Key Points: Chapter 2 Critical Research Approach

Monday lecture touched on “critical” research. I want to make sure it’s clear.

According to lecture, the critical approach is situated closer the interpretivist perspective than the positivist. And if you think back to Chapter 1, the critical approach is reflective of applied research (in particular action research, pp. 12-13).

Technically speaking the critical approach blends multiple epistemological and ontological perspectives. This really isn’t important since we don’t want you bogged down in lay-philosophical debates. So, the take-away point is that the critical approach views knowledge as power, both as a form of oppression and of empowerment.

Knowledge can be oppressive when it used to negatively impact people’s lives, yet it can be empowering if mobilized to improve social conditions. For example, for a long time many people assumed that homeless people were on the streets because they were lazy, subject to vice, and made poor decisions. This was common wisdom and, as a result, the public had little interest in helping the downtrodden. But once scholars collaborated with social workers to identify and the many structural factors contributing to homelessness, we began to see a greater public willingness to allocate resources to mitigate factors influencing homelessness.

In this example, knowledge was mobilized as a form of activism for the express purpose of improving public welfare. Knowledge was sought not for knowledge sake, but rather in the interests of social reform. This is what the text refers to as praxis. However, implicit in this approach is the assumption of an objective reality—that is, that harmful structural conditions truly exist but can nonetheless be curtailed. There is an implicit assumption of shared experience—i.e., homelessness—that can be remedied to some degree. At the same time, few would argue that the experiences of all homeless people are the same or that people on the streets are all there for the same exact reasons. This means that the critical approach sometimes straddles that ontological border between realism and constructivism.

In short, the critical approach is about producing knowledge for the sake of mobilization and reform. Whether we employ a positivist or interpretivist approach toward knowledge is irrelevant; more important is an understanding that power and use of knowledge to fix social problems.