BEYOND METHOD:
CONTEMPORARY CULTURAL THEORY AND EDUCATION RESEARCH Paper presented at the 1992 AARE/NZRE Joint Conference,
Deakin University, Geelong, Australia.

Lorraine Johnson-Riordan
The City University of New York.


I recently came across a piece written by Paul Willis as long ago
as 1976 which supports the "beyond method" argument that I want to
take as my point of departure in this paper. It's called "Notes on
Method". Paul Willis, "Notes on method", Culture, Media, Language.
Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972-9, London: Hutchinson (in
association with the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies,
University of Birmingham), 1980: 88-95. There, Willis wrote: "I shall be arguing that
positivism's unwilling acceptance of 'qualitative' methodology sees
more clearly than its own admissions that the emphasis on
methodological variety may leave the heartland of the positivist
terrain untouched. In its recognition of a technical inability to
record all that is relevant - and its yielding of this zone to
another technique - positivism may actually preserve its deepest
loyalty: to its object of inquiry truly as an 'object'. The duality
and mutual exclusivity of the over-neatly opposed categories,
'qualitative' methods and 'quantitative' methods, suggests already
that the object is viewed in the same unitary and distanced way
even if the mode is changed - now you measure it, now you feel it"
(p.88). In his conclusion, Willis argued that "we must liberate the
whole notion of 'methodology'" and turn, instead, to the relations
between researcher and researched (p.95). While the directions I
want to go in now, in educational research in the '90's, are
somewhat different to Willis', I retain his spirit of skepticismabout the old method debate, and his insight that there's not much
difference between the 'quality' and 'quantity' sides of that
debate. 

So, in titling my paper "beyond method", I am disengaging myself
from the fetishization of method that has characterized so much of
the debate in the social sciences (what Mary Daly once called
"methodolatry"). At the same time, I am also consciously avoiding
the catastrophic "end of" type argument that pervades certain
versions of "postmodernism". Baudrillard's 1983 essay "In the Shadow of the Silent
Majorities...or the end of the social" is one instance of a
contemporary theoretical-narrative which takes the "end of"
position. His fatalistic, catastrophic tale has been read by some
feminists (Laura Kipnis, for one) as playing out white Eurocentric
male fear of the loss of modernity and their own supremacy. To
claim "the end" of method (or of "the social" and therefore of
social science), would be to disclaim the possibility of further
contestation. As Stuart Hall has pointed out, the argument is
better understood as being about ideology. (see Jean Baudrillard,
In the Shadow of Silent Majorities...Or The End of the Social and
Other Essays, trans. by P. Foss, P. Patton & P. Johnston, New York:
Semiotext(e), 1983; Laura Kipnis, "Feminism: The Political
Conscience of Postmodernism?" in Andrew Ross, ed., Universal
Abandon? The Politics of Postmodernism, Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1988) I am not arguing for the end of
method. Instead, I am signalling that the 'qualitative' versus
'quantitative' argument has reached an impasse, and that we need
to look at research in education in new ways made available in the
contemporary historical juncture. To put it more strongly, I would
argue that it is a moral, ethical and political imperative that
educational researchers of all "varieties" engage in a re-visioning
of their project in the contemporary "crisis" of knowledge,
specifically, in this instance, in the social sciences. There are numerous references to the contemporary "crisis" in
knowledge. I'll name three. Edward Said (1983) has argued that the
University as a site of disciplinary autonomy is under siege.
Knowledge produced and disseminated under surveillance in

specialized disciplinary territories, thus protecting the methods
of knowledge production, the identity of the field, its experts,
its institutional presence, is now being challenged. Stuart Hall,
has pointed to the knowledge crisis in his story of the emergence
of Cultural Studies at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
in Birmingham. The break up of old structures of thought
(theoretical frameworks, categories, themes, narratives, metaphors)
is made possible, he claims, by the force of historical events.
Cornel West has argued that the historical/cultural coordinates
producing the current "crisis" of knowledge include the waning of
the age of Europe since World War 11, the decline of North America
as a superpower (which changes significantly the frameworks of
American Sociology, for instance, and their importation elsewhere)
and the ongoing de-colonization process with the consequent
dislocation and mobility of peoples all over the world. The new
global telecommunications, the international division of labor and
the outdated notion of nation-states are other factors. (see Stuart
Hall, "Cultural Studies: two paradigms," Media, Culture, Society,
2, 1980: 57-72; Edward Said, "Opponents, Audiences, Constituencies
and Community," in Hal Foster, ed., The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on
Postmodern Culture, Washington: Bay Press, 1983; Cornel West,
"Black culture and postmodernism," in Barbara Kruger and Phil
Mariani, eds., Remaking History, Seattle: Bay Press, 1989).

