Finding New Paths to Family Scholarship: A Response to James White and Sheila Marshall

Abstract

White and Marshall claim to have a difficult time understanding the logic and practical implications of my suggestions to develop a critical consciousness for an inclusive family studies (Allen, 2000). They find that many of my key assumptions are tacit and unexamined, and they do not believe that I provide adequate documentation for my knowledge claims. Reading their interpretation of my essay, I felt as if we were playing a game of hide-- and-seek. We're in the same backyard, but our perspectives are worlds apart. They've got their eyes closed and are counting to 10 while I hide. They can't see me while they're counting with covered eyes. not all that aware of them either, because scrambling for a challenging and secure place to hide. After they've reached 10 and said, Ready or not, here we come, they start to look for me. First they check the bushes, then the toy box, then underneath the car. But I've found a new spot up in the apple tree. I can see them searching in the usual places they always check when we play this game. Perhaps they can't imagine anyone climbing up that apple tree. After all, they've never tried it so it doesn't occur to them that someone like me (e.g., someone little, a girl) could do it. So intent on pursuing their habitual pattern, it is taking them such a long time to find me. Why don't they just look up? I start dropping apples to give them a clue. Some even hit them on the head, but they are so intent on their original plan and purpose that they still can't see me. Hey, guys, up here, I say. I'm not that hard to see. Just lift up your head. If only they would try to imagine that there is more than one way to find what they are looking for. The deductive, positivist path White and Marshall advocate is the path that dominates family studies. White and Marshall point out, there are many ways of going down that path. Positivism is not a monolith. Just as there are as many feminisms as there are feminist scholars, there are multiple variations of positivism, and the same is true for postpositivism and postmodernism. Consult any methods or theories text addressing the philosophy and practice of science for evidence of divergent knowledge pathways (see, e.g., Guba and Lincoln's [1994] metaphysics of alternative inquiry paradigms). I am in complete agreement with White and Marshall in cautioning against the creation of some monolithic distinction between falsely opposing camps. I agree with their concluding statement: As a result, we do not see dichotomous treatments such as descriptions of positivism postmodernism as doing much more than trivializing important distinctions about fundamental assumptions for research and theory (p. 897). The purpose of my essay was much larger than the tired caricature of positivism versus postpositivism or postmodernism. I share White and Marshall's enthusiasm for philosophy of science questions, but the deductive method they propose is, in my opinion, more of the same kind of theorizing that could render family scholarship irrelevant for the 21st century. My aim was to demonstrate another method of theorizing, which respects the lived experience of the people who actually live in families (e.g., inclusivity) and utilizes the human capacity for reflection and critique (e.g., critical consciousness). By valuing additional knowledge paths, we gain insight and understanding of what family life is like for us (e.g., the knowers), as family members, as well as for the people we study and the students we teach. The method I used to illustrate one alternative path is that of narrative, or storytelling. I told a story in my essay about how I felt when another researcher described families in which I have lived in ways that denigrated their full humanity. I told stories on myself, as well, to reveal how interaction with others once deemed different from myself, through the process of critical reflection, helped to deconstruct my own blinders and biases. …