizes the complex and dialectical relationship between structure and action

 Structuration Theory: Anthony Giddens

structure is not to be conceptualized as a barrier to action, but as essentially involved in its production Ontological privileged: Agent over structure

 Epistemological Theory: nature of knowledge and

how knowledge is to be gathered and use in the social world

Jurgen Habermas:

- Empirical analitical cognitive interest Knowledge should consist of deterministic and general laws of nature - Hermeneutic- historical cognitive interest: the uniqueness of human activities Positivist approach as reductionist and believes that knowledge should be based on emergent on local text that are historically situated - Critical- emancipatory cognitive interest : knowledge as a process of self reflection through which historical constraints

 Axiological Commitments:
Values should guide scholarship, and theorist should

work as change agents in supporting those valued Cultural Studies Feminist Studies