III: Methodology and methods: critical realism and empirical research
The third and final section of this reader will relate the philosophical resources that were developed in its previous two sections to discussions about both methodology (here understood broadly as involving reflection on the logics and principles of rcscarch/scicncc) and - to a lesser extent - the use of specific methods. In so doing, it examines and aims to demonstrate the value of critical realist philosophy for empirical forms of feminist and gender studies research.
Importantly, the link that the four chapters contained in this section make (whether implicitly or explicitly) between philosophy, one the one hand, and methodology and methods, on the other, cannot - at least in the current intellectual context - be taken for granted. Approaches that actively seek to sever this link have, after all, become increasingly influential throughout the last few decades. Prominent authors like Anthony J. Onwucgbuzie and Nancy L. Leech (2005), Alan Bryman (2007), and Abbas Tashakkori and Charles Tcddlie (1998), for instance, have argued in favour of a form of methodological pragmatism (or eclecticism) that - rather than getting bogged down in discussions about the (dc)mcrits of specific philosophical frameworks and their preferred methods - places the importance of the research question centre stage. According to such authors, rcscarch/scicncc should be problem- or question-driven rather than philosophy- or method-driven. More generally, leaving behind the idea that using certain types of mcthods/tools (e.g. quantitative or qualitative) should be restricted to proponents of the schools of philosophical thought that arc most commonly associated with them (e.g. positivism or intcrprctivism/hcr-mcncutics) is, according to methodological pragmatists, essential to securing a much-needed ‘paradigm peace’, pluralising our research practices, and facilitating mixed-methods research.
This orientation - along with the impatience with philosophy which it reflects - has obvious emotional appeal, especially when it is explicitly situated within the longer-term context of the nineteenth-century Methodenstreit and its seemingly inexhaustible power to give rise to various methodological rifts, splits, and ‘paradigm wars’. Indeed, as Sadie Parr highlights in her chapter in this section, feminist and gender studies authors too have frequently stressed ‘the need for a less rigid conception of “method” that allows the researcher flexibility’ (p. 267).
An identical (pragmatist and pluralist) perspective appears, at first glance, to be apparent within critical realist philosophical and methodological writings as well. After all, the proponents of critical realism have repeatedly and explicitly repudiated ‘scientism’, or the methodological naturalist idea that - irrespective of what we study - the mcthods/tools appropriate for doing so remain the same. As such, they have staunchly opposed the idea that there exists such a thing as the (single, universal, and completely context-transcendent) ‘scientific method’. Such claims arc, however, animated by an altogether different logic than the logic which inheres in the idea that rescarch/science should be exclusively problem- or question-driven. Specifically, critical realists have argued that any severing of the methods/tools we employ from broader philosophical considerations is not just undesirable but, more importantly, is ultimately illusory. Our methods/tools, they suggest, inevitably presuppose philosophical commitments of various kinds, and it is therefore impossible to detach the problems and questions to which methodological pragmatists have given precedence from accounts (whether explicit or implicit) of being and knowledge.
For example, when we adopt semi-structured interviews as part of our ‘antinaturalist’ research strategy, this presupposes that people, as opposed to e.g. (sub-atomic) particles, are knowledgeable and agential, and that - as a result of this - we will be unable to develop reliable forms of knowledge about human behaviour without asking them to shed light on the motivations or forms of reasoning that underpinned their actions. In contrast, if we choose to forego such interviews in favour of ‘naturalist’ mcthods/tools that aim solely to identify and record empirical regularities (and which arc therefore purportedly more objective) this presupposes cither (1) that people, like (sub-atomic) particles, do not possess the characteristics of knowlcdgcability, agency, and so on, or (2) that their possession of such characteristics is in any ease without value for our attempts to develop reliable forms of knowledge about human behaviour.
