513733

research-article2013

QIXXXX10.1177/1077800413513733Qualitative InquiryMorgan

Article

Pragmatism as a Paradigm for Social

Research

Qualitative Inquiry
2014, Vol. 20(8) 10451053
The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/1077800413513733
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David L. Morgan1

Abstract
Although advocates of mixed-methods research have proposed pragmatism as a paradigm for social research, nearly all
of that work has emphasized the practical rather than the philosophical aspects of pragmatism. This article addresses that
gap by connecting John Deweys work on experience and inquiry to current issues in the study of social research. In doing
so, it also addresses the political concerns that link pragmatism and social justice. As a new paradigm, pragmatism disrupts
the assumptions of older approaches based on the philosophy of knowledge, while providing promising new directions for
understanding the nature of social research.
Keywords
mixed-methods design, methodologies, pragmatism, methods of inquiry, John Dewey

Every thinker puts some portion of an apparently stable world

in peril and no one can wholly predict what will emerge in its
place.
John Dewey, Experience and Nature (1925a/2008, p. 172)

Although the possibility of pursuing pragmatism as a paradigm for social research is not entirely new (e.g., Gage,
1989; Howe, 1988; Patton, 1988), its frequent linkage with
Mixed-Methods Research (MMR) has heightened the
awareness of pragmatism (e.g., Biesta, 2010; Hall, 2013;
Johnson & Onwuegbuzie, 2004; Maxcy, 2003; Morgan,
2007; Pearce, 2012; Tashakkori & Teddlie, 2010). There
are, however, legitimate questions about the extent to which
MMR has actually made use of the intellectual foundations
of pragmatism as a philosophy (Denzin, 2010, 2012). MMR
has emphasized the practical aspect of research methods in
ways that both introduced pragmatism as a paradigm for
social research, largely avoiding serious contact with the
philosophical foundations of pragmatism.
Does arguing for a broader application of pragmatism to
social research require a clarification of its specific relationship to MMR? At issue here is the idea that pragmatism is
somehow uniquely related to MMR. This confusion is reminiscent of some paradigmatic claims that qualitative methods must be connected to constructivism and quantitative
methods must be connected to post-positivism. In all of
these cases, there may be an affinity between paradigms and
methods, but there is no deterministic link that forces the
use of a particular paradigm with a particular set of methods. Although the recent resurgence of interest in pragmatism was indeed sparked by an attempt to resolve issues

within MMR, this says more about the historical context

involved rather than implying an intimate connection
between mixed methods as an approach to research and
pragmatism as a paradigm.
The argument here is that pragmatism can serve as a
philosophical program for social research, regardless of
whether that research uses qualitative, quantitative, or
mixed methods. As a new paradigm, it replaces the older
philosophy of knowledge approach (e.g., Guba, 1990; Guba
& Lincoln, 2005; Lincoln, 2010), which understands social
research in terms of ontology, epistemology, and methodology. This claim to be a new paradigm rests on demonstrating the broader value of pragmatism as a philosophical
system, along with its immediate practicality for issues such
as research design.
This article thus has two goals. The first is to make stronger connections between MMR and pragmatism as a philosophy by moving beyond the narrow approaches that
reduce pragmatism to practicality. Doing so leads to an
emphasis on John Deweys concept of inquiry. The second
goal is to demonstrate that this philosophical pragmatism
provides a useful system for understanding social research
in general. Doing so includes particular attention to issues
of social justice as a broad agenda for social research.

Portland State University, OR, USA

Corresponding Author:
David L. Morgan, Department of Sociology, Portland State University,
Portland, OR 97207-0751, USA.
Email: morgand@pdx.edu

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Qualitative Inquiry 20(8)

