This section discusses the philosophical and theoretical approaches that
influenced the research design and implementation. It begins with discussion of the epistemological and ontological assumptions of critical realism which form the philosophical roots of the thesis; critical realism shaped my understanding of the concepts used in this study where I sought to avoid collapsing epistemology (our ideas about what exists) into ontology (what exists). A critical realist position requires methods that access the ways in which our ideas about reality are influenced and constructed, perception and meaning making, and which is theoretically grounded; this is why I drew on Symbolic Interactionism as a means through which to theoretically complement the philosophical
underpinnings. The second sub-section below, therefore, explores the theoretical premises of Symbolic Interactionism which shaped and guided the
methodological decisions to carry out qualitative research and to analyse data through a broadly grounded theory approach where the research implications were firmly rooted in the data (described later in this chapter).
4.2.1 Critical realism
Research is always guided by set of beliefs about the world (ontology) and about how we come to know about the world (epistemology), understand it and, in turn, study it (Bottoms, 2008). This set of beliefs is known as a ‘paradigm’ (Denzin and Lincoln, 1998: 26), ‘perspective’, or ‘model’ (Silverman, 2006: 3) and refers to the ontological, epistemological, and methodological stances that underpin a research project. My research is driven by a critical realist paradigm which amalgamates ontological realism with epistemological constructivism. Critical realism operates on two philosophical premises: firstly, it accepts that there is an external social reality. This means that critical realists believe that the social world exists independently of our theories about it (Phillips, 1987: 205); that there is a real world which exists, with which we interact and to which our concepts and theories refer. Secondly, critical realism rejects the premise that we can have any single ‘objective’, or correct,
75 knowledge of the social world. Grounded in epistemological constructivism, critical realism accepts that there can be multiple interpretations of the social world. As such, Williams (1999: 805; see also Shakespeare, 2006) argues that a critical realist
perspective avoids collapsing the ontological (our beliefs about what exists) into the epistemological (our knowledge of and ideas about what exists).
The philosophy is associated with the works of Roy Bhaskar (1975, 1978, 1979, 1998;
see also: Archer, 1995, 2000; Collier, 1989, 1994; Sayer, 1992, 2000; Lawson, 1997).
Fundamental to Bhaskar’s approach is the rejection of positivism’s stance which beckons ‘value free’ research; he argues that studies of social reality are at the same time ‘value impregnated’ and ‘value impregnating’ (Bhaskar, 1998: 9). By separating ontology from epistemology, Bhaskar’s approach avoids ‘naïve realism’, strong constructivism, and relativism, instead, arguing for the ontological autonomy of phenomena. This means that a critical realist approach argues that: ‘phenomena exist whether or not we have concrete knowledge of them, and the existence of phenomena should not be confused with knowledge about them’ (Watson, 2012: 102).
Critical realism seeks to avoid ‘naïve realism’ which implies that the nature of social reality can be understood at its face value. Collier (1994: 64) refers to the ‘flatness’ of realist ontology; Williams (1999: 809) explains this through realism’s notions of ‘pre-existence of structures’ and unilateral ‘causal’ explanations. These predispositions limit any attempt to understand the nuances and complexities which colour human social reality. Critical realism ‘enables us to analyse critically the social processes by which structure and agency shape and reshape one another over time’ (Williams, 1999: 809). Thus, it values both concepts as ontologically independent, albeit interrelated and continually interacting with one another. Collier (1998) argues that social phenomena can be explored through various levels of a stratified, or laminated, system, and each of these levels overlap and influence one another, yet, individually and together, provide a deep understanding of the issue at hand (see Table 1 and discussion in chapters 2 and 9).
Critical realism also rejects strong social constructivism which reduces social phenomena to ‘just a theoretical interpretation or cognitive construction’ and,
76 therefore, denying its ontological reality (Bhaskar and Danermark, 2006). However, Bhaskar and Danermark (ibid.) state clearly that ‘weak constructivism’ is welcomed, wherein knowledge is formed through social interactions which can be multiple varied, but valid interpretations of the same phenomenon (Hammersley 1992: 51). By acknowledging multiple interpretations, critical realism can enable a more holistic analysis of social phenomena by engaging with material causation as well as the interpretations and meanings applied by those who experience it.
A central feature of critical realism is that it refuses to collapse the ontological into the epistemological stance (Bhaskar, 1989: 185; Bhaskar, 1975); doing so is deemed an
‘epistemic fallacy’, which describes the conflation between what reality is and our knowledge about it (Fairclough, 2005). Rather, critical realism holds that the
existence and nature of reality are not socially constructed, but what we know about them is. Thus, the approach is useful when conceiving of crime by rejecting
positivistic notions of inherent criminality while moving beyond the notion that crime and punishment are only constructions and not subjectively experienced (Matthews, 2014). By approaching social phenomena and human social experience as complex, multi-factorial, and interrelated, a critical realist approach would view the social phenomena of crime as a real, felt, thing but our knowledge about it depends on our relationship to it, and will never provide a complete ‘God’s eye view’ of it. This informed my decision to combine the approach with symbolic interactionism (described below) as a theoretical model in order to keep central the individual participants, their views and interpretations of the criminal justice system, and the meanings they applied to their experiences.
