Orientational Perspective

Examples of Orientational Perspectives

The concepts and conceptual frameworks one uses, whether unconsciously as a matter of tradition and training or intentionally as a matter of choice, carry embedded messages about what and who is important. A feminist perspective, for example, presumes the importance of gender in human relationships and societal processes and orients the study in that direction. The orientation of feminist inquiry can include working toward a sense of connectedness and equality between researcher and researched—explicitly acknowledging and valuing women's ways of knowing so as to integrate reason, emotion, intuition, experience, and analytic thought—and using qualitative inquiry to support change, especially generating findings about women that will contribute to their liberation and empowerment. In essence, a feminist orientation uses the lens of gender inequality to shape the inquiry.

Feminist inquiry challenges the phenomenological notion that one can cleanse oneself of such fundamental language-based conceptions when doing fieldwork and data analysis. Moreover, feminist inquiry provides not only conceptual and analytical direction, but also methodological orientation in emphasizing participatory, collaborative, change-oriented, and empowering forms of inquiry.

A quite different theoretical framing for inquiry would be a Freudian orientation, which assumes that individual behavior must be understood as a manifestation of the struggle between id, ego, and superego as influenced by very early childhood relationships and sexual experiences that have left their mark on the unconscious.

Racism can be another defining lens—or orientation—for qualitative inquiry in research and evaluation; from this perspective, racial issues are a defining characteristic of societal interactions and an essential framework for making sense of human interactions and patterns that differentiate important aspects of the lives of people with different racial or ethnic backgrounds. Queer theory, an orientational perspective focused on sexual orientation, combines social constructionist insights with a critique of cultural inhibitions about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender experiences. Empowerment evaluation uses the inquiry to build the capacity of those studied to tell and to conduct their own stories; the inquiry is oriented toward empowerment of those involved.

In each of these distinct and different orientational examples—feminism, racism, queer theory, and empowerment evaluation—the qualitative researcher begins with presumptions about what the important factors are in the setting to be studied. The question is not whether gender, race, sexual orientation, or disempowerment is an issue or factor; that is presumed. The question is how issues of gender, race, sexual orientation, or disempowerment are manifest in the setting under study—and the implications of those manifestations for the lives of those who are the focus of the inquiry. Orientations can be combined, as in a feminist psychoanalytical framework.

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