A constellation of discourses currently constituting contemporary
critical (cultural) theory offer critiques of the social sciences.
I'm referring to philosophical "postmodernism", feminism, Cultural
Studies and post-colonial discourses. These discourses have
converged, at this historical post-colonial moment, I prefer the term "post-colonial" to "postmodern culture" or
"postmodern condition" to name the contemporary historical moment.
Either way, the "post" is problematic, since it signifies a
position about temporality, a time after/beyond and so makes a
claim that "we" are, here and now, in the postmodern or that "we"
have reached a state beyond colonialism. I agree with Spivak and
others who argue that the post-modern "is not yet". At the same
time, post-colonial times (in Australia of the '90's) have to be
understood as times not yet here but which "we" (that is, some of
"us"), are working toward and looking forward to. The hyphen
signifies the interval in-between, a process of emerging through
struggle. (see Homi Bhabha, "Signs Taken for Wonders: Questions of
Ambivalence and Authority under a Tree Outside Delhi, May 1817, in
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., ed., "Race", Writing and Difference,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986: 186-183; Gayatri
Spivak, In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics, New York:
Routledge, 1988; Trinh T. Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other: Writing
Postcoloniality and Feminism, Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1989) to put into
question the epistemological and theoretical frameworks, the
narratives, metaphors and categories of modern social science,

including, I want to argue, educational research, in some new and
powerful ways. But having said that, I want to stress the necessity
of creating a dialogue between these critical discourses rather
than merely pointing out their affinities and conflicts or, as
seems to be common in work now being published (Rosenau's
Postmodernism and the Social Sciences, for instance Pauline Marie Rosenau, Post-Modernism And The Social Sciences:
Insights, Inroads and Intrusions, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 1992.), to attempt
to "apply" "postmodern insights" to the social sciences without
acknowledging that "postmodernism" itself has been critically
interrupted by cultural critics of assorted persuasions. I am implying, of course, that feminism can no longer be avoided
by male critics who have previously refused to engage with its
debates. Any critical work which does not take into account
feminist critiques is not engaging fully with the contemporary
theoretical scene. (see Linda Nicholson, ed., Feminism/
Postmodernism, New York: Routledge, 1990; Andrew Ross, ed,
Universal Abandon? The Politics of Postmodernism, Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1988). By the same token, white
feminists can no longer postpone their engagement with the
critiques of feminism by women of color and "Third World" critics
who, for the past decade at least, have pointed to feminism's
cultural imperialism. (see for instance Gloria Anzaldua, ed.,
Making Face, Making Soul/Haciendo Caras: Creative and Critical
Perspectives by Women of Color, San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1990;
bell hooks, Ain't I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism, Boston:
South End Press, 1981; Cherrie Moraga & Gloria Anzaldua, eds., This
Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, New
York: Kitchen Table Press, 1983; Hortense Spillers, "Mama's Baby,
Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book," Diacritics, 17, 2(Summer
1987): 65-81) What has
to be done, I think, is to begin to make a new discourse - a space
of ongoing tensions and contradictions - from the emerging
critiques, their rereadings and rewritings, of contemporary
critical theories. 

So, the question I want to ask is what critical possibilities does
this newly emerging discourse offer contemporary education research
and how can the project of educational research be re-visioned in
the contemporary juncture? In the short space of this paper I can
only pick out a few headlines and suggest what possibilities might
be opened up for educational research. 

Perhaps the first thing that needs to be acknowledged is that I
have already taken educational research as "discourse". If we are
going to rearticulate the project of educational research, then the
shift to discourse is necessary and I know that in other sessions
of the conference this week discourse analysis will be discussed

with specific reference to policy issues. But it should also be
said that the shift to discourse (as in Foucault, or textuality in
Derrida), may not be an unproblematic move. Undoubtedly, when
education research and policy are understood as instances of
discourse, new possibilities for critique are opened up. My caution
is that the shift to discourse not signal a shift away from "the
world" as is the case in philosophical "postmodernism". If Spivak's
"resolution" of the problematic relation of "discourse" and "the
world" is kept in mind, namely that discourse is representation of
the world in the world, then the tendency of "postmodernism" to
turn everything into discourse or textuality can be avoided. The
point is to acknowledge discourse as one terrain of struggle but
that the world is not a text. In that case, cultural workers need
to adopt at least a two-pronged approach, one on education as a
discursive terrain and the other on non-discursive practices of
educators, kids, parents and the public.