Pragmatism as a Philosophy
The crude summary of pragmatism as merely asking about
what works has been a perennial problem (Dewey,
1920/2008), so it is hardly surprising that it is occurring
once again. Of course, a similar kind of caricature also
exists for simplistic versions of constructivism, in which
social structure exists only in the imaginations of atomistic
individuals, and in retrograde summaries of post-positivism, which still insist on a one-to-one correspondence
between our observations and some external reality.
Fortunately, the ongoing discussions of the last decades
about paradigms (Guba, 1990) have created a more sophisticated understanding of constructivism and post-positivism
as paradigms for social research. Unfortunately, the omission of pragmatism from that debate has limited our understanding of it as a philosophical system. Hence, clarifying
the value of pragmatism as a philosophy for social research
requires getting past an emphasis on practicality.
The sheer difficulty of designing and carrying out MMR
helps explain the fields attraction to the portions of pragmatism that highlight workable approaches to problem
solving. MMR as a research community has a strong tendency to emphasize the how to aspects of research; however, this captures only part of the message of pragmatism,
which places more importance on questions about why to do
research in a given way. Following the path of classical
pragmatism (e.g., James, 1907/1995), we need to ask, What
difference does it makes to do our research one way rather
than another? When we ask why to questions, this points
to the importance of our choice of research goals. Yet even
the how to questions involve more than making technical
decisions about research methods because of the commitments we make when we chose one way rather than another
to pursue our goals. Thus, a limited emphasis on what
works is never enough, because it ignores choices about
both the goals to be pursued and the means to meet those
goals.
Denzin (2012) summarizes the importance of these
issues as follows:
The MMR links to the pragmatism of Dewey, James, Mead,
and Peirce are problematic. Classic pragmatism is not a
methodology per se. It is a doctrine of meaning, a theory of
truth. It rests on the argument that the meaning of an event
cannot be given in advance of experience. The focus is on the
consequences and meanings of an action or event in a social
situation. This concern goes beyond any given methodology or
any problem-solving activity. (p. 81)

Stating that pragmatism as a philosophy goes beyond

problem solving is a key point. There is a distinct trap here
that needs to be avoided, because the fundamental principles of pragmatism are indeed well suited to the analysis of
problem solving as a human activity. Given the importance

of problem solving for research in general and research

design in particular, it is hardly surprising that the renewed
interest in pragmatism within the social sciences has arisen
within this context. This historical circumstance has, however, downplayed other aspects of pragmatism. One of the
best places to get a sense of both the broad outlines of pragmatism as a philosophy and its orientation to problem solving is in the work of John Dewy.

Deweys Concept of Experience

Throughout his career, Dewey sought to promote pragmatism by reorienting philosophy away from abstract concerns
and turning it instead toward an emphasis on human experience (Dewey, 1920/2008; 1925a/2008). For Dewey, experience is built around two inseparable questions: What are the
sources of our beliefs? And, what are the meanings of our
actions? The answers to these two questions are linked in a
cycle, in which the origins of our beliefs arise from our
prior actions and the outcomes of our actions are found in
our beliefs. Experiences create meaning by bringing beliefs
and actions in contact with each other (see Figure 1).
From Dewey standpoint, experiences always involve a
process of interpretation. Beliefs must be interpreted to generate action, and actions must be interpreted to generate
beliefs. Many of our experiences occur in a relatively
unquestioned fashion that Dewey termed habit (Dewey,
1922/2008), in which the beliefs that we have acquired
from previous experiences can adequately handle the
demands for action in our current circumstances. In this
case, much of what we do happens in a semi-automated
state that does not require careful decision making. For
example, making breakfast typically does involve some
choices, but many of our actions in the situation are almost
purely habitual. In contrast to habit, Dewey describes
inquiry as a process of self-conscious decision making.
Many problematic situations require thoughtful reflection,
and this is where inquiry comes into play. As an example,
the tendency to treat inquiry and research as synonyms indicates the importance of careful, reflective decision making
in research. Because inquiry places such a central role in
both Deweys thinking and the research process, the next
section of this article will take up the concept of inquiry in
some detail.
Whether experiences are based on habit or active
inquiry, they always occur within some specific context.
This context dependency means that our ability to use prior
experience to predict the outcome of a current action is fallible and probabilisticthere is always the chance that our
prior experiences will not be sufficient to guide our actions
in a given setting, or that what appear to be the safest
assumptions will fail to produce the expected outcome.
More specifically, Dewey treats all experience as both historically and culturally located (1922/2008). This cultural

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pragmatism lacked a philosophy of knowledge, but instead

of traditional metaphysics he relied on a process-based
approach to knowledge, in which inquiry was the defining
process.

