Tourism, Culture & Communication, Vol. 13, pp. 127–137
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CRITICAL REVIEW
BETWEEN YOU AND ME:
MAKING MESSES WITH CONSTRUCTIVISM AND CRITICAL THEORY

KELLEE CATON
Faculty of Adventure, Culinary Arts and Tourism, Thompson Rivers University, British Columbia, Canada

New social science researchers often grapple with questions of scholarly identity and paradigm
belongingness in a postmodern world. On one hand, there are perhaps more options than ever, in
terms of philosophical orientations to research that are taken seriously across the landscape of social
scholarly disciplines. On the other hand, however, these philosophical orientations (typically presented as paradigms) have solidified to such a degree in writing and teaching on qualitative inquiry
that they can feel confining, leading students to feel that more than one “paradigm” resonates with
their personal sensibilities, and therefore to wonder where the points of tension actually lie between
different orientations to research—for indeed, what is learned in the classroom about convergences
and divergences between research perspectives is sometimes not borne out in our lived experiences in
the field. In this critical review article, which is meant to be both a personal reflection and an analytical methodology exploration, the author engages in an exercise of “rethinking,” in which she questions earlier claims regarding the tension between two increasingly popular research approaches in
her own field of tourism studies—namely, constructivism and critical theory—and attempts to interrogate what is really at stake between these perspectives. Ultimately, the author concludes that the
tension between these two traditions may lie in a surprising place: it may not be ontological, and not
necessarily even political, but pedagogical and care oriented. She then ponders the inherent challenge
that lies in the tension between these two perspectives, in terms of the quest to forge a social research
approach that is reflexive, critically and politically oriented, and respectful of participants and their
lived experiences. By situating her analysis within the context of her own doctoral research project,
she hopes not only to capture the analytical dimension of working at a methodological crossroads,
but also to offer a window into the ways that such issues are worked through in our own respective
and embodied research journeys. (Abstract by A.-M.H.)
Key words: Paradigm debate; Qualitative research; Reflexivity; Research ethics;
Researcher–participant relationship; Scholarly identity

Address correspondence to Kellee Caton, Faculty of Adventure, Culinary Arts and Tourism, Thompson Rivers University, 900 McGill Road,
Kamloops, British Columbia, V2C 0C8, Canada. Tel: 250-852-7630; E-mail: kcaton@tru.ca

127

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CATON
Introduction

When I was nearing the end of my own doctoral
work in 2007, I embarked on what turned out to be
a rather epic job search. I was “on the market” for
years—that lovely expression that makes those of
us described by it feel like ham hocks hanging in
a street market booth, ready for consumer inspection—and in all that time, I got pretty good at articulating a pithy “elevator description” of my research
interests for anyone who would give me an ear for
3 minutes. Each time I was asked, I would explain
that my work follows two primary tracks: first, I
investigate the role of tourism in ideological production, and second, I explore the lived experience
of tourism. I think this two-pronged description
probably made search committees conclude that I
was “unfocused,” a charge all too readily leveled at
qualitative scholars, who tend to like to go where
the data lead us, in an occupational climate that
prizes the Dumbo’s feather of constructed transparency, in which we assure others of our value by
laying out a tidy plan of what our research line will
contribute—or at least by having the courtesy to
bluff about it.
The truth, however, is that the relationship
between my two research tracks is far from random. It arises from a basic feature of life, which
I will call the paradox of self. What I mean by
this is that, as humans, we exist in some sense as
discrete entities, each with our own body, biography, and perspective. At the same time, however,
we are not discrete: our very DNA connects us to
each other across time, our ideas are the product of
intersections with that which lies outside ourselves,
and our behaviors create consequences that ripple
well beyond our individual lives. Our thoughts and
actions intrude upon each others’ biographies such
that we are simultaneously both many and one.
Thus, whenever I approach tourism phenomena, I
find that there are always stories unfolding on two
different levels at the same time. The first is that of
individuals, each on their own life trajectories, who
share with me their experiences of being tourists or
tourism service providers, or the physical manifestations of their creative energies, such as a personal
scrapbook or an advertising campaign. The second is that of society—of the social consequences
that arise when people from different backgrounds

