Sociology, Common Sense, and Qualitative Methodology.
The Position of Pierre Bourdieu and Alain Touraine*
Jacques Hamel
Université
de Montréal
At the present time,
qualitative methods are making
headway in French sociology. They
are the object of constant interest
and their contents are much
discussed. Two outstanding figures
in French sociology, Pierre
Bourdieu and Alain Touraine, have
given them pride of place in their
recent research.
The aim of this paper is to examine the
methods that
these authors have recently developed: the sociological
intervention
and the provoked and accompanied self-analysis. A detailed
presentation
is made of these methods and their respective strong and
weak
points are then underlined. The latter are approached in such
a
way as to open a broad discussion on the problems faced by sociology
such, for instance, as the status of common sense in relation
to the
sociological explanation. The lessons learned from these
methods permit,
in conclusion, the formulation of propositions
for which, however,
the author of this paper is alone responsible.
Brief
introduction
Touraine's use of qualitative methods is
not recent,
however, since his first surveys on worker consciousness
(Touraine,
1966) were already recommending the semi-directed sociological
interview. But it was in his book La voix et le regard that
he first proposed employing the sociological intervention method,
by
which he hoped to renew sociological methodology. This method
has had
a considerable impact on French-language sociology and
has given rise
to numerous studies on women, students, environmentalists
and the labour
movement in France (Touraine, 1978; 1983b; 1987).
This group of studies -
carried out on the initiative of Touraine
himself, with a team joined by
well-known French sociologists
of the day such as Michel Wieviorka and
François Dubet
- is referred to as permanent sociology,
in other words
a sociology constantly at work and directly involved in
political
and social action. The sociological study of social movements
in Québec has also made considerable use of the sociological
intervention method (Gagnon, 1982; Maheu, 1988).
In Bourdieu's
work, qualitative methods appear in
his first studies of an ethnological
nature (Bourdieu, 1977).
His subsequent sociological studies, such as
his studies on education,
museum attendance and the French university
(Bourdieu, 1969, 1977,
1979, 1990) were essentially designed according
to the most advanced
quantitative methods. However, in his most recent
study, La
misère du monde (1993), Bourdieu applies a new
qualitative
method, "provoked and accompanied self-analysis,"
thus
declaring his liberation from positivism (Bourdieu, 1994). Indeed,
this method marks a real turning point for this author in relation
to his former positions on representativeness and objectivity
in
sociology, as well as on the status attributed to common sense
and to the
epistemological rupture.
Alain Touraine and the sociological
intervention
method
The first to appear in French sociology,
the sociological
intervention is described by its author "as an
intensive
and in-depth process during which sociologists lead the actors
from a struggle they must carry on themselves to an analysis of
their
own action. This process involves a series of stages that
constitute the
history of the research" (Touraine, Dubet
& Wieviorka, 1982:
280). The sociological intervention is
thus a self-analysis that
requires the active participation
of social actors engaged in a collective
struggle concerning political
and social issues. The struggle of women,
students, ecologists,
workers, Solidarnosc in Poland are all entitled
to claim this
title and the goal of the sociologists' intervention
in these
struggles is to turn them into a social movement. According
to
Touraine, such a movement is "the effort of a collective
actor to take over the "values", cultural orientations
of
a society by opposing the action of an adversary to whom he
is linked
by relationships of power" (Touraine, 1995: 239).
Thus,
the sociological intervention concerns a militant
action and aims to
carry out a sociological analysis of that action
in cooperation with its
principal actors. Emphasis is placed on
"the search for issues, the
analysis of the contradictions
of action and distance between a struggle,
a discourse and a movement
of opinion" (Touraine, 1978: 66) likely
to galvanize a struggle
and transform it into a social movement. But
the sociological
intervention does not merely focus on the analysis of
a political
discourse and a militant organization: it is also concerned
with
the struggle represented by the action that has brought these
about.
By definition, this method requires the participation
of
the actors in this struggle, at least its key figures, who
are invited
to a series of meetings that may take place over a
whole year. At these
meetings they will be confronted by a team
of sometimes as many as seven
sociologists. Two of these assume
the leading roles of secretary
and moderator. The
latter is the person who will chair the meetings
- he introduces
the participants, guides the discussion, gives people the
floor,
etc. - while the former is responsible for noting the different
opinions expressed during the discussions and proposing a sociological
interpretation of them. If these roles are beyond their capabilities,
other members of the team take over.
During the meetings
and discussions, the participants
are invited to trace the history of
their struggle, the various
incidents that have marked their collective
action. When mutual
trust is established and the actors realize the need
for an analysis,
they are then confronted with interlocutors who either
oppose
or support their action. Antinuclear activists, for instance,
are
confronted by EDF (…lectricité de France) administrators
who manage the nuclear power plants. These interlocutors express
a
viewpoint that is opposed to that of the militants but together,
they
offer an overall view of the nuclear question in France.
