Context and Contextuality

Central to most forms of qualitative inquiry is the idea that human actions, of whatever kind, can be properly understood only in context—that by their very nature they are situated. In these terms, quantitative methods are often criticized for effectively stripping what people say and do out of their normal contexts. Instead of this, qualitative researchers generally seek to gather data in “natural” settings and in ways that are sensitive to the contexts in which the data were generated.

At the same time, there are some significant differences among qualitative researchers over what taking account of context means. One dimension concerns whether the emphasis is on local or wider contexts—whether the focus is micro or macro. Microethnography emphasizes the role of immediate context in shaping action. In contrast, other kinds of qualitative research insist that we cannot understand what goes on in any local situation without viewing it within the context of the larger national society or, indeed, of global processes.

A second dimension concerns how context is to be identified. Some see social context as socially defined by participants. The researcher's task, therefore, is to document how people interpret the situation they are in, either by means of in-depth interviews or through close analysis of processes of social interaction. For example, those influenced by conversation analysis argue that contextualization is ongoingly accomplished through actors displaying the context of their actions to one another, with this being essential to communication and the coordination of action. The task of the analyst, then, is to document how contexts are displayed and ratified in and through processes of social interaction.

At the other end of the spectrum are those who see the specification of context as the task of the analyst, drawing on theory. Here the very rationale for research is that people will not be aware of the context in terms of which their actions can be properly understood. This is because relevant parts of this context will be either below or beyond their awareness—whether in the form of unconscious psychodynamic processes, macrohistorical structures, or both.

A third dimension concerns the ontological status of any definition of context. Is it discovered or constructed? All of the approaches discussed up to now tend to treat context as an objective feature of the world being studied. However, other qualitative researchers treat context as necessarily relative to purpose and perspective. It is argued that, in understanding anything, the analyst cannot avoid relying on inherited background assumptions, and these provide the context for what is observed. Nor does this process need to be interpreted in entirely cognitivist terms; the role of emotional response may also be acknowledged. There is an alternative version of this argument that can be termed postmodernist in broad terms. Here context is essentially arbitrary; there are many incommensurable contexts in which we could locate what we are studying in the sense that a host of stories could be told. There is no notion of validity, in the sense of correspondence with reality, on which we can draw to privilege one definition of context over another. Other selection criteria—political, ethical, or aesthetic—must be used. Moreover, none of these can be treated as being of universal value.

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