Page 89 - Culture Media Language Working Papers in Cultural Studies

78 NOTES ON METHOD

compact with positivism to preserve the subject finally as an object. Indeed,
what the all-embracing concern for techniques and for the reliability of the data
really shows us is a belief that the object of the research exists in an external
world, with knowable external characteristics which must not be disturbed.
The central insistence, for instance, on the passivity of the participant
observer depends on a belief that the subject of the research is really an object.
The concern is to minimize ‘distortion of the field’, with the underlying fear that
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the object may be contaminated with the subjectivity of the researcher. Too
easily it becomes an assumption of different orders of reality between the
researched and the researcher.
The insistent, almost neurotic, technical concern with the differentiation of PO
from reportage and Art is also a reflection of the subterranean conviction that PO
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belongs with the ‘sciences’ and must, in the end, respect objectivity. There is a
clear sociological fear of naked subjectivity. The novel can wallow in
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subjectivity —this is how it creates ‘colour’ and ‘atmosphere’—but how do we
know that the author did not make it all up? Indeed, in one obvious way he or she
did make it all up! So the search must be for a unified object which might be
expected to present itself as the same to many minds. The first principle of PO,
the postponement of theory, compounds the dangers of this covert positivism. It
strengthens the notion that the object can present itself directly to the observer.

On the role of theory
In fact, there is no truly untheoretical way in which to ‘see’ an ‘object’. The
‘object’ is only perceived and understood through an internal organization of
data, mediated by conceptual constructs and ways of seeing the world. The final
account of an object says as much about the observer as it does about the object
itself. Accounts can be read ‘backwards’ to uncover and explicate the
consciousness, culture and theoretical organization of the observer.
However, we must recognize the ambition of the PO principle in relation to
theory. It has directed its followers towards a profoundly important
methodological possibility—that of being ‘surprised’, of reaching knowledge
not prefigured in one’s starting paradigm. The urgent task is to chart the
feasibility, scope and proper meaning of such a capacity.
If we are to recognize the actual scope for the production of ‘new’ knowledge,
we must avoid delusions. We must not be too ambitious. It is vital that we admit
the most basic foundations of our research approach and accept that no
‘discovery’ will overthrow this most basic orientation. The theoretical
organization of the starting-out position should be outlined and acknowledged in
any piece of research. This inevitable organization concerns attitudes towards the
social world in which the research takes place, a particular view of the social
relationships within it and of its fundamental determinations and a notion of the
analytic procedures which will be used to produce the final account. It would
also explain why certain topics have been chosen for research in the first place.