Actors such as
these are thus brought into the group in order
to highlight the militant
action, grasp its ins and outs and neutralize
the ideological pressures
and political gambits that are inevitably
involved in, or caused by,
a collective struggle of this nature.
Both sides are then
inclined to see their struggle
as part and parcel of a social movement,
the theory of social
movements disposing them to recognize its sense
in their own action.
By interpreting the actors' comments in the light
of this theory,
an hypothesis emerges that explains their collective
action in
a sense in which that action can conclusively indicate a social
movement. If it is recognized and accepted by both parties, the
sense
revealed by this self-analysis can then bolster their action
and help
it attain "the highest level it can reach"
(Touraine, 1981b:
213).
This final phase is termed conversion of the
group
and on it depends the success of the sociological intervention.
Indeed,
if the sense is endorsed by the actors of the struggle
invited to the
discussions, this means that the sociological theory
which brought it to
light is validated as to its pertinence in
explaining the action that
is the object of the sociological intervention.
This verification is
therefore done on the spot with the agreement
of the actors who, through
their participation in the sociological
intervention, are able to measure
its explanatory value.
The sociological intervention thus proves
to be a
permanent sociology since the explanation of the social action
it
helps to reveal is established in the heat of an open discussion
with its
own actors. The latter may benefit from this to direct
their collective
action so as to turn it into a social movement.
The sociological theory
is thus ready to feed its object of study:
the social action originally
envisaged by the sociological intervention.
Alain Touraine's method
takes note of the special status of the
sociological explanation
emphasized by Anthony Giddens whose theoretical
approach is in
many ways closely related to that of the author
of the sociological
intervention. "Theories in sociology,
said Giddens, have to be
some part based upon ideas wich (although
not necessarily discursively
formulated by them) are alreay held
by the agents to whom they refer. Once
reincorporated within action,
their original quality may be lost;
they may have become too familiar"
(Giddens, 1984: XXXIV).
Sociology supplies an explanation capable of accounting
for
the social action while at the same time helping to direct
it when
its actors reflect the need. The sociological intervention
aims to
provide the methodological details of this return to the
action to which
Giddens merely gives his blessing.
Some technical details
concerning the sociological
intervention
After this rapid
overview, we shall now take a brief
look at the technical details of this
method. The first objective
is to gain the active participation of the
social actors because,
according to Touraine, they have a practical
consciousness
respecting their action. This consciousness is seen,
moreover,
as "real knowledge of the social action" (Dubet, 1988:
13). The positive status attributed to practical consciousness
stems
from a position whereby the "sociologists' actor is
an epistemic
actor insofar as his remarks fit into a form of knowledge
that makes him
knowable" (Ibid.: 2), and makes his
action knowable, too. In
other words, social action is grasped
only through this consciousness
- practical in form since it stems
from the immediate experience that
its actors have of the action.
Moreover, sociological methodology is
obliged to take account
of this practical consciousness that emerges
from the actors'
"remarks" since these are in fact "the
only material
available" (Ibid.: 13). Indeed, the material
at the
disposal of sociology for grasping its object always remains
the
remarks of actors imbued in the final analysis with the practical
consciousness of social action.
Although this consciousness
remains the intermediary
of the action, its highest sense is nonetheless
revealed by sociological
theory "because the actor has only a limited
consciousness
of the sense of his action" for "the dimensions
of the
social system or the conditions of the action (...) escape the
consciousness of the social actors" (Ibid.: 17). To
remedy
this, the sociological intervention, at the methodological
level, proposes
that the social actors meet as a group thus offering
"the image
of the social movement, with its many meanings
and its more or less
stable configurations" (Wieviorka, 1986:
160).
On
representativeness
The actors who participate in the
sociological intervention
are chosen with this in view. Their choice is
determined by the
desire to reconstitute the collective struggle on a
reduced scale,
that of the group, "constructed on the basis of as
complete
and diversified a theoretical representation of the struggle
as
possible" or again, "of an image that the sociologists
make of it" (Idem).
This "image" explores in minutest detail the theory of social movements whereby any collective struggle is bound to change into a social movement. This shift from the industrial to the post-industrial society must conflict with a technocratic power and thus acknowledge the democratic ideal (Touraine, 1994). Participants in the sociological intervention must therefore possess the quality of being actors in a struggle characterized in this way and of which each in his own way represents a different configuration. The group's representativeness depends less on the quantity of participants than on the quality conferred on them by the theory of social movements.
