Mauthner 2020 ResearchPhilosophiesandWhyTheyMatter

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Research philosophies and why they matter
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12. Research philosophies and why they

matter
Natasha S. Mauthner
Research philosophies provide theories about the nature of the reality that
is being investigated in research (ontology) and about how knowledge of
this reality is produced and justified (epistemology). The topic of
research philosophies tends to be a challenging one for doctoral research-
ers. For one thing, there is a bewildering number of ‘isms’: positivism,
empiricism, rationalism, realism, direct realism, naïve realism, critical
realism, objectivism, subjectivism, social constructivism, social construc-
tionism, interpretivism, postmodernism, poststructuralism, posthuman-
ism, pragmatism, symbolic interactionism, not to mention hermeneutics,
phenomenology, feminist standpoint and many more. Furthermore, some
of these terms are often used interchangeably. Many a student has asked
me what the difference is between direct and naïve realism, social
constructivism and social constructionism or postmodernism and post-
structuralism. A further question is whether these ‘isms’ are referring to
ontology, epistemology or both. And then there is the question of the
difference between philosophy and theory. Researchers write about
poststructural and postmodern theory, yet these are also listed as research
philosophies. So which is it: theory or philosophy? Navigating this
confusing terrain is difficult, and I don’t think there are any easy short
cuts. Getting to grips with research philosophies requires time, reading
and thinking, and there are many excellent books to guide students.
My aim in this chapter is not to rehearse these points. The question I
want to address is: Given the vast array of research philosophies within
the social sciences, how do you decide on a research philosophy and why
does it matter? I have learnt as much about the philosophy of science
from reading books as I have from doing research. Indeed, tensions and
contradictions between these two domains have been particularly instruc-
tive. Teaching and writing about research methods has also provided
insights. I draw on all of this material in telling my story. First, I outline
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Research philosophies and why they matter 77
how I was introduced to philosophical alternatives to positivism, includ-

ing social constructionism and feminist epistemologies. Second, I discuss
learning about a feminist method of narrative analysis and encountering
tensions between my constructionist philosophical commitments and the
implicit realism underpinning this method. Third, I talk about my failed
attempts to translate my philosophical commitments into my methodo-
logical practices. Fourth, I write about running a research methods
workshop and discovering that philosophies are built into methods. Fifth,
I discuss finding a book that helped me understand this, and much more,
and that outlines a philosophy of science that I have found utterly
convincing and compelling. Throughout, I consider the implications for
doctoral researchers.
FIRST INTRODUCTIONS TO THE HISTORY,

PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE
In 1989 I started my doctoral research on women’s experiences of
motherhood and postnatal depression. My PhD was funded by a student-
ship from the Medical Research Council and initially I was based in a
department of experimental psychology at the University of Cambridge,
which is where I had done my undergraduate degree. A few weeks into
the project, I grew increasingly disenchanted with mainstream psychol-
ogy, its positivist philosophy of science, and how this had shaped
research in my new field of study. Research at that time was dominated
by medicalised interpretations of postnatal depression in which mothers’
accounts of their experiences were largely disregarded. Women’s own
views on their lives were seen as overly subjective, and therefore invalid
grounds on which to base any knowledge of the condition. I was looking
for ways of privileging women’s stories and using their experiences as a
starting point for my research.
This represented such a philosophical and methodological departure
from the experimental psychology department at that time that I had to
move to the then Faculty of Social and Political Sciences (SPS) to find a
supervisor sympathetic to my approach. One of the first things he did
was to give me a copy of Berger and Luckmann’s (1966) The Social
Construction of Reality. I added this to the readings I had done as an
undergraduate student as part of a course on the history and philosophy
of science, most of which critiqued classical science and explored
alternatives to positivism. These recommended texts were all by white
men. Indeed, the SPS Faculty, and University more generally, in the late
1980s and early 1990s was predominantly male with few established
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78 How to keep your doctorate on track
female professors. Even though the field of feminist epistemology and

