Book Reviews
Postmodernism and Social Research
Mats Alvesson
ISBN: 0-3352063-1-X 2002 200 pages Buckingham: Open University Press
Trudy Rudge
School of Nursing and Midwifery, Flinders University of South Australia, Adelaide, SA
This is a further title in the series Understanding Social Research (series editor: Alan Bryman) published by Open University Press. As the editor remarks in the book's foreword, this series is designed for an audience of students seeking an understanding of a specific aspect of social research, or to act as a resource for beginning researchers. One could also add that this is a book squarely within the mainstream of the social sciences where postmodernism is viewed as situated against the traditional modernist stance in social science.
The author provides a summary of the salient features of postmodernism for a researcher wanting to use selective insights. Alvesson is intent on ensuring that the marketing of postmodernism as the best and newest 'thing' is overcome by an overtly cynical and questioning outlook on its use in social science research. Undoubtedly, this provides a useful counter to students who may be easily seduced by the 'marketing' of 'pomo' as the latest 'thing'. As a counter to such enthusiasm, in the 'Introduction', he lays out the challenges a researcher will face in using postmodernism for social research. He argues that the use of postmodernism is encouraged because the validity and relevance of traditional social science approaches, with their call to objectivity, are currently under question. A further challenge arises from their purported lack of critique of the power relations that sustain the status quo. Indeed, Alvesson makes the point that researchers using postmodernism are not alone in this questioning and find support from researchers using other forms of critical analysis, such as feminism or critical theory.
In the second chapter, Alvesson further limits the application of the postmodern paradigm to social research. In this chapter, entitled 'Postmodernism: a sceptical overview', he constructs the problematic relations between research espousing either empirical or interpretive approaches in the social sciences and that using the 'pomo'. It is this sceptical approach to the 'pomo' that contributes to this book's value as a tool for graduate students. In this chapter, he provides most of the prevailing critiques of postmodernism, and then a reasoned way around such critiques.
The remaining chapters deal with the key themes of postmodernism (such as identity, discourses, the problem of representation, and intrinsic links between power-knowledge) and specific research issues, such as language analysis, unpacking categories, interviewing and the writing of results. Alvesson approaches each issue, outlining what is challenged by using postmodernism and then providing some of the limitations each application has in terms of rigorous social science research. This leads to a tendency to over-state his case, sometimes submerging valid points about problems with the trademark concerns of methods such as discourse analysis or deconstruction. It is of benefit that Alvesson examines each process-its data collection strategies, data presentation and the alternative analyses such a process makes available to the researcher. If, after such a measured approach to the paradigm, a student still wants to use this research approach, then this book will provide them with a critical slant on the most creative and fruitful ideas that come from applying postmodernism.
Perhaps the most valuable case made in the chapters on language, categories, interviews and writing is Alvesson's plea for analysts to stay within the data, and to not let the analytical points made through using this paradigm go beyond the claims that can be reasonably made from data-a point valid for any act of interpretation in research. Alvesson provides a thoughtful exploration of how to produce trustworthy research and robust insights by taking language use seriously, challenging taken-for-granted power relations and truth claims about the social. Most of his examples throughout the book come from his specialization in organisational research, although he provides good examples from research in gender studies particularly in relation to deconstructing the category of gender.
What remains problematic throughout the entire book is Alvesson's elided theoretical reading of postmodernism. Alvesson loses the subtleties of postmodern research through locating different aspects under the rubric of a singular brand, 'postmodernism', where some aspects like Deconstruction (following Derrida) or Discourse Analysis (following Foucault) are more appropriately termed post-structural methodology or remain contested as to their proper location. Thus, he compromises some of his more telling insights into the frailties of postmodernism when used in social research. This elision is not apparent in the glossary and may cause confusion for his audience. Indeed as the definitions in the glossary rightly assert there are differences that matter. Such glossed definitions are concerning when the book's prospective audience are students and novice researchers. If a student were to follow his lead it would prove problematic in an examination where a more stringent reading of the 'pomo' was applied. Alvesson has a tendency to overstate difficulties arising from using discourse analysis, or deconstruction, because he does not have time or space to give to the variations (for example, positivistic, interpretive, critical and post) contained in these methods. Hence, this book should be approached as a beginning text, requiring augmentation by specific methodological texts.
This book on social research and postmodernism can be usefully applied in the area of health. Its focus on organisational research may be useful for research on the organization of health care delivery. New researchers may find this book beneficial as it provides ready-to-hand examples of postmodernist applications in the unpacking of categories (for example, categories such as class, gender, ethnicity); the analysis of discourses that govern and organise health care policy and system reform; and ways to challenge taken-for-granted truth claims in positivist and/or clinical research. Students will find this book reasonably easy to read, with a good glossary. Alvesson has furnished them with counter-arguments and cautions they need for productive application of postmodernism to social science research in the field of health care.
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