The real interest of the
sociological intervention
lies in this sole aspect. Indeed, it maintains
convincingly that
a collective struggle can, from a methodological
point of view,
be reduced to a group whose participants possess the
theoretical
qualities necessary for its analysis. Nonetheless, this
method
poses certain problems in this regard. By focusing on the militant
quality of the participants, as figureheads, their representativeness
in the sociological intervention tends to be limited to a political
level. From a broader perspective, these participants may be considered
as representative elements of a social struggle since they seem
to be
its leaders or because the media, for instance, presents
them as such. In
our view, the definition of representativeness
in this sense presents
serious problems that may even discredit
the sociological intervention
method. Nonetheless, the idea of
a method that can reduce a struggle or,
more generally, a social
fact to the size of a group - whose theoretical
representativeness
suggests it to be an excellent observation point -
must be conserved
and studied in greater depth.
The sociological
intervention has a further quality
in that it recognizes the value of the
social actors' practical
consciousness, yet the importance attributed to
this practical
consciousness seems paradoxical. Although it is seen from
the
outset as "true consciousness," or even "the only
real consciousness available," yet it is nonetheless considered
as "limited" consciousness because "the dimensions
of the social system and the conditions of the action" escape
it, the actors thus having only a limited consciousness of them.
This
latter term is used confusedly and should probably not be
accorded so
much weight. In our view, it should be understood
in a more qualified
way.
If the dimensions of the social system escape the
actors'
consciousness, it is not because that consciousness is
limited. On the
contrary, it may be argued that the actors' practical
consciousness is not
only constituted by the "dimensions
of the social system" but
also by the addition of the whole
range of dimensions that characterize
the action - historical,
psychological, social, etc. All of these
constitute the object
of this practical consciousness which is therefore
by no means
limited. It is sociology that, by definition, must try to
"limit"
or reduce it by highlighting the "dimensions of
the social
system and the conditions of the action" that must be
drawn
from the practical consciousness that the social actors possess
of
their own action, this being the very object of sociology.
For
this purpose, the sociological intervention proposes
a somewhat daring
self-analytical approach. Together with sociologists
who guide them in
this direction, the social actors are urged
to reveal the sense of their
collective action and, through this
self-analysis, to take account of
its social dimensions, going
beyond its practical consciousness. The
sociological intervention
method is somewhat vague on this point,
however, and indeed amounts
to an interpretative approach of which
psychoanalysis is the perfect
model. By acting as an interpreter, the
secretary of the sociologists'
team identifies the social dimensions of
the action by interpreting
its actors' remarks in the light of social
movements theory which
disposes the actors to reveal these dimensions
and to assume a
practical consciousness of them. The secretary proposes
them in
the form of an hypothesis with which he challenges the group
of
actors. If this hypothesis achieves their conversion, it serves
as
a sociological explanation that can possibly provide their
action with
the coefficient it lacks to become a social movement.
While,
contrary to the criticism levelled at it (Amiot,
1982), the social
intervention hardly resembles a "psychanalyse
sauvage",
it must be admitted that this phase of the
intervention is lacking in
explicit methodological procedures
and rules, the focus being placed
on conversion. Thus,
the sociological intervention, or rather
the sociologists' intervention,
seems to fade away under cover of this
conversion. The consequent
interpretation then becomes suspect since its
value depends less
on the rigour of the rules and procedures employed
than on the
degree of support given to the resulting hypothesis by
the group.
The conversion to the hypothesis may well be caused by the
friendly
feelings inspired in the group by the sociologists or, on the
contrary, by the group's desire to put an end to the discussion
and
to take their leave.
For lack of precise indications in this
respect,
the interpretation may be, or appear to be, a repetition of the
actors' militant discourse expressed in other terms - in
this
case sociological, the sociological intervention having constituted
just
another tribune for them. In less drastic terms, it can be
the simplified
picture of the social action formed by the practical
consciousness of
its actors for whom this intervention highlights
the general dimensions
that act as social dimensions since the
latter escape their practical
consciousness by definition. Conversely,
the interpretation may weaken
the actors' practical consciousness
in favour of social movements theory
by means of which the sociological
intervention will have caused the
conversion. From this viewpoint,
the sociological intervention method
raises problems that it cannot
solve.
Pierre Bourdieu
and provoked and accompanied self-analysis
Without this
rapprochement suggesting any theoretical
relationship, Alain Touraine's
sociological intervention can be
compared with the "provoked and
accompanied self-analysis"
recently proposed by Pierre Bourdieu in
order to study the different
aspects of suffering in the world (Bourdieu
et al., 1993).
Like the sociological interview whose methodological
qualities
are recalled and described by Bourdieu, provoked and accompanied
self-analysis evokes the direct participation of social actors
as does,
moreover, the sociological intervention. The sociological
interview is
termed "provoked" because in all cases
it takes place when
requested or "provoked" by sociologists
in order to pursue
the object of their study. It is an "accompanied"
interview
because, according to Bourdieu, the interviewer must
accompany the
interviewee, according to the sense conveyed by
his remarks.
Bourdieu considers that this sense may be grasped
by the interviewer,
in this case the sociologist, if the latter
manages to objectivize the
dispositions and social positions that
this sense expresses concerning
the objective relationships between
the various sorts of capital by which
social fields are formed.
