Objectivity, Subjectivity and Contextuality: Approaches to the Study of Rural Change in Western Australia and Elsewhere

Abstract

This article explores the importance of context as an intervening variable between the subjective researcher and the objective world(s) in which they operate. It considers both the dynamic intellectual context of the shifting and colliding empiricist, positivist, humanistic and structuralist paradigms of Human Geography from the mid twentieth century to the present and the academically disturbing organisational context of a university system which has become increasingly economistic, managerialist and neoliberal over the same time period. It describes the paradigmatic shifts in the discipline, in part through the lens of the changes made to successive editions of the classic texts, Geography and Geographers by Ronald J. Johnston and Political Geography by Peter J. Taylor. A specific consideration of the neoliberalisation of academia focuses on the more subjective topic of the stress and precarity experienced by individual academics. The author then outlines how these changing contexts have impacted on his own research career, using an autobiographical approach.