Going critical: the problem of problematizing knowledge in education studies

Abstract

This paper raises the issue of what it is to be ‘critical’ in education studies and in social theory more generally. It argues that this idea has for a long time been associated with forms of social constructionism and sociological reductionism. These understand the idea that knowledge is social in terms of reducing it to the experiences and interests of the groups whose perspective knowledge is held to represent. In this way knowledge is conflated with knowing. This approach has the consistent problem of collapsing into a relativism that denies of possibility of objectivity in knowledge or an epistemologically independent basis for knowledge claims. This paper offers an alternative view based in critical realism that attempts to provide non‐relativist, though fallible, grounds for knowledge claims that restore a sense of autonomy to fields of knowledge production by understanding the sociality of knowledge in terms of emergent materialism. In this manner, the argument provides an alternative to both social constructionism and to Bourdieu's relationalism.

Notes

1. There is a well known logical objection to the relativist argument to the effect that if it is true that all truth is relative, then there must be one truth that is not: namely, the truth that all truth is relative. In which case, it is not true that all truth is relative. This is not just a rather neat piece of semantic footwork. It points to a significant feature of arguments of this type which is that they covertly exempt themselves from their own principles. Interest and standpoint theories, if consistent, must themselves represent interests and standpoints that vitiate their own truth claim that the truth claims of others are interest and standpoint relative. This ensnares such arguments in a regress in which all standpoints are successively unmasked by further standpoints.

2. It is necessary to qualify ‘thing’ in this way because in the main positivists tended to be Humean sceptics: that is; they did not believe that there was any logical warrant for assuming that what we perceive to be the case is in fact the case about some independently existing state of the universe. Strictly speaking words reflect sensations, not things. In this respect positivists were themselves thoroughgoing constructionists.

3. Niiniluoto refers to this position as the ‘all or nothing fallacy’: ‘Its different forms propose a strong or absolute standard for some category (e.g., truth, knowledge, conceptual distinction), and interpret the failure or impossibility of satisfying this standard as proof that the category is empty and be rejected.’ (Niiniluoto, 2002, p. 81). In this case what is being assumed is an infallibilist definition of truth in which truth is that which is certain beyond doubt. As Niiniluoto argues, the response to this is a fallibist approach which recognizes that knowledge is provisional, but does not collapse into relativism because it demands only that some knowledge be more reliable than others, not that it is true in an absolute sense.

4. This subterranean link between positivism and postmodernism has been noted by various writers (see, for instance, Hacking, 2000, pp. 42–43). We can note that semiotics (or ‘semiology’—the science of signs) actually has its modern origins the work of late nineteenth century and early twentieth century mathematical logicians such as Pierce in America (who, I believe, coined the term), Frege in Germany and Russell and Whitehead in England. Essentially, this language is that of positivism—on the ‘linguistic turn’, in this respect, see Dummett (1993, chapter 2).

5. See, however, texts referred to in this paper by Beck, Maton, Moore, Muller and Young authored singularly and in various combinations.

6. I must note here that the principle of ‘emergence’ is not agreed by all critical realists. A major exception is that of Rom Harré. The first chapter of Lopez and Potter (2001) is a debate between Harré, Roy Bhaskar and others on this and a number of other important conceptual and terminological issues. In general, the line followed in this paper accords with that of Bhaskar. In order to avoid possible confusions, I prefer, here, to say that critical realism is concerned with the social production of knowledge rather than with its ‘construction’ and to reserve ‘constructionism’ for reference to those forms of interpretative sociology described in this paper (symbolic interactionism, phenomenology, ethnomethodology, postmodernism, discourse theory, etc)—see Bhaskar's comments on page 29 (1975) and also Abbott (2001, chapter 3). I also treat ‘constructionism’ simply as a synonym of ‘constructivism’. An excellent philosophical review of the problems covered in this paper is to be found in Charles Mills (1998) Alternative epistemologies. This also provides a useful bibliography.