Deweys Concept of Inquiry as a Basis

for Research

Figure 1. Deweys model of experience.

and historical dependency, and the changing nature of the

circumstances in which we find ourselves, is a crucial reason why reasoning from past experience can only be fallible and probabilistic.
Words like reasoning and probabilistic can make it seem
as if the connection between belief and action is based on
cold, cognitive rationality. On the contrary, Dewey argues
argued that experiences always have an emotional, embodied element, in which feelings provide an essential link
between beliefs and actions. From this standpoint, feelings
are often both the sources and the outcomes of our experiences. Dewey often spoke of the extent to which the outcome of an action was satisfying (1925a/2008), by which
he meant both a degree of positive affect and the sense of
meeting or satisfying some hope, desire, or need.
This description of experience also has the potential to
make it seem too individualistic, whereas experiences for
Dewey are always social in nature. Deweys thinking in this
area (1922/2008; 1925b/2008) is very similar to Meads,
which is hardly surprising because they were colleagues in
the philosophy department at the University of Chicago as
well as personal friends. From the first moments of infancy,
our experiences are shaped by others. As we mature, even
our private thoughts are based on concepts that have been
socially shaped. Consequently, all beliefs and all actions are
social, so all of our experiences are inescapably social.
For Dewey as a professional philosopher, this emphasis
on human experience created a strong contrast with the
established philosophy of his day. Rather than metaphysical
discussions about the nature of reality or truth, Dewey and
other pragmatists called for a different starting point that
was rooted in life itselfa life that was inherently contextual, emotional, and social. This does not mean that Deweys

As noted above, inquiry is a specific kind of experience.

What distinguishes inquiry is that it is a process by which
beliefs that have become problematic are examined and
resolved through action. It is a process of making choices
by asking and answering questions, in which those questions concern the likely outcomes of applying current
beliefs to future action. In Deweys approach to inquiry
(1910b/2008), there is no sharp boundary between everyday
life and research. Instead, research is simply a form of
inquiry that is performed more carefully and more self-consciously than most other responses to problematic situations. Just as a decision about buying a car demands more
attention than what to order for lunch, research in general
requires a considerable amount of effort to make the choices
that are most likely to have the desired consequences.
Overall, however, inquiry is just one form of experience,
and research is just one form of inquiry.
Deweys systematic approach to inquiry involves five
steps, which can be summarized as follows (for more
detailed treatments of Dewey and inquiry, see Biesta &
Barbules, 2004; Morgan, 2013; Strubing, 2007):
1. Recognizing a situation as problematic;
2. Considering the difference it makes to define the
problem one way rather than another;
3. Developing a possible line of action as a response to
the problem;
4. Evaluating potential actions in terms of their likely
consequences;
5. Taking actions that are felt to be likely to address the
problematic situation.
Figure 2 shows how the process of inquiry provides an
explicit mechanism for linking beliefs and actions, but it is
important not to treat inquiry as a kind of short circuit that
interrupts the cyclical connection between beliefs and
actions. Therefore, rather than a step-by-step linear process,
beliefs and their interpretations operate throughout, as
potential actions are mentally rehearsed and evaluated.
Inquiry is thus, like any form of experience, a continuous
process that may involve many cycles between beliefs and
actions before there is any sense of resolution.
Like any other form of experience, each instance of
inquiry is situated within a given context. For pragmatism,
every set of circumstances that we encounter brings forth

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Qualitative Inquiry 20(8)

Figure 2. Deweys model of inquiry.

some potentially unknowable set of prior beliefs, so that we

are always acting within some definition of the situation.
When we are pursuing a research project, we are acting
within a mind-set that determines what it means to choose
one research topic rather than another as well as what it
means to choose one research method rather than another.
Of course, these choices can be quite different when we are
doing qualitative, quantitative, or MMR.
Once again, it is important not to confuse inquiry with a
purely rational or disembodied process of logical reasoning.
Emotions and preferences operate throughout the inquiry
process, starting most notably with a feeling that something
is problematic in a situation. Our feelings color every aspect
of the inquiry process, or as William James put it, The trail
of the human serpent is thus over everything (1907/1995,
p. 26). When we do research, we make our choices according to what we believe is good or bad, right or wrong, and
these choices clearly involve preferences between likely
outcomes as we ask what difference it would make to do our
research one way rather than another.
Following Dewey, it is also essential to recognize that
any process of inquiry is always social in nature. Even when
an inquiry is based solely on our individual thoughts, those
thoughts and the standards that we use to apply them have
social origins. In research, one of the most explicit social
dimensions is the concept of peer review, in which we anticipate and interpret how our choices will be received by others in our field. In addition, the choices that we make are not
abstract interpretations of the rules that govern our particular realm of research; instead, as Denzin (2010) notes,

Of course, what works is more than an empirical question.

