RESEARCH METHOD COHEN ok

28 THE NATURE OF INQUIRY
of meaning in a social context (Held 1980). Gadamer
(1975: 273) argues that the hermeneutic sciences
(e.g. qualitative approaches) involve the fusion
of horizons between participants. Meanings rather
than phenomena take on significance here.
The emancipatory interest subsumes the previous
two paradigms; it requires them but goes
beyond them (Habermas 1972: 211). It is concerned
with praxis –action that is informed by
reflection with the aim to emancipate (Kincheloe
1991: 177). The twin intentions of this interest are
to expose the operation of power and to bring about
social justice as domination and repression act to
prevent the full existential realization of individual
and social freedoms (Habermas 1979: 14). The task
of this knowledge-constitutive interest, indeed of
critical theory itself, is to restore to consciousness
those suppressed, repressed and submerged determinants
of unfree behaviour with a view to their
dissolution (Habermas 1984: 194–5).
What we have in effect, then, in Habermas’s
early work is an attempt to conceptualize three
research styles: the scientific, positivist style; the
interpretive style; and the emancipatory, ideology
critical style. Not only does critical theory
have its own research agenda, but also it has its
own research methodologies, in particular ideology
critique and action research. With regard to
ideology critique, a particular reading of ideology
is being adopted here, as the suppression of generalizable
interests (Habermas 1976: 113), where systems,
groups and individuals operate in rationally indefensible
ways because their power to act relies on
the disempowering of other groups, i.e. that their
principles of behaviour cannot be generalized.
Ideology – the values and practices emanating
from particular dominant groups – is the
means by which powerful groups promote and
legitimize their particular – sectoral – interests at
the expense of disempowered groups. Ideology
critique exposes the operation of ideology in
many spheres of education, the working out of
vested interests under the mantle of the general
good. The task of ideology critique is to
uncover the vested interests at work which may
be occurring consciously or subliminally, revealing
to participants how they may be acting to
perpetuate a system which keeps them either
empowered or disempowered (Geuss 1981), i.e.
which suppresses a generalizable interest. Explanations
for situations might be other than those
‘natural’, taken for granted, explanations that
the participants might offer or accept. Situations
are not natural but problematic (Carr and Kemmis
1986). They are the outcomes or processes
wherein interests and powers are protected and
suppressed, and one task of ideology critique is
to expose this (Grundy 1987). The interests at
work are uncovered by ideology critique, which,
itself, is premised on reflective practice (Morrison
1995a; 1995b; 1996a). Habermas (1972: 230)
suggests that ideology critique through reflective
practice can be addressed in four stages:
Stage 1: a description and interpretation of
the existing situation – a hermeneutic exercise
that identifies and attempts to make sense of
the current situation (echoing the verstehen
approaches of the interpretive paradigm) (see
http://www.routledge.com/textbooks/
9780415368780 – Chapter 1, file 1.6. ppt).
Stage 2: a penetration of the reasons that
brought the existing situation to the form
that it takes – the causes and purposes of
a situation and an evaluation of their
legitimacy, involving an analysis of interests
and ideologies at work in a situation, their
power and legitimacy (both in micro- and
macro-sociological terms). Habermas’s (1972)
early work likens this to psychoanalysis as
ameansforbringingintotheconsciousness
of ‘patients’ those repressed, distorted and
oppressive conditions, experiences and factors
that have prevented them from a full, complete
and accurate understanding of their conditions,
situations and behaviour, and that, on such
exposure and examination, will be liberatory
and emancipatory. Critique here reveals to
individuals and groups how their views and
practices might be ideological distortions that,
in their effects, perpetuate a social order or
situation that works against their democratic
freedoms, interests and empowerment (see
also Carr and Kemmis 1986: 138–9).