Critical social research: re-examining quality

Abstract

ion Abstraction is usually construed as the distillation of sensory perception of the world of objects into conceptual categories. That is, starting from the (literally) objective world, recurrent or apparently core or defining features are identified until an abstract concept is formulated. Thus, for example, ‘employability’ is construed as the set of ‘skills’ that enable a person to get a job. This process of distillation of some features from a set of observed objects is at the basis of most systems of classification. Critical social research starts from the view that facts do not exist independently of their theoretical context. If facts are not self-evident then concepts cannot be abstracted from them. Critical social research thus works by moving from the abstract to the concrete. It starts with the abstract generalisation and investigates them in a broader context. For example, aggressive behaviour in the home in which a husband pushes, hits or throws things at his wife is encapsulated by the term ‘domestic violence’. Critical social research goes beyond the surface appearance of domestic violence as a set of aggressive acts and reconceptualises it as, for example, an outcome of a patriarchal control. Abstraction, for critical social research, is more than specifying the concrete components, it requires identifying underlying structures, which have been assimilated uncritically into the concept, with the aim of developing a reconstructed concept. Abstraction in critical social research, therefore, differs from the positivist use because, rather than simply providing the basis for ordering appearances and ultimately reifying them, they are used to get beneath the surface of appearances.ion is usually construed as the distillation of sensory perception of the world of objects into conceptual categories. That is, starting from the (literally) objective world, recurrent or apparently core or defining features are identified until an abstract concept is formulated. Thus, for example, ‘employability’ is construed as the set of ‘skills’ that enable a person to get a job. This process of distillation of some features from a set of observed objects is at the basis of most systems of classification. Critical social research starts from the view that facts do not exist independently of their theoretical context. If facts are not self-evident then concepts cannot be abstracted from them. Critical social research thus works by moving from the abstract to the concrete. It starts with the abstract generalisation and investigates them in a broader context. For example, aggressive behaviour in the home in which a husband pushes, hits or throws things at his wife is encapsulated by the term ‘domestic violence’. Critical social research goes beyond the surface appearance of domestic violence as a set of aggressive acts and reconceptualises it as, for example, an outcome of a patriarchal control. Abstraction, for critical social research, is more than specifying the concrete components, it requires identifying underlying structures, which have been assimilated uncritically into the concept, with the aim of developing a reconstructed concept. Abstraction in critical social research, therefore, differs from the positivist use because, rather than simply providing the basis for ordering appearances and ultimately reifying them, they are used to get beneath the surface of appearances.