Within critical psychologies, knowledge production is recognized as inherently political. For that reason, researchers in the field often engage with critical methodologies. This section presents some methodological approaches and considerations stemming from various critical psychology traditions.
Perhaps it is unsurprising that in a field oriented toward a critique of the status quo, many critical psychology researchers have also developed and engaged with methodologies that challenge dominant ways of doing research. Above, we considered the importance of reflexivity and acknowledging the entanglement between researchers and the work they do. If knowledge production is political, taking a look at how power flows through methodologies is important (Teo, 2023). This is core to the praxis of many critical psychology researchers. But what methodologies are critical psychology researchers engaging with?
Qualitative Research
Qualitative research has been popular amongst critical psychology researchers; however, not all critical psychology research is qualitative, and not all qualitative research is critical. There is an assumption that qualitative research naturally “uplifts” or “amplifies” the voices of marginalized people. Critical researchers (across disciplines) have encouraged a reconsideration of this seemingly altruistic orientation (e.g., Limes-Taylor Henderson & Esposito, 2019).
Limes-Taylor Henderson & Esposito (2019) wrote about the ways in which doing research requires us to consider our alignment with and embeddedness within systems that do harm:
Our connection to the academy encourages participation in the white supremacist, patriarchal, settler colonial system, despite our personal and individual experiences of oppression within this very system. It is important for us to acknowledge we are, indeed, participants in this system, rather than imagining that we academics (even those of us from marginalized groups) do not participate in it as we work against oppression and toward social justice.
(Limes-Taylor Henderson & Esposito, p. 878)
What are your reactions to this passage? We would encourage you to read this article in full, as it prompts us to consider how, regardless of our positive intentions, undertaking qualitative research may not be straightforwardly altruistic or empowering of research participants.
Reflection Questions: Empowering or Engaging?
It is not uncommon to see qualitative researchers frame their work in terms of “giving voice” to those who have limited access to opportunities to directly express their views in the public sphere. While researchers using qualitative methodologies may even directly quote participants’ words in academic journal articles, participants’ voices are always mediated and interpreted by researchers. This is neither good nor bad—it is simply a result of expectations of what research outputs should look like. But does it have to be that way?
Let’s think a bit more about the idea of “giving voice.”
- Is voice something that can be given?
- Are there ways of engaging with the voices of others that does not include a layer of interpretation?
- What kind(s) of outputs might enable voices to be shared otherwise?
- How are research participants and researchers positioned in qualitative research? Where is the power? What factors might impact where you would place the power in this scenario?
Discourse Analysis
Considering power as it operates in research is a core feature of many critical psychologists’ work. Methods and methodologies are not typically considered separate from what is produced through them (Beshara, 2021; Newman & Holzman, 2003). This orientation challenges the idea that an experiment, which artificially separates stimulus and response, can tell us much about the workings of phenomena in the world (Dreier, 2020).
Discursive approaches have been popular in critical psychology, and perhaps particularly in the UK; indeed, for many in the UK, discourse analysis became synonymous with critical psychology (Parker, 2020). Of course, discourse-oriented approaches are not the only methods to have been used in critical psychology. However, they do offer the opportunity to dive into the operation of language and its entwining with power in a way that lends itself to a critical lens.
Definition
Discourse analysis (like most of the things we have explored in this module) is not a singular “thing.” There are multiple approaches to discourse analysis, ranging from the micro to the macro level. Conversation analysis, for instance, is oriented toward a close reading and analysis of typically naturally-occuring talk (Rossi, 2021).
Discourse analysis has also featured in social psychology, bridging the gap between a micro and macro level of analysis and exploring the relationship between language, power, attitudes, and behaviour (Potter & Wetherell, 1987).
Critical discourse analysis tends to focus more on discourse at a macro level, exploring how language operates to open or constrain possibilities; however, it is not a singular entity itself, and different approaches to CDA themselves find their roots in the work of a variety of theorists (Reisigl, 2013).
What approaches to discourse analysis share is their commitment to seeing language as powerful in and of itself, rather than being simply a route into meaning.
Participatory Action Research
Returning to the idea of moving beyond abnormalizing discourses that position some as “other” to a constructed norm, many critical psychologists have worked with methods that engage more deeply with the communities of people the research is “about.” This includes critical participatory action research, which critical psychology researcher Michelle Fine (2023) frames as a “radical tactic for honouring and centring precious and brilliant knowledge cultivated in conditions of oppression, sharpened in struggle and focused on root causes, consequences, and radical alternatives to precarity” (p. 192).