It involves the politics of evidence (p. 422). Thus, any
statement about the results from a piece of research is subject to the judgments of others who may or may not share
our beliefs and standards.
In summary, Deweys philosophy of knowledge relies on
his concept of inquiry, in which actions as outcomes of
inquiry serve as the basis for beliefs. It is certainly possible
to state this process as the production of knowledge, but
Dewey preferred to avoid this word because it was so
closely associated with what he called the epistemological
industry (Dewey, 1941/2008). Instead of knowledge, he
spoke as warranted assertions, where warrants come from
the outcomes of inquirythat is, the outcomes of using a
belief in practice, in which knowing cannot be separated
from doing. For Dewey, the knower and the known were
inseparable, bound together in a process of inquiry, with a
simultaneous reliance on both belief and action.
Dewey claimed that his emphasis on inquiry was the
basis for a reconsideration of philosophy in general. At the
broadest level, Deweys pragmatism as a philosophy
addresses the central question: What is the nature of human
experience? Refocusing on inquiry as a central form of
human experience requires reconsidering the philosophy of
knowledge by replacing the older emphasis on ontology
and epistemology with a concentration on inquiries about
the nature of human experience. It is thus quite reasonable
to treat Dewey as proposing a new paradigm for his own
field.

Pragmatism as a Paradigm
Much of Deweys philosophical agenda is highly relevant
for social research today, because he sought to break down
the dualism between realism and idealism. This contrast is
very close to the separation between post-positivism and
constructivism, in which differentiation of these two paradigms has been a central feature in applying the philosophy of knowledge to social research (e.g., Guba & Lincoln,
2005). In this philosophical system, post-positivists claim
that the world exists apart from our understanding of it,
while constructivists insist that the world is created by our
conceptions of it. For Dewey (1925a/2008), these two
assertions are equally important claims about the nature of
human experience. On one hand, our experiences in the
world are necessarily constrained by the nature of that
world; on the other hand, our understanding of the world is
inherently limited to our interpretations of our experiences.
We are not free to believe anything we want about the world
if we care about the consequences of acting on those beliefs.
Within Deweys pragmatism and its emphasis on experience, ontological arguments about either the nature of the
outside world or the world of our conceptions are just discussions about two sides of the same coin.

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Morgan
Deweys rejection of arguments about the nature of reality is not the same, however, as denying the differences
between post-positivism and constructivism as approaches
to research. Researchers from these traditions have very
difference experiences in the world of research, and these
experiences lead to different beliefs and different actions.
The point here is that any attempt to produce knowledge
occurs within a social context. Morgan (2007) interprets
Kuhns (1996) concept of paradigms in terms of the importance of shared beliefs within a community of researchers
who share a consensus about which questions are most
meaningful and which methods are most appropriate for
answering those questions (2007, p. 53). Paradigms are
thus social worlds where research communities exert a
powerful influence over the beliefs we consider to be
meaningful and the actions we accept as appropriate.
Using a conception of paradigms as shared beliefs within
a community of researchers, what we know as and post-positivism and constructivism easily fit within this definition due
to the distinctive research experiences that they define and
promote. Rather than assigning post-positivism and constructivism a priori to different ontological and epistemological camps, a pragmatist would focus on their characteristic
approaches to inquiry. Each of them creates its own world of
researchdifferent contexts with different feelings about
and different standards for the nature of inquiry.
For metaphysical versions of the philosophy of knowledge, assumptions about the nature of reality determine the
kinds of knowledge that are possible. For pragmatism, this
abstraction is replaced by an emphasis on experience as the
continual interaction of beliefs and action. This leads to
questions about what difference it makes not only to acquire
knowledge one way rather than another (i.e., the procedures
we use), but to produce one kind of knowledge rather than
another (i.e., the purposes we pursue). Knowledge is not
about an abstract relationship between the knower and the
known; instead, there is an active process of inquiry that
creates a continual back-and-forth movement between
beliefs and actions.
The key point here is that pragmatism as a paradigm can
account for one of the most distinctive features of the previous paradigmthe importance of distinguishing between
post-positivism and constructivismwithout relying on
metaphysical assumptions about ontology and epistemology. Pragmatism not only replaces arguments about the
nature of reality as the essential criterion for differentiating
approaches to research, it also recognizes the value of those
different approaches as research communities that guide
choices about how to conduct inquiry. Thus, pragmatism
acts as a new paradigm to replace an older way of thinking
about the differences between approaches to research by
treating those differences as social contexts for inquiry as a
form of social action, rather than as abstract philosophical
systems.