encounter, represent, perform for, and make sense
of one another through tourism, for pleasure, for
education, or for survival. My respect for these
two stories—for the magic of individual human
beings (human becomings?) unspiraling on their
own unique paths and for the awesome responsibility that derives from the fact that we humans have
the power to affect one another’s lives—has been
a fundamental force in shaping my identity as a
tourism scholar.
Like many young scholars today, I came of age
in a rather odd philosophical milieu. On one hand,
I took the standard methods classes and read the
standard texts, where I encountered descriptions of
various social research traditions. Positivism, postpositivism, critical theory, and constructivism were
laid out before us, juxtaposed in neat matrices prepared by towering intellectual figures like Guba and
Lincoln (1998, 2003), with tidy descriptions of the
places where their core ideas were seen to converge
and diverge. It is probably not an exaggeration to say
that most social researchers of my generation will
feel eternally indebted for these efforts. Such handy
tools were great facilitators as we attempted to wrap
our heads around the sea of new concepts we were
encountering, and they were also convenient and
reassuring aids for scholarly identity building: we
could scroll through the matrix until we found the
research tradition that matched our particular sensibilities, almost as though we were shopping for a
breakfast cereal that met all the right criteria: high
fiber, no raisins, chocolate coating—Bingo! The
right selection and our dissertation methodology
could be complete. More importantly, we would be
able to articulate to our rapidly growing selves who
we were, what we were doing, and what we believed
in. On the other hand, this ease was disrupted by
another prevailing intellectual force: a destabilizing
postmodern sensibility that made the whole smorgasbord of research philosophy seem ripe for the
taking, a set of ingredients that could be mixed and
matched to customize an individual approach. Taking this latter path is not easy, though, and it inevitably forces us to rethink the ideas that have been
handed to us about various research approaches and
what is really at stake between them.
This critical review article—one part analytical methodology exploration, one part personal
reflection—is meant to be just such an exercise in

MAKING MESSES WITH RESEARCH PARADIGMS
rethinking, in this case, about the tensions between
two increasingly popular philosophical approaches
in tourism studies, which served, in an uneasy partnership, to anchor my own dissertation research a
half decade ago: constructivism and critical theory.
In this analysis, I question earlier claims regarding
the places where these two traditions tend to butt
heads and then attempt to interrogate what is really
at stake between them. Ultimately, I conclude that
the tensions between constructivism and critical
theory may lie in a surprising place: they may not
be ontological, and not necessarily even political,
but pedagogical and care oriented, having more to
do with the existence of different moral imaginaries about how people (in this case, researchers and
study participants) can best do right by each other
than with researchers’ basic beliefs about the nature
of reality or the point of the research endeavor.
There are many ways of approaching the relationship between the researcher and the study participants in social inquiry. A traditional, positivistic
view would hold that research participants are there
to provide data and that the researcher’s goal is to
extract that data; it would essentially remain silent
on the issue of morality in the context of that relationship, aside from its concern that the research be
conducted in line with ethical standards governing
the profession, as laid down by formal bodies like
research ethics boards. Many interpretivist schools
of thought, however, have evinced a greater awareness of the complexities that arise in what are inevitably human relationships embedded in the context
of the social research encounter. Feminist researchers, in particular, have been at the forefront of arguments about obligations on the part of the researcher
toward his or her participants that go beyond the
call of the typical research ethics approval form.
Such discussions have opened the possibility
of imagining research encounters in more diverse
ways than as simply forums for data transmission.
Like any substantive communicative exchange,
they are also potentially spaces for reflection, perspective enlargement, and personal growth, on the
part of both the researcher and the participant (see
Caton, 2013, for a philosophical account, and Bott,
2010, for an excellent empirical example, in the
context of her work with British lap dancers in Tenerife). Thus, research encounters potentially have
a pedagogical capacity. And, like all substantive

