THE MEANINGS OF METHODOLOGYEXPANSION BOX 1
The Extended Case Method and CSSand were “just scientists.” PSS adopts such an
approach and produces technocratic knowledge—a
form of knowledge best suited for use by the people
in power to dominate or control other people.^22
CSS rejects PSS and ISS for being detached and
concerned with studying the world instead of acting
on it. CSS holds that knowledge is power. Social sci-
ence knowledge can be used to control people, it can
be hidden in ivory towers for intellectuals to play
games with, or it can be given to people to help them
take charge of and improve their lives. What a re-
searcher studies, how he or she studies it, and what
happens to the results involve values and morality
because knowledge has tangible effects on people’s
lives. The researcher who studies trivial behavior,
who fails to probe beneath the surface, or who buries
the results in a university library is making a moral
choice. The choice is to take information from the
people being studied without involving them or lib-
erating them (see Expansion Box 1, The Extended
Case Method and CSS). CSS questions the morality
of such a choice, even if it is not a conscious one.
viewpoint of the people being studied) and from the
outside inward (i.e., from the viewpoint of external
forces that act on people).- The researcher constantly builds and rebuilds theory.
This takes place in a dialogue with the people stud-
ied and in a dialogue with other researchers in the
scientific community.
Burawoy used the extended case method to study
mine workers in Zambia. He argued that positivist
social science best fits situations in which people are
“powerless to resist wider systems of economy and
polity” (p. 30)—in other words, situations in which
people are dominated and have little control over
their lives. The CSS approach strives in contexts in
which people try to resist or reduce power distinc-
tions and domination. It highlights conditions of
emancipation in which people come to question or
challenge the external forces of power and control
under which they live.
Michael Burawoy’s (1998) extended case method is an
example of critical social science. He says it applies
reflexive scienceto ethnography or field research.
Reflexive science is a type of CSS that states social re-
search should be a dialogue between the researcher
and the people being studied. Thus, intersubjectivity is
not only among scientists, as in positivism; rather, it oc-
curs between the researcher and people under study.
Burawoy identifies four features of reflexive science:
- The researcher interacts with subject-participants.
Disruptions or disturbances that develop out of their
mutual interaction help to expose and better illumi-
nate social life. - The researcher adopts the subject-participant’s view
of the world in specific situations, but does not stop
there. The researcher adds together many views
from individual subjects and specific situations, ag-
gregating them into broader social processes. - The researcher sees the social world simultane-
ously from inside outward (i.e., from the subjective
Summary
Although few full-time academic researchers adopt
CSS, community action groups, political organiza-
tions, and social movements often follow a CSS ap-
proach. It only rarely appears in scholarly journals.
CSS researchers may use any research technique,
but they tend to favor the historical-comparative
method. This is so because of its emphasis on change
and because it helps researchers uncover underlying
structures. CSS researchers differ from the others
less in the research techniques they use than in how
they approach a research problem, the types of ques-
tions they ask, and their purposes for doing research.
Chart 4 provides a summary of CSS.FEMINIST AND POSTMODERN
RESEARCH
Two additional, less well-known approaches are
feminist and postmodern social research. Both
criticize PSS and offer alternatives that build on