Dewey and other classic pragmatists felt that the longstanding debates in traditional metaphysics were seriously
misguided. By ignoring the centrality of human experience,
these debated simply asked the wrong questions. Of course,
this dismissal of metaphysical issues will not sit well with
those who advocate for their importance in understanding
social research. Accordingly, Yvonna Lincoln (2010) complains, The mixed-methods pragmatists tell us nothing
about their ontology or epistemology (p. 7). This demand
that pragmatism pay attention to metaphysics is hardly new,
and as noted above, Dewey himself saw his version of pragmatism as what we would now call a new paradigm within
his home discipline of philosophy. Thus, in a passage from
his work on evolution that sounds very much like Thomas
Kuhn (1996), Dewey claims that rather than solving the traditional philosophical problems, we need to get over them.
Intellectual progress usually occurs through sheer abandonment
of questions together with both of the alternatives they
assumean abandonment that results from their decreasing
vitality and a change of urgent interest. We do not solve them:
we get over them. Old questions are solved by disappearing,
evaporating, while new questions corresponding to the changed
attitude of endeavor and preference take their place. (Dewey,
1910/2008, p. 14)

Pragmatism presents a radical departure from age-old

philosophical arguments about the nature of reality and the
possibility of truth. As Hall (2013) puts it, pragmatism
offers an alternative epistemological paradigm (p. 19). In
this new worldview, knowledge consists of warranted assertions (Dewey, 1941/2008) that result from taking action and
experiencing the outcomes. But inquiry in general and
research in particular are specific realms of experience, and
as such, they are only part of Deweys larger philosophical
system. For Dewey, questions related to politics were at
least as important as issues related to research, and the next
section takes up this topic.

The Political Implications of

Pragmatism
Examining the political and moral dimensions of pragmatism requires, once again, a distinction between the merely
practical uses of pragmatism and its deeper philosophical
content. Not surprisingly, the methods-centric view of pragmatism within most of MMR has led to little explicit discussion of the connection between social justice issues and
pragmatism. Denzin (2010) thus raises the concern that
turning our discourse about research into a discussion of
procedures leaves little space for issues connected to
empowerment, social justice, and a politics of hope (p. 420).
At the same time, he recognizes the work of researchers
who do pursue these goals from within MMR, such as

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Hesse-Biber and Leavy (2008) and Mertens (2003). At a

