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1
unavoidable impacts of this type of mine, or were they also results of weak environmental legislation or policy-making?
Normative questions are held to be acceptable by some methodology text
books, for instance Alvesson and Sandberg (2013). In contrast, White (2017)
argues that normative questions should be avoided as research questions, because
there is no single correct answer to them, and they require the researcher to make
an ethical judgement.
However, the Frankfurt School (see 7 Chap. 2) and other traditions associated
with critique of positivism reject the claim that social science research should be
value free. Instead, scholars should explicitly discuss values, including their own.
This means that transparency rather than objectivity is an epistemological goal.
Political ecology is a critical approach, and normative questions play a key role in
this research.
We can distinguish between two types of normative questions. First, they may
be asked to assess a situation compared to specific standards, such as targets for
environmental justice, sustainability or human rights. This implies that scholars or
students may discuss similarities and differences between their own empirical
knowledge or available data compared to the chosen norms or principles.
Secondly, normative questions can be asked to investigate what can be done to
improve a problematic situation. Students may, for instance, start with asking a
descriptive question about what solutions have been proposed to stop pollution
from mining, and proceed to discuss strengths and weaknesses of suggested solutions. Such studies could be examined through analyses of documents and media
texts about local impacts of a particular mine or about a mining activity in a particular country (e.g. gold mining in Ghana, uranium mining in the USA, or copper
mining in Chile), or even at a global level. Such normative questions could also be
studied by collecting data through methods such as interviews, observations or
written texts, and by examining data from natural science studies.
It is useful to start the work of a paper or dissertation by formulating tentative
research questions. This will provide some direction for where to go. Nevertheless,
along the process, it may be important to modify or change the original research
questions in order to adjust them better to the available empirical material as well
as to theorical frameworks that can be used in the analysis. When elaborating the
outline for a thesis, it is useful to specify elements to address each research question, and decide what methods to use, and, for instance, what particular questions
to outline in interview guides for different groups of interviewees.
See also the methodology box in 7 Chap. 3 on how research questions may be
formulated about narratives and discourses.
1.11 Delimitations of this Book
We argue that political ecology, as well as social science in general, benefit when
researchers possess a broad range of perspectives, theories and concepts as possible building blocks they can draw on when designing empirical studies. In this
Chapter 1 · Political Ecology on Pandora
1
unavoidable impacts of this type of mine, or were they also results of weak environmental legislation or policy-making?
Normative questions are held to be acceptable by some methodology text
books, for instance Alvesson and Sandberg (2013). In contrast, White (2017)
argues that normative questions should be avoided as research questions, because
there is no single correct answer to them, and they require the researcher to make
an ethical judgement.
However, the Frankfurt School (see 7 Chap. 2) and other traditions associated
with critique of positivism reject the claim that social science research should be
value free. Instead, scholars should explicitly discuss values, including their own.
This means that transparency rather than objectivity is an epistemological goal.
Political ecology is a critical approach, and normative questions play a key role in
this research.
We can distinguish between two types of normative questions. First, they may
be asked to assess a situation compared to specific standards, such as targets for
environmental justice, sustainability or human rights. This implies that scholars or
students may discuss similarities and differences between their own empirical
knowledge or available data compared to the chosen norms or principles.
Secondly, normative questions can be asked to investigate what can be done to
improve a problematic situation. Students may, for instance, start with asking a
descriptive question about what solutions have been proposed to stop pollution
from mining, and proceed to discuss strengths and weaknesses of suggested solutions. Such studies could be examined through analyses of documents and media
texts about local impacts of a particular mine or about a mining activity in a particular country (e.g. gold mining in Ghana, uranium mining in the USA, or copper
mining in Chile), or even at a global level. Such normative questions could also be
studied by collecting data through methods such as interviews, observations or
written texts, and by examining data from natural science studies.
It is useful to start the work of a paper or dissertation by formulating tentative
research questions. This will provide some direction for where to go. Nevertheless,
along the process, it may be important to modify or change the original research
questions in order to adjust them better to the available empirical material as well
as to theorical frameworks that can be used in the analysis. When elaborating the
outline for a thesis, it is useful to specify elements to address each research question, and decide what methods to use, and, for instance, what particular questions
to outline in interview guides for different groups of interviewees.
See also the methodology box in 7 Chap. 3 on how research questions may be
formulated about narratives and discourses.
1.11 Delimitations of this Book
We argue that political ecology, as well as social science in general, benefit when
researchers possess a broad range of perspectives, theories and concepts as possible building blocks they can draw on when designing empirical studies. In this
Chapter 1 · Political Ecology on Pandora