Towards depth and width in Qualitative Social Work: Aligning interpretative phenomenological analysis with the theory of social domains

Introduction

It is axiomatic that any attempt to understand the nature of social work, from a qualitative perspective, is a complex task. Thus, social work deals with the ‘personal’ and the ‘political’; it is embroiled in human agency and wider structural processes; it engages with the ‘micro’ aspects of daily life but also the ‘macro’ components of social divisions and inequalities. The objective features of society, its roles, rituals and institutional norms, influence social workers and service users alike in their daily ‘face-to-face’ activities.

What is more, at the heart of qualitative investigation into social work is an attempt to understand ‘meaning’ but in the context of the wider social processes that shape it. Clearly, ‘social experience and lived realities are multi-dimensional and our understandings are impoverished and may be inadequate if we view these phenomena only along a single dimension’ (Mason, 2006: 9). To neglect the influence of (or bracket) either human agency or social structure in qualitative inquiry is to render a partial account of human action, one that may not fully grasp the range of causative factors shaping the individual’s reactions.

In this article we argue that qualitative investigation in social work can achieve a perspicacious awareness of this multidimensional world by aligning a methodological approach, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (Smith, Flowers and Larkin, 2009), with a sociological theory of agency and structure, the Theory of Social Domains (Layder, 1997). The former combines interpretative and phenomenological perspectives within a research method, so that inner, psychological experience can be understood. By way of contrast, the latter offers a theoretical explanation of social interaction in the context of the social world, with its textured and layered dimensions that stretch out into time and space. By aligning these approaches, our central contention is that the researcher will be better equipped to understand the impact of both the psychological and sociological dimensions of existence – its ontological depth and width.

This combined focus is imperative for qualitative inquiries into social work practice which typically deal with the individual’s psychological experience – his or her coping strategies (England, 1986), reactions to crisis (O’Hagan, 2000), adjustments to loss and change (Marris, 1974), and attempts to deal with trauma (Schofield and Beek, 2006). Moreover, such inquiries are also concerned with social interaction in the wider context of social institutions and social organization. Hence, service users and social workers encounter social practices that are reproduced and normative; they also experience structural power as an ubiquitous force that both enables and constrains action.

We also contend that this much needed alignment brings together traditional epistemological approaches (such as phenomenology and hermeneutics) with post-positivist theoretical perspectives (as exemplified in critical social theory and post-structuralism). While being careful about theoretical incongruities, qualitative approaches to social work can only gain from an eclectic, variegated set of ideas that draw on the strengths of the interpretative and phenomenological traditions while harnessing the insights from schools of thought that highlight the role of discourse and societal structure in social life.

In this article we first set out the main tenets of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis as a methodological approach and then critically appraise its theoretical foundations. It is then argued that the indentified weaknesses in this method’s theoretical stance can be ameliorated by drawing on the Theory of Social Domains. That is, we posit that the insights from interpretative phenomenology can be complemented and enhanced by the impact of different social spheres, or domains, on inner experience. However, to offer a more robust justification for this move, the linkages, or conceptual bridges between the two perspectives are highlighted even though we recognize that a neat synthesis between them is not possible and that some of their competing or contrasting ideas cannot be fudged nor forcibly clamped together.

A final section of the article then considers how this alignment of the Theory of Social Domains with Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis can strengthen the latter’s qualitative investigation into human experience and importantly, the kind of experience – loss, change, oppression – with which social work typically engages. It is argued here that an understanding of psychological depth and sociological width, which comes from this reworked version of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, can enhance the examination of social work process, service users’ reactions and the constraints impacting on strategies geared towards change and human empowerment.

The methodological and theoretical foundations of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis

Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis is gaining ground as a formative qualitative method for investigating areas falling within the ambit of the psychological, social and health sciences and their allied professional disciplines. However, to date, it has not secured a firm foothold in qualitative investigations of social work. Only a handful of studies have used the method in these contexts. Examples include investigations into leaving care (Dima, 2009) and foster care (Oke, 2009). This dearth of application is somewhat surprising as the method seeks to ascertain how social actors make sense of their experience by exploring, investigating and eliciting meaning, and by attempting to provide ‘thick’ descriptions of their perceptions. This contribution to knowledge generation marks it out as a method par excellence for qualitative inquiries into social work. In this section we provide a brief overview of the approach and then explore, in more detail, its core theoretical foundations.

Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (Smith et al., 2009) examines, in depth, how subjects make sense of their significant life experiences. It aims to arrive at the core nature of experience, to attain the essence of what the subject perceives in the flow of her day-to-day consciousness. ‘Going back to the things themselves’ is at the heart of this form of inquiry, necessitating a concentration on the subject’s inner life, and making a reflexive turn from outward objects in order to examine how they are perceived inwardly. This is a process of linking the perceiver with what is perceived.

Notably, the method is idiographic. That is, it requires a formative analysis of cultural and historical ‘particulars’, in contrast to a nomothetic concentration on causal law-like explanations of social phenomena. Idiographic methods are concerned with the individual and unique experience rather than focusing on generalities.

With this outlook in place, data collection usually proceeds through purposive sampling. Once the sample has been identified, an unstructured or semi-structured interview schedule is used flexibly with the participants avoiding a directive style or one that attempts to impose too much structure on the process. A detailed, verbatim transcript of the interview is then systematically analysed, searching for themes in the first instance, followed by an attempt to make connections between them to arrive at a set of master themes for each individual transcript. These themes are then compared across the sample to arrive at cross-transcript themes. The process moves systematically from a descriptive to an increasingly interpretative analysis. An audit trail, linking verbatim extracts with the identified themes, helps to ensure that the research is trustworthy.

The method is indebted to two main theoretical traditions, namely: (a) phenomenology and (b) hermeneutics. The former is a descriptive study of experience including anything perceived by our senses. It gives rise to an introspective examination of cognitive processes. In Husserl’s view of how the phenomenological method should be applied, extraneous conceptions (that are not directly related to the focus of inquiry) are bracketed or set aside in order to attain a systematic study of the a priori essence of the perception. Conversely, hermeneutics combines a theory and method of interpreting human action, artefacts and texts. Fundamentally, the hermeneutic inquirer seeks to uncover the intentions or meanings of the actor or author. Moreover, he (sic.) attempts to understand the relationship between the context of action and its interpretation. The hermeneutic inquirer thus endeavours to empathize with the actors being studied or the authors of a text but in a manner that takes account of the worldview of the society in which they are situated.

In the method the phenomenological and interpretative traditions are drawn together. Indeed, the founders see no conflict in using a hermeneutic version of phenomenology and cite the influence of Heidegger and Gadamer to support this move. In their view, this involves the researcher moving through a cyclical process, beginning with an awareness of one’s preconceptions, then bracketing them to engage with the participant’s meanings, then returning to an (ostensibly) altered set of conceptions.

The method therefore enables the inquirer to attain a rich understanding of human experience. That said, there are two aspects that are under-theorized, particularly from a social work perspective. First, the nature of the ‘social’ is somewhat eclipsed because of the adherence to methodological individualism and psychologism. Hence, the role of social structure, institutions and social settings, and their impact on the subject’s meaning-making activities, is inadequately grasped even though there is a tacit acknowledgement of the wider world. Typically, many studies adopting the method, provide rich information about the subject’s lived experience, which reflect its core strength, but then fail to contextualize it fully from a sociological standpoint that looks closely at the interrelationship between agency and structure, the micro and the macro and the subjective and the objective dimensions of social life.

Second, the role of power in shaping meaning is poorly conceived. Traditionally, the hermeneutic stance has centred on meanings constructed in the context of the cultural sphere. This emphasis gives insufficient weight to the role of political economy and how it imposes constraints on the subject. Yet, such deficiencies are not intractable. Below, we summarize Layder’s Theory of Social Domains and argue that it builds on the strengths of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis as a research method while also providing an account of the relations between subjective, inner experience, social encounters and societal structure.

The theory of social domains

In his Theory of Social Domains, Layder (1997) has integrated ideas from a range of key social theorists, such as Habermas, Foucault and Goffman, to provide sensitizing concepts that shed light on aspects of lived experience. In doing so, his theory offers a convincing account of ‘agency’ and’ structure’, breaking it down into smaller domains or units of analysis, and showing how these aspects of social life are shaped by power, time and space.