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human interactions, they are spaces in which we
must navigate questions of how to do right by one
another—spaces in which we have a duty of care to
one another.
Although the issue of the relationship between
the researcher and study participants is beginning to
receive more attention, as evidenced by the creation
of new categories in Guba and Lincoln’s (2003)
updated matrix like “inquirer posture” and “ethics,”
it nevertheless continues to lack the level of consideration it deserves in qualitative inquiry discussions
on paradigmatic conflicts and confluences—and
methodological issues, in general, lack sufficient
attention in tourism forums (Duval, 2006). The
goal of this critical review article is thus to explore
the issue of the tension between constructivism
and critical theory in more depth, abstractly and
­analytically—debunking old myths and opening new
questions about what is really at stake between these
two perspectives—while also offering a window
into the concrete reality of what it felt like, for one
lone doctoral student, to navigate the messy space
between these philosophical traditions in the practice of trying to create tourism understandings. In so
doing, I seek to engage with the invocation of scholars like Gabb (2010), working in the intimate and
ethically loaded area of family studies, and Brogden
and ­Patterson (2007), working in education studies,
who argue for the need to offer sustained attention
to the unique kinds of ethical dilemmas that qualitative researchers face as they go about making their
impacts on the social world. These scholars offer
profound, empirically situated discussions of the
complexity of the care ethic in qualitative research
practice, and in the case of Gabb (2010), highlight
the way that “commitment to participants can come
into conflict with the academic need for a critical
analytical mind” (p. 461)—a concern central in my
exploration here of the tensions between constructivism and critical theory. Like these scholars and
many others, I agree that one of the most important ways we can attend to such matters is to give
deep reflexive consideration to our interactions and
relationships with our research participants.
A Tale of Two Traditions
Both constructivism and critical theory are
­complex intellectual movements that can better be

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CATON

imagined as skeins of ideas (to borrow a metaphor
from Peters & Burbules, 2004) than as unified theories: they are each like balls of yarn, made up of
strands that are individual and separate, yet twisted
together and generally moving in the same direction. Thus, to characterize these two movements
fully here would be impossible. Instead, I shall
simply aim for the standard garden variety description of these perspectives—the type that is typically
served up for doctoral students—and then, to stick
with the knitting analogy, hope that (as my friend
who likes to make scarves is fond of saying) my
characterization “passes the galloping horse test,”
meaning that it looks good enough, from the perspective of someone at a distance moving quickly,
to get the job done.
Thus, in short, we can say that constructivism is
the term for a broad movement in social research
philosophy and practice, which contends that knowledge and truth about the social world are created
rather than discovered, and that what we take to be
social facts are actually the product of discursive
practices that have favored some perspectives over
others, making them appear natural and inevitable
(Schwandt, 1998). Constructivists are typically
viewed as rejecting the realist ontology and objectivist notion of truth favored by postpositivists,
instead subscribing to a relativist ontology, or the
belief that reality is plural and exists as a set of “intangible mental constructions, socially and experientially based, local and specific in nature . . . and
dependent for their form and content on the individual persons or groups holding [them]” (Guba &
Lincoln, 1998, p. 206). Epistemologically speaking, constructivism operates under the belief that
the “findings” of research are not actually found,
but created through the investigator’s interaction
with the studied phenomenon. The researcher’s
identity and values cannot be excluded from the
research process, and even if this were possible, it
would not be desirable, as a researcher’s humanity
is precisely what endows her with the capacity for
empathy, a prerequisite for understanding others’
worlds (Baronov, 2005; Guba & Lincoln, 1998).
Furthermore, constructivists (especially feminist
theorists) tend to be highly concerned with rapport
in the research process. Although rapport certainly
aids in a researcher’s quest to understand how participants make meaning of events in their lives,

notions of respect, reciprocity, and compassion are
more likely to be viewed not as simply a tool for
data collection but as a moral imperative (­Watson,
2009). Constructivists often view themselves as
facilitators of “multivoiced reconstructions” of
phe­nomena (Guba & Lincoln, 2003, p. 260) and
consciously attempt to avoid hegemonizing the
perspectives of the individuals they study.
Taking a similar flyby of critical theory, we
can say that this term is the signifier for a loose
coalition of ideas whose origin can be traced back
through the original Frankfurt School boys, to the
earlier work of luminaries like Gramsci and Marx.
In its most basic sense, critical theory foregrounds
the existence of conflicts between social groups
and attempts to work in the service of the marginalized (Kincheloe & McLaren, 2003). It is overtly
political, arguing that all intellectual labor should
proceed with the goal of trying to right some particular wrong. Early critical theory, taking its cue
from Marx, considered much extant social theory
to be too esoteric and lacking in power to effect
material improvements in individuals’ lives and
instead emphasized scholarly work that produced
obvious social action, and the movement still
retains an activist flavor. However, critical theory
has also been influenced by the work of postmodern thinkers (Kincheloe & McLaren, 2003). Thus,
an emphasis on discourse and its power in maintaining systems of dominance has emerged (Parker,
1998), and contemporary critical theorists are often
engaged in projects that seek to deconstruct various
cultural discourses to reveal the ways that symbolic
practices operate to produce hegemony. While
some would argue that the discursive turn has taken
critical theory away from its activist roots, others
would counter argue that deconstructing takenfor-granted notions is a necessary step in effecting
social change, because altering discourse means
altering the very way that people understand the
world around them, which renders actions different
from those taken in the status quo sensible.
Ontologically, critical theorists are generally
argued to subscribe to a position of “historical realism” (Guba & Lincoln, 1998, p. 205), meaning a
belief that individuals’ understandings of reality
are distorted because they have been shaped by
ideological factors; thus, social structures that are
taken as “real” are actually historically evolved

