Interpretivism is innovative

The argument

Interpretivism is presented here as innovative because of the break it made with the assumptions that preceded it rather than because of any technique it introduced. It began as an epistemological critique of Positivism in the social sciences — an objection not to how positivist research was conducted but to its underlying account of what social knowledge is. Interpretivists hold that there is no objective truth of the kind positivism sought. Instead people experience their own "realities", and those experienced realities are what social life actually consists of, rather than being distortions standing between the researcher and some underlying fact. That premise has a direct methodological consequence. If there is no single objective truth, then individual viewpoints cannot be treated as noise to be averaged out; each person's viewpoint is important to the research process. The innovation extends to the researcher's own perspective, which is included on the same terms. Where positivism treated the investigator's standpoint as a source of contamination to be minimised, interpretivism treats it as one more situated view that is part of the inquiry and must be acknowledged within it. The stance toward the subject matter follows from this. Interpretivists consider the social interactions among people valuable in themselves and often attempt to study them from the inside, entering the setting and the meanings the participants use. This is set directly against objectivist philosophies such as critical realism and Positivism, which purport to proceed by detachment — observing from outside on the assumption that distance secures accuracy. Because it reversed that assumption, making the researcher's involvement and the participants' own meanings into resources rather than obstacles, interpretivism is innovative, and it stands among the best research philosophies in academia.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics reply that the claim of innovation does not survive the dates. The interpretive turn in the social sciences is well over a century old — Dilthey's distinction between explanation and understanding, Weber's Verstehen, and the hermeneutic tradition behind them all predate the twentieth century — so a tradition that has been the standard alternative to positivism for generations cannot be described as innovative now. They add that novelty would not settle the question in any case: the position at issue is that interpretivism is among the best research philosophies, and being new is not a reason to think an approach is good. There is also a difficulty internal to the premises. If there is no objective truth and each person experiences their own reality, it is unclear on what footing interpretivist findings are offered to anyone else, and the sibling positions press exactly this — critical realism holds that a mind-independent reality can be investigated through fallible theory, while pragmatism denies that researchers must choose between objectivism and relativism at all. Critics note finally that the body describes what interpretivism is rather than defending it, offering no comparison with the rivals the question puts against it.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The interpretive turn is well over a century old — Dilthey's explanation-versus-understanding distinction, Weber's Verstehen and the hermeneutic tradition behind them — so a long-standing alternative to positivism cannot be called innovative, and the strong claim that there is no objective truth leaves it unclear on what footing its findings are offered to others. [Rejecting P2] Studying meaning from within is a description of the method rather than a defence of it, and the body offers no comparison with the rivals the question sets against it. [Rejecting C] Novelty is not a measure of quality: the position at issue is that interpretivism is among the best research philosophies, and being a break from what came before is no reason to think an approach is good.