For Layder, these domains refer to distinct spheres of activity which cannot be reduced to each other but are nevertheless interlocking and mutually dependent. He depicts them as follows (see Figure 1 below). OPEN IN VIEWER

Psychobiography refers to an individual’s unique journey throughout the life course. It traces the impact of critical events (for example, loss, broken attachments, and reunions) that have a psychological resonance for identity, values, ideas and dispositions. In this formulation, formative personal relationships play a significant role in shaping biographical narratives as do personal experiences such as trauma and illness. Importantly, each person’s experience is uniquely processed and becomes a meaningful perspective for viewing the social world.

Situated activity, by way of contrast, refers to the influence of every day social interaction, how it shapes meaning and the formation of identity. People meet and greet each other, and engage in dialogue about topics that may be banal or unsettling. Encounters are defined by arrivals and departures. Meaning is indexical or internal to these encounters; in other words, meaning cannot be apprehended outside of the social context in which it occurs.

The domain of social settings represents the social environment within which situated activity is located. Some settings are highly formal such as schools, bureaucracies and the work place; others are evanescent and less formally structured and include peer groups and family networks. Critically, they embed social rituals, positions and practices. These are reproduced aspects of social life that occurred in the past and are instantiated in the present.

The final domain of contextual resources delves into the macro context, the arena of society as a force de jure. It encompasses two aspects, namely: (a) a distributional one that allocates societal resources (money, credit, capital) unevenly according to various social categories such as class, gender and ethnicity; and (b) an historical one in which cultural resources – mores, artefacts and styles – are utilized to socialize agents making sure they adopt dominant value positions and ideologies. Layder adheres to the traditional Marxist view that the cultural dimensions of social life build on the infrastructural foundations of the economy and means of production.

Layder also emphasizes how power is pivotal to social relations. Just as a capillary provides a conduit within the vascular system, so Layder (2006) views power as a capillary force within the social system. He argues that each domain has a different form of power: individual, inter-subjective or systemic. These forms of power are seen as intermeshed so that it is within an envelope of more encompassing power relations that individual behaviour and situated activity exists. Layder further emphasizes how the domains are stretched across time and space. Hence, historical antecedents and the impact of future events have a significant role in shaping meaning, as do ‘place’ and the social environment.

It is clear that the configuration of these domains is indebted to Habermas’ bifurcation of the ‘lifeworld’ (the everyday world of symbolic interaction reflected in the domains of psychobiography and situated activity) and ‘system’ (the sphere of the State, polity and economy reflected in the domains of social settings and contextual resources). Layder’s domains also reflect Goffman’s notion of different orders of social life, particularly that of the interaction order (where face-to-face encounters take place in a way that is consonant with ‘situated activity’) while his ideas on power are moulded by Foucault’s later work on sexuality (where the role of human agency in shaping discourse is acknowledged). Giddens’ emphasis on the active subject additionally emerges in Layder’s work, although he believes that Giddens minimizes the role of systemic constraints on social life.

Aligning interpretative phenomenological analysis with the theory of social domains

A key argument for aligning Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis and the Theory of Social Domains rests in the very nature of hermeneutics itself. As we have indicated, hermeneutics involves interpretation. To interpret, we need to theorize about the phenomena under scrutiny. To explain further, in the method there is an attempt to differentiate between a ‘hermeneutic of empathy’ and a ‘questioning hermeneutic’. The former seeks to more or less accept what the participants say, and rests at the descriptive level. However, the latter seeks to interpret within the terms of the text which the participant has produced. In doing so, it can draw on outside sources of knowledge. Thus, the ‘questioning hermeneutic’ opens up the possibility of exploring theories, such as the Theory of Social Domains, that cast a more sociological light onto what is being studied.