It is in this way that the participant
objectivization
that Bourdieu talks about can be understood. The
provoked and
accompanied self-analysis constitutes its ideal method
since it
"enables us to really construct the space of objective
relationships
(structure) of which the directly observed communicational
exchanges
(interaction) are the manifestation" (Bourdieu &
Wacquant,
1992: 227). Indeed, if the interviewee's dispositions
and social
positions are reflected in those of the interviewer, the
latter
can easily recognize them. As a sociologist familiar with the
theory explaining the configuration of capital and social space,
he
succeeds in objectivizing them under ideal conditions. The
sociological
interview, henceforth seen as provoked and accompanied
self-analysis, fits
this purpose perfectly.
On epistemological rupture
In Bourdieu's work, this "method" stems from a new trend announced in his Réponses to LoÔc Wacquant, namely "to go into the street and question the first-comer" (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992: 176). This method is in direct contrast with the quantitative orientation of his previous studies in which it is argued that "the first comer" can in no way be considered as a perfect sample for revealing the configuration of capital and social space on which the sociological explanation must necessarily focus. This configuration of capital and social space could not be drawn from the "first comer's" remarks without causing an epistemological rupture formerly held as "the sovereign principle of a unequivocal distinction between the false and the true" (Bourdieu et al., 1991: 29) introduced by the theory in situating these remarks at the level of objective relationships. The epistemological rupture was thus marked by an opposition to the actors' practical consciousness which is conveyed by common sense, seen by Bourdieu as false consciousness.
The author's recent positions on the subject recall
that sociology certainly demands an epistemological rupture as
regards
common sense whose definition, however, is nuanced. "Rigorous
knowledge," states Bourdieu, "almost always assumes
a
more or less resounding rupture with the evidence of common
sense,
commonly identified with good sense. It is only at the
cost of an active
denunciation of the tacit presumptions of common
sense that the effects
of all the representations of social reality
to which investigators and
their subjects are continually exposed
can be countered." And he goes
on, "Social agents do
not have "innate knowledge" of what
they are and what
they do; more precisely, they do not necessarily have
access to
the reason for their discontent or their distress and the most
spontaneous declarations can, with no intention of dissimulation,
express
something quite different from what they are apparently
saying"
(Ibid.: 918-191).
Common sense is "denounced,"
not because
it shows itself to be false by definition, but because it
stems
from a "spontaneous" consciousness of the social actors,
directly related to their action and therefore unable to give
access
to the "principle" that can explain their suffering.
Thus, the
social actors do not have "innate knowledge"
of their action,
in the sense that they cannot explain it by this
principle expressly
sought by sociological theory, so that the
practical consciousness of
social actors conceals "no intention
of dissimulation."
Based on his interviews with the social actors invited
to talk about
suffering, Bourdieu notes that, on the contrary
"the interviewees,
especially among the most destitute, seem
to grasp this situation (the
sociological interview) as an exceptional
opportunity offered to them
to testify ... to explain themselves,
in the fullest sense of the term,
namely to construct their viewpoint
on themselves and on the world and
to identify the point, within
this world, from which they see themselves
and see the world,
and become comprehensible, justified, and primarily
for themselves"
(Ibid.: 915). If sociological theory must
oppose this,
it is because this practical consciousness is marked by
"routines
of the ordinary thought of the social world which is more
attached
to substantial "realities," individuals, groups,
etc.,
than to objective relationships that cannot be shown or touched
and that must be conquered, constructed and validated by scientific
work" (Ibid.: 918-919), namely by sociological theory.
Without referring to it directly, Bourdieu's position
echoes that
of Anthony Giddens for whom "any social agent
has a high degree
of knowledge which he invokes in the production
and reproduction of
daily social practices, but the greater part
of this knowledge is
practical rather than theoretical" (Giddens,
1984: 22). Social
agents thus demonstrate a knowledge that
they exploit to explain
their practice to themselves without it
developing into a theory such as
sociological theory. This knowledge
is practical, "[it] is all that
the agents know tacitly,
all that they know how to do in social life
without necessarily
being able to express it directly in a discursive
manner"(Ibid.
: XXIII). In this line of thought, Giddens
goes so far as to state
that this knowledge is practical because the
agents are unable
to express it verbally.
In comparison,
Bourdieu's position is, in our view,
far more fruitful and subtle. He
holds that this knowledge is
routine since it is directly related to
practice. It is the practical
knowledge of the practice because this
knowledge bears the stamp
of routine as long as the practice is shown
conclusively to be
the doings of "individuals, groups, substantial
realities."
In this line of thought, differences appear as to the
definition
that Bourdieu gives to the epistemological rupture. Indeed,
the
sense commonly conveyed by the social actors' remarks is henceforth
no longer considered as false consciousness but as routines
of knowledge that tend to translate social action as the doings
of individuals or groups rather than to situate it at the level
of
"objective relationships" constituting the very object
of
sociological theory. Only research initiated by this theory
allows the
"conquering" or "constructing"
of the social action
at the level of objective relationships since
that is its goal.