MAKING MESSES WITH RESEARCH PARADIGMS
and are neither natural nor inevitable, but they are
nevertheless real in their consequences. Epistemologically, Guba and Lincoln (1998) argue critical
theorists to be in consort with constructivists in the
belief that researchers and their values are inevitably intertwined with studied phenomena. Critical
theorists engage their values both in their decisions
about what questions to problematize and in their
interactions with participants, whom they often
wish to enlighten. They have been traditionally
argued to subscribe to a foundationalist perspective,
in the sense that they locate truth in social structures of oppression, which conceal this truth from
the hapless actors who are caught in them, unable
to see their oppression or perceive the misalignment between their own best interests and those
of the system they have been socialized to uphold
(­Kincheloe & McLaren, 2003).
Upon considering these descriptions, what has
traditionally popped out as constituting the conflict between constructivism and critical theory (at
least as I was taught in grad school) appears to be
twofold and centers around the notions of ontology
and research purpose. This simple characterization,
however, raises some important questions.
First, does it really make sense to say that constructivism and critical theory have different “basic
beliefs” with regard to ontology? Ontology refers
to one’s views about the nature of reality, and holding a realist ontology, in theory, simply means
assuming that there is a reality out there, existing
independently of any human who might wish to
know about it. Despite descriptions of some new
inquiry paradigms that would appear to argue to
the contrary, it seems unlikely that many scholars
of any stripe would oppose the basic notion that
phenomena (broadly conceived) exist, regardless
of whether we, as individual researchers, have any
interaction with them or not. For example, it would
seem foolish (not to mention highly egocentric) to
assume that because I, as a social researcher, have
never personally encountered any individuals living
in Bangladesh and have no idea what they are up to
in their corner of the world, that such individuals in
fact do not exist and are not up to anything. Thus,
most researchers would seem to be able to agree
on the basic premise that there are objects, events,
behaviors, and so forth going on in the world that
exist external of any individual potential knower of

131

them. To argue that most practicing constructivists
would not abide this position (whether one wants to
call it an “ontologically realist” viewpoint or something else) would seem to indicate a misreading of
what these scholars actually believe (Gergen, 2009).
Indeed, many qualitative inquiry writers have suggested, explicitly or implicitly, that a realist ontology is not incompatible with constructivist views
at all (e.g., Barkin, 2010; Burr, 1998, 2003; Crotty,
2003; Patomaki & Wright, 2000; Pernecky, 2012;
Slife & Williams, 1995; Weinberg, 2008), and some
have argued that adherence to a genuinely relativist
ontology is not even really a marker of constructivism, but rather of solipsism (Pernecky, 2012).
Instead, what most qualitative scholars would
emphasize is that what complicates social phenomena, as opposed to physical phenomena, is that the
former have meaning (Loseke, 1999; Schwandt,
2003). If we accept symbolic interactionism’s
general, and not very controversial, premise that
people act toward objects and situations in their
world on the basis of the meanings those objects
and situations hold for them, then we can easily
see why both constructivists and critical theorists
are interested in meaning. Constructivists are
interested in understanding the way individuals
and groups make sense of their world in localized,
historicized moments, as they believe that consequences flow from these constructions. It is often
their aim, through the research process, to help
participants coconstruct new and more sophisticated understandings that will lead to courses of
action that enhance their quality of life (Guba &
Lincoln, 1998). One key aim of critical theorists,
in turn, is to understand how social structures (e.g.,
class, race, gender) influence the way people make
sense of their lives and choices (as, again, these
constructions have consequences), and to help
people to recognize the ways they unknowingly
participate in systems of dominance and oppression. Thus, if we can agree that understanding
meaning is central to the work of constructivists
(by definition), as well as to that of many critical
theorists, then what is called into question philosophically is not the nature of reality but the nature
and consequences of meaning. The question of
whether or not real things exist is different from the
question of whether or not they have meaning and
whether or not that meaning can be linked, through

