In this paper we argue that what is missing from many ethnographic accounts is a recognition that dilemmas inevitably emerge for the researcher before they make contact with the research setting, during the process of ethnographic research, and subsequently in the lengthy time taken to unravel the theoretical importance of the research after the fieldwork has ended. Using a comparison of two ethnographies as case studies, and by recourse to a realist methodology, such dilemmas are, we argue, overdetermined by many non-observable social structures that influence the everyday research process. We argue that specific mechanisms determine both the process and the outcome of the ethnographic journey in the before, during and after stages of research. For example we demonstrate how biography and the wider process of institutional knowledge production are two key resources that influence research practice. We use the term pragmatic realism as a means to reflect upon some of the connections between the dilemmas of research and real structures in these three stages.
Critical realism has been an important advance in social science methodology because it develops a qualitative theory of causality which avoids some of the pitfalls of empiricist theories of causality. But while there has been ample work exploring the relationship between critical realism and qualitative research methods there has been noticeably less work exploring the relationship between dialectical critical realism and qualitative research methods. This seems strange especially since the founder of the philosophy of critical realism, Roy Bhaskar, employs and develops a range of dialectical concepts in his later work in order to extend the main tenets of critical realism. The aim of this paper is to draw on Bhaskar's later work, as well as Marxism, to reorient a critical realist methodology towards a dialectical approach for qualitative research. In particular, the paper demonstrates how dialectical critical realism can begin to provide answers to three common criticisms made against original critical realist methodology: that the qualitative theory of causal powers and structures developed by critical realists is problematic; that critical realist methodology contains values which prove damaging to empirical research; and that critical realists often have difficulties in researching everyday qualitative dilemmas that people face in their daily lives.
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