ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses participant observation, as concisely as possible, in terms of three underlying philosophical concerns, namely ontology, epistemology, and methodology. Historically, discussions and debates over these matters have resulted in three different methodological stances: positivism, humanism, and postmodernism. Methods for investigating the human condition cannot be separated from longstanding philosophical issues in the Western world about the character of human reality, how the envisioned reality can be truthfully apprehended, and the means appropriate for studying human existence. The chapter discusses these philosophical matters—known as ontology, epistemology, and methodology—as they pertain to participant observation. In particular, sociologists and anthropologists trained in the post-WWII period were exposed to Marxist thinking, phenomenology, existentialism, linguistics, and analytic philosophy—most all of it reinforced by eighteenth and nineteenth century European social theory. Insofar as the usual Western philosophical categories and concepts apply at all to postmodernism, it would seem to be a drastic form of subjective idealism.