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CATON

compelling evidence and argumentation, to identifiable tangible or ideological outcomes, which may
then be deemed positive or negative (although certainly, all people involved may not agree on what
a particular situation means, what outcomes appear
to be flowing from it, or whether a given outcome
is good or bad).
So is there a substantive difference with regard
to ontology? It would seem that each perspective
clearly 1) acknowledges the real existence of multiple meanings and 2) views real consequences as
flowing from those meanings.1 Perhaps it is merely
the language each perspective favors that causes
the confusion. Constructivists tend to refer to
“multiple realities,” but the idea that human reality is characterized by “multiple meanings,” which
are all equally “real” in the sense that they are all
actually held by individuals, probably better captures the essence of their perspective. Similarly,
the concept of “false consciousness,” sometimes
used by critical theorists, illustrates an awareness
of the existence of at least two ways of looking at
a given situation: an unenlightened view, in which
people accept their circumstances as natural and
inevitable, and an enlightened view in which people recognize the socially constructed nature of the
system that constrains their life chances and make
choices to oppose injustice. Both of these perspectives are clearly viewed as “real,” in the sense that
people actually subscribe to them, and they are also
viewed as resulting in actual consequences, or there
would be no purpose in attempting to rid people
of “false consciousness.” Again, it seems to be the
expression that is problematic, as the term “false”
is not being used to express the idea of “not real,”
but rather of “misinformed” or “failing to recognize
one’s own best interests.” And constructivists must
believe that there is some way to logically link individuals’ meaning-making activities with personal
and social consequences. Otherwise, there would
be no purpose in encouraging people to develop
more informed and sophisticated constructions,
as no positive consequences (not even internal
ones in the minds of research participants) would
ensue. Thus, both perspectives recognize the existence of multiple constructions, and neither tends
to be concerned with judging these constructions
as “true or false,” but rather as “better or worse,”
depending on the nature of the outcomes produced.

Both perspectives are less invested in truth than in
consequences.2
The view that critical theory and constructivism
differ radically with regard to research aims seems
to be similarly overstated. As noted, critical theory
focuses overtly on the critique and transformation
of exploitative social structures whereas constructivism has traditionally claimed the more modest
ground of seeking to understand people’s interpretations of given phenomena and life situations
(Guba & Lincoln, 1998), a position that has led it
to garner criticism for “lacking a critical purchase”
(Chambers, 2007, see also Schwandt, 1998). But
such a cursory summation of this difference fails
to capture the complexity of these two research
approaches in practice. Although space does not
permit an empirical analysis of recent acts of
“doing” constructivism or critical theory, research
philosophers have argued convincingly that current
reasoning has brought the two perspectives closer
together on this front. As Schwandt (2003) argues,
today’s practicing constructivists are far from apolitical. Even prominent scholars hailing from the
most extreme corners of the modern constructivist
movement (say, Gergen or Denzin), who speak most
vociferously about the lack of any foundations on
which humans can securely base knowledge claims,
often link their work to agendas of democracy or
moral empowerment (Schwandt, 2003). Similarly,
Kincheloe and McLaren (2003) argue that the influence of the “postdiscourses” (i.e., postmodernism,
poststructuralism, and other perspectives that have
encouraged scholars to radically question and move
beyond received views of knowledge production)
has brought critical theory closer to constructivism
because researchers have come to recognize even
the act of research as being power driven and to be
more reflexive about their role in the social web as
constructers and evaluators of knowledge and as
voices of authority. In most cases, this has not led
them to slide down the slippery slope into moral
abandon, as awakening to antifoundationalist recognitions could theoretically lead some humans to
do (McGettigan, 2000). Instead, most critical theorists have gracefully picked themselves up from the
dust that fell when antifoundationalism brought the
walls down, and have come to the conclusion that
they need not embrace foundationalist thinking in
order to pursue a liberatory agenda. This position

