Backroom Research

I came to the iSchool from an undergraduate in English literature, and while I focused predominantly on Old and Middle English, I found theoretical grounding in the postmodern. I'm pretty comfortable applying postmodernism to Chaucer or Julian of Norwich, but I've never really considered it in relation to social science, likely because I've never really encountered a social science in an academic setting prior to my entry to the iSchool. So, this week's reading was an eye-opening experience.

Luker states that research methods are socially situated; they arise and become privileged because of various cultural and environmental factors. In emphasizing this, Luker implores us to question the doxa, the taken-for-granted, and thus unravel the often tangled, embedded assumptions that reinforce the very structure of research. This appears, from my naive perspective, essential to the integrity of research. But what to do with such an analysis?

If a seemingly flawed methodology is privileged for whatever reason, and is subsequently replaced in the general consensus of the research community by a seemingly better methodology, is that new methodology not equally socially situated? Will it not ultimately be replaced anew by future researchers? Any application of postmodernism to research methodology seems to render Truth (the capital T sort) an impossibility. How do we reconcile this with the empirical purpose of research?