paradigms


 * Postpositivist New Paradigm Inquiry**

Patti Lather and Elizabeth A. St.Pierre (Revised June 2005)

Based on: Lather, Patti. (1991). //Getting smart: Feminist research and pedagogy with/in the postmodern//. New York: Routledge. (See p. 7 of this book for an earlier version of this chart.)

See also, Habermas, Jürgen. (1971). //Knowledge and human interests.// (Jeremy J. Shapiro, Trans.). Boston: Beacon Press. (Original work published 1968)


 * //Predict// || //Understand// || //Emancipate// || //Break// || //Deconstruct// || //Next??// ||
 * //*//Positivist || *Interpretive || *Critical ||  || *Poststructural || *Neopositivist ||
 * Mixed Methods || Naturalistic || Neomarxist ||  || Postmodern || Neopragmiatist ||
 * || Constuctivist ||  ||  || Postcolonial || Citizen Inquiry ||
 * || Phenomenological || Critical Race Theory ||  || Post-critical || Participatory Dialogic Policy analysis ||
 * || Ethnographic || Praxis-oriented ||  || Post-humanist || Post-theory ||
 * || Symbolic Interactionist || <Freirian Participatory Action Research ||  || Post-Fordist || post-post ||
 * || Interpretive Mixed Methods || Gay & Lesbian Theories ||  || Queer Theory ||   ||
 * ||  || Critical Ethnography ||   || <Discourse Analysis ||   ||
 * ||  ||   ||   || *PositivistPostparadigmatic Diaspora ||   ||
 * ||  ||   ||   || Post-everything (Fred Erickson) ||   ||
 * ||  ||   ||   || *PositivistPostparadigmatic Diaspora ||   ||
 * ||  ||   ||   || Post-everything (Fred Erickson) ||   ||

//* Indicates the term most commonly used < Indicates cross paradigm movement//

//“**Brea**k” indicates a shift from the modernist, structural, humanist theories/discourses on the left to the postmodernist, poststructural, post-humanist theories/discourses on the right. In the post theories, all major epistemological, ontological, and methodological concepts (e.g., language, discourse, knowledge, truth, reason, power, freedom, the subject, objectivity, being reality, method, science) are deconstructed.//

NOTE: Though all these paradigms operate simultaneously today, there is an historical sense to their articulation. August Comte (1778-1857) proposed positivism in the nineteenth century; social constructivism is often dated from Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s (1966) book, the //Social Construction of Reality//. The emancipatory paradigms grew from the Frankfurt School and the social movements of the 1960’s and 1970’s; and the post paradigms, from critiques following World War II and the Algerian War, including those of Michel Foucault (1926-1984), Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), and Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995). Paradigm shifts occur as reaction formations to the perceived inadequate explanatory power of existing paradigms. Therefore, someone who works in emancipatory paradigms, for example, is often aware of the theoretical assumptions as well as the critiques of positivism and interpretivism.

Also, some theories that start out in one paradigm change considerably when they are taken up in another; i.e., poststructural feminism is considerably different from liberal, emancipatory feminism. Conventional science is positivist, but when science’s assumptions are rethought in interpretive or post paradigms, it is not the same, **i.e., science is not the same in all paradigms in terms of ontology, epistemology and methodology.**