methodology was burgeoning at the time, this was not reflected in the
formal readings and teachings we were receiving. Discovery and discus-
sion of this feminist literature was done through informal reading groups
with fellow PhD students. I learnt as much from talking to other doctoral
students as I did from my supervisor and lecturers, a point I often make
to my own PhD students. These early introductions to the history,
philosophy and sociology of science shaped my thinking and the broad
feminist social constructionist and interpretive stance that I took in my
work. But I never felt completely at ease with this approach and it was to
be over two decades before I discovered a research philosophy that I felt
able to fully commit to. More on that later.
There is an element of serendipity in finding and choosing a research
philosophy. It depends on the readings that you come across and that are
recommended to you. It is useful to cast your net widely: to read and talk
to lots of people including supervisors, mentors and other doctoral
researchers. Many supervisors have been trained and influenced by an
earlier generation of texts and scholars, and may not be up to date with
the latest thinkers. Learning about research philosophies, including
emerging intellectual movements and developments, with and from
fellow PhD students can be useful for your research.
THE TENSION BETWEEN PHILOSOPHICAL

COMMITMENTS AND METHODS
Halfway through my doctoral research I met the North American feminist
psychologist, Carol Gilligan, when she came to the University of
Cambridge in 1992 as a visiting professor. That year Carol published a
book with her doctoral student, Lyn Brown, Meeting at the Crossroads:
Women’s Psychology and Girls’ Development, influenced in part by
Carol’s highly acclaimed earlier book In a Different Voice, which came
out in 1982. Meeting at the Crossroads describes how Lyn and Carol
developed an innovative feminist voice-centred relational method of
analysing interview narratives—the Listening Guide—designed to access
voices and experiences that were marginalised within patriarchal soci-
eties. The Listening Guide method is organised around a four-stage
process for listening to interview accounts: (1) listening for the plot;
(2) listening for the narrating self and the voice of the ‘I’; (3) listening
for how the participant speaks about relationships; and (4) listening for
the ways in which institutionalised cultural norms and expectations
become internal moral voices that constrain expression and silence
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voices. On her arrival in Cambridge, Carol set up a seminar group for

graduates, which I instantly joined.
The Listening Guide method, and its initial concern to uncover and value
the experiences and perspectives of women, and marginalised groups more
generally, was inextricably linked to second-wave feminism and its
identity-politics and voice-giving project. Second-wave feminism was
focused on revealing identities, lives and realities that were seen as having
been obscured by mainstream theories and methods that embodied male,
white, middle-class, heterosexual, and Western norms and values despite
their claims to neutrality and objectivity. Carol’s work and method therefore
spoke to me powerfully as it seemed to provide exactly what I had been
looking for: a way of privileging women’s voices and stories of their own
depression, and using these as legitimate sources of knowledge about
their emotional state. I wrote my doctoral research very much in the
tradition of Carol’s work, second-wave feminism and its voice-giving
project (Mauthner, 2002).
Throughout this period, however, I had niggles about how this method
tied in with my philosophical approach. Wasn’t I contradicting myself by
arguing that I was adopting a social constructionist/interpretive approach
while using a method that was claiming to access women’s real experi-
ences? Feminist scholarship, like Carol’s work and the Listening Guide
method, was coming under increasing criticism at that time for essential-
ising women and their experiences—for implying feminist methods give
us unmediated access to essential truth(s) about women’s lives. There
were growing cross-disciplinary arguments that subjectivities, experi-
ences and stories, and interpretations of them, are not fixed and given,
but reflexively and discursively constituted within specific theoretical,
cultural, historical and political frameworks and practices. This ‘linguistic
turn’ created tensions for the kind of feminist voice-giving research that I
was engaged in and that Carol’s work had helped pioneer.
These tensions between realism and social constructionism raise
philosophical questions for doctoral and other researchers to consider.
Think about what your empirical research is telling you about: the social
world as it really is, a social construction of this world or something
altogether different? As well as spelling out your explicit philosophical
beliefs and responses to this question, you also need to look at whether
and how you are putting these assumptions into practice in the empirical
part of your research. Are your methods of data collection and analysis
consistent with your stated philosophical position?
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FAILED ATTEMPTS TO TRANSLATE PHILOSOPHICAL

