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Constructionism – A critical realist reply
Annals of Tourism Research xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Annals of Tourism Research journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/atoures
COMMENTARY
Constructionism – A critical realist reply David Botterill ⇑ Oxford School of Hospitality Management, Oxford Brookes University, United Kingdom University of Westminster, United Kingdom NHTV University of Applied Sciences Breda, The Netherlands
Tomas Pernecky (2012) has made a valuable contribution to the underlabouring of tourism research in his conceptual and philosophical exegesis, Constructionism, Critical Pointers for Tourism Studies. There is much to commend in his article, as the Annals reviewers and the co-ordinating editor have confirmed by their acceptance of it for publication. The point of my reply is to simply disagree with a central argument advanced in the article, namely that ‘‘constructionist epistemology is both realist and relativist’’ (p. 1116). The use of the word epistemology in this phrase, taken from the article abstract, is somewhat problematic for me as I think of realism and constructionism as completing philosophies in the social sciences that contain both epistemological and ontological commitments. If the discussion is limited to epistemology then there is little to disagree on, as both critical realism and constructionism are epistemologically relativist, even though some of the proponents of constructionism in tourism studies seem to favour qualitative methods over any other. Differences between these two philosophies only become apparent when we consider their divergent ontological commitments and this is what Pernecky explores in pages 1122–1124 of his article, and has provoked this reply. The arguments used by Pernecky to support his position are largely drawn from the literature defending constructionism in the social sciences. They are therefore, for the most part, responses by its proponents to attacks on constructionism (see for example references to Burr on page 1123). I offer to Pernecky, the article’s reviewers, and the wider readers of the Annals, a counter viewpoint informed by realist social science inspired by the body of work collectively called critical realism. Pernecky’s article claims to critically examine the ‘‘. . . pitfalls . . .’’ of constructionism and in this one respect I’m afraid it disappoints me. Constructionism does indeed ‘‘add a valuable dimension to tourism studies by allowing for new constructions to emerge’’ (p. 1132). The question I suggest that tourism scholars need to ask themselves, and one that I answered for myself in the negative after working with constructionism for 15 years is, ‘Is this enough?’. Is it enough that the result of social scientific inquiry is to empower a myriad of voices and to delight in documenting multiple representations of tourism? The central matter that divides constructionism and realism are not their epistemologies but their very differing ontological commitments. Critical realism distinguishes between domains of the social world; the transitive domain (our theories, concepts and discourse of research) and the intransitive domain (the largely enduring structures and properties of objects that enable and constrain human
⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 2920 498865. E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected] 0160-7383/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2013.11.004
Please cite this article in press as: Botterill, D. Constructionism – A critical realist reply. Annals of Tourism Research (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2013.11.004
2
D. Botterill / Annals of Tourism Research xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
agency). Under critical realism the relationship between these two domains is problematised by the insistence that social scientists should exercise ‘judgemental rationality’ to produce fallible, historically and culturally contingent, but, practically adequate accounts of the intransitive domain. Thus, through judgemental rationality critical realism insists that tourism social scientists make choices between the myriad voices and multiple representations of tourism produced under epistemic relativism, to lay bare an explanatory account of the ontology of tourism. Such accounts invoke the method of retroduction in order to mine a layered and stratified ‘deep’ social ontology; they aspire to reunite the natural and social worlds in the production of knowledge; and to rescue the explanatory possibility within the social sciences from the limitations proscribed under constructionism (see for example Botterill et al., 2013). Let me try to give a concrete form to these abstract terms. Pernecky uses the example of an airline ticket, and then—in passing—the passport, to demonstrate ‘the different stances [of weak and strong constructionism] towards physical and social reality in the context of tourism’ (p. 1127). Let me use the same examples to argue from a critical realist perspective that we should not separate physical and social reality in our philosophy of social science and that it is possible to view the social as a part of a structured ontology that shares with nature a similar, and layered, ontological structure. In effect to ‘‘aspire to the standards of empirical and theoretical rigour of the natural sciences, while fully acknowledging the indispensably communicative-interpretive dimensions of