10th Biennial ACSPRI Social Science Methodology Conference in conjunction with the Australian Social Network Analysis Conference (ASNAC)

Hermeneutic and interpretative qualitative research methodologies have become well-established across the social sciences. These approaches provide sophisticated ways for understanding lived experience, meaning- and sense-making within the context of human interpretation. Drawing from phenomenological and hermeneutic traditions associated with Heidegger, Gadamer and Ricoeur, methodologies such as hermeneutic phenomenology and interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) understand that experience cannot be accessed without interpretation. Further, these methodologies recognise that researchers inescapably encounter participants’ accounts of their experience through contextually situated horizons of understanding. Substantive traditions of hermeneutic phenomenology and critical hermeneutics exist, along with a more recent and still-developing field of critical phenomenology. Yet, the interpretative quality of these methodologies raises an important question: to what extent should interpretation seek to understand participant meanings of their life-worlds on their own terms, and to what extent should it critically investigate the social, cultural and political conditions which create those meanings or even their plausibility? Substantive traditions of hermeneutic phenomenology and critical hermeneutics exist, along with a more recent and still-developing field of critical phenomenology. Yet, comparatively, less attention has been focused on explicitly integrating critical and hermeneutic modes of interpretation within phenomenological qualitative methodology. This presentation argues for a more explicitly critical approach to hermeneutic and interpretative research in the social sciences by examining the literature on critical hermeneutics and critical phenomenology. We explore two specific applications, IPA and hermeneutic phenomenology, where we use both the hermeneutics of empathy and the hermeneutics of suspicion, but place emphasis on the latter. Rather than proposing a replacement methodology, we argue that a critical approach to interpretative and hermeneutic applications of phenomenology provides an underutilised resource to examining the conditions through which meanings and experiences are constituted. We offer a framework for retaining the empathic and experiential commitments of interpretative and hermeneutic phenomenological inquiry while strengthening its capacity for reflexive relational and social critique.