La misère du monde presents
this work in
action and, without any intention of being
so, it can be seen as
a daring experiment in qualitative methodology
in sociology. Indeed,
each chapter comprises an interview that
testifies to a specific aspect
of suffering. Each of them includes:
a) detailed notes on the context
and conduct of the interview,
b) its transcription in full and c) the
sociological interpretation
resulting from each testimony. The latter
should not be considered
as a sociological explanation, notes Bourdieu,
who hastens to
emphasize that "the testimonies given us by men and
women
concerning their lives and their existential difficulties have
been
organized so as to obtain ... as comprehensive a view as
the requirements
of the scientific method impose on us, and permit
us to accord them"
(Bourdieu et al., 1993: 7). In
other words, by their testimony,
the social actors' contribution
to the definition of sociological theory
must not overlook the
exacting demands of sociological research.
Bourdieu's study is daring insofar as the work is
presented in such a
way that anyone can understand it. Each interview
is organized according
to its transcription and notes on its conduct
which shed light on the
resulting sociological interpretation.
The "organization" of
the interviews in this form is
designed to show the transformation of
the actors' viewpoint into
an explanation or theory that demonstrates
the sociological viewpoint:
showing social action at the level of
objective relationships.
In Bourdieu's particularly inspired words, it
gives rise to a
"democratization of the hermeneutic posture"
(Bourdieu
et al., 1993: 923), in that the sociological work -
in
this case the interpretation - can be grasped immediately.
On representativeness
Each testimony is seen
as the ideal "case"
of a specific apect of suffering and
their representativeness
emerges in their order of presentation. This
is structured so
as to ensure the representativeness of each of the
aspects of
suffering studied. "Thus, the order in which the cases
are
arranged is intended to bring together, during the time of reading,
people with different - and possibly conflicting - viewpoints;
it also
reveals the representativeness of the case directly analyzed
... by
grouping cases around it that can be considered variants
of it"
(Ibid.: 8). The cases are thus arranged in
order to reconstitute
the mosaic of suffering according to an
order that is nothing more nor
less than the sociologist's own
"image" of suffering, to repeat
the term used to define
the representativeness of the group of social
actors invited to
participate in the sociological intervention. The
representativeness
of each of the interviews is based on an image or
"theory"
designed to attain the goal Bourdieu attributes
to sociology,
namely that of considering suffering at the level of
objective
relationships. The order of presentation of each interview
and,
consequently of each testimony of a particular aspect of suffering,
constitutes the demonstration of this "theory." These
cases are
representative insofar as they each form an ideal observation
point for
understanding a specific aspect of suffering, this ideal
character being
reinforced by the place occupied in the overall
order of presentation.
As regards this "image" or "theory",
each of the
social actors chosen in the context of the study represents,
in Bourdieu's
view, a particular aspect of suffering. This representativeness
is not
based on the statistical data to which it is often reduced
in sociology
but is a representativeness that may be termed theoretical
or
sociological. It is a representativeness based on the
qualities
of the testimonies of individuals considered by Bourdieu
as agents of
dispositions and social positions by which suffering
can be studied
from a sociological point of view.
The social actors who
take part in the sociological
study will, according to their degree
of representativeness, give
access to the "principle" that,
in Bourdieu's view,
can explain suffering. For this purpose, their
individual characteristics
are set aside in favour of the characteristics
that permit the
establishment of this explanation which Bourdieu sees as
their
dispositions and positions in a social space. This goal may even
be attained by means of a single person possessing the
necessary
qualities. Bourdieu himself notes on this point that
"contrary to
what a naively personalized view of the singularity
of social persons
might suggest, it is the identifying of the
structures underlying the
conjunctural remarks made in a specific
interaction that can alone enable
us to grasp the essentials of
what constitutes the idiosyncrasy of each
(of the social actors)
and all the singular complexity of their actions
and reactions"
(Ibid.: 916).
Pursuing this line of
thought, Bourdieu will allow
himself a comparison between the qualitative
methodology that
he proposes in sociology with the "provoked and
accompanied
self-analysis" and the experimental method in the
exact sciences.
In his dialogue with Loïc Wacquant, he aptly
points out
that "Galileo did not need to repeat his inclined
plane experiment
indefinitely in order to construct the model for the
law of falling
bodies. A single, well-constructed case ceases to be
particular"
(Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992: 57). It now remains
to be seen
how his method succeeds in "well constructing"
a case
so that it may lead to a sociological explanation.