To take the notion of discourse a step further, I want to argue
with feminists, post-colonial and "third world" critics, that the
social sciences, and educational research (and policy making) are
instances of discursive colonization and that this is particularly
evident in the context of contemporary heterogenous cultures,
including Australian cultures. See Chandra Talpade Mohanty, "Under Western Eyes: Feminist
Scholarship and Colonial Discourses," in Chandra Talpade Mohanty,
Ann Russo & Lourdes Torres, eds., Third World Women and the
Politics of Feminism, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991:
51-80 and numerous feminist critiques of science such as Sandra
Harding, The Science Question in Feminism, Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1986; Donna Harraway, Primate Visions: Gender,
Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science, New York:
Routledge, 1989; Donna Harraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The
Reinvention of Nature, New York: Routledge, 1991. See also the
presentations at this conference by Maori and Koori cultural
workers. Homi Bhabha Homi Bhabha, "Signs Taken for Wonders: Questions of Ambivalence
and Authority under a Tree Outside Delhi, May 1817" in Henry Louis
Gates Jr., "Race", Writing and Difference, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1986. claims that colonial
(or, colonizing) discourses (like science, although he's referring
to other instances of English cultural imperialism) function
through a strategy of disavowal which involves a two-fold process,

of self-erasure and cultural disavowal. In this way, any
universalizing discourse, by avoiding both self and others, that
is, differences, can claim itself as a discourse for all times, all
places and all people. Significantly, it has to be acknowledged that critical cultural
theories themselves are not free of colonizing, universalizing
tendencies. Laura Kipnis (1988) and Gayatri Spivak (1988) have made
the claim that philosophical "postmodernism" is "not yet
postmodern" but rather a return to aesthetic modernism, and that,
despite its rhetoric of difference, it is a universalizing,
colonizing discourse, claiming itself for all people and all time.
What it effectively does is to return the Eurocentric male subject
to the centre of discourse and meaning making. For the most part,
feminists and cultural and post-colonial critics step warily around
"postmodernism", some declining to use the term (like Judith Butler
in Gender Trouble), others taking from it what, if anything, they
find useful, while making central the problematic of colonizing
(Western) discourses. (West, Hall, Spivak)


If we are to work against the colonizing tendency of the social
sciences, then, both culture and "selves" must be reclaimed. I want
to argue that, for this to take place, the traditional project of
the social sciences, and educational research, has to be re-
visioned, that is, both education and research into education have
to be understood as cultural terrains and educational researchers
(along with teachers and administrators) as cultural workers. To
engage in educational research, in the contemporary moment, is to
do cultural critique. The reclaiming of culture (and life) implies the reworking of
the relation of social science and cultural studies, that is, a
reconceptualization of "the cultural" and "the social", both in
terms of what they mean and how they interrelate. It also implies
the possibility of knowing other than scientific knowing. Further,
reclaiming culture means reclaiming the political, ethical and
moral dimensions of knowledge and action. Cultural Studies works
against depoliticizing science.
 I'll return to this after a detour in search
of critical tools.

Read against the theoretical/practical/political project of
cultural critique, which I have now claimed for education research,
the usefulness of philosophical "postmodernism" begins to fade.
While it has challenged, and, to some extent, undermined, the
foundations of modern science (by reversing modernist principles
of universality, objectivity, rationality, representation and the
unitary subject), from a cultural studies perspective significant
elements are missing. Hall (who has carefully avoided positioning
himself within "postmodernism") claims Foucault leaves us with no
representation, no meaning, no agency and no subject. Moreover,

culture and ideology, which are key to cultural critique, have been
summarily dismissed. All of these are necessary for understanding
the construction of truth and action, the subject and
subjectivity. See Stuart Hall, "Cultural Studies and the Centre: some
problematics and problems," in Culture, Media, Language: Working
Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972-79, London: Hutchinson, 1980;
Stuart Hall, "Cultural Studies: two paradigms," in Media, Culture
and Society, 2, 1980:57-72; Stuart Hall, "On Postmodernism and
Articulation: An Interview with Stuart Hall," Journal of
Communication Inquiry, (summer 1986):45-60. Spivak has argued that to adopt an anti-stance
(postmodernism as anti-modernism) to thinking causally or
universally, or within humanism, is disabling for cultural practice
because these notions are necessary to ground social justice, to
make moral and ethical judgements and to take political action. 