A second related argument for the alignment comes from Smith (2001), the progenitor of the method. He is receptive to the idea that human consciousness and the social environment are deeply imbricated even though his ideas on the nature of the interrelationship require further development. Essentially, Smith views the subject as socially embedded but the precise nature of the ‘social’ in the method is not theorized fully. This deficit is unfortunate and circumscribes the approach’s interpretative potential by pushing it towards psychological reductionism, particularly when it is applied empirically. In effect, this results in the emphasis shifting from the interpretative towards the phenomenological. Moreover, without a cogent means to explain the impact of the ‘social’, the approach’s relevance for qualitative inquiry into social work practice remains partial. However, we might ask at this point whether Layder’s theory provides a complementary sociological perspective to ameliorate this shortcoming in the method?

To make an affirmative response to this question, it is important to state, first and foremost, that Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis is receptive to a wide range of phenomenological voices. Thus, amongst others, the approach draws on the work of Heidegger, and Sartre. Centrally, while Husserl laid emphasis on the individual subject’s experience and perception, these phenomenologists drew attention to the ‘worldliness’ of the subject’s experience, seeing meaning in the context of one’s ‘being’ in the lived social world. Hence, this more socially attuned phenomenology might offer a point of meaningful contact with the Theory of Social Domains. This proposition is bolstered by the fact that Layder’s project explicitly encompasses a phenomenological understanding of the person-in-society. Writing about his synthetic endeavours in this vein, he posits:

We can conclude that the general phenomenological and existential framework has a great deal to say about social experience… In particular, it tells us much about people’s experience of social life, their feelings, hopes, plans and perceptions. Thus this perspective enables us to probe into the intersubjective world from a truly human point of view. (2006: 97)

Layder’s willingness to draw on phenomenological sociology, in this regard, is clearly evident. More specifically, in one of his works on social research (1998), he acknowledged the explanatory power of Schutz’s notion of the typification; that is, the ways actors organize their knowledge of the social world in terms of typical features of persons, things or events.

Layder is also sympathetic to many of Sartre’s ideas. For instance, he agrees with Sartre that people respond to their lived experience in the social world, and the constraints it imposes, by exercising choice, constructing plans and deliberating about authentic courses of action. For Sartre and Layder, people are also confronted with the existential dilemma associated with the ‘dialectic of individual separateness and social relatedness’: their need to maintain their individuality on the one hand, and their social identity, on the other.

Thus, it is through the portal of social phenomenology that we can forge a conceptual bridge, or mutual understanding, between Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis’ theoretical foundations and the Theory of Social Domains. In other words, in Husserl’s terms, there exists a compatible Horizontgebundenheit, or horizon, between the two approaches. Thompson’s thinking (2007) has moved in a similar direction since he has noted that, while this method was developed in psychology, it could be used in relation to other theories; in fact, he suggested that the ‘I’, or the interpretative aspect of the method, harnessed a reflexive awareness of, and openness to, a multiplicity of factors – both psychological and sociological.

Larkin (2002) also suggested that this method engendered a secondary, critical focus on language, meaning and social context. In doing so, it became open to an analysis of the ‘macro’ sphere. In other words, analysts employing the method could draw upon other theoretical frameworks or concepts to develop interpretations of the emerging experiential accounts. He has since indicated that psychological considerations often have a sociological component (Larkin, 2007).

Furthermore, Willig (2001) argues that the method is essentially a contextual constructionist approach, one that shows ‘the relationship between accounts and the contexts within which they have been produced’ (p. 145). Such accounts, she goes on to suggest, need to be grounded in the situational, personal, cultural and social aspects of experience. They need to be attentive to social context. To be more clear on this theme, what the Theory of Social Domains adds to the social phenomenology of Heidegger, Schutz and Sartre, is a nuanced, differentiated account of the social context; that is, one that sees the constituent features of social life as an amalgam of subjectivist influences and objectivist elements. Layder’s notion of the social world as comprising four interlocking and mutually dependent domains, bound by social relations, positions, power, discourses and practices, is immensely helpfully to the researcher – as the next section of the article will argue. Theoretically, it also makes an important contribution to social phenomenology which can be critiqued for presenting an ahistorical view of society and one that does not take sufficient cognizance of social conflict, power and inequality. Layder’s critique resonates with Mouzelis’ (1995) detailed assessment of micro sociological theories including phenomenology. For Mouzelis, micro sociological theory, because of its abreaction against the systemic and structural emphases within Parsonian and Marxist sociology, has neglected the impact of social hierarchies in the micro, meso and macro domains of social reality.