COMMITMENTS INTO METHODOLOGICAL
PRACTICES
What I encountered in my own research was a clash between my explicit
social constructionist/interpretive philosophical commitments and an
implicit realism that underpinned the method of data analysis that I was
using. After completing my PhD, I started to tackle this issue with
Andrea Doucet, who had been a fellow PhD student and a close friend.
We worked together for many years exploring the question of how to
translate our philosophical commitments into our methodological prac-
tices. We set out to reconceptualise the Listening Guide method in more
social constructionist, interpretive and poststructural terms. Influenced by
debates about reflexive approaches to theory-building and empirical
research, we argued for reflexive ways of practising the Listening Guide.
Reflexive use of the method, we suggested, signalled awareness that the
object of study is being socially, historically and culturally constituted.
This reflexive practice required being explicit about our philosophical
and theoretical commitments, and translating these commitments into
methodological practices. We argued that methods are conceptual and
theory-laden, which we illustrated with the example of subjectivity.
Given broad theoretical debates about the nature of subjectivity, it was
necessary to be explicit about what specific concept of subjectivity we
are using and how this concept is built into methods. Here, we pointed to
how a concept of a relational subject was embedded in the Listening
Guide (Mauthner and Doucet, 2003).
As time went on, however, I had doubts about how effective our
approach was. Although we argued that we were engaging in reflexive
interpretive practices, we were not able to account for how these
practices were making a material difference to the subjects, voices and
narratives we were hearing. The Listening Guide techniques and listening
stages were still listening for entities that were assumed to be pre-
existing: the narrative’s plot, the voice of the speaking ‘I’, stories of
relationships, and cultural norms and expectations. Despite our best
efforts to use reflexivity to bridge the divide between philosophy and
method, there was still a contradiction between our explicitly stated
social constructionist philosophical stance and the implicit realist
philosophical assumptions underpinning the Listening Guide. The con-
cept and practice of reflexivity turned out not to be the means of putting
philosophy into practice after all. I felt that the tension between social
constructionism and realism, and the chasm between philosophy and
9/1
practice, introduced philosophical inconsistencies that threatened the

rigour of my research, which led me to give up empirical research for
some years.
As graduate researchers, examine what research philosophy you are
explicitly subscribing to, what research philosophy is implicitly under-
pinning the research methods that you are using, and whether these are
consistent. We are not used to considering the philosophies embedded in
our methods because we have been taught to think of methods as neutral
techniques that have nothing to do with philosophy. It took a trip to New
Zealand for me to learn that this was not the case.
DISCOVERING THAT PHILOSOPHIES ARE BUILT

INTO METHODS
In December 2008 I went on sabbatical to New Zealand. While I was
there I ran a workshop on the Listening Guide and its different listening
stages, starting with listening for the voice of the ‘I’. The workshop was
attended by researchers from Asian and South Pacific cultures, who
pointed out that they did not have or use personal pronouns—I, you,
we—as in Western cultures, and they were therefore unsure how they
could listen for ‘the voice of the I’, or indeed what this meant. It dawned
on me that the Listening Guide was assuming that there was an ‘I’ out
there that existed before we arrived on the scene and started looking for
it. I began to see how normative, and largely taken for granted, Western
or Euro-American assumptions and concepts around subjectivity and
identity were embedded in, and enacted by, the Listening Guide and its
listening stages. The Asian and South Pacific researchers were struggling
with using the Listening Guide because, from their cultural perspective,
the thing or concept that the method was implicitly taking as given and
looking for—the I—did not exist as such.
When we learn about research methods, we tend to learn about their
technical aspects, not their histories and philosophies. Yet methods have
been developed and designed within specific historical and cultural
contexts. Most of the methods we use have emerged within a Euro-
American setting and tradition, and as such they embed its philosophical
assumptions. One example, relevant to our discussion here, is the
influence of individualism and humanism—the beliefs, respectively, that
individual entities form the most basic units of analysis and that
intentional human subjects are at the helm of philosophical, scientific,
cultural and other projects. We can see the legacies of these philosophies
in our research methods. The raison d’être of methods like interviews,
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focus groups and surveys is to gather information about people and their
views, experiences, perspectives, behaviours and so on. These methods
therefore implicitly assume the existence of an intentional human subject.
This seems so obvious that it feels hardly worth stating. But if you do
research in a different cultural (and indeed historical) context you may
find yourself, as I did, seeing in your methods philosophical assumptions
that you never saw before, causing you to radically rethink what methods
are and what they do.
Methods are still understood in positivist terms as objective and neutral
measurement instruments and procedures that, if applied correctly, guar-
antee the revelation of universal truths and facts. Yet it turns out that
methods are not neutral tools after all (see also Law, 2004). Methods
carry within them implicit philosophical assumptions that are largely
invisible because these assumptions are part of our taken-for-granted
cultural inheritance. They are also hard to spot precisely because we’ve
been taught and trained to think that methods are simply techniques:
aphilosophical, apolitical and acultural. Perhaps this is the most import-
ant reason why research philosophies really do matter: because, un-
beknownst to us, they are built into all of our methods, and research
practices more generally. Every time you use a research method, you are
unwittingly enacting a research philosophy. I call research methods
‘philosophies in action’, ‘philosophical practices’ and ‘metaphysical
practices’ to convey this idea (Mauthner, 2016). Methods are ways of
doing philosophy. They have a whole philosophical life of their own that
we are largely oblivious to. This is why research philosophies are not
simply your own personal beliefs and assumptions. They are historically
and culturally situated and produced, and as such they become implicitly
embedded within our disciplines, theories, methodologies and methods.
As I have already hinted at, many of our practices enact versions of
positivism. This is because positivism has had 300 years or so to embed
itself into knowledge practices, and because although positivism is a
specific philosophical doctrine, it renders itself invisible by denying
being either a doctrine or a philosophy. This is why I tell my students
that they can’t simply opt out of research philosophies and just get on
with the research. Opting out is a philosophical choice and stance in itself
because it inadvertently takes up a positivist position.
THE BOOK THAT CHANGED MY LIFE

