ABSTRACT
Pragmatism can be thought of as a critical orientation toward the conduct of social research and the knowledge claims resulting from this research. It shares much in common with those critiques of positivism that begin with a deep skepticism for the idea of generating social knowledge based on absolute certainty and for efforts to craft grand social theories grounded in rationalist traditions. Pragmatism thus emerges, in part, from an active engagement with ongoing debates over the nature of knowledge and competing strategies for social investigation. In this spirit, pragmatists raise many questions. What are the limits of science and of social inquiry? Given these limits, what should be the purposes and the goals of social research? What types of questions and what forms of evidence are then most congruent with these limits, purposes, and goals? A further essential feature of pragmatism is implied by such queries. This is the rejection of scientific research as valueneutral. To the contrary, pragmatism holds all social research to be tainted, so to speak, by the beliefs and values of the researcher and the larger research community. Furthermore, given the inevitably value-embedded nature of social research, pragmatists advocate the deliberate and strategic integration of social values into research with the aim of promoting social progress and advancements in the human condition. This represents a core, guiding principle behind pragmatic social research.