Participatory approaches engage “participants” in the process of creating the research questions and methods, as well as holding aims of social change. Many participatory action research (PAR) traditions trace back to Latin American theorists like Paolo Friere (1970), drawing on “the pedagogy of the oppressed.” PAR places experiential knowledge at the forefront, taking seriously the ways in which systemic inequities have framed oppression and exclusion (Cornish et al., 2023).
Autoepistemological Approach
Critical psychologist Thomas Teo (2023) argues for the importance of acknowledging methods as political and suggests that an “autoepistemological” approach means turning the gaze not only on who we are as researchers but on methods. This includes interrogating where knowledges come from, how what we know and how we know is connected to various histories and cultures, and more.
In thinking through critical methodologies, a common thread is the disruption of understandings of concepts themselves (Unger, 1993). As psychology and women and gender studies researcher Sara I. McClelland (2017) explains, this means
[not] assuming that concepts are simple, universal, or singular, feminist psychologists have consistently drawn attention to the often messy, incoherent, and different perspectives individuals bring to research.
(McClelland, 2017, p. 451)
In this quote, McClelland draws our attention to how critical feminist scholars have interrogated the ways in which concepts are created by people. This seems like an obvious statement, but again, it is perhaps not so obvious when we look at the production of knowledge. Digging a little deeper, it is also important, through this lens, to look at the everyday instead of focusing only on the concepts that we assume hold deeper meaning. Many critical psychologists have done just this, exploring how everyday life acts illustrate the operation of subjectivity and power relations (Dreier, 2020; González Rey & Martinez, 2020).
Activity: The Everyday
Think about a typical day in your life. What do you do when you first wake up? What are the tasks you carry out as you go about your business? What are the leisure activities, the work tasks, the care work that form your daily life? Drawing on the work of cultural-historical psychologist Lev Vygotsky, some critical psychology researchers have framed the everyday as an important topic of study that may help us to understand quite a lot about power relations and subjectivity. For instance, Maria del rio Carral has devised a “day in the life” interview methodology: Over two time points, she asks people to describe a typical day in their lives and to reflect on their recounting in a follow up session. Asking people to think about their experience of a single day encourages them to engage with the “mundane” aspects of life that are often overlooked, but can actually hold a lot of meaning.
Reflexive Thematic Analysis
These are, of course, only a few examples of the many methods that critical psychologists engage with. Many have also used more “classical” methods of analysis and specifically explored their critical potential. A core example of this is psychologists Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke’s (2021) reflexive thematic analysis approach. While thematic analysis itself is not necessarily critical, what Braun and Clarke have illustrated is the value of a flexible method that encourages researchers to engage with their epistemological lenses and theoretical approaches. This illustrates that it is not only the method itself but how we use it that determines its critical potential.
Conclusion
In this brief overview, we have explored some of the ways in which critical psychologists engage with questions of method. Relating back to questions about the political nature of knowledge production, we began to explore specifically what that can look like when “doing research.” While critical psychologists engage in a range of methodological practices, what these share is an emphasis on the importance of thoughtful engagement with the taken-for-granteds that undergird both research and life.
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Cornish, F., Breton, N., Moreno-Tabarez, U., Delgado, J., Rua, M., de-Graft Aikins, A., & Hodgetts, D. (2023). Participatory action research. Nature Reviews Methods Primers, 3, 34.
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McClelland, S. I. (2017). Conceptual disruption: The self-anchored ladder in critical feminist research. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 41(4), 451–464.
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Rossi, G. (2021). Conversation analysis. In J. Stanlaw (Ed.), The international encyclopedia of linguistic anthropology (pp. 1–13). John Wiley & Sons.
Teo, T. (2023, June 20). Subjectivity and epistemology: From EDI to the critique of society [Video]. Global South Critical Psychology Conference. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_pIdm7e6ak
Unger, R. K. (1993). The personal is paradoxical: Feminists construct psychology. Feminism & Psychology, 3, 211–218.
A sculpture hanging from a white gallery wall. The piece is mounted on a square of white plastic and features many overlapping worm-shaped strips of dark and light grey felt, each attached with a line of stitches up the center. Here and there, groups of small wooden ovals, like dog-tags, are affixed to the plastic by small rings, laying over the grey felt. A strip of copper wire extends from the bottom of the piece. Part of the collection “Out of Body: Sample Map” by Olivia Brouwer. From the exhibition avere cura.