MAKING MESSES WITH RESEARCH PARADIGMS
is given perhaps its most powerful philosophical
explication in the work of Rorty (1989, 1999), who
concluded, at the end of his life and after decades
of deep thought about the matter, that social hope
can be located not in God nor in science nor an any
other foundational doctrine, but only in the pragmatic human urge to reach out to each other and
to aid and comfort each other, in the best—if still
bumbling—way we currently know how. Indeed,
the new generation of antifoundationalist critical
theorists has been active in creating a burgeoning
literature on the need to relink knowledge production and moral reasoning (Belhassen, 2007;
Caton, 2012; House & Howe, 1999; Kincheloe
& McLaren, 2003; Schwandt, 1996) because the
absence of secure foundations for truth renders the
human moral compass more important than ever.
For many of us working within the current “new
paradigm” milieu, then, regardless of which particular badge of scholarly identity we may choose
to bear, there is both a craving for justice, to bring
about positive social change through our research
activities, and also a recognition of our own limits
and a drive for connection—the desire to reach out
to others in our world, to respect their views and
ways of making sense of the world, and to refuse
the arrogant position of attempting to perform absolute adjudication between conflicting constructions
of reality. These impulses exist in tension with one
another, and therein, in my view, lies the rub.
But before I go any further, let me tell you the
story of Jim.
Encountering Jim
In the spring of 2007, I set out to collect the final
pieces of data for my doctoral project. As noted,
my work focuses on the role of tourism in ideological production, and for my dissertation research, I
was studying Semester at Sea (SAS, an American
university study abroad program) in an attempt to
understand how educational tourism might serve
as a site of perpetuation or resistance to the hegemonic Western discourses identified by so many
tourism media scholars that continue to position the
non-Western world in colonialist terms, as exotic,
sensual, servile, backward, dependent, and morally inferior. I considered several sources of data
for my project, and my final task was to gather the

133

perspectives of SAS alumni through personal interviews. I wanted to understand how these individuals were making sense of the people, spaces, and
cultures they had encountered while traveling.
Jim (a pseudonym) was one of several SAS
alumni who was kind enough to share his story
with me. I had scheduled to meet him on a sunny
Saturday morning at a corner coffee shop near
DePaul University. When I showed up there, I was
greeted by a lanky, t-shirted guy in his mid-twenties
who met me with a huge grin. Jim was immediately endearing. He told me about how Semester at
Sea had completely changed his life: how meeting
people all over the world had shaken up his white,
middle class existence and made him realize racist
assumptions he never knew he had harbored. He
spoke of the kindness he encountered, as complete
strangers offered to show him around their hometowns and share their cultures, inviting his group
of friends home for dinner and sometimes even
for overnight stays. Especially, he discussed how
the trip had made him change directions in life and
realize what, for him, would make for a meaningful
existence. As he explained,
Before the trip, I didn’t really know what I wanted
to do with my life. I guess I thought I’d travel,
maybe get a job in Vail [the Colorado Rockies
resort] and be a ski bum and then eventually buy
a big house in the suburbs. But seeing families all
over the world . . . really made me gain focus. . . .
Looking back on my first stop, which was Cuba,
[I got] invited into these people’s home, and it was
a one room place with a sink, and a toilet, with no
shower, and I sat down in a room that just had these
blankets piled up in the corner, and there were 20
people who lived there, in one room, and you have
never seen such happy people. Their smiles were
from ear to ear, and these kids—you could tell
they were just thrilled, happy kids, and I wanted
that. There’s something about having that feeling
in that room, and I thought, if I could somehow get
to that point, then that’s all I would really want.

Jim told me that now that he was finished with
college he could not wait to meet the love of his
life and start a family. I immediately begin mentally
scrolling through the list of nice single girls I knew,
wishing I could think of someone to set him up
with. He was just that great: open, sincere—quite
simply, the kind of guy anyone would want her best
friend to end up with.

