Objectivities and Subjectivities in Geographical Research: A Philosophical Inquiry into Methods

Abstract

Epistemological and ontological issues are intertwined in the broad philosophical inquiry into research methods. First, different theoretical perspectives concerning objectivity and subjectivity in research methods are shown to be part and partial to three grand national traditions in Western philosophy. Then, a sequence of debates in the social sciences is presented tying epistemology and methods to competing scientific paradigms and syntagms from the late 19th Century onward. After this, specific critics of ethnographical and rural research are discussed as extreme cases of cultural dissonance existing between researcher and researched. Finally, a general model of characterizing the researcher self is offered which makes possible biases explicit so that one can adopt strategies for controlling them. This model is then illustrated in issues of subjectivity which arose in the author’s own research in coastal areas of Rio de Janeiro state since the mid-1980s, during a period of considerable epistemological metamorphosis in the political ecology perspective which guided investigations there.