Abstract
Looking at the title of this book, you might expect that the answer it begs is “No one.” But you would be wrong. The answer provided in the first chapter is “Everyone.” Hammersley is passionate about the need for methodology and advocates that a lot more attention be paid to methodological issues.
Hammersley provides a well-written, well-organized, and very clear presentation of many of the conceptual and philosophical dialogues that relate to social science research methodology. I particularly enjoyed his clear prose and greatly appreciated his offerings of solutions to thorny philosophical issues of methodology. But his intent is also practical: He is concerned that academic social science cannot survive against current trends that dismiss knowledge as being valuable in and of itself and the commitment to value neutrality. With this thoughtful book, Hammersley calls on us to examine our own positions regarding methodology.
In the first chapter, he outlines several trends in methodology (methodology as technique, philosophy, and autobiography) and argues that we need to spend more time, attention, and thought on how we conduct our investigations. Social science faces “fundamental methodological problems that require a great deal more attention, and more thoughtful investigation, than is usually recognized” (p. 42). Chapter 2 defines the term public intellectual, provides five different models of what it means to be an intellectual, and concludes with a discussion of why social scientists must strive to be public intellectuals rather than professionals or technicians. In chapter 3, he contends we have become too critical and shows how the meaning of being critical has shifted over time. Critically assessing the validity of knowledge claims is central to social science; however, the scope of criticism has been broadened to include being critical of “public policies, institutions, and forms of social practice” (p. 75). Hammersley wants researchers to be mindful of both the authority of research and the limits to that authority. He emphasizes that we need to instead focus on the validity of research findings, because some findings become widely accepted even when the validity is questionable. This is addressed in detail in chapter 5 using the teacher-expectancy effect to illustrate the case of “too good to be false.” In chapter 4, he suggests a new conceptualization of objectivity after discussing why the term is so problematic in social science. Hammersley argues that objectivity is necessary to make us more mindful of external influences on our methodology.
In chapter 6, he outlines the philosophy that underlies the discovery and construction models of research and offers a critique of each. He then goes on to outline a third model, focused on the notion of understanding, that incorporates elements from both of the previous models. I particularly enjoyed his discussion of Gadamer and the “fusion of horizons” as a remedy against the postmodern tendency, which makes building a body of knowledge problematic, to see every piece of evidence generated by research as relative to its context and not universally useful. He cautions against communicating research results too early to lay audiences and argues in chapter 7, “Collective, dialectical assessment of knowledge claims is essential to the process of academic knowledge production” (p. 157). This resonated with me as I thought about the conflicting health advice that is communicated daily through the media. It seems to me that more and more lay audiences are confused by the media’s tendency to bring forward newsworthy bits of research findings without communicating the research-mediated context from which it arises. Is the latest piece of evidence something that we should pay attention to, or can we safely ignore it? I fear this contributes to the public’s tendency to dismiss scientific claims when the evidence does not fit with its experiences or beliefs. Hammersley then uses in chapter 8 the case of Holocaust denial to illustrate the limits of what he calls “academic license.” He asks us to consider what are the proper limits to open-mindedness in research contexts and reminds us that “to take seriously all criticisms of what is currently treated as true would undercut any possibility of progress in developing knowledge” (p. 169).
I have found myself thinking about Hammersley’s work as I teach a class of predominately nonmajors in an Introduction to Research Methods course. What are we teaching our students about research methodology? Is it just a set of rules about observation that are not really important to the research process? I worry that I am teaching students to be critical of a process for creating knowledge without instilling a reverence and respect for it first. Students learn to critique studies without fully understanding that despite the fact that there is never a perfect study, what we can learn from even badly flawed studies can be important and useful.
This is not a book for undergraduate introductory methods courses but instead would be useful for advanced undergraduate courses, like a capstone experience or perhaps an honors seminar on research methodology. I am strongly considering adding it to the graduate seminar I teach in theoretical foundations, which is generally taken concurrently with the introductory methodology seminar. But the most appropriate use of this book, in my opinion, would be for a book group of social scientists. It could be a catalyst for conversations about what underlies our own methodological assumptions. If these social scientists were also instructors of research methodology, the benefit would be increased, as this work could also inform their approach in the classroom. It is a thought-provoking book that straddles even the quantitative-qualitative divide.