How do you view the world?

It all started with a simple enough sounding question from one of my supervisors, something along the lines of “how do you view the world?”. As it turns out, this wasn’t so simple to answer as whatever responses came to mind were quite clearly wrapped up in layers upon layers of unquestioned assumptions.

Two possible answers were suggested, one by one of my supervisors who thought I might be a critical realist, the other by a friend who thought I was a social constructivist. To me these both seemed equally plausible as I had absolutely no idea what either of them really meant.

I was reminded of Bourdieu’s (1991, p. 57) observations around “linguistic relations of power based on the unequal distribution of linguistic capital”. In this case I very clearly am not (yet?) in possession of the necessary linguistic capital to hold my own in a conversation about something I ought to know enough about. How hard can it be to describe how you view the world?

It is always an interesting experience to find yourself suddenly exposed as having essentially zero effective knowledge within a particular area. It wouldn’t be such a surprise if this was in a conversation about astrophysics with a leading scientist in the field, as I do not pretend to know anything about astrophysics. The surprise here is more that the question feels like it should be easy to answer, I feel I “know” how I view the world, but without the necessary understanding of key terminology I find it quite impossible to describe.

Savin-Baden and Howell Major (2013, p. 80) offer some potential encouragement to push through the uncertainty with their statement that “qualitative researchers are located in an interrupted world, and where they stand and how they interpret the world constantly changes and moves in and out of focus.” That is good to hear, so no matter how out of focus things might seem right now, it is just part of the process, and things are likely to move back into focus again in the future.

A quote I like even more is from Alvesson and Sköldberg (2009, p. 2), who claim that “by problematising research, we may come to overrate its difficulties, which leads in the long run to a defeatist reaction, and perhaps even to ask ourselves whether empirical social science has any reasonable function at all.”

Assuming that the defeatist reaction is not the one to go with, what then might the solution be? Might it be to stop problematising and instead to return to doing what is obvious to me, and not over-questioning everything into oblivion? Perhaps. Eventually though I will need to come up with a strong positionality statement.

So how do I view the world? Currently, I do find myself appreciating the realist perspective of “acknowledg[ing] a ‘social reality’ in addition to a ‘physical reality’” (Savin-Baden and Howell Major, 2013, p. 57). I do believe not everything is a social construction, but at the same time, the things that are socially constructed do not need to be automatically considered less real because of that. One of the challenges appears to then be in attempting to prove something that is socially constructed is real, and not just a shared (and possibly erroneous) belief amongst a group of people.

For example, if most of the people on the planet believe the earth is flat, does that make it so? Or how many people would need to tell you they think gravity doesn’t exist before you decide to jump out of a plane without a parachute? What about if all employees of a company believe it is a good place to work? When does something become a fact, or when can knowledge be said to accurately represent reality?

Clearly I still have more questions than answers, but I’m starting to feel better about not having very good answers yet. I also expect to acquire some additional linguistic capital in the near future that will allow me to produce better answers.

I’ll leave you with two questions to think about for yourself:

• How do you view the world?
• What is knowledge?

Happy thinking 😊

 Reference list:

• Alvesson, M. and Sköldberg, K. (2009) Reflexive methodology: New Vistas for Qualitative Research. 2nd edn. SAGE.
• Bourdieu, P. (1991) Language and Symbolic Power. Polity Press.
• Savin-Baden, M. and Howell Major, C. (2013) Qualitative Research: The essential guide to theory and practice. 1st edn. Routledge.