As hinted at in the last post, there are many challenges that participatory research and its practitioners must face. Mainly, these challenges have arisen because this research approach is relatively young and still needs to work out some 'kinks'. Some of these challenges will be discussed in the forthcoming post.
As some participatory researchers assert, it is common to hear of participatory researchers expressing frustration on the part of the community being apathetic towards the research process; thus, non-interest or apathy on behalf of the community is a challenge that PR practitioners must face. Participatory researchers also face a dilemma between building the capacity of the community as much as possible and report back to the research funders on the progress of the project; whilst educating funding agencies on the benefits of PR may make them more amiable to participatory research and true capacity building, this is currently a challenge PR faces.
Some of the core principles in PR, such as rapport building, often take a long time and thus can be constrained by lack of time and financial resources. Also concerning the financial resources of some PR phases, such as rapport building, are less likely to be supported by funders as they may not see it as an important part of the research process and thus it is up to the researchers to convince them of its importance. Although there is a focus on the ‘dispossessed’ (such as young children, the elderly, women) members of the community, many of the people do not end up being part of the research process and, subsequently, possibly vital sources of information are lost.
There may be participants who do not trust the researchers or feel that they have nothing to gain from participating in the activities and the overall research process often choose not to be involved in them at all, and, again, this is a loss of important information. Last in this itinerary of challenges, but not the least of them, is the issue of the lingering unbalanced power dynamics among the participants and the researchers, even if participation has been increased.
To conclude the posts i've written so far, it is evident from what was discussed that the participatory approach to conducting research is, at its core, fundamentally different from other research approaches, specifically that of positivism. For example, in contrast to the principles and concepts of conducting positivistic research, such as the researcher being a distant, disconnected, neutral entity who only looks at empirical sources of information and indirectly reinforces unequal power dynamics in research, the participatory researcher believes in the principles of verstehen and distanciation, maximizing the role of the participants in the research in order to make use of their own local knowledge so as to decrease the power dynamics between researchers and participants and to maximize the chance of sustainable empowerment in the community they are working with.
The participatory approach also adopts some principles from the social approach to understand human action, such as the fact that individuals are not always aware of the meaning and reason behind their own actions and that in order to understand an action; one must understand the cultural and social conventions and institutions that indirectly determine the intent of the action. The ontological (nature of reality) and epistemological (nature of knowledge) structure of the participatory approach and subsequently how knowledge, using the participatory approach, is generated. Lastly, in this post, some of the challenges of the PR approach – which appeared to be primarily practical issues – were discussed. In the subsequent posts, I will be discussing certain participatory research techniques that can be used which maximize participant participation.
Showing posts with label Folk Psychology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Folk Psychology. Show all posts
Wednesday, 13 November 2013
Saturday, 9 November 2013
The social approach to understanding human action: part two
The previous post on the social approach to understanding human action introduced us to the topic, but ended off with a comment on intelligibility being necessary for understanding human action. This post will elucidate this comment and discuss it further.
Intelligibility, already mentioned in the previous section, is one of the most influential concepts that have arisen out of the social approaches to investigating the phenomenon of human action. Crudely put, intelligibility is the ability of others to understand and correctly interpret one’s actions, so that the intent or purpose behind the action is meaningfully understood by the audience witnessing the action. Furthermore, it has been suggested that “there is no such thing as a purely individual action”. What is meant by this assertion is that, beginning with learning, an individual is not innately born with the ability to act. While a human is born with certain behavioural abilities, such as the ability to sleep or suckle, this view maintains the dichotomous separation of mere behaviour compared to human action. Also, you learn from others around you, such as your parents, in the beginning, then your friends and peers and colleagues later in life. This social aspect of learning is made even more important by the very close association between language and actions. Some authors have stated that people “use language to do things, and not simply say things”.
Consequently, using language and finding it intelligible also requires a myriad of non-verbal skills which themselves have to be learned through careful observation and monitoring of other individuals, and practicing what they observe. For example, regardless of how well one can utter the language of car mechanics in its complete vocabulary, one will still not be able to repair their car until they learn to apply this language in practice. Therefore, the language you learn to use in specific contexts is closely connected with you learning how to perform activities that are socially acceptable and intelligible.
While positivism concentrated greatly on generating causal laws of human action, the more socially orientated approaches to human action is determined in finding out the social rules in play in a society which makes certain actions acceptable and intelligible. One can describe these types of social rules as “socially accepted conventions or norms which give meaning and expression to different types of social activity … they dictate what to do in specific situations and how to do it”. The reasoning behind these social conventions and norms is, however, not always known to the actors who perform them.
