CONTACTOS LUNA-SATURNO

This study uses the case study of the NGO, in a more concrete sense this study has taken the form of an ethnographic case study with a grounded theory (GT) approach (Charmaz & Mitchell, 2001). Merriam (1998) points out that a case study addresses a certain unit that a researcher can “fence in” (p. 275), especially in terms of the final product of research. She also states that a case study can employ various methods (Merriam, 1998). As I will discuss later, I used the ethnographic method of participant observation to complement interview methods by, for example, providing more insights into the field through extensive observation (Charmaz & Mitchell, 2001) and helping to build a rapport with research participants, thereby facilitating the collection of sensitive data of their ideas on rights and governance.Merriam (1998) adds that a case study is suitable for ‘how’ type research questions and thus for explicating social processes. Similarly, GT is suitable for examining social processes, being basically concerned with the generation of a substantive theory. Therefore, it is deemed appropriate to use a case study with a GT approach to unravel an unknown process of how the intervention of the rights-based development NGO in Cambodia influences people’ agency in fulfilling their rights.

As mentioned, I originally held Giddens’ view of the agency and structure relationship, namely his structuration theory, as my ontology and epistemology. In that, reflexive and knowledgeable agents draw on structure to formulate and perform actions, whilst their actions determined by such structure reflexively reproduce, reorganise or transform the structure. Such social interactions, in which agency and structures are reconstructed, broadly fall into constructivist ontology and epistemology.

Based therefore on this constructivist ontological and epistemological position of how people’s agency is exercised, rather than on the traditionally positivist GT, I had originally envisaged employing constructivist GT to examine the broader social

contexts in terms of the interactions of actors, power relationships, and multiple realties (Clarke, 2005; Charmaz, 2006). However, I have shifted my ontological and

epistemological position to that of critical realism. At that time, through searching the literature, I noticed an understanding has been emerging that critical realism and GT are complementary (for example, Kempster & Parry, 2011; Oliver, 2012). Thus I went beyond constructivist GT to adopt this new critical realist GT as my methodology.

I had also noticed that the results from GT analysis themselves did not portray the whole picture of how things really work as they are mostly based on villagers’ perceptions of their actions or inactions (owing to GT’s symbolic interactionist bent). I felt that I needed to go further to interpret why things work, in particular by connecting people’s perceptions on the ground with generative mechanisms. Sayer (2010) states that “an explanation of social practice will involve…regress from actions through reasons to rules and thence to structure” (pp. 75-76). Critical realist GT pays attention to individual or collective meaning-making as a point of departure in this regress towards understanding causal relations (Oliver, 2012). Then critical realist GT explores a stratified reality by going beyond what is immediately observable through such empirical data (Kempster & Parry, 2011; Oliver, 2012). In order to do so, the weight and scope of literature review, which helps interpret the connection between people’s perceptions and unobservable underlying mechanisms, would be larger than the

conventional GT. Although this can be a point to be criticised (Kempster & Parry, 2011), a critical realist justification for this is the need for sufficiently depicting the complex overall contexts, only through which better explanatory theories would emerge. Hence, whilst critical realist GT is underpinned by the symbolic interactionist and constructivist epistemology, it goes beyond those to “address both the event itself and the meanings made of it” in pursuit of the explication of generative mechanisms and their effects, which is the heart of critical realist GT (Oliver, 2012, p, 378, italics original). Therefore, from the critical realist perspective, even intensive research like this ethnographic case study traces macro and even global forces or “provides a window onto larger entities, showing how the part is related to [the] whole” (Sayer, 2000, p. 25).

On the other hand, this very strength of critical realist GT can be a point to be critiqued. Specifically, its evidence or claims—unsubstantiated by data, which are used when exploring and interpreting generative mechanisms and their effects—are criticised (Kempster & Parry, 2011). According to Kempster and Parry (2011), a critical realist answer to this is Sayer’s (2000) “practical adequacy,” which means that “truth might be better understood...in terms of the extent to which it generates expectations about the

world and about results of our actions which are realised” (p. 43). Namely, if things work according to a critical realist explanation, that explanation is useful (even if it is not substantiated in data) (Oliver, 2012). Nonetheless, Sayer (2004a) also cautions that such knowledge claims by critical realists should be tentative and modest, as our understanding of the world is inevitably constrained by available discourses and conceptual and theoretical frameworks.

Table1: Comparison of Research Positions between Structuration Theory and Critical Realism. Agency-centered Structure-centered Ontological and Epistemological Position Structuration Theory (Constructivism) Critical Realism

Methodological Position Constructivist GT Critical Realist GT

Focus Micro Micro-Macro

Methods  Participant Observation  Focus Groups  Individual Interviews  Document Analysis  Participant Observation  Focus Groups  Individual Interviews  Document Analysis  Heavy Emphasis on Literature Review

Expected Findings Meaning-making Meaning-making and Causal Relations

Source: Based on Hay (1995) but substantially modified and added to by author

Variations of GT exist, and the inventors of these tend to be dogmatic about their approaches. However, as in the case of my choosing critical realist GT:

Flexibility allowed grounded theory to become a qualitative research standard because everyone could find something they liked and ignore the rest.

Hence, I used what fits in with my research in GT, although I maintained the essence of GT—namely, letting the findings come out of data rather than ‘forcing’ particular frameworks on the data—in order to make my research GT research. Hence this study used a general ‘GT approach’ rather than rigid ‘GT methods.’