Moreover, Mouzelis wants to redirect sociology away from its internecine paradigm wars in order to build conceptual bridges between different approaches. Significantly, Mouzelis is committed to a conceptual pragmatism that focuses on the ‘criteria of utility rather than truth’ (1995: 7). This view resonates with Larkin, Watts and Clifton’s (2006) clarion call for an epistemological openness or range in Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis and Layder’s notion of epistemological inclusiveness in qualitative inquiry. It also chimes with Weiss and Wodak’s (2003: 7) declaration that the first question we have to address as researchers is not ‘do we need a grand theory’ but rather ‘what conceptual tools are relevant for this or that problem and for this and that context?’. In the next section of the article we build on these pleas for utility, eclecticism and pragmatism by addressing the implications of the alignment for qualitative research into social work. Before doing so, let us highlight some words of caution: this alignment is not a marriage of equals nor a union of complementary temperaments. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis is hesitant about taking deductive theorizing too far, while domain theory is wary of phenomenological closure (the closure of outward objectivist influences). For all of that, the pragmatic gains of the linkage outweigh these epistemological and ontological tensions, as we attempt to argue in the next section.

Implications for qualitative research in social work

Shaw and Gould (2001) characterize qualitative research, and its application to social work, in terms of a number of common descriptors. First, it involves an immersion into the everyday life of individuals (for example, service users, social work staff in various settings and professionals from other disciplines) as they associate with groups, societies and organizations; its aim here is to obtain ‘thick descriptions from the inside’ by the researcher suspending her preconceptions about the topics under discussion.

On this basis, we believe that the phenomenological and hermeneutical aspects of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis have a central role to play in qualitative social work, given that they are concerned chiefly with perception and meaning but in a way that ‘drills down’ into the essence of these mental phenomena. But more than that, the afore-mentioned reference to ‘groups, societies and organizations’ links with Layder’s notion of social domains and their impact on the individual’s perceptions. Of relevance, here, is the domain of situated activity where ‘face-to-face’ encounters occur. This is where social work practice is often located through the important medium of ‘relationship’ (Ruch, Turney and Ward, 2010) even though it is shaped by other forces as we have argued. Qualitative social work, as a consequence, will also inevitably direct its inquiries to meaning and sense-making in the ‘face-to-face’ sphere. Taking a hypothetical example to enlarge on this point, it is important to know how social workers implement organizational requirements to acquire, sift, analyse and utilize information. According to Parton (2008) these are pervasive processes shaping contemporary social work and there is a compelling need to understand how they are operationalized. More specifically, we need to know how professionals incorporate these processes within their face-to-face work with service users and the extent to which they pose a challenge to more traditional, time-honoured discourses centring on the use of relationship in social work. A phenomenological study into this area might explore whether informational exigencies can be met but in a way that remains true to the tenets of humanistic practice and a person-centred stance. The potential contradictions that social workers face in combining instrumental and humanistic positions, and how they attempt to resolve them, might be of interest to service users, practitioners and managers.

What is more, the study’s findings could be interpreted, hermeneutically, in the context of the Theory of Social Domains. In this example, the domain of situated activity (where informational imperatives abound) might be understood more fully when taken in the context of the domain of social settings, where policy on the afore-mentioned processes is formulated. Furthermore, an additional line of inquiry might centre on the social workers’ experience of organizational power, of having to implement directives at the expense of professional discretion, know-how and practice wisdom.

A second theme, identified by Shaw and Gould, refers to qualitative social work’s attempt to gain a deep understanding of the ‘particular’. As we have argued earlier, Interpretative Phenomenolgical Analysis is committed to an idiographic stance that studies particular persons, events or things. It is a research approach that gives attention to detail. It engenders a deep analysis of specific, experiential phenomena as perceived by individual research participants. The need for depth, rather than surface (Howe, 1996) in all of this, is met through the method’s phenomenological stance which proceeds to study experience in the way it naturally unfolds, on its own terms. This is a move towards deep, inward psychic experience in order to reveal the essential nub of the issue under scrutiny. It goes without saying that qualitative social work must be open to this depth when it attempts to understand or explain social phenomena.

