The Politics of Research Methodology in the Social Sciences

Abstract

In this paper we critically examine various research methodologies which have been employed in the social sciences and which have developed in the context of conditions determined by the historical development of capitalism in Africa. This analysis establishes the context in which the Participatory Research Approach emerged, to be investigated in Lead Paper 3. The paper is divided into three sections. The first section analyses the dominant social science research methodologies and the conditions of production of knowledge in the present epoch of imperialism. The methodologies which have developed in Africa are examined in the second section in relation to different periods of capitalist development. The third section critically analyses struggles over production and reproduction of knowledge using the Experimental World Literacy Programme as illustration of worldwide basic education reform in order to concretise the issues raised concerning neo-positivist survey research methods of investigation, and to show their integral relation to concepts of development identified with orthodox bourgeois economic theory.