Critical Realism and Social Work Research The Promises of Retroductive and Emancipatory Approach - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Critical Realism and Social Work Research The Promises of Retroductive and Emancipatory Approach

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Title: Critical Realism and Social Work Research The Promises of Retroductive and Emancipatory Approach


1
Critical Realism and Social Work Research -The
Promises of Retroductive and Emancipatory Approach
  • Nordic Sociological Conference
  • Turku 18 20.8.2006
  • Doctoral student Elina Pekkarinen
  • Doctoral student Maria Tapola-Haapala
  • Department of Social Policy Studies
  • University of Helsinki
  • http//www.mv.helsinki.fi/home/mtapola/esityksia/

2
Motives for the New Approach
  • In social work research constructionism and
    positivism cause contradictions in relation to
    the reality of social problems
  • Constructionism problems encountered in social
    work cannot be regarded as mere constructions
  • Positivism simple cause-effect-explanations are
    often invalid in complex social situations
  • In practice social work professionals are forced
    to apply the ibid. approaches in often artificial
    ways
  • ? Could there be an alternative?

3
The Promise of Critical Realism
  • The domains of the real, the actual and the
    empirical
  • We operate in the domain of the empirical, but
    cannot ignore the structures and the mechanisms
    of the real manifested in the actual
  • Research should aim at both revealing these
    underlying and describing the evident factors by
    using valid epistemological frameworks
  • ?Critical realism accepts the complexity of the
    world

4
Retroductive Process
  • Retroductive research process offers tools to
    obtain necessary objectivity and analytic ability
  • It helps in revealing structures and mechanisms,
    and assessing their relations and effects
  • At its best retroduction may produce emancipation
    by revealing the structures and mechanisms in
    function

5
Emancipatory Dimension
  • For to be free is
  • to know ones real interests
  • to possess both
  • the ability and the resources, i.e. generically
    the power, and
  • the opportunity to act in (or towards) them and
  • to be disposed to do so.
  • (Roy Bhaskar 1986, 170.)
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