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CATON

The problem, however, was that in some ways,
Jim’s reasoning patterns fell in line with just the sort
of discourses I was hoping programs like Semester at
Sea would upend. Although his opinions could never
be characterized as obnoxious, he did tend to engage
in certain problematic reasoning patterns, like romanticizing poverty. Although it was great that he recognized that poverty and misery are not the same thing,
he seemed not to grasp the distinction between poverty
and voluntary simplicity, the salient point being that the
latter is a choice. Also, because of his strong views that
traveling with organized programs while the ship was
in port was “not what Semester at Sea is about” and
that such workshops merely served as a crutch for the
“less adventurous who can’t open up,” mediating what
would otherwise be a direct cross-cultural experience,
he seemed to miss out on a lot of the intellectual content of the trip, which would have served to frame the
experience and help him to make sense of some of what
he was witnessing. For example, Jim commented that
it was hard to see the challenges that many residents of
poorer nations face, but when I asked him how he made
sense of such vast inequality, he answered that he supposed it was due to a lack of natural resources in these
countries, combined with mismanagement and corruption on the part of their governments. Past colonial projects and current hegemonies were lost on him, despite
the foregrounding of such issues in SAS’s curriculum.
The critical theorist in me wanted to speak up
when Jim offered his analysis of the state of the
world—to fill in some of the gaps in his Swisscheesed shipboard education. I wanted to argue
with him about the value of educator narratives in
helping to frame international travel. I wanted to
offer him a different view that might broaden his
perspective. But I was loathe to scare him away.
The constructivist in me feared he would think I did
not find his perspective valid or valuable. I didn’t
want him to think I thought he was a bad person—
which I didn’t.3 I sat there frozen. I took in all he
had to say and told him how much I had enjoyed
talking with him and how much I appreciated his
participation in my study. And that was that.
Rethinking the Tension Between
Constructivism and Critical Theory
My encounters with Jim and with the other participants in my study, as well as my engagement

with the research philosophy literature regarding
the evolving trajectories of constructivism and
critical theory, have led me to an interesting realization about what is at stake between these two
perspectives. Clearly, practitioners coming from
both angles typically want to extend themselves in
the service of others. The difference seems to lie in
each’s orientation regarding how to help.
Constructivism seems to approach caring as a
matter of respecting autonomy. Emphasis is placed
on respecting the conclusions that individuals’ own
experiences have led them to reach. There is also
an emphasis on showing respect for the diverse
processes through which people come to know the
world. Constructivism’s orientation toward care
as respect for individuality and autonomy makes
sense, given its close relationship with standpoint
theories like feminism and critical race theory,
which struggle against patriarchy, racism, and other
forms of oppression. It is easy to imagine why, upon
entrance to the academy, members of marginalized
groups, whose ways of knowing had not previously
been valued, would consider listening, exercising
tolerance, and acknowledging the validity of others’ perspectives to be key components of respect
and caring.
Alternatively, critical theory seems to approach
caring more as a matter of nurturing growth through
information sharing. Communication on the part of
the researcher is emphasized to enable individuals
to begin to see their lives from perspectives they
may not previously have been able to access. While
critical theorists have historically had the troubling
reputation of viewing social structures somewhat
deterministically and believing themselves to hold
the true knowledge of the inner workings of the
world, which they must use to enlighten others,
contemporary critical theory has, as noted, been
very much influenced by the currents of postmodernism, which emphasize the endless interpretive
possibilities that exist in the space where individual agents and structures collide. Thus, postmodern critical theorists are logically more likely
to view working for social change as a dialogue,
in which researchers, participants, and even readers of the written research report bring their own
understandings to the encounter and deliberate with
one another to encourage the development of perspectives that produce better (typically more just,

MAKING MESSES WITH RESEARCH PARADIGMS
democratic, and compassionate) outcomes. This
tendency toward viewing the research encounter as
a dialogue between evolving perspectives is nicely
encapsulated by a recently emergent series of
approaches to social research, known variously as
the participatory, participatory action, or deliberative democratic paradigms (see Heron & Reason,
1997; House & Howe, 1999; Howe, 2005), which
represent a wedding of the constructivist commitment to noncoercive research practice to a growthand action-oriented framework derived, in large
measure, from the legacy of critical theory. Thus,
the goal from both sides seems increasingly to be the
forging of a social research approach that is reflexive, critically and politically oriented, and respectful of participants and their lived experiences.
Of course this is sticky in practice. I am reminded
of a story from my childhood, from a book that I
loved to read when I was around 11 or 12 by Barthe
DeClements (1984), called Seventeen and In
Between. In the book, one of the characters, Jack,
who has dropped out of high school to work in the
logging industry, relates a story to his best friend
Elsie about a profound exchange he has had with
a local shaman. The exchange occurred when Jack
and the shaman went walking in the woods, and
upon approaching a tree, the shaman asked Jack
which way he planned to go around it. Jack, confused, replied that he supposed he would go to the
right. The shaman suggested he go to the left and
then asked Jack if Jack thought the shaman had any
right to be telling him which way to go around the
tree. Jack concluded that he did not, an answer that
pleased the shaman, although the two pondered the
idea that perhaps the shaman had special knowledge and was trying to prevent Jack from harming
himself by going the wrong way. Elsie recalls the
story later when she catches herself about to pass
judgment on one of her classmate’s behaviors,
and as such, the story provides a nice message for
young readers about tolerance and the importance
of allowing others to live their lives as they see fit. It
still resonates with me so many years later, though,
because in truth, I can see both sides of the story. I
prize my autonomy, but I am not sure I would like
to break my ankle tripping over a tree root if someone could have foreseen my fall and suggested I
take a different route around the tree. One person’s
savior is another’s imperialist.

