Double Hermeneutic

Conceptual Overview and Discussion

Although the term double hermeneutic is frequently attributed to sociologist Anthony Giddens, philosophical constructs upon which the concept is based echo back to Martin Heidegger's notion of Dasein—interpreted here as a form of presencing—that is, to the researcher's presence within the research process. The concept of the double hermeneutic was further developed through extensions and interpretations of Heidegger's work by German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer and by French narrativist Paul Ricoeur. More recent philosophical and methodological examinations of the double hermeneutic include the move toward a postpositivist era in the social sciences, which situates the researcher fully within the interpretive process and demands attention be paid by the researcher (and, by extension, the research design) to the dialogical relationships operating within the various disciplines of social science research. This demand for attention to the interconnected spheres—or circles—of meaning-making, in both design and interpretation of research, leads to an increased emphasis on reflexivity within the research process. Not to be confused with self-reflection—although self-reflection is one of the tools the researcher can use when grappling with tensions arising—reflexivity refers to an awareness of the discourses within which both the research and the researcher are embedded as well as to the ways in which the contexts of the research refer back, reflexively, to prior experiences and knowledge constructs. Thus, the double hermeneutic requires that the researcher tend to the dual, or double, meanings present at both the microlevels of research [Page 323]design and the macrolevels of situating the research within a given social science community, be it anthropology, education, history, political science, sociology, or other.

Application

When designing social science research it is important to consider that the parameters of the research context are not limited to the object of the research; instead, the research design also needs to tend to the situatedness of the researcher. Inquiry that acknowledges the presence of the double hermeneutic can use reflexivity to better grapple with the interactions of meaning-making present between subject and object, and in both the research design and in the interpretation of data.

By incorporating reflexivity in the research process researchers work to render explicit the effect of the double hermeneutic. However, there is a paradoxical element in both the double hermeneutic itself and in the reflexivity used to address it: Because both the effect and the means used to render the effect more explicit call on meaning-making within and through the researcher and the research process, one encounters a seemingly endless series of referral. In this, the paradox of endless referral creates a tension within the process of reflexivity and returns to name the effect upon which it operates, that is, the double hermeneutic itself.

...