On studying information seeking methodologically: the implications of connecting metatheory to method

Theory constructs its evidence, and values and faith construct what constitute theory. [Maines, D. R. & Molseed, M. J. (1986). The obsessive discoverer's complex and the ‘discovery’ of growth in sociological theory. American Journal of Sociology, 92(1), 158–163.] To admit that knowledge is intrinsically erroneous is not to imply that we should forego it. [McGuire, W.

J. (1986). A perspectivist looks at contextualism and the future of behavioral science. In R. L. Rosnow & M. Georgoudi (Eds.), Contextualism and understanding in behavioral science: implications for research and theory. New York: Praeger, 271–301.] It is not enough for theory to describe and analyze, it must itself be an event in the universe it describes.

In order to do this theory must… tear itself from all referents and take pride in the future. Theory must operate on time at the cost of a deliberate distortion of present reality. [Baudrillard, J. (1988). The ecstasy of communication. New York: Semiotext(e).] The purpose I have mandated for this article is to explore the implications of articulating the bridges that are built, usually implicitly, between metatheory and method, and between these and their ultimate interests, the doing of research.

The purpose is to articulate the uses of methodology. To chart this as a mandate is to assume, in contradiction to extant wisdom, that: (1) the journey has not yet been fully mapped; and (2) in fact there are multiple and everchanging ways of bridging these gaps with no one agreed upon single set of criteria by which the results can be evaluated.

Above these assumptions is a higher level assumption that impels this journey -- that taking an explicitly and self-consciously methodological approach is necessary to the improvement of the enterprise of systematic study. It is the primary purpose of this paper to illustrate by example the statements made above.

The argument supporting the statements can be found elsewhere (A longer version of this paper is available which includes arguments regarding inattentions to methodology and a bibliography which includes authors writing on the issue. Readers who wish a copy may contact dervin.1@osu.edu). Suffice it to say here that the statements above rest on the assumption that in the midst of the paradigm battles which mark today's study of humans and their conditions, methodology as a term is highly contested, much abused, and frequently ignored.

It is referred to either as method, or as metatheorical critique of the constructing of theory. It is, thus, either collapsed into method or collapsed into metatheory and in either locale it disappears. Rarely, however, is methodology attended to as that branch of metatheory which involves the reflexive analysis and development of methods -- with methods defined broadly as methods of theorizing, observing, data collecting, analyzing, and interpreting.

The result is that we lack a vocabulary for talking about methodology, a vocabulary which attends to the philosophic mandate in the term, the way in which it might build a bridge between metatheoy and method, and, thus, make more obvious the impacts of these on research and its theory-constructings.