The Foundations of Social Research: Meaning and Perspective in the Research Process

by Michael Crotty

• ISBN13: 9780761961055
• ISBN10: 0761961054
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781446225745
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-10-15
• Publisher: Sage Publications
• More Book Details

Summary

Choosing a research method can be bewildering. How can you be sure which methodology is appropriate, or whether your chosen combination of methods is consistent with the theoretical perspective you want to take? This book links methodology and theory with great clarity and precision, showing students and researchers how to navigate the maze of conflicting terminology. The major epistemological stances and theoretical perspectives that colour and shape current social research are detailed and the author reveals the philosophical origins of these schools of inquiry and shows how various disciplines contribute to the practice of social research as it is known today.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Introduction: the research process	1	(17)
Four elements	2	(8)
What about ontology?	10	(2)
In all directions	12	(2)
The great divide	14	(4)
Positivism: the march of science	18	(24)
Positivism	19	(10)
Post-positivism	29	(13)
Constructionism: the making of meaning	42	(24)
The construction of meaningful reality	42	(10)
`Social' constructionism	52	(5)
Conformism or critique?	57	(6)
Realism and relativism	63	(3)
Interpretivism: for and against culture	66	(21)
Roots of interpretivism	67	(5)
Symbolic interactionism	72	(6)
Phenomenology	78	(9)
Interpretivism: the way of hermeneutics	87	(25)
Historical origins	88	(2)
The hermeneutic mode of understanding	90	(2)
Modern hermeneutics	92	(20)
Critical inquiry: the Marxist heritage	112	(27)
Karl Marx	115	(7)
Marxism after Marx	122	(3)
The Institute for Social Research	125	(5)
Critical theory	130	(9)
Critical inquiry: contemporary critics & contemporary critique	139	(21)
Jurgen Habermas and communicative reason	140	(7)
Paulo Freire's pedagogy of the oppressed	147	(10)
Critical inquiry today	157	(3)
Feminism: re-visioning the man-made world	160	(23)
The many feminisms	162	(8)
Feminist `epistemology'	170	(6)
Feminine thought or feminist values?	176	(7)
Postmodernism: crisis of confidence or moment of truth?	183	(31)
`Post' what?	183	(12)
(Post-) structuralism	195	(8)
The character of post-structuralism	203	(7)
Back to the postmodern	210	(4)
Conclusion	214	(3)
Notes	217	(4)
Bibliography	221	(12)
Index	233