ABSTRACT
Karl Popper expounded the view that there was only one kind of scientific approach, best developed in the natural sciences but equally applicable to the social sciences. Hypotheses will arise from processes of conjecture, but to be accepted as science they need to be subject to processes of refutation. The underpinning role of non-specialist argument and social circumstances in the actual conduct of science has been studied in some detail since, by, among others, Bruno Latour and his associates. Latour argued that science in action could be seen best as the operation of a whole network of actors, or rather 'actants'. Autoethnography and polyvocalism also display an interestingly limited form of poststructuralist argument, Susanne Gannon argues: a poststructuralist stance is sufficient to rebuke the scientistic claims of other methodological approaches, but the conventional notion of the humanist subject is left intact, as a unified self 'capable of self knowledge and self articulation'.
