Pragmatism

Pragmatic fieldwork is heavily informed by its other namesake, pragmatism. Specifically, pragmatic fieldwork draws on pragmatist ideas, including the pragmatic maxim, living/dead hypotheses, ongoing knowledge, creative democracy, abductive reasoning, non-privileged representations, and epistemic communities. 

Originally formulated by Peirce (1903), the pragmatic maxim states that conceptions about the world mean what their practical outcomes are. Said another way, since direct correspondence with the world is likely to be problematic (for reasons outlined by Quine [1953] and Sellars [1963] and unified by Rorty [1979]), the value of a theory rests more in its ability to enliven human action to seek flourishing than the theory’s ability to mirror the world. A theory means what it gets us to do. This maxim guides data analysis by focusing on the living, active parts of social worlds and guides theory creation by highlighting traits like usability, mnemonic power, and inspiration. 

Similarly, James (1896) focuses on what quickens or enlivens people to act. For James, people should worry less about the truth or falsity of a hypothesis, and more about whether it is living or dead – does it call those who hold it into action. This attention to action serves as both a philosophical justification for action and as an analytic starting point. As a philosophical justification, the purpose of research becomes focused on creating the type of knowledge that enables people to act. As an analytic starting point, it draws attention to communicated knowledge that organizes and creates action. 

Pragmatic fieldwork is driven by creative democracy – the optimistic and ongoing development of a better world. Dewey (1939) says that creative democracy should use past experience to create future flourishing. Qualitative forms of data collection help accomplish that goal. Analyzing experience rendered through interviews and observations by abductive reasoning (the process of generating possible explanations for why something occurred [Peirce, 1905]) leads to the creation of new social forms. Pragmatic fieldwork is also guided by warranted assertability (Dewey, 1941) as a criteria for knowing, which replaces theoretic saturation as a trigger for writing or speaking.  

The method also draws on Rorty’s (1979) deprivileging particular representations of the world and his focus on epistemic community. Rorty rejects two classic notions of empiricism, namely that 1) ideas can be founded on a phenomena in the world and 2) a thinker can cleanly differentiate what is true by definition and what is true by evidence. Taken together, these two rejections make it difficult, if not impossible, to privilege one representation of the world over another. This questioning of representation threatens the relationship between the knower and the known. Instead, Rorty focuses on the fact that people most often know together and implores his readers to see knowledge as a social process. As a method, pragmatic fieldwork draws two lessons from Rorty. One is a deep respect for all accounts of the world. The second is an attention to the communal processes of knowing. 

Pragmatism informs pragmatic fieldwork by establishing a paradigmatic frame. As Lindlof and Taylor (2002) articulate, qualitative research reconstructs and probes the “situated form, content, and experience of social action” (p. 18). However, that can be done from a realist or a constructionist ontology, a value-free or a value-driven axiology, or an interpretive or objectivist epistemology (Guba & Lincoln, 1994). Although less commonly invoked, pragmatism can also serve.  

When a qualitative scholar draws on pragmatist concepts outlined by James (1896), Peirce (1903, 1905), Dewey (1939, 1941), and Rorty (1979), he or she operates under different criteria for success than if he or she had another stance. For example, postpositivist qualitative research succeeds when it creates a detailed picture of the social world (and perhaps triangulates with data collected in other ways [Denzin & Lincoln, 2011]). Marxist qualitative research succeeds when it reveals the critical, historic, and economic landscape of a people (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011). Constructivist qualitative research succeeds when it credibly represents the standpoint of the actors in a social world (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011). 

Along these lines, I propose that pragmatic fieldwork succeeds when it identifies the living, active knowledge of a social world. Creatively democratic, Dewey-inspired qualitative research also includes a generative aim, to imagine, articulate, and implement new social forms that improve future experience. It focuses on applications – or what works – and solutions to problems (Patton, 2001). A pragmatic approach privileges the research problem over the particular methods (Rossman & Wilson, 1985). In summary, pragmatic fieldwork has the following commitments. It takes an ontology of optimism and immediacy that sees both embodied and ideological realities. Its epistemological commitments include a belief in the ongoing sophistication of action and experience and the connections among practical wisdom, theory, application, and polyvocal knowledge creation. It also takes a community-based approach to knowledge. Finally, its axiological commitments are toward enablement and life-enhancement, the ongoing pursuit of justice in society, and the endeavor to improve practices. I do not posit pragmatic fieldwork as an entirely new method, but rather as a subcategory. While participatory action research and pragmatism could frame various research designs and qualitative methods can be done from various paradigms, pragmatic fieldwork occupies the overlap between the three.