INTERPRETIVIST AND POSITIVIST APPROACHES

Interpretivist and Positivist Approaches to the Social Sciences

Interpretivist and Positivist Approaches to the Social Sciences

Introduction

Positivism is the application of empiricist views of natural science to the study of society and the development of policy. It is a denigrated but misunderstood term. While, the term interpretivism refers to epistemologies, or theories about how we can gain knowledge of the world, which loosely rely on interpreting or understanding the meanings that humans attach to their actions.

Interpretivists state that most of the positivistic social science is unsuccessful in understanding that its calculations branches are rooted in uncertain facts, and so are much more untrustworthy than is frequently supposed. This paper Critically assesses some of the strengths and weakness of both interpretivist and positivist approaches to the social sciences.

Discussion

Positivism is the use of empiricist visions of natural science to the study of society and the development of policy and Interpretivism is based on a philosophical framework that promotes plural perspectives in evaluations relying on qualitative approaches and natural settings. (Schutz 2002, 52)

Interpretivism arose as an alternative to positivist methods, and many associated ideas can be traced back to the work of Guba and Lincoln in the 1980s. Basically, interpretivism is about contextualized meaning involving a belief that reality is socially constructed, filled with multiple meanings and interpretations, and that emotions are involved. As a result, interpretivists see the goal of theorizing as providing an understanding of direct lived experience instead of abstract generalisations.

Positivism And Empiricism

The term 'positivism' came from the nineteenth-century French philosopher Auguste Comte in his attempt to label a scientific approach to social science that could emulate natural science. Specifically, he hoped (like many of his contemporaries) that sociology and anthropology would be able, like the natural sciences, to produce reliable, objective knowledge which could be acted on in order to improve society in the future - a positive knowledge from a positive science. However, positivism was based on a specific, empiricist view of natural science rather than on many other available approaches to science that were and increasingly are available. So when social scientists are accused of being 'positivist' they are being accused of being empiricist rather than scientific. There has been no real justification to abandon a scientific approach to social science as a direct result of the attack of empiricism. (Acton 2008, 32-51)

Problems With Empiricism

Positivism, and especially the empiricism on which it is based, have been heavily criticised to the extent that positivism has become something of a term of abuse and few ethnographers would now call themselves positivist. However, the extent to which positivism has ever been applied systematically to ethnographic research is debatable. Indeed, it has probably been severely misunderstood so that criticisms of empiricism have been directed wholesale towards what are actually realist ethnographies that do not adhere to the empiricist canons. It is important that we know exactly what we are attacking when we accuse something of being positivist. There are serious problems with the empiricist view of science, ...