There is a book that has helped me think about these questions, and much
more, and that has had such a profound effect on my thinking that I have
9/1
called it the book that changed my life: Meeting the Universe Halfway:
Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. It is by
Karen Barad, a physicist and feminist theorist, and it draws on quantum
physics, feminist science studies and poststructuralism. I can’t claim to
fully grasp the complexities and intricacies of her work. The parts on
quantum physics are especially tricky. And working out what her insights
about physics and the philosophy of physics entail for a philosophy of
social sciences and its methodological practice is challenging. But this
book spoke to me powerfully because it provided a way through the
seemingly intractable philosophical questions that I had puzzled over
since doing my PhD and that had eventually brought my empirical
research to a standstill.
First, Barad’s philosophy of science, ‘agential realism’, offers a way to
move beyond the debate between realism and social constructivism by
suggesting that science tells us neither about ‘nature’ (the real nature of
the world) nor about ‘culture’ (the social construction of the world) but
about the inseparability of nature and culture. Barad refuses to accept the
nature–culture dichotomy, arguing instead that ‘the study of science and
the study of nature go hand in hand’ (Barad, 2007, p. 247). Understand-
ing the nature of the world depends on understanding how (social)
science itself constitutes the nature of this world.
Second, agential realism conceptualises measurement devices and
experimental apparatuses (for our purposes, research methods) as consti-
tutive of their objects of study. Here, Barad draws in part on Niels Bohr’s
insight that measurement devices are physical–conceptual apparatuses
that embody concepts in their material arrangements. (The example in
quantum physics is the double-slit experiment and apparatus, which is
designed to measure the nature of light as both particle and wave, and
therefore embodies the concepts of light-as-particle and light-as-wave
within its physical structure.) Bohr argued that understanding an object of
study was dependent on taking into the account the fact that the
experimental apparatus used to understand this object contributes to, and
is part of, the object being described. In other words, the surveys,
questionnaires, interviews, focus groups, and other methods that we use
in the social sciences do not provide a neutral mechanism for putting us
in touch with pre-existing objects of study. Rather, they help bring these
objects into being in line with the concepts that are embedded within
these methods, and as such must be incorporated as part of the object of
study. This provided a philosophical explanation of what I had found out
in the workshop I ran in New Zealand. The Listening Guide was not a
neutral method. It was designed to ‘discover’ a Western subject, which
was taken to be pre-existing. This concept and this assumption had both
9/1
been implicitly built into the method in the course of its design, and it
was necessary to take this into account in order to understand what this
method was measuring.
Agential realism opens up a way of doing research that can hold
together (in non-contradictory ways) the idea that the world is both real
and constituted. Realism is not understood as the existence of an
objectively given material and/or social reality. As the name of Barad’s
philosophy implies, this is an agential reality—a reality that is only made
real through ongoing performative practices including practices of
inquiry, methodological practices and experimental apparatuses. Taking
up an agential realist philosophy makes a difference to what and how we
research. It reconfigures the object of study because it entails no longer
researching (aspects of) the social world without including—as part of
the object of study—investigations of how social science itself (including
its methods and apparatuses) contributes to the very making of this
world.
Working out your research philosophy is a journey. You can learn as
much about research philosophies from doing empirical research as you
can from theoretical readings. Settling on a research philosophy is not a
decision that you make once and for all. It took me over twenty years to
find a research philosophy that clicked. And although I feel as—indeed
more—committed to Barad’s philosophy today as I did when I first read
her book in 2011, I might well grow out of it or be inspired by a new
find. As your research and reading expand, your philosophical beliefs and
commitments may change. You may also find that you hit a wall and
struggle to find a research philosophy that fits with your worldview or
with the methods that you are using. There is no easy way forward here,
other than perhaps exploring and writing about these tensions and
contradictions, and seeing where they take you. You may be on the road
to new insights and discoveries about research philosophies and why they
matter to research.
LESSONS FOR KEEPING ON TRACK

