The examination of particular critical empirical studies that forms the bulk of this book is in order to illustrate how critical research has been undertaken in practice and how some or all of these elements have been combined in the dialectical deconstructive-reconstructive process. Critical social research includes an overt political struggle against oppressive social structures. Not only does it want to show what is happening, it is also concerned with doing something about it. It wants to show what is really going on at a societal level. Critical social research, then, is interested in substantive issues. It is concerned with revealing underlying social relations and showing how structural and ideological forms bear on them. So critical social research is concerned with the broad social and historical context in which phenomena are interrelated. A totalistic approach denies the relevance of looking at one element of a complex social process in isolation and argues that the interrelationship of elements have to be examined as well as and how they relate to the social structure as a whole. ![]() This process of deconstruction and reconstruction involves a totalistic approach. Rather than take the abstract phenomena for granted, it takes apart (deconstructs) the abstraction to reveal the inner relations and thus reconstructs the abstract concept taking into account the social structural relations that inform it. In examining the context of social phenomena, critical social research directs attention at the fundamental nature of phenomena. Critical social research thus addresses and analyses both the ostensive social structure and its ideological manifestations and processes. Such power (grounded in repressive mechanisms) is legitimated through ideology. Social structures are maintained through the exercise of political and economic power. Critical social research analyses this structure. Historically-specific phenomena cannot be regarded as independent, on the contrary they are related to other phenomena within a prevailing social structure. It does so by locating social phenomena in their specific historical context. Instead, critical social research methodology cuts through surface appearance. It regards the positivistic scientific method as unsatisfactory because it deals only with surface appearances. ![]() ![]() These elements of critical social research are abstraction, totality, essence, praxis, ideology, history and structure.Ĭritical social research denies that its object of study is ‘objective’ social appearances. They are elements that are drawn together in various ways in the process of deconstruction and reconstruction. These blocks should not be considered as discrete units that can simply be placed next to one another. References About Critical Social Research (1990)Ĭontact © Lee Harvey 1990, 2011, 2014, 2018, 2019 Page updatedĬitation reference: Harvey, L., 2011, Critical Social Research, available at /csr, last updatedģ1 January, 2019, originally published in London by Unwin Hyman, all rights revert to author.Ĭritical social research is extremely varied but critical methodology is based on seven building blocks.
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