A moment of reflection about the construction of knowledge in a post-modern research set-up.

Abstract: Within the social sciences there has always been a tendency to divide ideas, concepts and thinkers in a binary manner. As such positivism is placed against symbolic interactionism, naturalism against anti-naturalism and so on. The positivistic approaches study the world as if it is confined within general laws, although this might be useful for analysis, it is not representing the complexities of the real world. Since Malinowski’s study of Trobriand society, ethnographic studies have become more differentiated and methods for data gathering, other than participant observation, have ‘emerged’. Methodologies are borrowed from phenomenology to feminism and postmodernism. The reflections made in postmodern and critical ethnography are relevant for the study of power structures and their impact on every day life. In this paper I will illustrate the impact of Foucauldian and Bourdieuan thinking for my own research. Using my own work in several deprived neighbourhoods in Cape Town I will show how studying the every day life of people can help to understand the underlying power structures of a given society, and more importantly, how the structure-agency dichotomy in the social sciences can be overcome