Moreover, postmodernism has been revealed as itself a discourse of
transcendence (despite its own critique) What is the difference between the removal of the experiencing
subject from modern science and the "disappearance" of the subject
in Foucault and Derrida's anti-modernist theories? and the postmodern
theorist as himself a transparent intellectual. While arguing against the transparency of intellectuals, he
pretends that he himself has "no geo-political determinations."
(Spivak, 1988, p.272) Read by post-
colonial critics, "postmodernism" is a discourse about the demise
of the Eurocentric male in the post-European era. West says it's
"a kind of European navel-gazing", parochial, provincial and
Eurocentric." As an African-American cultural critic, he is rightly
suspicious of "postmodernism". He asks what it can offer peoples
of color who historically embody and enact postmodern themes such
as "difference". Cornel West, "Black culture and postmodernism," in Barbara
Kruger & Phil Mariani, eds., Remaking History, Seattle: Bay Press,
1989.

In addition, Hall has argued that the epistemologies of
"postmodernism" ought not be swollowed whole. What is gained from
moving to an "epistemology of difference" in opposition to the
modernist "epistemology of identity"? Is the move to difference the
way to go in the contemporary historical juncture? Many feminists
have argued, critically, that such a move implies either

indifference, or a politics of pluralism and pragmatism. Neither
of these alternatives is adequate. Moreover, postmodernism's
"epistemology of difference" makes no reference to an actual
community of knowing persons; the kind of difference referred to
is "pure" difference. Neither can Foucault's shift to "local"
knowledge, in response to the problem of universality in modern
science, be taken up uncritically; it may well be an instance of
an inadequately worked through philosophical gesture of reversal.
The timeless/spaceless discourse of the universal (the fiction of
singular temporality) cannot be simply replaced by "local"
time/place. It's not a question of dismissing one and reverting to
the other. Educators know some knowledge does "travel"! I think
it's a matter of articulating a different kind of relation between
what has been called the "universal" in modern science and the
"particular"/ "local" or, in Harraway's term, "situated knowledge".
There is a need for blurring of boundaries, for finding an in-
between-zone. The suggestion of an "epistemology of identity-in-
difference" may offer possibilities. See Gayatri Spivak, In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural
Politics, New York: Routledge, 1988.  

Moreover, the "postmodern" move beyond representation remains
problematic for education research as cultural critique. At least,
to understand this move as the "end of" representation, as certain
"postmodernists" do, is not useful for cultural workers for whom
a central problematic must be the politics of representation. This,
I'd argue, is the central problematic of cultural critique, and of
educational research in the contemporary historical juncture.Representational politics are cultural politics. To go "beyond
representation" understood as mimesis, on the other hand, or, in
the old language of realist educational research, "telling it like
it is", is useful, however, because the "is-ness" of educational
research is displaced, and representation is understood as
constructed and mediated. 

So does "postmodernism" offer anything for educational practice as
cultural critique?

There is one thing I want to retain and develop further here, and
that is its support for "boundary crossing", "Border work"/"border crossing", the anti-disciplinary and non-
disciplinary moves (which is not the same as inter- or trans-
disciplinary work) supports cultural studies work, while
challenging the current compartmentalization of "bodies" of
knowledge in the universities. Border crossings are breaking down
the disciplinary constraints and challenging and changing the
hierarchies of knowledge and power.
 and, in particular,
the blurring of boundaries between science and fiction/narrative The notion of science as narrative/fiction is made available
through the revival of rhetoric by literary and cultural theorists
(Barthes and de Certeau), Lacanian psychoanalysis (Lacan's positing
of language, culture and desire as mediators of meaning), and the
sociology of knowledge (constructionists like Latour). Nietzsche,
Bataille and Heidegger are long time predecessors of these moves
(Nietzsche's questioning of Truths etc.). For Foucault, all you can
do is produce socio-fictions which have 'reality effects'.
(and theory and fiction/narrative). The rearticulation of old notions of Theory and the theory-
practice relation are essential too. There are versions of
postmodernism and feminism in which theory is rejected or
jeopardized. But to make theory is to make cultural practices
viable, to enable those practices to be articulated and
transformed. Trinh has argued that theory has been separated off
from story as well as from practice and that the blurring of
boundaries between the theoretical and non-theoretical is now
necessary. Story telling, is for her, another way of making theory.
Story telling combines theory, analyses and practice since it is
a reading, an interpretation. The art/craft of story telling breaks
with modernist representational practices in that "she speaks to
not about". (Trinh Minh-ha, The Moon Waxes Red)