social life’’ (Benton, 2009:211). A critical realist would not agree that ‘the concept of a ticket remains a social construction’ (p. 1127). Its intransitive chemical constitution of paper and ink is the result of the powers and potentials of particular chemical properties and, critical realists would argue that such powers and potentials can also be detected in the social ontology of the ticket in the intransitive social world. Let me explore a tentative, explanatory, account of the ‘deep’ social ontology of the ticket by positing what powers, or mechanisms, act to facilitate and constrain tourist mobility through the ticket. The ticket prescribes a particular passage between places. It is produced by a set of institutional rules. The rules lie below the codified numbers and letters of the booking code and ticket number. The rules that produce its form are set by a number of large commercial and governmental institutions (and their ideologies) and these institutions act together as mechanisms that have powers that are largely enduring and stable. Already Pernecky’s social construction—‘the concept of a ticket’—is looking rather like the largely enduring chemical composition of paper and ink to me. The powers of an international airline ticket are insufficient on their own to effect travel, they are potentials that are unexercised and unobserved until they are combined with a document of identity, let us say a passport. A passport is also a material paper object. It exists because the organisation of the population of the world is formulated into nation states. Nation states create preconditions before an individual achieves a national identity. Laws of nation states determine the right of citizenship inferred by national identity and regimes of state policing control access to those rights, through bureaucratic systems and through force on the nation’s borders. A passport is a necessary possession for travel beyond domicile borders. Even passports, on their own, are often insufficient to release the powers of tickets. Travel between nation states often requires permission granted through the issuing of a visa. The necessity of a visa is a result of bi-lateral and multi-lateral government protocols. Such protocols are themselves often rooted in centuries of international relations developed in times of both conflict and peace. Such mechanisms are very powerful structuring agents in international tourism, they are historically contingent, yes, but they are also enduring mechanisms. They are much more than ‘meanings given to objects’ and more akin to the enduring mechanisms of the natural world than constructionists would care to acknowledge. This is what I mean by the ontological commitments of critical realism. Just one further point. Critical realists understand that the powers of mechanisms in the intransitive domain are not always exercised and are not always observable. Social reality cannot be reduced to facts. Thus the transitive analytical processes of critical realism invokes retroduction. Retroduction entails the idea of going back from, underneath, or behind observed patterns or regularities to discover what produces them. Capturing the social meanings of the passport ascribed to it by tourists or airport workers or passport control officers might, amongst other data sources both qualitative and quantitative, be a starting point for critical realists—but I digress, so back to my concrete example. Between Please cite this article in press as: Botterill, D. Constructionism – A critical realist reply. Annals of Tourism Research (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2013.11.004
D. Botterill / Annals of Tourism Research xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
3
international travel trips the passport probably languishes in its own special draw or storage place. Its powers are undiminished (while it is still in date) yet they are unobserved and unexercised. The arrival of a ticket for a trans-national journey releases the latent powers of the passport, through the attachment of a visa perhaps. Under the contingent conditions of a trouble free journey—unimpeded by natural (ash clouds) or social (civil unrest) or technological (aircraft failure) forces—critical realists would say that the combined powers of the mechanisms of a ticket, a passport and a visa are exercised and largely unobserved. Counter intuitively, their powers only become fully exercised and observed when the documents are removed from the normal ontological ordering of the journey, perhaps lost, perhaps stolen, perhaps retained by the authorities. The move to electronic ticketing has meant that tickets are relatively easily replaced by proof of identity or alternative electronic storage. The absence of a passport is of another order completely and neatly demonstrates the vertical layering present within the social ontology of trans-national travel. The powers of the ticket are dependent on the mechanism of the passport, the powers of the passport depends on the mechanism of a valid visa, the visa depends on, and so on. Suddenly, the deep social ontology of the ticket becomes observable as its enabling powers are temporarily removed from the normal ontological order of the intransitive social world of international tourism. The absence of a document of national identity, represented through a passport, and designed to protect citizenship rights halts the tourist in her tracks. The multiple agencies of national governments including the police and sometimes armed forces