more personal rather than philosophical level, Dewey himself was notably active in the progressive politics of his day,
including working with Jane Addams at Hull House and
playing a role in founding the American Civil Liberties
Union (ACLU), the American Association of University
Professors (AAUP), and the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Still the question remains about whether there are deeper links between
pragmatism and social justice.
As the previous discussion of inquiry noted, all our
attempts to understand and act in the world are inherently
contextual, emotional, and social. More specifically, pragmatism emphasizes that all aspects of research inherently
involve decisions about which goals are most meaningful
and which methods are most appropriate. As Denzin (2010)
stresses, Inquiry will always be a moral, political and
value-laden enterprise (pp. 424-425), and the same orientation is central to Deweys philosophy. His approach to
questions of ethics, morality, and politics was identical to
his arguments in other realms of experience (1925a/2008).
In particular, he treated inquiry into ethical questions as
continuous with other efforts to link existing beliefs with
situations in which there is a need a for action. Ethical questions are questions about what to do and about the difference it would make to act one way versus another, and, as
such, they fall directly within Deweys philosophical
emphasis on human experience.
The central moral value that Dewey advocates for his
version of pragmatism is freedom of inquiry (1925b/2008),
in which individuals and social communities are able to
define the issues that matter most to them and pursue those
issues in the ways that are the most meaningful to them. His
version of inquiry as the revision of beliefs places a central
emphasis on the capacity for growth. In particular, he was
opposed to any use of force or economic domination that
would limit the possibilities for growth of other social
groups. This leads to a natural fit between pragmatism and
many versions of transformative or emancipatory research
through a shared emphasis on openness, fairness, and freedom from oppression.
Saying that Deweys philosophy has a position on moral
and political experience is not the same, however, as saying
that his version of pragmatism presented a detailed method
or coherent agenda for action. Dewey has been rightly criticized on these grounds, most notably by C. Wright Mills
(1964), who highlights how Deweys vision of democracy
never advanced beyond the kind of face-to-face interaction
he encountered in his New England upbringing. This limited perspective is evident in one of Deweys (1939/2008a)
late essays in which he explicitly claims the superiority of
American democracy in opposition to the fascist movements in Europe and then notes,

I am inclined to believe that the heart and final guarantee of

democracy is in free gatherings of neighbors on the street
corner to discuss back and forth what is read in uncensored
news of the day, and in gatherings of friends in the living rooms
of houses and apartments to converse freely with one another.
(p. 227)

Rather than staying within the limited political position

developed by Dewey and other classic pragmatists, more
recent versions of pragmatism have developed a stronger
bond to a social justice agenda. This is particularly notable
in the work of pragmatist feminists such as Charlene
Haddock Seigfried (1996, 2002a), Shannon Sullivan (2001),
and Judy Whipps (2010). The value of this line of work is
that it not only demonstrates the value of pragmatism as a
philosophy for feminism but also points out the ways that
feminism can develop a social justice agenda within pragmatism. Thus, Seigfried (2002b) points out that
Dewey does consistently argue against the subjugation of
women, racial and ethnic or other minorities, and the working
class, and for their emancipation and full participation in
Society. He thinks that these goals can be accomplished
through rational persuasion . . . What is needed is need to
complete his analyses and proposals is a more penetrating
account of the sources of inherited prejudice. (p. 60)

Thus, a feminist analysis of power, prejudice, and

oppression has much to offer to Deweys overly optimistic
version of conflict resolution. In other words, he offers a
vision of progressive politics that was in keeping with his
own times but which can benefit directly from subsequent
analyses of these issues.
Recognizing that pragmatism provides a strong match
with the advocacy of social justice certainly does not claim
that it is the only way to make the connection between politics and research. Lincoln (2010) argues that generations of
feminists and other researchers who advocate for social justice view epistemology as deeply linked to method, and
vice versa (p. 7). Making this linkage, however, typically
requires an expansion to include axiology as a fourth defining element, alongside the traditional triad of ontology,
epistemology, and methodology. According to Hesse-Biber
(2012),
Axiology means being cognizant of our values, attitudes, and
biases and acknowledging how these might play out in research
praxis in terms of (a) what questions are asked or not asked in
our research, (b) what type of data are or are not collected, and
(c) the type of methods, measurement, analysis, and
interpretation that shape our understanding of the research
process. (p. 878)

As the preceding discussion indicates, these same defining characteristics also underlie pragmatism as a philosophy.

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Morgan
The difference is that these principles flow directly from
pragmatisms core assumptions about the nature of inquiry
without any need to add axiology as a separate element.
While there is no doubt that metaphysical discussions about
the nature of reality and truth can be extended to handle the
political and ethical aspects of research, pragmatism as a
philosophical paradigm has the advantage of naturally
assigning a central role of politics and ethics in every aspect
of human experience.
Once again, the larger point is that pragmatism as a
broad paradigm for social research can account for the
accomplishments of the previous paradigm without the
need for metaphysical assumptions. In this case, pragmatism can stand outside the previous assumptions and still
provide at least as strong a bond to social justice goals. Both
social justice and pragmatism treat our actions as researchers as located within belief systems, in which those beliefs
are subject to change by our conscious actions. Furthermore,
both the experiences we bring to research and the changes
we hope to produce are context bound, embodied and emotional, and thoroughly social in nature. Taken together,
these strengths point to both the value of classical pragmatism as an orientation toward social justice and the potential
for current work on social justice to continue pragmatisms
development in this direction.