Some problems with the provoked and accompanied
self-analysis
method
The first problem with the method arises from the
qualities attributed to it. The latter are essentially theoretical
-
conferred by virtue of the "theory" whereby the individual
is marked by a methodological value to explain suffering. This
is not
sufficiently explained by Bourdieu. In his work, these
qualities come from
a "familiarity" felt upon contact
with the interviewees - the
social actors who are the privileged
witnesses to the various aspects of
suffering. This familiarity
is linked to the fact that these individuals
were immediately
seen as "people of knowledge or people to whom
(the sociologists)
could be introduced by people of knowledge"
(Ibid.:
908). If this familiarity can turn the interview into
an ideal
communication situation, on which Bourdieu rightly insists,
it
is nonetheless suggested that it was established "with the
first-comer."
It is also connected to the dispositions and
social
positions that interact, at different levels, between interviewee
and interviewer. Indeed, since the latter can immediately recognize
them in the former, he can therefore bring them to light in order
to
explain the suffering that the interviewee is experiencing
as regards the
configuration of capital and social space. Familiarity,
from this second
point of view, is thus "based on prior knowledge
of the realities
that the research may reveal" (Ibid.:
916). However, this
prior knowledge, like Touraine's image of
a struggle, may well place
the interviewees' value at a political
level since both interviewee
and interviewer share the same dispositions
and social positions.
In our view, it would be better if this familiarity
were related
to the theoretical representation of suffering held
by the interviewer
the particular aspect of which will be revealed
by the case study at the
level of dispositions and social positions.
This representation must obey
the constraints involved in the
work of "well constructing" a
case, as Bourdieu so aptly
puts it. In other words, it must explore the
methodological imagination
by which the case in question may be seen as
an ideal observation
point for explaining suffering, by highlighting,
for instance,
the objective relationships through which, according
to Bourdieu,
the object of sociology may be recognized.
The
problem, in Bourdieu's work, is that this methodological
familiarity
is not clearly established in the form of methodological
rules and
principles. It can be summarized as the "democratization
of the
hermeneutic posture" expressed by the "organization"
of each testimony of suffering. While this democratization allows
the
realization of the hermeneutic posture, no explicit methodological
indications are given. Consequently, the value of the sociological
interpretation depends less on the rigour of the process than
on the
'attraction' of this interpretation aroused by its rapprochement
with the
transcript of the interview, and which may well elicit
adherence or even
conversion, to echo the sociological
intervention method. Under
these conditions, it is far from certain
that this interpretation is a
"well-constructed" sociological
explanation: only a detailed
statement of the rules and procedures
that make it possible might
prove this. Bourdieu has a word to
say on this point, however, in his
methodological note at the
end of La misère du monde.
Indeed, the author suggests that "despite the
old diltheyan
distinction, it must be stated that understanding
and explaining are
but one and the same thing" (Ibid.:
910). The explanation
is therefore related to the interpretation
of the practical knowledge
that the social actors have of their
own action. In the same line of
thought, Bourdieu rightly recalls
that the sociological explanation
is a point of view and that
"the sociologist cannot ignore the
fact that the basis of
his point of view is to be a point of view on
a point of view"
(Ibid.: 925), that of the social actors,
or, in other words,
"knowledge of knowledge" (Bourdieu &
Wacquant, 1992:
103).
This viewpoint of the social actors must
therefore
be considered as the positive status of knowledge of which the
object is their action in all its dimensions - individual, psychological,
historical, etc. The sociologists' point of view, however, is
another
sort of knowledge that tries to deduce from the actors'
knowledge the
"objective relationships" by which Bourdieu
represents the
social dimension of their action. It is therefore
presented as knowledge
enabling this dimension of the action to
be abstracted from the social
actors' knowledge which is its practical
form and to transform it into an
abstract form better suited to
theory.
If the sociological point
of view is "a point
of view on a point of view," as Bourdieu
puts it, then the
shift or transformation of the social actors' point of
view to
the sociological point of view must be explained. In brief, this
shift constitutes the sociologists' ideal intervention as regards
their
work on the social actors' knowledge in order to achieve
sociological
knowledge or explanation. More precisely, the interpretation
may be
compared here to the course followed in order to reveal
the object of
sociology: the "objective relationships"
or "dimensions
of the social system" based on the social
actors' knowledge whose
object is the action in all its dimensions.
With Bourdieu, the
sociological interpretation is
based on an understanding of this knowledge
of common sense that
he terms generic and genetic. It
obeys the first
term insofar as, by its function, the dispositions and
positions
to which all individuals testify at their own level are placed
in the light of the "objective relationships" by which,
on a
broader scale, they are generated independently of their
knowledge. On
the other hand, it is by exploring them that sociological
knowledge
is formed. In other words, it is through the understanding
of this
knowledge that the theory expressed by revelation of the
objective
relationships is formulated. In this sense, this understanding
can be
described as genetic.
The technical problem, as in Touraine's
work, arises
from the absence of precise indications concerning
the
rules that govern the hermeneutics by which the "objective
relationships" between the dispositions and social positions
emerge
from the sociological interview seen, however, as a "provoked
and
accompanied self-analysis." It is up to the reader to
imagine them
by examining the "evidence" - the context
of the interview,
its complete transcript and the resulting sociological
interpretation. In
other words, these rules are revealed through
this democratization of the
hermeneutic posture.
