The Practitioner's Perspective

Abstract

The positions advanced by Eisner, Guba, and Barone this symposium share many of the tenets of a logic of inquiry variously called qualitative, ethnographic, naturalistic (Lincoln and Guba 1985), or constructivist (Guba and Lincoln 1989). However, Smith's (1989) term, interpretivism, is surely the better one, for it directly connotes a central premise of this many-named framework, namely, that in the world of human experience, there is only interpretation (Denzin 1989, 8). For the practitioner, adopting the interpretivist logic of justification for inquiry means foregoing aspirations to get it right and embracing instead ideals of making it meaningful. Relevant here is the interpretivist view of social inquiry as an active process of making sense of constructing meaning, which is a theme central to all three of the articles this symposium. Guba refers to inquiry findings as literally created social constructions, and Eisner and Barone to knowledge as the dynamic transaction between the qualities of the external world we cannot know and our own internal qualities, frames of reference, and histories. Along with this constructivist view inevitably comes an acceptance of knowledge as relativistic, pluralistic, and subjective or interwined with self. As Guba shows, human knowledge claims are active constructions of meaning and, therefore, are always relative to the unique interaction between the inquirer and the particular context which the inquiry was conducted. There are always multiple and different constructions possible social reality, none inherently more legitimate than the others. Hence all knowledge is, Barone's terminology, mind dependent and culturally contextual, personalized and intertwined with the self of the inquirer. In fact, especially for Barone but also for Eisner, interpretivist social inquiry is an opportunity to give voice to one's self, to offer a view of human experience that promotes one's own values and ideals. Interpretivism retains its essential relativism on this issue, such that it can be used as a platform for many different, even competing, advocacy stances and beliefs.