Some theorists have argued that individuals are not always aware of their own desires or beliefs – or what they think they believe may not even derive from the source they thought. Take, for example, Freud’s use of psychotherapy to reveal ‘hidden meanings’ and ‘deeper’ layers of thought which the patient did not know even exited in their mind – such as suppressed memories which influence one’s behaviour unconsciously. Human action, it is argued, can be thought of as having many of these deeper, hidden meanings. The social institutions of marriage, police, and religion, for example, often play a role in shaping an individual’s action, making it possible to an extent, even though they might not be aware of them.
Thus, to summarize all points thus far, three primary aspects of the nature of individual action were looked at, which, theorists who argue that human action is, at the very least partially social, suggest this to be so: Firstly, individuals must learn to act from others; secondly, people learn to act through learning to follow rules that are essentially social in nature; and finally, that social institutions must be understood first in order to understand and investigate human action.
In conclusion, it seems then that what human action is understood to be is highly dependent on which approach one follows: staunch followers of the positivistic philosophy still believe that empirical observation and causal laws is the way to understand human action, while those who places emphasis on the social sphere believe human action is extremely complex and is understood by means of cultural and linguistic symbolism; those who are not so academically inclined, the common, the lay person’s view human action as something which is understandable when using commonsense.
Whilst these arguments are crucial to the development of what participatory research is, it is also important to highlight and discuss the type of approach used in relation to the research done. In other words, the next series of posts will look at a more detailed discussion on the participatory approach in relation to conducting research and how this approach is conceptualized within research.
Intelligibility, already mentioned in the previous section, is one of the most influential concepts that have arisen out of the social approaches to investigating the phenomenon of human action. Crudely put, intelligibility is the ability of others to understand and correctly interpret one’s actions, so that the intent or purpose behind the action is meaningfully understood by the audience witnessing the action. Furthermore, it has been suggested that “there is no such thing as a purely individual action”. What is meant by this assertion is that, beginning with learning, an individual is not innately born with the ability to act. While a human is born with certain behavioural abilities, such as the ability to sleep or suckle, this view maintains the dichotomous separation of mere behaviour compared to human action. Also, you learn from others around you, such as your parents, in the beginning, then your friends and peers and colleagues later in life. This social aspect of learning is made even more important by the very close association between language and actions. Some authors have stated that people “use language to do things, and not simply say things”.
Consequently, using language and finding it intelligible also requires a myriad of non-verbal skills which themselves have to be learned through careful observation and monitoring of other individuals, and practicing what they observe. For example, regardless of how well one can utter the language of car mechanics in its complete vocabulary, one will still not be able to repair their car until they learn to apply this language in practice. Therefore, the language you learn to use in specific contexts is closely connected with you learning how to perform activities that are socially acceptable and intelligible.
While positivism concentrated greatly on generating causal laws of human action, the more socially orientated approaches to human action is determined in finding out the social rules in play in a society which makes certain actions acceptable and intelligible. One can describe these types of social rules as “socially accepted conventions or norms which give meaning and expression to different types of social activity … they dictate what to do in specific situations and how to do it”. The reasoning behind these social conventions and norms is, however, not always known to the actors who perform them.
Some theorists have argued that individuals are not always aware of their own desires or beliefs – or what they think they believe may not even derive from the source they thought. Take, for example, Freud’s use of psychotherapy to reveal ‘hidden meanings’ and ‘deeper’ layers of thought which the patient did not know even exited in their mind – such as suppressed memories which influence one’s behaviour unconsciously. Human action, it is argued, can be thought of as having many of these deeper, hidden meanings. The social institutions of marriage, police, and religion, for example, often play a role in shaping an individual’s action, making it possible to an extent, even though they might not be aware of them.
Thus, to summarize all points thus far, three primary aspects of the nature of individual action were looked at, which, theorists who argue that human action is, at the very least partially social, suggest this to be so: Firstly, individuals must learn to act from others; secondly, people learn to act through learning to follow rules that are essentially social in nature; and finally, that social institutions must be understood first in order to understand and investigate human action.
In conclusion, it seems then that what human action is understood to be is highly dependent on which approach one follows: staunch followers of the positivistic philosophy still believe that empirical observation and causal laws is the way to understand human action, while those who places emphasis on the social sphere believe human action is extremely complex and is understood by means of cultural and linguistic symbolism; those who are not so academically inclined, the common, the lay person’s view human action as something which is understandable when using commonsense.