 My argument in this paper for
the necessity to go "beyond method" is, in part, to challenge the
regime of representational practices that have constituted
educational research and to contest the authority of social science
as the privileged representational practice in education. I am
aided in this by reclaiming narrative and story telling, and
especially the notion of science as narrative. According to this
view, rather than providing a direct copy of reality, science,
while retaining a relation to reality, narrates the facts. Through
this kind of "border crossing," the boundary of science can be
opened up and contested, unmasking science as a non-neutral,
"fictional" space, culturally and historically constructed and
woven in power relations. 

Addressing the problem of the closed text of science, feminists
have successfully deployed the notion of science as narrative
(Donna Harraway's Primate Visions is exemplary) to open up access
to an otherwise exclusive field. Science, they argue, is one way
of producing knowledge, indeed a particular kind of knowledge, but
there are other ways, other knowledge producers and other stories,
possibly better stories, about education than those produced by
professional education researchers using the traditional
technologies of science (again, I stress, 'quantitative' or
'qualitative' is not the issue). So, whereas the stories of science
have been the privileged narratives about the world of schools,
there are other story tellers and other stories which are produced
differently but may be more valid. This, of course, implies a
rejection of the epistemology of modern science as the privileged
mode of knowledge production, understanding it as one way to
produce knowledge, not the only, nor the privileged discursive
authority on education. This move to narrative and story telling is significant in
reclaiming the narrative knowledge teachers produce about their own
practices. The question is not whether teachers can do research or
not. Given the constraints of teaching practice, it is easy for
academics and professional researchers to stake out a claim to the
territory of knowledge production about education, on the grounds
that teachers simply don't have the time and know-how. The point
is the knowledge teachers produce about schooling is not the same
kind of narrative professional researchers produce. Teacher
narratives compete with professionally, "scientifically" produced
narratives. And some stories are better than others.

The narrative approach exposes social science/educational research
as an instance of discursive colonization, as a culturally embedded
"intertextual" practice which imposes its "models", frameworks,
stories and metaphors on the world (of education), stories which
are linked to other cultural/historical discourses, often
patriarchal and Eurocentric, such as the military, biology,
economics and communications engineering. These stories of

strategies, Harraway has written that the metaphorical and conceptual
structure of the world in the post war West has taken the form of
"a problem of strategic control." It is within this framework that
educational research (of whatever variety) has constructed its
objects and produced meanings and possibilities to the exclusion
of others. These objects of research, and their "truths", have to
be understood as cultural and historical artefacts. (see Donna
Harraway, Primate Visions: Gender, Race and Nature in the World of
Modern Science, New York: Routledge, 1989) goal orientedness, measureability and calculability,
to name just a few, function as technologies of power shaping the
discourse and practices of educators as militarized and/or economic
zones open to prediction and control. These are the hegemonic
stories which frame the debate, to the exclusion of alternative,
and possibily more productive, metaphors and narratives. 

Representational practices do have profound effects on educators
and public debates generally. The notion of education research as
narrative opens up the possibility of challenging and changing the
narratives, categories and codes through which thinking about
education has taken place. 