In addition to illustrating that attempts to sever the link between methods/ tools and philosophical accounts of being and knowledge are bound to fail, however, these two examples also bring to the fore a second problem with the adoption of a pragmatist methodological orientation; specifically, they highlight the fact that, when we operate ‘as if’ such a split is possible, this puts us at significant risk of philosophical inconsistency. For instance, if - in our (entirely justifiable) desire to side-step the ‘paradigm wars’ - we combine mcthods/tools that presuppose that human beings are irreducibly agential with methods/tools that presuppose that human behaviour, like everything else in nature, is the result of deterministic causal laws, this cannot but result in an incoherent amalgam of competing philosophical positions. While it remains tempting - in the face of more than a century-and-a-half of bickering - to simply ‘let a hundred methodological flowers bloom’ or endorse the cpistemologically-anarchist slogan that ‘anything goes’ (Feycrabend 2002 [1975]), there arc therefore reasons to be concerned about the philosophical costs that will be incurred as a result. Moreover, when our simultaneous use of philosophically incompatible methods/tools produces conflicting results - as it surely will - we are left with a question that is fundamentally insoluble from a methodological pragmatist perspective: how do we adjudicate between the results that were produced by means of ‘method/tool A’ and ‘method/tool B’? Any compelling answer to such questions will be rooted in an explicit account of reality (i.c. an ontological stance) and/or knowledge (i.c. an epistemological stance) and - by extension -it will provide us with a critical evaluation of the methodological pragmatist imperative to ‘just get on with it’.
As the four chapters in this section of the reader show, critical realist philosophy serves exactly this critical purpose. In so doing, however, this approach is by no means unique. Rather, in electing to place philosophy centre-stage, it mirrors the more systematic versions of positivism and intcrpretivism/hcrmeneutics, which have always maintained that the link between philosophy and our mcthods/tools should play a prominent role in our research/scientific practices as well.
In contrast with the naturalism of positivism and the anti-naturalism of intcrprctivism/hcrmencutics, however, critical realist philosophy proposes a critical naturalism. This philosophico-methodological position, like the positions that were discussed in the previous two sections of this reader, involves both a negation - in this case, a negation of the ‘eithcr/or’ logic that inheres in the existing naturalism/anti-naturalism problematic - and a synthesis, here in the form of a principle of methodological unity-in-difference that has the distinctive ‘both/ and’ logic of dialectical thought built into it. The various philosophical strands that, when they arc woven-together, form the whole that is methodological unity-in-difference require some initial untangling and further explanation before (1) they can be rc-cntwincd, and (2) their relevance and value to the areas of feminist and gender studies theory and praxis can be fully demonstrated. Specifically, to engage in this untangling and explanation it will be necessary to return - once more - to the concepts of ontological depth and emergence/on tological stratification.
The critical realist claim that being is characterised by depth, for instance, provides research/science with a general logic of invcstigation/cxplanation that contrasts with the emphasis on induction and/or deduction which characterises traditional approaches to this topic; specifically, the idea that real causal powers/mcchanisms produce actual and empirical events suggests that - while both conventional modes of inference like induction and deduction and less conventional modes of inference like abduction have a role to play - it is retro-duction that is of greatest significance to research/science. In short, rctroduction refers to the creation of models of causal powcrs/mcchanisms that, if they were to exist and act in the postulated manner, would account for the event (or phenomenon) with which our investigation is concerned. As such, rather than attempting to subsume some evcnt/phenomcnon of interest - e.g. sex- and gender-based violence, or some specific instance of it - under a deterministic/ probabilistic causal law (whether through induction, deduction, or their combination) rctroductivc logic encourages rcscarchcrs/scicntists to ‘work back’ from an evcnt/phenomcnon to its causal conditions of possibility.
This process and the broader importance of retroduction for forms of research with a specifically feminist or gender studies orientation arc fleshed out in Amber Fletcher’s chapter, which brings these abstract critical realist claims to bear on a concrete case study that is centred on the lives of female Canadian farm workers. For now, however, it is worth noting two things in particular. First, the stress that critical realist philosophy places on retroduction is consistent with questions on which feminist and gender studies authors have - historically speaking - placed great emphasis as well. When social reproduction theorists (c.g. Bhattacharya 2017) pose questions about the (informal/unpaid) reproductive labour that is required for (formal/paid) employment to take place, for instance, they are - in typical rctroductive fashion - ‘working back’ from an cvcnt/phcnomcnon to its causal conditions of possibility. As such, any potential contribution of critical realist philosophy to feminism and gender studies is much better understood in terms of clarifying, legitimising, and reinforcing the role of a mode of inference that is already established than it is in terms of introducing it. Second, and more generally, it is also worth noting here that it is the pivotal role that retroduction plays in capturing the depth of being that substantiates the ‘unity’ that is inherent to the aforementioned principle of methodological unity-in-diffcrencc.
