ABSTRACT
At the same time as interpretive approaches were challenging positivism, another view was developing that challenged both positivism and interpretivism. Both methodologies, suggested an emerging group of critical theorists who came to be known as the Frankfurt School (Horkheimer, Adorno and Marcuse, and later Habermas), were inappropriate for social scientific study, in that they ignored the power-constituted basis of human relationships and the hegemonising influences of some over others. While interpretive approaches might like to think that they were encouraging the emergence of people’s voices in the interests of emancipatory social practices, those voices were always and inevitably conditioned by their own historical and cultural legacy. People could not be free until they realised that they were unfree.