Similarly, a critical realist approach to understanding disability moves beyond debates about what impairment is and how disability should be defined (Watson, 2012: 102).
Stalker (2012) advocates for Disability Studies to incorporate critical realism as a meta-theoretical approach (Bhaskar and Danermark, 2006): this includes learning disability as a social reality whose impairment effects are experienced differentially (Thomas, 1999, 2007), but which ‘embraces all causally relevant levels of reality’
(Stalker, 2012: 132). The benefit of a critical realist approach lies in the acceptance of multiple interpretations of social reality but the rejection of binary dualisms of
77 existence; instead, it encourages a nuanced interpretation of reality, material relations, and human social interaction based on stratification. As a flexible approach to
researching social phenomena, it marks a compromise between accepting that there is a single reality but since it is experienced and perceived by individuals there are, and should be, multiple interpretations of this reality which will always be partial.
4.2.2 Symbolic Interactionism
Symbolic interactionism emerged from the Chicago school of sociology and was based on the works of Cooley (1902) and Mead (1934), among others. Although it can largely be credited to Herbert Blumer (1969), who articulated and developed the work of his mentor George Herbert Mead, symbolic interactionism came to dominate the epistemological and theoretical traditions of the Chicago school scholars (Deegan, 2001). It assumes that the social organisation of society derives from the interactions between social actors, and focuses on the understanding of symbolic meanings those actors apply to social phenomena (Blumer, 1969). Guided by Chicago school belief that social phenomena should be studied within their own natural settings (Park, [1925] 1967), symbolic interactionists insist that social life should be studied through
‘first-hand observation’ (Blumer, 1969: 38).
Symbolic interactionism is a micro-level approach to the study of social phenomena;
it is concerned with meaning, interaction, differential perspectives, and the self. It places the highest importance on the meanings that people attribute to the social world around them (Blumer, 1969). Symbolic interactionism is a bottom-up perspective guided by Blumer’s (1969) three fundamental premises: first, people act toward things based on the meanings these things have for them; second, meanings are not inherent in objects, but develop from the interactions people have with those objects; third, meanings are attached through a process of interpretation, and this can change.
This process of interpretation serves as an intermediary between meaning-making and action, but social actors are always involved in the process of interpreting phenomena
78 and assigning meaning to things as they socially move through the world; the
interpretations and meanings applied to phenomena determine action (ibid.), not social norms, values, roles, or goals. This is consistent with Archer’s (1996) agency-focused perspective that structures are ‘peopled’ by social actors. Society is
comprised at all levels of social actors who are always involved in a continual process of interpreting the world around them, deriving meaning from these interpretations, acting toward the social world based on those meanings. However, Denzin (1992) argues that the micro-level essence of symbolic interactionism lacks structure.
Burawoy (2000) contends that the theory is too insular, arguing that there is little scope for an exploration of the role of power in social relations; however Jenkins (2012) recently produced a paper conceiving of Goffman’s (1961) symbolic interactionist work of the micro-level interactions within ‘total institutions’ as an emblematic study in the interpretation and reproduction of power relations.
As a theoretical approach, symbolic interactionism is compatible with critical realism’s philosophical stance due to the latter’s emphasis on the importance of context in understanding social phenomena (Sayer, 1992, 2000). In common with the critical realist approach, symbolic interactionist approaches try to understand the distinct layers and interconnections that constitute the complex nature of social life (Hammersley 1989). Just as critical realists focus on the contextual nature of causal explanation (Sayer, 1992: 60-61), so too do symbolic interactionists locate at the centre of their work the situational contingency of phenomena and social actors’
constant social involvement with their surroundings.
Moreover, symbolic interactionism’s theoretical framework also serves as a
foundation for the methodological principles of grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1968; Strauss and Corbin, 1990). As discussed more fully later in this chapter,
grounded theory relies on an in-depth familiarity with and micro-level analysis of data which is subject to a process of ‘constant comparison’ to allow generalisable themes to emerge from the data (Glaser and Strauss, 1968). Similar to symbolic
interactionism’s view of human social life as emergent and subject to change, grounded theory is rooted in the belief that theory can emerge from the data and develop further through continual interrogation of the data in relation to itself (ibid.).
79 In spite of criticism for encouraging ‘introverted’ sociology (Burawoy, 2000),
symbolic interactionism offers theoretical relevance to micro-level social relations among the self, social institutions, and wider social domains, and adequately permits space to conceive of interpretation as a dynamic process of both the participants and researcher alike.