RESEARCH METHOD COHEN ok

30 THE NATURE OF INQUIRY
their own status. Further, the link between
ideology critique and emancipation is neither clear
nor proven, nor a logical necessity (Morrison
1995a: 67) – whether a person or society can
become emancipated simply by the exercise
of ideology critique or action research is an
empirical rather than a logical matter (Morrison
1995a; Wardekker and Miedama 1997). Indeed
one can become emancipated by means other than
ideology critique; emancipated societies do not
necessarily demonstrate or require an awareness
of ideology critique. Moreover, it could be argued
that the rationalistic appeal of ideology critique
actually obstructs action designed to bring about
emancipation. Roderick (1986: 65), for example,
questions whether the espousal of ideology critique
is itself as ideological as the approaches that it
proscribes. Habermas, in his allegiance to the view
of the social construction of knowledge through
‘interests’, is inviting the charge of relativism.
While the claim to there being three forms of
knowledge has the epistemological attraction of
simplicity, one has to question this very simplicity
(e.g. Keat 1981: 67); there are a multitude of
interests and ways of understanding the world and
it is simply artificial to reduce these to three.
Indeed it is unclear whether Habermas, in his
three knowledge-constitutive interests, is dealing
with a conceptual model, a political analysis, a set
of generalities, a set of transhistorical principles, a
set of temporally specific observations, or a set of
loosely defined slogans (Morrison 1995a: 71) that
survive only by dint of their ambiguity (Kolakowsi
1978). Lakomski (1999: 179–82) questions the
acceptability of the consensus theory of truth on
which Habermas’s work is premised; she argues
that Habermas’s work is silent on social change,
and is little more than speculation, a view echoed
by Fendler’s (1999) criticism of critical theory
as inadequately problematizing subjectivity and
ahistoricity.
More fundamental to a critique of this approach
is the view that critical theory has a deliberate
political agenda, and that the task of the researcher
is not to be an ideologue or to have an
agenda, but to be dispassionate, disinterested and
objective (Morrison 1995a). Of course, critical
theorists would argue that the call for researchers
to be ideologically neutral is itself ideologically
saturated with laissez-faire values which allow the
status quo to be reproduced, i.e. that the call
for researchers to be neutral and disinterested is
just as value laden as is the call for them to
intrude their own perspectives. The rights of the
researcher to move beyond disinterestedness are
clearly contentious, though the safeguard here is
that the researcher’s is only one voice in the
community of scholars (Kemmis 1982). Critical
theorists as researchers have been hoisted by their
own petard, for if they are to become more than
merely negative Jeremiahs and sceptics, berating
a particular social order that is dominated by
scientism and instrumental rationality (Eagleton
1991; Wardekker and Miedama 1997), then they
have to generate a positive agenda, but in so doing
they are violating the traditional objectivity of
researchers. Because their focus is on an ideological
agenda, they themselves cannot avoid acting
ideologically (Morrison 1995a).
Claims have been made for the power of action
research to empower participants as researchers
(e.g. Carr and Kemmis 1986; Grundy 1987). This
might be over-optimistic in a world in which power
is often through statute; the reality of political
power seldom extends to teachers. That teachers
might be able to exercise some power in schools
but that this has little effect on the workings
of society at large was caught in Bernstein’s
(1970) famous comment that ‘education cannot
compensate for society’. Giving action researchers
asmalldegreeofpower(toresearchtheirown
situations) has little effect on the real locus
of power and decision-making, which often lies
outside the control of action researchers. Is action
research genuinely and full-bloodedly empowering
and emancipatory Where is the evidence
Critical theory and curriculum research
For research methods, the tenets of critical theory
suggest their own substantive fields of enquiry
and their own methods (e.g. ideology critique and
action research). Beyond that the contribution to
this text on empirical research methods is perhaps