Yet, Shaw and Gould also argue that the ‘particular’ needs to be approached with some awareness of the ‘whole’. They quote Geertz (1973: 23) who said that ‘small facts speak to large issues’. In the method this notion is expressed as the hermeneutic circle where, to understand any given part, one must look to the whole and vice versa. Accordingly, the micro and macro aspects of the research inquiry need to be appraised in tandem, even though the former might be privileged as the main focus of the investigation.

This dynamic between the particular and the whole is consonant with an awareness of how agency and structure are interrelated, because micro phenomena embrace human agency and the macro dimensions overlap with structural elements. The Theory of Social Domains enables the social work researcher to identify areas of particular interest concerning human agency, say within the domain of psychobiography, but also provides a template for her to raise questions regarding the influence of the other, more structurally located domains. More specifically, if the research question and method centre on the service user’s experience in the domain of psychobiography, the unfolding data might still be analysed in the context of the other three domains. Thus, the researcher might raise tentative questions, or seek further data, concerning the impact of the social setting on the client’s situation; or consider how the domain of contextual resources had constrained potential courses of action or perhaps opened up ‘windows of opportunity’. So, while one of the domains might be privileged as the dominant focus of inquiry, the findings arising from it can be set within a much larger canvass.

The integration of ‘agency’ and ‘structure’, the ‘micro’ and the ‘macro’, psychology and sociology, is vital for qualitative social work as many aspects of the service user’s experience are considerably under-theorized. The leaving care experience for young people is a case in point. Thus, there is a range of early and more contemporary studies (Dixon, 2008; Godek, 1978; Lupton, 1985; Stein, 2004) highlighting the problems that care-leavers face: poverty, dislocation and mental ill health to name a few. Be that as it may, a more nuanced and in-depth appreciation of the nature of these difficulties is only beginning to emerge through research inquiry. We know little about the interplay between psychological processes (for example, attachment and resilience), adaptive responses (for instance, coping and stress management) and wider socio-cultural structures and mechanisms (such as social class and gendered relations) in shaping meaning and outcomes for care-leavers. The need for this type of theorization in qualitative inquiry, which this theory-method alignment provides, is most pertinent when we attempt to understand the complex factors influencing the young people’s mental well-being and coping strategies.

Another example can be drawn from residential child care. In this context, Smith (2009) summarized the theoretical perspectives which had been borrowed from other disciplines over the years, to understand processes and practices within this setting and stated that they all ‘betray (their) origins in psychology’. While intimating that such theory is valuable, Smith asserted that, in order to make sense of residential care, we required a broader theoretical base. Pertinent here is an appreciation of the role of biographical and institutional time, social relations and their interwoveness (Pösö, 2010).

Shaw and Gould highlight a third characteristic of qualitative social work: its commitment to inductive processes of theory generation and development. Qualitative social work ‘is inseparably connected to theory’ but in a way that allows for concepts to emerge from the data. It should be reiterated at this point that Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis adopts a method that is discernibly inductive. Yet, ‘the thinking that qualitative researchers do is both deductive and inductive’ (Gilgun and Abrams, 2002: 42). Qualitative researchers do not approach their inquiries on the basis of a tabula rasa. In our view, a cautious elicitation of theory at the early stage of inquiry (before fieldwork commences), say in the form of a set sensitizing concepts (applied with a ‘light touch’), is still compatible with Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis’ essentially inductive orientation. This is because the method, as we have argued earlier, promotes a questioning hermeneutic that permits the researcher to consider theoretical constructs at the outset before moving to a description of the participant’s views.

The Theory of Social Domains generates a number of relevant sensitizing, or orienting, concepts that apply to qualitative approaches to social work. Examples from each of Layder’s domains are illustrated in the table below (see Table 1). These concepts reflect the range of psychological and social theories underpinning the Theory of Social Domains. For instance, at the psychological level, Layder sources ideas from psycho-analytic theory whereas within the domain of situated activity, he resorts to the thinking of interactionists such as Mead and Goffman. The latter’s ideas on the institutional order are also integrated within the domain of social settings. On the one hand, Layder justifies this pluralism on the grounds that social reality, far from being monochrome, is variegated and that social research should engage in a dialogue with different types of theory even though they may be antithetical to some degree. Having said that, on the other hand, he warns about the pitfalls of theoretical anarchism or an undisciplined ‘mish-mash’ of countervailing concepts that obfuscate rather than elucidate.

