| Chapter 2: | Background |
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While his thinking encompasses the fundamental nature of the research problem—that is, the nonstatic nature of culture, knowledge, values, and the role subjectivity plays in these shifts—Bloor’s theories, on the other hand, provided a useful conceptual working model for this investigation, particularly in setting the scope of the research. Thus, both provided complementary theoretical support for the design of this study.
2.2. Research Assumptions and Points of Departure
The philosophical foundation of this book lies within the tradition of interpretative constructivism in which I adopt two positions: first, an awareness of the role researchers play in the research itself and second, the view of symbolic interactionism, which is that individuals are engaged in active meaning making (Blumer, 1969) with which I will deal later. Many of Mannheim’s theories concerning the tradition stresses the reflective process of the researcher and the awareness of the role he or she plays in the social acts of social research have also been adopted. As Delanty (1997) suggested, Mannheim’s major contribution to the philosophy of social science lies in his attempts to relate knowledge to its social producers and also in his important influence on constructivism.
Mannheim, a follower of Husserl’s phenomenology (Hekman, 1986; Wolff, 1983), argued that knowledge has always been produced from a specific social and historical standpoint, which reflects the interests and cultures of the interest groups with the result that the “truth” produced is ultimately a product of its social location. He drew attention to the elements of value judgment in the selection of and focusing on the research act itself. According to Mannheim (Kettle et al., 1982), sociological interpretation “has as its deep experiential foundation a human capacity to grasp the functional aspect of human doings, to discern their place in the experienced world of social actions and relationships” (p. 16). In other words, he believed that it is essential to take into account elements such as researchers’ judgments, perceptions, and experience gained in the process of forming sociological knowledge. These views present strong similarities to those advocated by Husserl 2 decades earlier. Husserl, in his lecture “The Possibility of Cognition” that he gave in 1907, used the concept of cognition to explain the process of how one’s worldview is formed. He said,