On sociological writing
Criticisms, on this point, have been severe. The
latest to date
notes that "deprived of the 'immense knowledge'
of Pierre Bourdieu
and his team, this sociology of suffering may
well merely reflect the
suffering of sociology" (Mayer, 1995:
369).
But Bourdieu
has, to a certain extent, forestalled
this criticism by emphasizing that
the hermeneutic posture that
he proposes is immediately revealed by the
writing of the
interpretation. Indeed, the writing testifies to
this hermeneutics,
more broadly to the rules by which the testimonies
collected are
objectivized by being transposed to the level of the
theory which
is then expressed in its own specific vocabulary. The
writing
is its mainspring; it is the means to reach the objectivizing
viewpoint which abstracts from the practical viewpoint of the
social
agents the dispositions and social positions revealed by
the research
that produces the sociological knowledge by which
suffering is explained
theoretically, in this case, the configuration
of types of social capital
and fields. He states very pertinently
that:
(the sociologist)
can only hope to make his most
inevitable interventions acceptable at
the cost of the writing
work that is essential to conciliate doubly
contradictory objectives:
to reveal all the elements necessary for
the objective analysis
of the position of the person questioned and
for the understanding
of his attitudes, without establishing with
him the objectivizing
distance that would reduce him to the state of
entomological curiosity;
to adopt a viewpoint as close as possible to
his without, however,
projecting oneself unduly into this alter
ego who always
remains, whether one likes it or not, an object,
in order to make
oneself abusively the subject of the latter's world
view. (Bourdieu,
1993: 8)
The enterprise of participant
objectivization, in
the way Bourdieu intends it, is thus expressed
in the writing
which distinguishes between the "analysis"
elicited
from the interviewee and that of the sociologist, in this case
Bourdieu, obliged to elucidate the dispositions and social positions
linked by objective relationships that escape the former's practical
knowledge. It is through the writing that sociological knowledge
can
be revealed, even differentiated, from practical knowledge.
The writing
is thus marked by the epistemological chiasmus which
makes sociological
knowledge possible. Its task is to testify
to the hermeneutics by which
sociological knowledge is constituted
in Bourdieu's work.
Yet,
strangely, Bourdieu hastens to add that the
sociologist "will never
have succeeded so well in his participant
objectivization enterprise
unless he manages to give the appearances
of the obvious and the natural,
even naive submission to the data,
to constructions completely inhabited
by his critical reflection"
(Idem.). In other words, although
having to subscribe to
the participant objectivization that characterizes
his task, the
sociologist, states Bourdieu, must nonetheless strive
to erase,
through his writing, any trace liable to indicate the factors
that govern the hermeneutics underlying sociological knowledge.
Thereafter, he cannot prevent himself from insisting
on the fact that to
prove its explanatory value, the writing of
the sociological knowledge
must be based on the content of the
testimonies that constitute the
interviews. This context permits
"the delivery of a more accessible
equivalent of complex
and abstract conceptual analyses ... Capable of
touching and moving,
of appealing to sensibility, without pandering to
sensationalism,
it can bring about conversions of thought and view that
are often
the prior condition to understanding" (Ibid.:
922).
In stating this, Bourdieu seems curiously to subscribe to the
impostures that he denounces in the thick description of
Clifford
Geertz (1973, 1988) and, thereafter, in the post modernist
theses in
anthropology whereby the latter is no more than a text
whose
rhetorical qualities reflect the explanatory value of the
anthropological
theories. Indeed, he suggests that the ability
to move, "to speak
to the sensibility" produced by the
transcription of the interviews
gives body to the rules that establish
the hermeneutic posture arising
from the writing. In our view,
their absence constitutes a problem that
the writing alone cannot
solve in spite of its ability to "speak
to the sensibility"
aroused by the qualities it possesses. Due to
a lack of explicitly
formulated rules, the hermeneutic posture vaunted
by Bourdieu
only amounts to "the writing talent that Clifford
Geertz
gives as a model to young American researchers, through the
praise
of what he calls "thick description" and the
exaltation of particularity and "local knowledge"
(Bourdieu, 1988: 11).
Conclusion
The advances
of qualitative methodology in five
points
In spite of
their limits, the methods of Pierre Bourdieu
and Alain Touraine enable
various lessons to be drawn, thus marking
advances in the development of
qualitative methods. These must
be emphasized as the conclusion of this
article.
First, sociology has always
dealt with social
actors endowed with practical consciousness.
Following Bourdieu's and
Touraine's propositions and in spite
of their vague formulation, this
practical consciousness can be
seen as a type of knowledge. This
knowledge assumes a practical
form, in the sense that it is immediately
connected to the action
and reflects all its dimensions - political,
historical, psychological,
etc. - as well as the "dimensions of the
social system."