Conclusion
In considering the increased interest in pragmatism as a
paradigm for social research, it is essential to recognize that
paradigms are more than simple statements about future
directions for research. From the perspective of pragmatism, new paradigms create new sets of beliefs that guide
new kinds of actions. At a fundamental level, paradigms
create new worldviews and social contexts that have widespread impacts on the conduct of inquiry.
Understanding the shift toward pragmatism as a paradigm begins with the recent history of social research methodology, from which interest in pragmatism emerged
through its association with MMR. MMR, in turn, arose in
a period when it was expected that any approach to social
research would have a metaphysical paradigm explicitly
based on the philosophy of knowledge. Yet, MMR did not
fit comfortably within that context. In particular, most of
the focus in MMR was on practical, procedural issues about
how to combine the strengths of qualitative and quantitative
methods rather than philosophical claims. Thus, for most of
the researchers operating within the field of MMR, the
appeal of pragmatism was more about its practicality than
in its broader philosophical basis.
That is the setting for this articlea moment when pragmatism has been proposed as a new paradigm for social
research, yet its potential in this regard has remained underdeveloped. The time has come for social research to dig

more deeply into pragmatism as a philosophy, and that has

been the goal of this article. The most basic objective has
been to demonstrate that pragmatism presents a coherent
philosophy that goes well beyond what works. Based on
the work of John Dewey, pragmatism points to the importance of joining beliefs and actions in a process of inquiry
that underlies any search for knowledge, including the specialized activity that we refer to as research.
One distinct consequence of advocating pragmatism as a
paradigm is to disrupt the reliance on a metaphysical version of the philosophy of knowledge as a lens for examining
social research. Although this disruptive influence may not
have been an intentional goal in the original pairing of pragmatism and MMR, pragmatism insists on treating research
as a human experience that is based on the beliefs and
actions of actual researchers. This is quite different from
characterizing social research in terms of ontology, epistemology, and methodology; even so, it does not imply that
the older approach was wrong. Instead, pragmatism
would understand the prior paradigm as a set of beliefs and
actions that were uniquely important within a given set of
circumstances. Since then, circumstances have changed in
ways that call for a new methodological agenda.
Rather than framing the study of social science research
as commitments to an abstract set of philosophical beliefs,
pragmatism concentrates on beliefs that are more directly
connected to actions. This calls for an approach to methodology that goes back to its original linguistic roots, the study of
methods. Pragmatism shifts the study of social research to
questions such as: How do researchers make choices about
the way they do research? Why do they make the choices
they do? And, what is the impact of making one set of
choices rather than another? Although these questions are
not new, making them the center of our program for studying
social research reorients us to a new set of issues and goals.
Pursuing this new agenda requires examining not just
what researchers do but why they do things the ways they
do. Research never occurs in a vacuum, so how it influenced by the historical, cultural, and political contexts in
which it is done? And how do our research communities
come together to emphasize one way of doing things rather
than another? We need to pay more attention to how these
factors influence both the choices we make and the ways
that we interpret the outcomes of those choices. This is the
path that pragmatism proposes.
Like any change in paradigms, accepting pragmatism as
a basis for social research will require a considerable alteration in our thinking. The same kind of change occurred in the
1980s when the philosophy of knowledge arose as a paradigm for understanding the nature of social research. Thirty
years later, it is time to put metaphysical issues behind us
and pursue the decisions that drive the practice of research.
Switching to this new paradigm does indeed require effort,
but the benefits that it provides are well worth it.

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Qualitative Inquiry 20(8)

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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Author Biography
David L. Morgan is a professor of sociology at Portland State
University. His work concentrates on focus groups and mixed
methods research. His most recent book is Integrating Qualitative
and Quantitative Research: A Pragmatic Approach from SAGE.

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