Reflections on the Purposes of Human Inquiry

Abstract

Human inquiry is participative, experiential, political, and action oriented. As such, it addresses very different purposes from orthodox social science, moving away from the narrow purpose of contributing to a field of knowledge toward a living inquiry that is integrated in the lives of all those involved. Such inquiry "faces the people" and "is of use," arising out of the needs and experiences of the people it serves, aiming to interrupt patterns of power that define issues in the service of the powerful. Using theory primarily in the service of the practical may also aim to speak out to a wider audience in a manner that causes them to reflect on the nature of knowledge making. In addition to immediate purposes, human inquiry also aims to heal the fragmented experience that is part of the legacy of positivism and to stand continually against the development of a new orthodoxy in inquiry.We started our debate with a discussion of the purposes of human inquiry, for it was evident from the beginning that the group of people that joined in the dialogue at Bath wished to legitimate very different purposes from academic social science. It became dear that if we are to revision the nature of human inquiry as a participative, political, and experiential human process, we need to look at and legitimate a wider range of purposes than merely to contribute to the field of knowledge. It seemed appropriate, therefore, to begin our discussions with a longer look behind both the methodology and the epistemology of orthodox social science and ask, &dquo;What are we trying to accomplish in our inquiries?&dquo; As Marja-Liisa Swantz put it, &dquo;I am just basically wanting to say that I do not separate my scientific inquiry from my life and that for me it is really a quest for life and to understand life and to create what I call living knowledge and it is knowledge which is valid for the people with whom I work and for myself.&dquo;Traditionally, science and scientific research have been seen in the Western world as privileged disciplines, separate from other human processes, whose purpose is to produce some objective knowledge about an empirical world. Mitroff and Kilmann (1978) described this approach to science as occupying &dquo;a privileged and preferred position: value free, apolitical, cumulative, pro-

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