get involved, the weight of legal and constitutional powers are exercised, the history of international relations between the tourist’s country of origin and her receiving nation all emerge into view and bear down on the missing, paper and ink, passport. Were I to invest more time in this tentative explanatory account of the social ontology of documents of international travel then I would creatively label these mechanisms using metaphor and analogy, a further marker of social scientific critical realist scholarship. The ontological commitments of constructionism are limited to the acknowledgement of a common sense notion of reality as objective physical facts, as in Pernecky’s examples of experiencing a turbulent flight over the Atlantic (p. 1124) or ‘holding a ticket’ (p. 1127). The ontological passivity of constructionism, encapsulated in Perneky’s use of Gergen’ phrase ‘Whatever is, simply is’ (p. 1123), rules out the possibility that constructionism can ever be realist, according to the tenets of probably the most influential realist philosophy in the social sciences, critical realism. Entrapped by the insistence of the exploration of social meanings as an end point, the truth claims of constructionist knowledge remains locked within the self-referential transitive domain, validated only by the processes and protocols of the relevant social scientific discipline communities, and defended by the mirrors of reflexivity and situatedness. Consequently, by the limits of its ontological (non) commitments, constructionism cannot aspire to an explanatory social science and that is indeed an important ‘pitfall’ that has somehow escaped Pernecky’s otherwise insightful analysis. It is for the differences in ontological commitment between constructionism and realism that I reject his assertion ‘that constructionism is at once realist and relativist’ (p. 1124) and while it is not within the scope of this comment to determine whether the philosophy of constructionism is both epistemologically and ontologically relativist, realist it certainly is not. References Benton, T. (2009). Conclusion: Philosophy, materialism and nature – comments and reflections (pp. 208–243). In S. Moog & R. Stones (Eds.), Nature, social relations and human needs: Essays in honour of ted Benton. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Botterill, D., Pointing, S., Hayes-Jonkers, C., Rodrigues, C., Jones, T., & Clough, A. (2013). Violence, tourism, security and critcal realism. Annals of Tourism Research, 42, 311–333. Pernecky, T. (2012). Constructionism, critical pointers for tourism studies. Annals of Tourism Research, 39(2), 1116–1137.
Please cite this article in press as: Botterill, D. Constructionism – A critical realist reply. Annals of Tourism Research (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2013.11.004
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Annals of Tourism Research journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/atoures
COMMENTARY
Constructionism – A critical realist reply David Botterill ⇑ Oxford School of Hospitality Management, Oxford Brookes University, United Kingdom University of Westminster, United Kingdom NHTV University of Applied Sciences Breda, The Netherlands
Tomas Pernecky (2012) has made a valuable contribution to the underlabouring of tourism research in his conceptual and philosophical exegesis, Constructionism, Critical Pointers for Tourism Studies. There is much to commend in his article, as the Annals reviewers and the co-ordinating editor have confirmed by their acceptance of it for publication. The point of my reply is to simply disagree with a central argument advanced in the article, namely that ‘‘constructionist epistemology is both realist and relativist’’ (p. 1116). The use of the word epistemology in this phrase, taken from the article abstract, is somewhat problematic for me as I think of realism and constructionism as completing philosophies in the social sciences that contain both epistemological and ontological commitments. If the discussion is limited to epistemology then there is little to disagree on, as both critical realism and constructionism are epistemologically relativist, even though some of the proponents of constructionism in tourism studies seem to favour qualitative methods over any other. Differences between these two philosophies only become apparent when we consider their divergent ontological commitments and this is what Pernecky explores in pages 1122–1124 of his article, and has provoked this reply. The arguments used by Pernecky to support his position are largely drawn from the literature defending constructionism in the social sciences. They are therefore, for the most part, responses by its proponents to attacks on constructionism (see for example references to Burr on page 1123). I offer to Pernecky, the article’s reviewers, and the wider readers of the Annals, a counter viewpoint informed by realist social science inspired by the body of work collectively called critical realism. Pernecky’s article claims to critically examine the ‘‘. . . pitfalls . . .’’ of constructionism and in this one respect I’m afraid it disappoints me. Constructionism does indeed ‘‘add a valuable dimension to tourism studies by allowing for new constructions to emerge’’ (p. 1132). The question I suggest that tourism scholars need to ask themselves, and one that I answered for myself in the negative after working with constructionism for 15 years is, ‘Is this enough?’. Is it enough that the result of social scientific inquiry is to empower a myriad of voices and to delight in documenting multiple representations of tourism? The central matter that divides constructionism and realism are not their epistemologies but their very differing ontological commitments. Critical realism distinguishes between domains of the social world; the transitive domain (our theories, concepts and discourse of research) and the intransitive domain (the largely enduring structures and properties of objects that enable and constrain human
⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 2920 498865. E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected] 0160-7383/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2013.11.004
Please cite this article in press as: Botterill, D. Constructionism – A critical realist reply. Annals of Tourism Research (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2013.11.004
2
D. Botterill / Annals of Tourism Research xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
agency). Under critical realism the relationship between these two domains is problematised by the insistence that social scientists should exercise ‘judgemental rationality’ to produce fallible, historically and culturally contingent, but, practically adequate accounts of the intransitive domain. Thus, through judgemental rationality critical realism insists that tourism social scientists make choices between the myriad voices and multiple representations of tourism produced under epistemic relativism, to lay bare an explanatory account of the ontology of tourism. Such accounts invoke the method of retroduction in order to mine a layered and stratified ‘deep’ social ontology; they aspire to reunite the natural and social worlds in the production of knowledge; and to rescue the explanatory possibility within the social sciences from the limitations proscribed under constructionism (see for example Botterill et al., 2013). Let me try to give a concrete form to these abstract terms. Pernecky uses the example of an airline ticket, and then—in passing—the passport, to demonstrate ‘the different stances [of weak and strong constructionism] towards physical and social reality in the context of tourism’ (p. 1127). Let me use the same examples to argue from a critical realist perspective that we should not separate physical and social reality in our philosophy of social science and that it is possible to view the social as a part of a structured ontology that shares with nature a similar, and layered, ontological structure. In effect to ‘‘aspire to the standards of empirical and theoretical rigour of the natural sciences, while fully acknowledging the indispensably communicative-interpretive dimensions of social life’’ (Benton, 2009:211). A critical realist would not agree that ‘the concept of a ticket remains a social construction’ (p. 1127). Its intransitive chemical constitution of paper and ink is the result of the powers and potentials of particular chemical properties and, critical realists would argue that such powers and potentials can also be detected in the social ontology of the ticket in the intransitive social world. Let me explore a tentative, explanatory, account of the ‘deep’ social ontology of the ticket by positing what powers, or mechanisms, act to facilitate and constrain tourist mobility through the ticket. The ticket prescribes a particular passage between places. It is produced by a set of institutional rules. The rules lie below the codified numbers and letters of the booking code and ticket number. The rules that produce its form are set by a number of large commercial and governmental institutions (and their ideologies) and these institutions act together as mechanisms that have powers that are largely enduring and stable. Already Pernecky’s social construction—‘the concept of a ticket’—is looking rather like the largely enduring chemical composition of paper and ink to me. The powers of an international airline ticket are insufficient on their own to effect travel, they are potentials that are unexercised and unobserved until they are combined with a document of identity, let us say a passport. A passport is also a material paper object. It exists because the organisation of the population of the world is formulated into nation states. Nation states create preconditions before an individual achieves a national identity. Laws of nation states determine the right of citizenship inferred by national identity and regimes of state policing control access to those rights, through bureaucratic systems and through force on the nation’s borders. A passport is a necessary possession for travel beyond domicile borders. Even passports, on their own, are often insufficient to release the powers of tickets. Travel between nation states often requires permission granted through the issuing of a visa. The necessity of a visa is a result of bi-lateral and multi-lateral government protocols. Such protocols are themselves often rooted in centuries of international relations developed in times of both conflict and peace. Such mechanisms are very powerful structuring agents in international tourism, they are historically contingent, yes, but they are also enduring mechanisms. They are much more than ‘meanings given to objects’ and more akin to the enduring mechanisms of the natural world than constructionists would care to acknowledge. This is what I mean by the ontological commitments of critical realism. Just one further point. Critical realists understand that the powers of mechanisms in the intransitive domain are not always exercised and are not always observable. Social reality cannot be reduced to facts. Thus the transitive analytical processes of critical realism invokes retroduction. Retroduction entails the idea of going back from, underneath, or behind observed patterns or regularities to discover what produces them. Capturing the social meanings of the passport ascribed to it by tourists or airport workers or passport control officers might, amongst other data sources both qualitative and quantitative, be a starting point for critical realists—but I digress, so back to my concrete example. Between Please cite this article in press as: Botterill, D. Constructionism – A critical realist reply. Annals of Tourism Research (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2013.11.004