If it is the critical realist claim that being has depth that provides a basis for the ‘unifying’ idea that retroduction is of primary importance to (feminist and gender studies) research, however, it is emergencc/ontological stratification that provides the primary impetus for incorporating ‘difference’ into the principle of methodological unity-in-diffcrencc.1
In short, emergentism (whether specifically critical realist in orientation or otherwise) claims - first - that there exist real differences between the varied types of ‘stuff’ that make up being in its entirety. Second, it argues that these differences result from the relational organisation of parts into causally and taxonomically irreducible wholes. For example, a water molecule has any number of features (c.g. the power to extinguish fires, the property of liquidity) which its component parts (hydrogen and oxygen atoms) clearly do not. Emcr-gentist philosophy commonly suggests, however, that the process which brings about these holistic causal/taxonomic properties occurs throughout the entirety of being. Reality can therefore be understood as consisting of an indeterminate number of levels, all of which arc characterised by irreducible properties. As these levels remain existentially dependent or build on pre-existing levels of reality for their existence (i.c. the irreducible features of a water molecule do not simply erase those of the hydrogen and oxygen atoms which make it up but depend on them for its existence), being in its entirety may be understood as stratified', or, in other words, it may be understood in terms of a principle of ontological unity-in-difference that arguably gets us all the way from (subatomic) particles to people and politics in a philosophically-cohcrcnt and nonreductionist manner.
Within critical realist philosophy, this ontological principle is then paired with the aforementioned methodological principle of the same name. The latter
Methodology and methods 199 of these, in turn, is rooted in Bhaskar’s multifaceted claim that ‘it is the nature of the object that determines the form of its possible science’ (1998, p. 3). This statement aims to get across - among numerous other things - that the appropriate methods/tools for a particular discipline are dependent on the nature of what it studies. For instance, if it is true - and critical realist philosophy suggests it is - that people possess the broad range of emergent properties that are most commonly described by means of terms like ‘agency’, then it only makes sense for rcscarchcrs/scicntists to use e.g. semi-structured interviews to enquire into their reasons for acting a certain way. In contrast, if we extend the use of this method/tool - one that is clearly of significant value to the study of both people and politics - to engage in research on (sub-atomic) particles, this effort is ill-fated from the start; no matter how much any hapless (but heroic!) scientists/ researcher may try, after all, the silence of their object of study is unlikely to be anything but abiding. While a range of additional considerations should guide our methodological practice as well - e.g. the specific aim(s) of our research, the stage of the research process in which we find ourselves, the kind of research which is most useful at the current stage of our discipline’s development, and a whole host of epistemological considerations - this ‘fit’ between the nature of what we study and the methods/tools we use to study it is therefore invariably an essential consideration. Indeed, endorsing the use of a particular method/tool before taking this fit into consideration (i.e. an a priori endorsement) is, from a critical realist philosophical perspective, tantamount to subscribing to the idea that the methodological cart should always and everywhere be placed well ahead of the horse.
Such claims mark a clear contrast between critical realism and scientistic approaches. This is the case, primarily, because they are rooted in the competing idea that real, emergent differences in the nature of what rescarchcrs/scicn-tists study will require them to adopt different types of methods/tools. As a result, critical realist philosophy paves the way for an unmistakably pluralistic methodological orientation. The sort of methodological pluralism that it grounds, however, is not at all the same as the kind that was discussed above. Rather, critical realism champions a kind of methodological pluralism that is persistently attentive to its objcct(s) of study and - by encouraging us to pay systematic attention to the presuppositions of our methods/tools - actively counters the risk of philosophical inconsistency to which methodological pragmatism remains wilfully blind. Such philosophical risk-taking in the name of a methodological pluralist cause - and, more broadly, in the name of ‘paradigm peace’ - is especially disconcerting because it is so unnecessary; after all, critical realist philosophy also provides rcscarchcrs/scicntists with a rationale for the adoption of a substantially pluralistic methodological approach. Rather than remaining entirely ‘untethered’, however, this approach is fastened to the ground by means of ontological and epistemological positions like those that were developed in the first two sections of this reader. As opposed to an unprincipled, opportunistic, or uncritical methodological pluralism, critical realistphilosophy therefore provides rescarch/science with a basis for what Danermark et al. (2002, 152) have helpfully referred to as a critical methodological pluralism.
