ABSTRACT
As will be clear from our discussion in the previous chapter, the intellectual history of the interpretive paradigm is as complex and conceptually as rich as that of the functionalist paradigm. The underlying assumptions of the interpretive paradigm with regard to the ontological status of the social world reject the utility of constructing a social science which focuses upon the analysis of ·structures' .It rejects any view which attributes to the social world a reality which is independent of the minds of men. It-emphasises that the social world is no more than the subjective construction of individual human beings who, through the development and use of common language and the interactions of everyday life, may create and sustain a social world of intersubjectively shared meaning. The social world is thus of an essentially intangible nature and is in a continuous process of reaffirmation or change.