If the notion of science as (cultural) narrative contributes to
countering the colonizing tendency of educational research, it must
also be countered by reclaiming bodies and selves. The moves
amongst contemporary cultural theories to reclaim "the body"
(bodies) and "the self" (selves) and rewrite "the subjective" and
"the personal" in their cultural connectedness ("my" story is
neither me nor "mine", but yours and yours; it's not bound to the
identity "I" Trinh T. Minh-ha, When The Moon Waxes Red: Representation,
Gender and Cultural Politics, New York: Routledge, 1991.) open possibilities for the production of new
knowledge. The dream of the social sciences of a disembodied
epistemology free of locatedness Bordo calls this a "dream of everywhere", a dream which she
argues is shared by both postmodernism and science. (see Susan
Bordo, "Feminism, Postmodernism, and Gender-Scepticism," in Linda
J. Nicholson (ed), Feminism/Postmodernism, New York: Routledge,
1990: p.136), a dream of the possibility of
self-erasure (I see you but forget myself) and the negation of
bodies (a distancing which is itself a delegation of power), is an
ideal model constructed in particular historical and cultural

circumstances, in the seventeenth century. See Susan Bordo, The Flight to Objectivity: Essays on
Cartesianism and Culture, Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1987. How can we justify its
use now? The bringing into play of the "self" in science has, of
course, been forbidden. Typically neither "I" nor "we" nor "you"
appears in the language of social science or educational research.
If they enter, the field shifts to "not science". (you do hear "I"
and "we" in teacher/curriculum development workshops, but of course
that's dismissed as mere narrative, knowledge "improperly", that
is, unscientifically produced)

Reclaiming bodies is also to reject the "postmodern" notion of "the
death of the author". Whereas Foucault and Barthes claimed it
didn't matter who the writer was, feminists and cultural critics
have argued the necessity of an authorial signature and the
"situatedness" of knowledge. Social science is a marked discourse
and must be acknowledged as such. He who writes carries the marks
of his own body, his history and culture. Donna Harraway, Primate Visions. He must "position"
himself - politically, ideologically, morally, ethically - when he
speaks/writes.

Where will new narratives, new metaphors, new knowledge come from?
From all those who have been excluded from the frame of
representation. That includes those now considered to be key
subjects in cultural critique, the new "hybrid" subject of post-
colonial times. The "subject" of social science, typically
understood as a permanent identity (one "subject" in one time, for
all time), divisible into discrete parts (what Hall has called the"mantra of race, class and gender"), has now been displaced by the
theory of the decentered/non-unitary subject (suggested by
"postmodernism" but more powerfully articulated by post-colonial
and cultural critics). The "subject"/"identity" is returned to her
complexity. The new understanding of "hybrid" identity allows for
the possibility of new subject positions which must now be central
to educational research as cultural critique. See Stuart Hall "New Ethnicities," in Kobena Mercer, ed., Black
Film/British Cinema. ICA Documents 7, London: Institute of
Contemporary Arts, 1988; Maria Lugones "Playfulness, 'World'-
Travelling, and Loving Perception," in Gloria Anzaldua, ed., Making
Face, Making Soul/ Haciendo Caras: Creative and Critical
Perspectives by Women of Color, San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1990:
390-402; Homi Bhabha, ibid) I'll just give one
example of this. The category "gender" can no longer be used as a
single category. It has to be linked more complexly with "race",
class and other categories. (as black women keep telling white
women they are not represented by the category "women"; gender is
not lived/experienced separately from "race" and class for black
or white women) But Hall says hybridity is everywhere. It has
become particularly evident in the light of post-colonial
critiques. That we live in more than one time and more than one
place simultaneously, moving between "worlds" in our daily lives,
necessitates a reconstruction of the theory of "subjects" which
underpins social science/educational research.

To conclude. The old debates about "qualitative" and "quantitative"
research have indeed been brought to an impasse. To take positivism
as "the enemy" is to narrow the field of debate. To focus
attention, as educational ethnographers like Willis wanted to do
in the '70's (and ethnographers in anthropology are currently
seeking), on equalizing or neutralizing the researcher-researched
relation has been tried and proven unsuccessful. Moreover, the

inside/outside dichotomy has been rearticulated by contemporary
cultural theories, displacing the old idea of the researcher as the
"outsider". "Method" is displaced by critical reading. What is
needed now are new theoretical frameworks, new stories, new
metaphors and alternative ways of conceptualizing education and
research. I am suggesting that one way to do this is to understand
educational research as cultural critique. The educational
researcher, the transparent intellectual of social science, becomes
a cultural worker who positions himself inside the frame of
representation and speaks from the traditionally tabooed position
of "I". He sees himself as having a moral, ethical and political
imperative to engage in what Hall calls a "worldly vocation" 
rather than serving as a gatekeeper of science. This, I argue, is
the path for change in the contemporary moment.

NOTES