It is its broader philosophical stance as well which sets critical realist reflections on mcthodology/mcthods apart from the parameters of the existing natural-ism/anti-naturalism debate. While it mirrors approaches like positivism and intcrpretivism/hcrmeneutics in affirming the important role of philosophy, for instance, it negates both (1) the naturalist idea that there is (or at least can/ should be) an essential unity of methods between different (natural, social, etc.) scientific disciplines, and (2) the anti-naturalist idea that there exists a fundamental, irreconcilable methodological divide between explanation (within science) and understanding (within the humanities).
While the former of these positions has been discussed at some length, the latter requires some further clarification; in particular, what is in need of explanation is how the critical realist critique of scientism differs from the dualistic anti-naturalist emphasis on the methodological contrast between studying particles and people or politics. To do so, it is essential to begin by noting that -while anti-naturalists have sought to defend the autonomy of understanding/the humanities from encroachments by cxplanation/thc sciences - they have also tended to implicitly univcrsalisc an (essentially positivistic) understanding of what it means to ‘do’ science; specifically, they have commonly left intact the assumption that science means scientism. Not only docs such an understanding drastically underestimate the methodological variety that actually characterises disciplines like physics, chemistry, and biology, however, the merits of scientism as an account of science arc also - for reasons that were discussed above -extremely debatable.
In fact, if it is true - as critical realist philosophy claims - that the fit between the nature of what we study and the methods/tools we use to study it should always be at the forefront of our minds when we develop our research design, this allows us to both reclaim and rethink rescarch/science. Specifically, it allows us to reclaim science from persistent efforts by proponents of positivist philosophy to monopolise the meaning of this term and rethink it by rooting the epistemological dialectic which characterises this practice in critical realist concepts like ontological depth, transfactual causality, cmcrgcncc/ontological stratification, structure, referential detachment, etc. This strategy is, however, strikingly different from the anti-naturalist strategy of defending the autonomy of understanding and the humanities. In contrast with this approach, for instance, the critical realist ‘game plan’ rejects the idea that the human/social/ cultural domain cannot be studied in accordance with ‘scientific methods’ in favour of the idea that - while there arc many different types of useful knowledge and many different types of useful tools/mcthods - all of bcing/rcality is susceptible to scientific investigation. As such, the critical naturalism which its advocates favour avoids the problematic, dualistic consequences - both philosophical and methodological in nature - that have long plagued anti-naturalist/ humanistic work. Moreover, this anti-dualistic methodological orientation is
Methodology and methods 201 further reinforced by the abovementioned fact that critical realist philosophy explicitly rejects the (positivist) idea that it is its use of a specific method/tool which provides research/science with its unity; rather, critical realism suggests that it is the primacy of rctroductive logic within research/science - whether focused on the ‘natural’ or the ‘human/social/cultural’ domain - that plays this unifying role.
The final section of this reader - or rather, the four chapters which it contains - examine and demonstrate the value of these abstract claims for empirical forms of feminist and gender studies research. While concepts like critical naturalism, methodological unity-in-difference, and critical methodological pluralism do not make an appearance in every chapter, all arc situated within the broader philosophico-mcthodological context that they provide.
The first chapter, by Amber Fletcher, discusses the relevance of rctroduction and abduction to feminist and gender studies research, and - as mentioned - is centred on a case study that is concerned with the lives of female Canadian farm workers. The second chapter, by Michiel van Ingen, draws on critical realist claims about ontological depth, cmergcnce/ontological stratification, and transfactual/mcchanismic causality to argue that the (broadly defined) constructivist orientation of much Feminist Security Studies (FSS) work ‘is incapable of providing this [International Relations] sub-field with adequate philosophical grounding’ (p. 225). This is the case, he argues, because the analytical framework that results from adopting this orientation is both ‘incapable of providing a basis and rationale for the kind of integrative, interdisciplinary research that is required to do justice to the events and phenomena with which FSS is concerned’ and ‘ill-suited to grounding empirical forms of feminist research' (p. 238). Such claims are rooted in the idea that constructivist FSS authors - like many proponents of the cultural turn - have adopted a one-dimensional focus on discoursc/mcaning that is both anthropocentric and premised on a unidirectional understanding of causality. Moreover, van Ingcn’s chapter suggests that constructivism is ‘plagued by persistent theory/praxis inconsistencies’ (p. 226). In contrast, it claims that ‘critical realist philosophy - especially its emergentist/ stratified ontology and power-/mechanism-based understanding of causality -docs pave the way for interdisciplinary research’ (p. 226); this is the case, in short, because - contra constructivism - it ‘paves the way for an approach to FSS that is multi-dimensional, anti-anthropocentric, premised on a multidirectional understanding of causality, [...] and able to effectively avoid theory/ praxis inconsistencies’ (p. 226).