Whilst these arguments are crucial to the development of what participatory research is, it is also important to highlight and discuss the type of approach used in relation to the research done. In other words, the next series of posts will look at a more detailed discussion on the participatory approach in relation to conducting research and how this approach is conceptualized within research.
Friday, 8 November 2013
The positivistic approach to understanding human action: part two
Carrying on straight from the last post, despite Weber’s positivist assertion that beliefs and desires are the causal agents for human action, he also recognized that unlike other causes, the beliefs and desires that a human has can also be the reason for their actions. The term ‘reason’ refers to the individual’s own justification and rationality behind their action – how they think it is appropriate, reasonable, efficient, and the correct action to perform. By this definition one could say that they attempt to make their actions intelligible. However, the positivistic view has some serious drawbacks on the issue of investigating human action, specifically because they only believe that empirical data (information we can retrieve with our senses) is the only type of data that can really be considered scientific. Take the following example, for instance: winking your eye at someone, compared to blinking while you happened to walk past them.
Therefore, the positivistic view could and would only be interested in looking at the physical behaviour of the individual, and there is not too much physiological difference between a wink and blink. The same physiological effects occur: muscles contract and expand, neurons fire, chemical processes are produced, etcetera. However, we as human beings, the agents of actions, know that there is a difference between a wink and a blink: the difference is that a blink is a behaviour that we do without thinking about it, there is no belief or reason behind our blink other than a purely physiological one. A wink has meaning behind it, or perhaps a better way of saying it is that the individual in our example would wink with intent.
Now, following from this example, suppose a woman who thought that a man was winking at her made her feel that he was sexually harassing her; therefore, she decided to sue him: a judge or jury following the positivistic approach would find no physiological, empirical difference between the act of a wink or a blink; thus they would view the intent (i.e. beliefs, reasons) behind the action (the muscles contracting and expanding to make the eyelid close and open) as something not worth scientifically considering.
In order to understand why positivists take this stance, it is important to realize that the positivistic approach and its practitioners are characterised as believing in the deductive-nomological explanation. A very brief definition of what this deductive-nomological explanation entails is that it is a scientific explanation which is a deductive argument, and that it has at least one ‘natural’ law in it. A natural law is something that happens whether or not we know of its existence, such as a metal expands when it is heated. Even if we did not realise or have the belief that metal expanded when exposed to a certain temperature, it still would expand when subjected to that temperature.
Furthermore, it is this type of law that positivists want to associate to human beings and their actions, and it is one of the main points of criticism of this approach. However, in the social sciences, there has been a dispute ranging since the end of the 19th century of the suitability of this positivist, deterministic mode of explanation for the investigation of human action. Thus, we move on to the more socially orientated approaches to human action paper and discuss how these critiques have led to more a socially orientated approach on how one may investigate the phenomenon of human action which will be discussed in the next series of posts.
Therefore, the positivistic view could and would only be interested in looking at the physical behaviour of the individual, and there is not too much physiological difference between a wink and blink. The same physiological effects occur: muscles contract and expand, neurons fire, chemical processes are produced, etcetera. However, we as human beings, the agents of actions, know that there is a difference between a wink and a blink: the difference is that a blink is a behaviour that we do without thinking about it, there is no belief or reason behind our blink other than a purely physiological one. A wink has meaning behind it, or perhaps a better way of saying it is that the individual in our example would wink with intent.
Now, following from this example, suppose a woman who thought that a man was winking at her made her feel that he was sexually harassing her; therefore, she decided to sue him: a judge or jury following the positivistic approach would find no physiological, empirical difference between the act of a wink or a blink; thus they would view the intent (i.e. beliefs, reasons) behind the action (the muscles contracting and expanding to make the eyelid close and open) as something not worth scientifically considering.
In order to understand why positivists take this stance, it is important to realize that the positivistic approach and its practitioners are characterised as believing in the deductive-nomological explanation. A very brief definition of what this deductive-nomological explanation entails is that it is a scientific explanation which is a deductive argument, and that it has at least one ‘natural’ law in it. A natural law is something that happens whether or not we know of its existence, such as a metal expands when it is heated. Even if we did not realise or have the belief that metal expanded when exposed to a certain temperature, it still would expand when subjected to that temperature.