D. Botterill / Annals of Tourism Research xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
3
international travel trips the passport probably languishes in its own special draw or storage place. Its powers are undiminished (while it is still in date) yet they are unobserved and unexercised. The arrival of a ticket for a trans-national journey releases the latent powers of the passport, through the attachment of a visa perhaps. Under the contingent conditions of a trouble free journey—unimpeded by natural (ash clouds) or social (civil unrest) or technological (aircraft failure) forces—critical realists would say that the combined powers of the mechanisms of a ticket, a passport and a visa are exercised and largely unobserved. Counter intuitively, their powers only become fully exercised and observed when the documents are removed from the normal ontological ordering of the journey, perhaps lost, perhaps stolen, perhaps retained by the authorities. The move to electronic ticketing has meant that tickets are relatively easily replaced by proof of identity or alternative electronic storage. The absence of a passport is of another order completely and neatly demonstrates the vertical layering present within the social ontology of trans-national travel. The powers of the ticket are dependent on the mechanism of the passport, the powers of the passport depends on the mechanism of a valid visa, the visa depends on, and so on. Suddenly, the deep social ontology of the ticket becomes observable as its enabling powers are temporarily removed from the normal ontological order of the intransitive social world of international tourism. The absence of a document of national identity, represented through a passport, and designed to protect citizenship rights halts the tourist in her tracks. The multiple agencies of national governments including the police and sometimes armed forces get involved, the weight of legal and constitutional powers are exercised, the history of international relations between the tourist’s country of origin and her receiving nation all emerge into view and bear down on the missing, paper and ink, passport. Were I to invest more time in this tentative explanatory account of the social ontology of documents of international travel then I would creatively label these mechanisms using metaphor and analogy, a further marker of social scientific critical realist scholarship. The ontological commitments of constructionism are limited to the acknowledgement of a common sense notion of reality as objective physical facts, as in Pernecky’s examples of experiencing a turbulent flight over the Atlantic (p. 1124) or ‘holding a ticket’ (p. 1127). The ontological passivity of constructionism, encapsulated in Perneky’s use of Gergen’ phrase ‘Whatever is, simply is’ (p. 1123), rules out the possibility that constructionism can ever be realist, according to the tenets of probably the most influential realist philosophy in the social sciences, critical realism. Entrapped by the insistence of the exploration of social meanings as an end point, the truth claims of constructionist knowledge remains locked within the self-referential transitive domain, validated only by the processes and protocols of the relevant social scientific discipline communities, and defended by the mirrors of reflexivity and situatedness. Consequently, by the limits of its ontological (non) commitments, constructionism cannot aspire to an explanatory social science and that is indeed an important ‘pitfall’ that has somehow escaped Pernecky’s otherwise insightful analysis. It is for the differences in ontological commitment between constructionism and realism that I reject his assertion ‘that constructionism is at once realist and relativist’ (p. 1124) and while it is not within the scope of this comment to determine whether the philosophy of constructionism is both epistemologically and ontologically relativist, realist it certainly is not. References Benton, T. (2009). Conclusion: Philosophy, materialism and nature – comments and reflections (pp. 208–243). In S. Moog & R. Stones (Eds.), Nature, social relations and human needs: Essays in honour of ted Benton. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Botterill, D., Pointing, S., Hayes-Jonkers, C., Rodrigues, C., Jones, T., & Clough, A. (2013). Violence, tourism, security and critcal realism. Annals of Tourism Research, 42, 311–333. Pernecky, T. (2012). Constructionism, critical pointers for tourism studies. Annals of Tourism Research, 39(2), 1116–1137.
Please cite this article in press as: Botterill, D. Constructionism – A critical realist reply. Annals of Tourism Research (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2013.11.004