The third chapter, by Sadie Parr, is rooted in research that was carried out with a group of women who were receiving intensive family support to help address their family’s ‘anti-social behaviour’. More generally, it explores the questions and normative/political dilemmas that arise when rcsearchers/scicntists seek to marry the common feminist concern with documenting and/or amplifying the experience, knowledge, and understanding of unheard/silenced/labcllcd/ marginalised women with critical realist claims about judgmental rationalism (i.c. the idea that some accounts of reality are explanatorily better than others).
Parr explicitly acknowledges that her chapter docs not provide an ‘easy answer’ to these questions (p. 263). This should not come as a surprise, as arguably there just arc no easy answers available to us; or rather, the easy answers that are provided by dismissive, hubristic approaches to securing the authority of researchers/scientists and approaches which urge the wholesale, indiscriminate valorisation of ‘women’s voices’ are - for both epistemological and normative/ political reasons - highly dubious. Instead, an approach that allows for greater epistemological nuance, complexity, and mutuality seems required. This is, of course, exactly what critical realist philosophy aims to provide by means of (1) its dialectical understanding of the epistemological process that lies at the heart of rcscarch/sciencc, and (2) its ‘holy trinity’ of ontological realism, cpistcmic relativism, and judgmental rationalism.
The final chapter, by Wendy Sims-Schoutcn, develops a methodological approach for Critical Realist Discourse Analysis (CRDA). In so doing it draws on interviews with Dutch and English mothers and focuses on the varied accounts they provide of motherhood, female employment, and day-care. As Sims-Schoutcn stresses, CRDA ‘views non-discursive factors [...] as causal mechanisms that operate alongside discursive factors’ (p. 280); that is to say, it ‘is informed by the anti-anthropocentric view that discourse docs not constitute or create our world independently but, rather, that it со-constitutes the realities that we experience’ (p. 280). As such, Sims-Schoutcn argues that the critical realist resources on which her chapter draws to ground this approach arc invaluable exactly because they allow researchers/scientists ‘to side-step the age-old structure/agency and matcrialism/idcalism (or constructivism) dualisms in favour of an approach that conceives of these as dialectically co-constitutcd’ (p. 291). Like van Ingcn’s chapter, then, this chapter maintains that critical realist philosophy provides crucial resources ‘for researchers who wish to avoid both the anthropocentric social constructionist tendency to reduce all dimensions of our existence to discourse and biological reductionism or materialist determinism’ (p. 291).
Note
1 Primary, but not only; for instance, Bhaskar’s original formulation of critical realist philosophy stressed the existence of ontological, epistemological, methodological, and relational differences between the natural and social/cultural/human sciences (1998 [1979], especially Chapter 2).
References
Bhaskar, R. 1998 [1979]. The Possibility of Naturalism: A Philosophical Critique of the Contemporary Human Sciences, third edition. London: Routledge.
Bhattacharya, T. 2017. “Introduction: Mapping Social Reproduction Theory,” in T. Bhattacharya (ed.) Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression, pp. 1-20. London: Pluto Press.
Bryman, A. 2007. “Barriers to Integrating Quantitative and Qualitative Research.” Journal of Mixed Methods Research 1 (1 ):8-22.
Danermark, B., M. Ekstrom, L. Jakobsen and J. C. Karlsson. 2002. Explaining Society: An Introduction to Critical Realism in the Social Sciences. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
Feyerabend, P. 2002 [1975]. Against Method, third edition. London and New York: Verso.
Onwuegbuzie, A. J. and N. L. Leech. 2005. “On Becoming a Pragmatic Researcher: The Importance of Combining Quantitative and Qualitative Research Methodologies.” International Journal of Social Research Methodology 8(5):375-87.
Tashakkori, A. and C. Teddlie (1998) Mixed Methodology’: Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches. Thousand Oaks, London, and Greater Kailash I: Sage Publications.