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Table 1.

Examples of sensitizing constructs drawn from the theory of social domains

The concepts listed above, particularly in the domains of social settings and contextual resources, play a central role in anti-oppressive social work research. According to Strier (2007), this form of research aims to carry out a systemic study of oppression in order to develop knowledge which will support marginalized populations to address the institutionalized use of unjust power. Significantly, for Strier, this necessitates the use of ‘methodologies that are able to address the complex, multifaceted character of oppression, with its structural aspects as well as its subjective, phenomenological dimensions’ (p. 5).

The theory-method alignment (that is being promoted) gives attention to the afore-mentioned subjectivist/phenomenological and objectivist/structural elements within society. Furthermore, its articulation of the multi-faceted nature of power and its approach to the cultural, economic and political spheres through the lens of resources (and their unequal allocation according to gender, race and class), provides points of reference for research inquiry.

To make the point more substantively, let us explore the example of a notional study of young people in the care system and their experience of secondary education. Initially, this study might inquire into the young people’s subjective accounts of their day-to-day experience within the schools they attend. A phenomenological approach is relevant to this aspect of the inquiry because the focus is on the meanings the young people attribute to their experience. Yet, at a deeper, interpretative level, it might also be important to consider the situational and structural constraints impacting on the young people’s educational careers. Here, the Theory of Social Domains is helpful. Notably, Layder draws on Bourdieu’s (1990) idea of ‘habitus’ as a sensitizing construct for qualitative research. ‘Habitus’ refers to the inner dispositions that individuals acquire that regulate the range and types of actions that are possible. For Bourdieu, social class acts as a medium for reproducing ‘habitus’ particularly in the sphere of education. It does so by inculcating dispositions that lead to differing expectations about educational achievement. Typically, working class children (who are overly represented in the care system) are seen to be at a disadvantage, finding it much harder to acquire the type of educational capital that leads to success.

Applied to our hypothetical study, a sensitizing construct such as ‘habitus’ might help explain how educational expectations were conveyed to children from a very young age as a result of their care backgrounds, class position and access to cultural and educational resources. Taking an anti-oppressive stance, this study might look critically at how children’s homes (reflecting the domain of social settings) either reinforce the young people’s existing ‘habitus’ or attempt to reshape it in a manner that builds educational capital.

Conclusion

The issue of how theory and research are linked has provoked much debate in the social sciences. Research needs to be theoretically informed but theory needs to be tested empirically. In qualitative social work this issue takes on a particular purchase when the interpretative and post-positivist approaches to research and knowledge are brought into a much needed, pragmatic alignment. In this article, we have approached this need through a critical examination of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis and the Theory of Social Domains. The bridge between these two approaches lies, it was argued, in social phenomenology – which both approaches embrace. The synergistic implications of this connection have meaning for qualitative social work which examines aspects of social life in the context of wider social structures, taking account of power and structural cleavages.

Putting this in another way, qualitative social work seeks to understand the depth of the participant’s experience, meanings and perceptions. At the same time, it strives to comprehend the width of social life, its interactional patterns, institutional affiliations and cultural embedding. But, more critically, it aims to understand the interplay between ‘depth’ and ‘width’; that is, the interchange between psychological experience, on the one hand, and the sociological context surrounding it, on the other. For qualitative social work to grasp this nuanced, time bound, spatially connected and layered social world, and the ligatures of power, discourse and meaning that give it shape and cohesion, it requires a theoretical and methodological substratum that is fit for purpose. The alignment that we have proffered may not meet all the stringent requirements that are required to investigate social work practice but it might make some inroads into this vastly complex arena. In this respect, a theoretically grounded, qualitative social work has a vital role to play in describing (phenomenologically) and interpreting (hermeneutically) human experience with erudition, understanding and humanity.