Consequently, it represents the essential vector for
bringing
them to light.
Second, sociology thus
reveals
itself as "knowledge of knowledge", as Bourdieu
puts it. It is
obliged to draw on practical knowledge in order
to explain the factors
that define the object of its study: the
"dimensions of the social
system," according to Touraine,
or the objective relationships
between dispositions and social
positions, according to Bourdieu.
Third, sociological knowledge
requires work that Bourdieu
terms participant objectivization
while Touraine describes it
as an intervention in the perspective
of a permanent sociology,
sociology in continuous action. For
both authors, this work requires
the participation of social
actors in order to explain a social
struggle or a phenomenon such
as suffering. In both cases a sample must
be constituted, in Touraine,
by the group of social actors in a struggle
brought together by
the sociological intervention, or by an individual
whose "familiarity"
prompts Bourdieu to think that he represents
a specific aspect
of suffering.
This representativeness is
based on an "image"
or "theoretical representation"
(Touraine), or "prior
knowledge" so that the "research
can reveal" the
"objective relationships" that explain
suffering (Bourdieu).
It is therefore linked to the qualities attributed
to the group
or to the individual so as to make possible the work that
sociological
knowledge requires. These qualities should espouse neither
a "personalist
vision" of the individual, as Bourdieu points
out, nor political
aspects, as both he and Touraine are reproached for
doing. They
must tend to "construct a case well" so that this
"ceases
to be particular" by enabling sociology to establish
its
task of explaining through "objective relationships"
or
through "dimensions of the social system." These
qualities
are consequently of a methodological nature and transform
the case in
question - group or individual - into a theoretical
representation
in the sense that it responds theoretically to
the constraints of
sociological knowledge as being a "well-constructed"
work.
Fourth, it is in this
perspective that we may speak of a
theoretical or sociological
representativeness as compared to statistical
representativeness
without any opposition arising between the two. This
representativeness
is not grounded, as is usual in sociology, in the laws
of probability,
but through the intermediary of a "theory" of
which
the methodological qualities conferred on the case show clearly
that it is indeed "well constructed." A comparison may
be made
with the experimental method to define it clearly. Like
the latter, this
"theory" holds until proof to the contrary
as long as it is set
out in sufficient detail to be open to validation.
This "theory"
is prior to the explanation to which the
sociological knowledge leads.
For, fifth, the explanation depends on the understanding of the practical knowledge of the social actors, interpretation and explanation being one and the same, according to Bourdieu. In other words, to be "well constructed," the explanation must transpire from this practical knowledge that the sociologist will have correctly interpreted by giving proof of it through the writing of the sociological knowledge. While the latter is the mainspring by which understanding is formulated by means of the theory into an explanation, it could not take precise account of all this work. The rules and procedures that constitute it are lacking. In actual fact, both exist but they are not explicitly formulated. If Galileo, in his day, was able to explain his inclined plane experiment by rules and procedures, why could sociology, to lend more weight to the qualitative method, not do likewise? And all the more so since Bourdieu and Touraine provide the first elements of this, as shown in this article.
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ABSTRACT
This article exposes the developments of
qualitative
methodology in French sociology with respect to methods
proposed
by Pierre Bourdieu and Alain Touraine: "provoked and
accompanied"
self-analysis and the sociological intervention. In
addition to
the presentation of these two methods, the propose of this
article
is to describe and discuss the position of these two authors on
certain problems such as representativeness, objectivity, status
of data,
epistemological rupture and lastly on the question of
the writing.by
which sociological knowledge is formed from common
sense knowledge
contained in the data. This brings to a broader
discussion on these
questions. The strengths and weaknesses of
these two methods are finally
examine.
RÉSUMÉ
Cet article aborde les développements de la
méthodologie
qualitative au sein de la sociologie française.
Il met l'accent
sur les méthodes récemment proposées
par Pierre
Bourdieu et Alain Touraine: l'auto-analyse provoquée
et
accompagnée et l'intervention sociologique. L'article
traite
plus largement des positions de ces deux auteurs à
propos de la
représentativité et de l'objectivité
en sociologie,
de mÍme que du statut attribué au
sens commun et à
la rupture épistémologique.
Sur cette lancée,
l'écriture sociologique est aussi
considérée. Les
forces et les limites de ces deux
méthodes sont examinées
au regard de ces différents
points.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Jacques Hamel is a full professor in
the Sociology
Department of the Université de Montréal. His
present
research focuses on qualitative methodology, the epistemology
of
sociology and interdisciplinarity. He has published numerous
articles on
these subjects in journals such as the International
Social Sciences
Journal, Social Science Information,
as well as UNESCO's
prestigious journal Diogenus. He is
also carrying out field
studies on baby boomers and baby busters,
as well as on the economy of
French-speakers in Québec.
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