Interpretivism: the philosophy of social science and its implications for the study

The study’s philosophical perspective is closely linked to its theoretical and methodological frameworks. The most accurate description of the study could be articulated in the following way: it is an inductive, qualitative research project focused onto the exploration of social worlds through a multiplicity of qualitative research methods. Following the logic of grounded theory, through the interpretation of empirical data, the analysis seeks to construct a theoretically sound explanation of gathered research material. When it comes to social science

philosophy, grounded theory is most commonly associated with interpretivism (Charmaz, 2006). Moreover, the study’s purported aim was described as the intention to understand social worlds of migrants through their narratives – such intention puts the study’s philosophical views firmly within the boundaries of interpretivism.

The philosophy o interpretivism makes a priori assumptions when it comes to the description of social reality. The interpretivist standpoint assumes that social reality can exist only if individuals are able to see and interpret it (Blumer, 1969 and Charmaz, 2006). Social reality rests on the interactions between social actors, and even more importantly through the meanings attributed to those interactions by the actors involved. Such understanding provides an epistemological background: individuals describe social reality through the language. Thus by paying attention to the language, researchers can learn on the ways individuals relate themselves to social reality (Charmaz, 2006 and Schwandt, 1994). Epistemological views over the nature of knowledge are backed by broader ontological assumptions. It is argued that social reality is inseparable from a human act of interpretation (Schwandt, 1994). Social scientists working within the interpretivist tradition should strive to understand social reality from the point of view of research participants (Schwandt, 1994). The process of understanding is seen not as a deductive practice or as the imposition of external theoretical constructs, but as an act of interpretation, which treats the testimonies of participants as texts representing the multitude of social meanings which in turn are expected to be de-coded by social scientists (Geertz, 1973). In contrast to ‘lay’ readers who are dealing with literary sources, researchers are expected to engage with what Plummer (2001) calls the documents of life: ethnographic observations, texts produced by participants (notably, the study by Znaniecki and Thomas (1958) cited in Plummer (2001), which pioneered both a grounded theory approach and looked at the phenomenon of migration, and was based on the interpretations of letters written by Polish peasant migrants in early 20th century America) and, most commonly, oral histories which are conceived as biographical narratives.

The interpretivist standpoint rejects logical empiricism associated with the positivist tradition: the stress is not on the verification of the facts and

establishment of patterns, but on the imaginative understanding of what research participants are trying to express through their narratives and other documents of life (Plummer, 2001). The understanding of participants’ experiences is a dynamic one. They are seen as social agents, who are conceived as ‘autonomous, intentional, active, goal directed; they construe, construct, and interpret their own behaviour and that of their fellow agents’ (Schwandt, 1994, p.120).

The interpretivist approach is not only concerned with the discovery of social worlds through the interpretation of qualitative and ethnographic materials, but it places a central emphasis on the role of researchers. The intepretivist vision of researcher is very different from the positivist quest for objectivity and neutrality. The opposite is the case: in all levels of researcher’s involvement, whether in data gathering or interpretation, researchers are seen as a participant in generating data and creating meanings: researcher’s conduct during interviewing hers/his class, ethnic and gender identity - all of it contributes towards the ways social reality is being represented (Schwandt, 1994). It is argued that the researcher’s subjectivity cannot be removed from the research process; instead it should be reflected and treated alongside gathered materials. It does not mean that the research process and data which it generates are always unique and unrepeatable: e.g. Denzin (1994) is a strong advocate of interpretivist stance in a postmodernist form, yet even this author, concedes that different researchers can get very similar answers to the questions they investigate. However, it is up to individual researchers to go beyond the subjectivities of research participants and their own positionality (e.g. the influences stemming from their own social identity), and articulate an imaginative interpretation of social phenomena. The interpretations are not based on prescriptions imported from external theoretical models, but on the researcher’s reflexivity and continuous interaction with qualitative material jointly accumulated with research participants (Charmaz, 2006).

Interpretivism is seen as a philosophical background underpinning the approach of grounded theory (Chamaz, 2006). According to Charmaz (2006), a number of features make interpretivist philosophy and grounded theory methodology compatible. Both call for the immersion into participants’ social worlds either through observation or in-depth interviewing. What is also significant is the

inductive and exploratory nature of grounded theory: the focus is on finding research techniques capable of revealing social processes interesting to researchers, not on imposing objective techniques capable of measuring and describing social phenomena. Blumer (1969, p. 41) specifically stresses this dimension: it is argued that the research techniques applied to the study of social life ‘may involve direct observation, interviewing of people, listening to their conversations, securing life-history accounts…There is no protocol to be followed in the use of any of these procedures; the procedures should be adapted to its circumstances and guided by judgement of is propriety and fruitfulness’. In other words, the interpretivist philosophy invites researchers to be flexible when it comes to the choice of research methods: the dynamics of fieldwork determine which qualitative methods are chosen to investigate social processes, not vice versa. The priority is given not to the statically pre-arranged research design and research schedule, but to researcher’s own reflexivity, i.e. her/his ability to grasp the changing dynamics of research process and understand participants’ social worlds (Charmaz, 2006).