Furthermore, it is this type of law that positivists want to associate to human beings and their actions, and it is one of the main points of criticism of this approach. However, in the social sciences, there has been a dispute ranging since the end of the 19th century of the suitability of this positivist, deterministic mode of explanation for the investigation of human action. Thus, we move on to the more socially orientated approaches to human action paper and discuss how these critiques have led to more a socially orientated approach on how one may investigate the phenomenon of human action which will be discussed in the next series of posts.
Understanding human action: ‘Folk Psychology’
How one understands, or has previously understood, human behaviour is inseparably connected to the context and intellectual climate of a particular time in history. As the definition, and subsequently the interpretation and understanding, of human behaviour has changed, this section shall entail a critical discussion of some of these changes and how they have contributed to how human behaviour is understood in the participatory research approach. The different approaches to understanding human behaviour shall be discussed in a sequence of posts: firstly, the commonsense or ‘folk psychology’ approach to viewing human action shall be investigate; from there, the positivistic approach shall be discussed; and lastly, there will be a discussion on more socially orientated approach.
In order to discuss how human action can be viewed by any specific approach or paradigm, such as the positivistic or social approaches, we must first understand how the ‘common’ person views and understands human beings. One of the ways in which humans understand something is through ‘commonsense’, which could also be referred to as ‘commonsense psychology’ or ‘folk psychology’. The concept of folk psychology has played an important role in the fields of philosophy and science over the past 50 years. However, there are at least three commonly used and differing definitions of what exactly folk psychology is. To avoid any confusion and misunderstanding, the definition of folk psychology which this report shall be using is that folk psychology is “used to refer to a particular set of cognitive capacities which include—but are not exhausted by—the capacities to predict and explain behaviour”. Thus one could say, broadly, that folk psychology is simply the information that the common man has about the mind. Whilst the scope of the literature on folk psychology is vast, the contemporary discussion of folk psychology in philosophy and the sciences have focused largely on the portion of folk psychology that guides the prediction and explanation of human actions.
One of the primary reasons that folk psychology has been the subject of much thought and debate is that it plays such a central role in our everyday lives. We often use folk psychology to predict and explain things in our lives; for example, we engage in folk psychology for mundane chores, such as figuring out what your classmates believe about your work and what your partner will think when you arrive home late. In addition, some people think that folk psychology has such a pervasive role in our lives that, if it should turn out to be a serious mistake, it would be “the greatest intellectual catastrophe in the history of our species”. While that may seem melodramatic, it does give a sense of the importance of the concept. After gaining an understanding of what folk psychology is, the power of common sense to understand human action by identifying the beliefs and reasons behind the action seems somewhat limited; for this reason, we now proceed to the discussion on the positivistic and social approaches to understanding human action in order to develop a broader view of how human action can be understood.
In the next post, I will be discussing the positivistic or naturalistic approach, and how it is inadequate in the context of understanding human action.
In order to discuss how human action can be viewed by any specific approach or paradigm, such as the positivistic or social approaches, we must first understand how the ‘common’ person views and understands human beings. One of the ways in which humans understand something is through ‘commonsense’, which could also be referred to as ‘commonsense psychology’ or ‘folk psychology’. The concept of folk psychology has played an important role in the fields of philosophy and science over the past 50 years. However, there are at least three commonly used and differing definitions of what exactly folk psychology is. To avoid any confusion and misunderstanding, the definition of folk psychology which this report shall be using is that folk psychology is “used to refer to a particular set of cognitive capacities which include—but are not exhausted by—the capacities to predict and explain behaviour”. Thus one could say, broadly, that folk psychology is simply the information that the common man has about the mind. Whilst the scope of the literature on folk psychology is vast, the contemporary discussion of folk psychology in philosophy and the sciences have focused largely on the portion of folk psychology that guides the prediction and explanation of human actions.
One of the primary reasons that folk psychology has been the subject of much thought and debate is that it plays such a central role in our everyday lives. We often use folk psychology to predict and explain things in our lives; for example, we engage in folk psychology for mundane chores, such as figuring out what your classmates believe about your work and what your partner will think when you arrive home late. In addition, some people think that folk psychology has such a pervasive role in our lives that, if it should turn out to be a serious mistake, it would be “the greatest intellectual catastrophe in the history of our species”. While that may seem melodramatic, it does give a sense of the importance of the concept. After gaining an understanding of what folk psychology is, the power of common sense to understand human action by identifying the beliefs and reasons behind the action seems somewhat limited; for this reason, we now proceed to the discussion on the positivistic and social approaches to understanding human action in order to develop a broader view of how human action can be understood.
In the next post, I will be discussing the positivistic or naturalistic approach, and how it is inadequate in the context of understanding human action.
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