135

So where does this leave Jim and me? Was I
showing good, constructivist respect for his perspective by keeping quiet when I found his reasoning problematic? Was I merely weaseling out of
creating conflict with someone I could tell was a
kind human being? Was the weaseling worth it to
maintain rapport? I am reminded here of Shuman’s
(2006) warning (cited in Watson, 2009) that an
empathetic approach can end up “serving the interests of the empathizer rather than the empathized”
(p. 153).
How would Jim have reacted for the rest of the
interview if I had suggested, however gently, that
his way of interpreting his travel experiences was
in some way linked to oppression? Would he have
become defensive and closed himself off to me?
How would he have felt if I had “saved up” my
feelings in this regard and then, after listening supportively for 2 hours to his analysis of his experiences, hit him up with my take on things. Would he
have felt betrayed?
I firmly believe that critical analyses of travel like
those I attempt, which include deconstructing the
ways tourists make sense of what they encounter,
are important for the world—that they can be vital
contributions to a broader discourse that seeks to
advance equality and compassion. But if, in pursuit
of this goal, I prioritized rapport in order to access
Jim’s perspective, validating it with my silence,
without also creating an opportunity through which
Jim could individually grow with regard to his own
views of the world, then was I using him unfairly?
Are the students who give their time and energy to
talk to me about their experiences merely the eggs
that must be cracked to create the greater omelet of
social change?
What’s even worse is that I benefit individually
from the situation: I get to have a smooth, enjoyable, conflict-free interview exchange about a topic
of interest to me, and I get to make a living writing
up the research report. In this regard, I am reminded
of Bono’s wise words from U2’s Zoo TV era in
the early 1990s: “Every artist is a cannibal, every
poet is a thief. They all kill their inspiration and
then sing about their grief.” I publish my report,
society is a smidge better off, and I get a paycheck
(at last, now that a university has finally “bought
me” from the ham hock booth), but is all of this in
some way at Jim’s expense—at the cost of his own

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CATON

growth because, in wanting to validate him and his
perspective, and in wanting to gather data successfully, I failed to tell him what my experience has led
me to know about the world? Should the research
encounter be pedagogical?
A supportive colleague, older and wiser than me,
once made the comment upon hearing this story that
it is important to remember that personal growth
takes a long time. Sometimes simply planting the
seed through an interview conversation can cause
individuals to reflect on their own over time. After
all, as Bruner (2005) tells us, we are always making sense of what has happened to us over and over
throughout the course of our lives, always in new
contexts as we mature and our situations change.
Thus, there is cause to champion a subtle approach
in which gentle prodding, which may be hardly
noticeable at the time, can have wonderful effects in
the long run. I worry about such reasoning becoming an excuse in my own research or teaching, however—an opportunity for me to be lazy or to hide
from conflicts and uncomfortable situations in the
name of wanting to “respect” others by letting them
figure things out for themselves.4 Finding the line
between being a pedagogical slacker and an overbearing zealot can be harder than it seems. Did I do
right by Jim? By the world, for its greater good? I
wish I knew, but years later, I still have no answers.
Notes
1
These ideas are key elements in a perspective that has
been expressed by some scholars as “critical realism” (see
Patomaki & Wright, 2000), and they also bear affinities with
pragmatism (see Rorty, 1989, 1999), but in the interest of
preventing confusion, I am opting not to open these cans of
worms in the present discussion.
2
Again, some readers may recognize this as a classic
pragmatist position, but again, fully contextualizing this
argument in pragmatism would go well beyond the space
available here.
3
See Bott (2010), for an excellent account of how our like
or dislike of research participants can shape data collection
outcomes.
4
See Brogden and Patterson (2007) for an excellent discussion on this tension.

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