Sociopolitical Underpinnings of Positivism and Qualitative Cultural Psychological Methodology

Abstract

The conventional explanation for positivism’s hegemony over social science research is that positivism is the only, or certainly the best, scientific methodology. Accordingly, qualitative cultural psychological methodology deserves to be marginalized because it is not a scienific approach. However, we have seen that positivism is unscientific in many respects and that qualitative cultural psychological methodology is a more objective approach for investigating cultural psychology. Therefore the explanation for positivism’s dominance at the expense of our methodology cannot lie in the scientific merits of the two approaches. It lies instead in social and political implications of the two methodologies (Vygotsky, 1997, pp. 233–234).

Every philosophy is practical, even the one which at first appears to be the most contemplative. Its method is a social and political weapon. (Sartre, 1963, p. 5)