Alderson, P;
(2016)
Critical Realism and Research Design and Analysis in Geographies of Children and Young People.
In: Evans, R and Holt, L, (eds.)
Methodological Approaches.
Springer: Singapore.
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Abstract
There are several complications in the geographies of children and young people and in all social science, including the following three questions: How can we resolve disagreements and even contradictions between empirical, evidence-based, factual, statistical research versus interpretive and social constructionist research into contingent beliefs, behaviors, and values? How can we understand and respect each local culture and yet not fall into mere description and cultural relativism? Limited micro-observational studies of children can be superficial and misleading if they ignore powerful macro-causes that shape children’s lives. How can short studies, without the time and resources of international longitudinal research such as Young Lives, take due well-grounded account of such macro-causal powers as global politics and economics? The chapter will outline concepts in critical realism and relate them to research reports about children from around the world, in order to show how the concepts help to resolve these problems. The concepts are especially relevant at the stages of designing research projects and later of analyzing and interpreting data. The concepts include being and knowing; intransitive and transitive; theory/practice contradictions; social science and philosophy; the epistemic fallacy; the possibility of naturalism; closed and open systems; polyvalence; depth realism; structure and agency; natural necessity; power; predicting the future; absence, change, and emergence; macro- and micro-levels in research; four planar social being; and a four-stage process of analysis that will be discussed later.
| Type: | Book chapter |
|---|---|
| Title: | Critical Realism and Research Design and Analysis in Geographies of Children and Young People |
| ISBN-13: | 978-981-4585-89-7 |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1007/978-981-4585-89-7_3-1 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4585-89-7_3-1 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| Keywords: | bodies, change, cities, contradictions, economics, epistemology, freedom, ethics, justice, ontology, politics, rights |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Social Research Institute |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1519633 |
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