1. There is an element of serendipity in settling on a research phil-
osophy. It depends on the books and scholars you come across or are
recommended.
2. You can learn as much about research philosophies by talking to
other PhD students as you can from books, supervisors and lecturers.
3. Think about how to translate your philosophical position into your
research practices and methods.
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4. Research philosophies are not simply your own personal beliefs and
assumptions. They are historically and culturally situated and pro-
duced, and as such they are embedded within disciplines, theories,
methodologies and methods.
5. When you are thinking about research philosophies, think about
them in terms of both their explicit and implicit forms: explicit
philosophical statements versus implicit philosophical assumptions
built into research methods and practices.
6. Identifying the research philosophies that are built into research
practices is difficult but important because these implicit philoso-
phies may clash with your explicitly stated philosophical approach,
and introduce philosophical inconsistencies into your research.
7. Methods are not the neutral techniques we’ve been taught to think
they are. They are philosophical practices, and one of the ways in
which philosophical commitments are expressed and enacted within
our research.
8. You can’t opt out of research philosophies. Opting out is a
philosophical choice and stance in itself because it inadvertently
takes up a positivist position.
9. Working out your research philosophy is a journey. You may find
yourself changing your research philosophy as your thinking and
work evolve.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Mark Saunders and Jill Hardacre for helpful
comments on an earlier draft.
REFERENCES
Barad, K. (2007) Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the
Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC, and London: Duke
University Press.
Berger, P.L. and Luckmann, T. (1966) The Social Construction of Reality.
London: Penguin Books.
Brown, L.M. and Gilligan, C. (1992) Meeting at the Crossroads: Women’s
Psychology and Girl’s Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Gilligan, C. (1982) In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s
Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Law, J. (2004) After Method: Mess in Social Science Research. London: Sage.
9/1
Mauthner, N.S. (2002) The Darkest Days of My Life: Stories of Postpartum

Depression. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Mauthner, N.S. (2016) Un/re-making method: Knowing/enacting posthumanist
performative social research methods through ‘diffractive genealogies’ and
‘metaphysical practices’. In: Victoria Pitts-Taylor (ed.) Mattering: Feminism,
Science and Materialism. New York, NY: New York University Press,
pp. 258–83.
Mauthner, N.S. and Doucet, A. (2003) Reflexive accounts and accounts of
reflexivity in qualitative data analysis. Sociology, 37(3), pp. 413–31.
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12. Research philosophies and why they

Research philosophies and why they matter 77

how I was introduced to philosophical alternatives to positivism, includ-

FIRST INTRODUCTIONS TO THE HISTORY,

78 How to keep your doctorate on track

female professors. Even though the field of feminist epistemology and

THE TENSION BETWEEN PHILOSOPHICAL

Research philosophies and why they matter 79

voices. On her arrival in Cambridge, Carol set up a seminar group for

80 How to keep your doctorate on track

FAILED ATTEMPTS TO TRANSLATE PHILOSOPHICAL

Research philosophies and why they matter 81

practice, introduced philosophical inconsistencies that threatened the

DISCOVERING THAT PHILOSOPHIES ARE BUILT

82 How to keep your doctorate on track

THE BOOK THAT CHANGED MY LIFE

Research philosophies and why they matter 83

84 How to keep your doctorate on track

LESSONS FOR KEEPING ON TRACK

Research philosophies and why they matter 85

86 How to keep your doctorate on track

Mauthner, N.S. (2002) The Darkest Days of My Life: Stories of Postpartum

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