Such position also requires from researchers a continuous reflection of one’s own positionality in order to reflect on personal subjectivities: while it is impossible to eliminate one’s own subjectivity, personal opinions or political views should not determine the interpretation of empirical findings (Geertz, 1973). However, in spite of questioning the ability of researchers to be objective in a positivist sense, the advocates of interpretivism argue against impressionistic and perfunctory approach to data collection and interpretation (Geertz, 1973). Denzin (1994) stresses that the researcher, who belongs to the interpretivist tradition, should provide a clear indication of her/his sampling strategy, indicate the number of interviews, review the demographic characteristics of research participants and clarify the objectives of research questions. A continuous note taking and transcription of interviews is encouraged (Charmaz, 2006). Moreover researchers should not cross ethical lines generally recognised by social science scholars working within alternative paradigms. Although the line between the researcher and researched is more blurred than in other philosophical perspectives, it is stressed that researchers should avoid going native, at least in a full way

(Schwandt, 1994). Instead a model of ‘marginal’ native, a researcher immersed in social worlds of interviewees, but at the same aware of ethical norms and research objectives, is advocated by Schwandt (1994).

Similarly, researchers are called not to reproduce narratives of participants, but to understand and theorize them (Plummer, 2001). The aim of the researcher is not only to describe the subjectivity of lived experiences of individuals and social groups, but to show how individuals and social groups are making sense of the social worlds which they inhabit and, crucially, to provide original theoretical explanations. Those explanations are built on the analysis of social worlds of individuals, which acknowledges both the autonomous potential of human agency and the contextual influence of social structures. Drawing on one of the inspirational ideas of interpretivism – the French existentialism, Plummer (2001, p.164) insists that ‘this method is a way of reading a life through moving both backwards (to sources and conditions in class, race, gender, emotion, etc) and forwards (to pragmatics and consequences) from a key event in person’s life- linking all these to wider issues of history and culture throughout. It is a method of ‘totalization’, trying to see ways through the whole life by moving through it and connecting to wider issues’. To sum up, although the researchers belonging to the interpretivist tradition seek to reveal personally unique experiences and emotions, as social scientists they have a duty to place them within a broader context underpinned by structural divisions.

To stress once again, the interpretivist philosophy of this study intrinsically linked with personal experience of the fieldwork and theoretical stances developed through the research process. A more detailed analysis of how interpretivist philosophy manifested itself in the fieldwork and data analysis will be conducted in three subsequent sections; at this point, a concluding comment over the extent to which interpretivism has influenced the fieldwork and interpretations seems to be appropriate and adequate.

Interviews with participants have resulted in the production of complex individual and family narratives. The produced narratives can be treated as a form of oral reflections over social interactions in the labour market, the places of residences

and elsewhere. Those experiences came out in the interviews in the form of narratives which were produced in the process of my (acting in the role of the researcher) interactions with participants. Participants’ testimonies and actions gave me insights into their social worlds which they themselves performed, created and interpreted, while being interviewed and observed by me. Those experiences were communicated to a specific person – a doctoral researcher from CEE background (who moved from the Republic of Lithuania to the UK in 2006) and as such the interviews included a form of dialogue, in which certain contexts and nuances, e.g. emotionality, were visible only to the researcher and the researched. Participants’ narratives, actions and opinions have been treated as summative articulations of experiences related to migration: they provided the insights on how the individual ‘self’ was formed through interactions with family members, co- migrants and co-workers, representatives of statutory/voluntary groups, employers and members of wider established communities in Northtown.

It is important to recognize that similarly to everyday interactions in which they played a role of conscious social agents, in the interviews participants also shaped the images of themselves in the ways which carried social meanings to them. In some ways, participants’ narratives were forms of self-reflections and self- interpretations communicated to me as a researcher – the participants were interpreting their own lives by creating oral narratives. Hence the research encounters and raw data which came out from them can be understood through the use of conceptual framework associated with the intepretivist philosophy.

The second layer of interpretivism can be detectable in data analysis: on one hand, I have consciously been trying to preserve various subjectivities of migrants’ testimonies, e.g. their ways to express their feelings by relying on certain expressions (e.g. the emphasis on ethnicity in the narratives such as ‘We Poles…’). However, on the other hand I have engaged in structural readings of their testimonies, the readings which took into the account both human agency with its properties of autonomy and individuality but also social structures within which participants had to position themselves. Moreover, it should be stressed that those interpretations were built on thick descriptions coming from participants, not imposed on them in order to illustrate pre-existing theoretical assumptions. In

other words, the subjectivity of individual testimonies and the role of social structure were not position against each other, but brought together in the act of theoretical interpretation. The act of theoretical interpretation has also performed a function of producing knowledge acceptable by social scientists as opposed to superficial and impressionistic depiction of social processes associated with journalism (Bloor, 1991): lived experiences of participants through the framework of grounded theory were translated into a methodologically and conceptually sound understanding of what does it mean to be a migrant in a medium-sized town in the North of England.

To conclude, interpetivism is well suited in providing philosophical underpinning for the study: whether one examines the way research encounters are being treated or the meanings assigned to participants’ narratives, the assumptions over the constitution of social reality or the conception of knowledge produced through data gathering and interpretation, interpretivism seems to provide understanding and justification for the logic of this study. It is particularly well equipped in allowing both to dedicate attention to human individuality and subjectivity as well as to bring various structural dimensions into the discussion, when empirical material allows doing so.

The discussion so far was focused on research philosophy. However it was also mentioned that methodologically the study adapted a grounded theory approach – the approach closely associated with interpetivism. The main principles of grounded theory and its implications for the study are going to be introduced next.