Environmental Security in Mindanao: a Case for Comprehensive Methods

ion delineates what causal components of a phenomenon constitute the focus of a particular social scientific study. To improve understandings of generative mechanisms that are causally relevant, research must focus on certain mechanisms at the temporary expense of 129 Schwartz, et. al. (2000), op. cit., p. 86. See also: Homer-Dixon (1999), op. cit., pp. 169-76. The Toronto Group defends their case study-driven methods with several supporting arguments from literature. For the most important of these see: Eckstein, Harry (1975), “Case Study and Theory in Political Science”, in Greenstein, Fred I. and Nelson W. Polsy, eds., Strategies of Enquiry: Handbook of Political Science Volume 7, Cambridge, MA: Addison Wesley, pp. 125-126. ; and George, Alexander and Timothy McKeown (1985), “Case Studies and Theories of Organizational Decision-Making”, in Coulam, Robert and Richard Smith, eds., Advances in Information Processing in Organizations, Vol. 2, London: JAI Press, pp. 34-41. 130 Critical realism a philosophy about the nature of reality rather a uniform set of explicit methods for social science. The primary objectives of leading critical realist scholarship, as well as the goals of oppositional philosophies, appears to be the refinement of philosophical positions as opposed to explicitly delineating how these philosophies should be practiced. See: Wai-chung, Henry (1997), “Critical realism and realist research in human geography: a method or a philosophy in search of a method? ” Progress in Human Geography, 21(1), pp. 51-74. ; see also Danermark (1997), op. cit., p. 73. The school’s philosophical focus has led Henry Wai-chung to argue that critical realism is “a philosophy in search of a method” and that social scientists have been guilty of misappropriating critical realism as if it were a method. Wai-chung’s argument points out that, while critical realism can provide philosophical underpinnings for research, it is up to social scientists to solidify critical realist methodologies through practice. Wai-chung argues that such applications contribute to the two-way relationship between philosophy and social science, in which philosophy informs social scientific research which in turn sheds light on the practice of the philosophy itself. However, while Wai-chung’s positions on this two-way relationship have merit, it is a mistake to suggest, however, that radical methodological interpretations of critical realist philosophies are necessary. Guidelines for employing critical realist methods are present in Bhaskar’s foundational works and were further developed during the following two decades. See: See Bhaskar (1979), op. cit.; Allen, John (1983), “In Search of a Method: Hegel, Marx and Realism”, Radical Philosophy, 35, pp. 26-33. ; and Sayer (1992), op. cit. The task for critical realist social science is to create an appropriate critical realist framework for the phenomena under study. For the environmental security subfield, this framework begins with abstraction. Ewing Page 124 others. Abstraction is particularly necessary for research conducted within open systems. In closed systems, research can afford to rely, to a degree, upon testable observations of empirical regularities. Open systems, adversely, typically erode such testable opportunities and require abstractions to categorically organise components contributing to an event. By temporarily individuating the causes and circumstances leading to an event, abstractions begin the process of developing knowledge about the characteristics of these causes and circumstances. In critical realist terms, the event at the end of the causal chain is the ‘concrete’ and research must construct abstractions of the concrete for explanatory purposes. After this impermanent abstraction of specific dynamics, the task becomes to reconstitute the drivers of the phenomenon under study in a way that respects the interplay among them. Tony Lawson describes the value of abstraction thusly: The point of abstraction is to individuate one or more aspects, components or attributes and their relationships in order to understand them better. Once this has been achieved it may be possible to combine or synthesise the various separate understandings into a unity that reconstitutes, or provides a better understanding of, the concrete. By individuating and then reconstituting the variables underlying an event, abstracting methods avoid the reduction of the concrete to abstract concepts (which is overly epistemological), and the reduction of the abstract to the concrete (which is overly ontological). To this end, abstraction requires categorising the contexts, powers and tendencies that contribute to an event. Delineating the categories or sectors to be abstracted upon for greater understanding is an essential initial step in research design. 131 Abstraction is particularly necessary for research conducted within open systems that focuses upon causal mechanisms. See: Dickens, Peter (2003), “Changing our environment, changing ourselves: critical realism and transdisciplinary research”, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 28(2), pp. 99-100. 132 Ibid. 133 See: Sayer (1992), op. cit., p. 116. ; and Danermark, et. al. (1997), op. cit., p. 69. 134 Lawson, Tony (1998), “Economic science without interpretation/Abstraction”, in Archer, et. al., eds., op. cit., p. 170. 135 Danermark, et. al. (1997), p. 50. Ewing Page 125 Choosing the categories upon which to abstract reflects the values and interests of the research being undertaken. Critical realism and CI environmental security scholarship both endeavour to create a semi-holistic account of a phenomenon under study, as both theoretical approaches avoid variable isolations and emphasise interactions among different structures and powers that lead to events. There are however limits to holism. Just as it is misleading to reduce complex phenomena to simply their constituent parts, it is likewise misleading to explain such phenomena only in terms of the whole which they constitute. Collier points out the futility of taking holism to its logical end by stating that such methods would “generate a regress that reduces wholes to greater wholes of which they are parts, or parts of smaller parts of which they are composed, until we reach.One Big Whole. ” As opposed to holism therefore, a critical realist approach to environmental security necessitates constructing appropriate abstractions of the sectors that are of greatest interest for environmental security. As Andrew Sayer proposes, abstractions must isolate variables with the whole in mind and “neither divide the indivisible nor lump together the divisible and the heterogeneous. ” The sectors selected for abstraction must be causally relevant and the task of the research remains to create a moderately comprehensive analysis of conditions leading to an event. The focus on particular drivers of this event, however, remains essential, and this focus reflects the vantage point of the researcher. The vantage point from which social scientific research is undertaken defines its explanatory goals. Progressive research attempts to explain events in ways in which they have not been 136 This polemic description of problematic ways to explain phenomena mirrors previously-explored divergent conceptions on the nature of society. The positivist reductions of society to individuals (Popper) and the collectivist expansions of society to show its coercive power (Durkheim) are similar to the division between segregating and holistic approaches to explaining concrete events. While critical realism constructs a relational model of society in response to the former problem, it constructs abstractions to respond to the latter. 137 Collier (1994), op. cit., p. 117. Collier states that another possible end to such holistic inquiry would be the construction of “a mass of literal atoms, differing only numerically and related only mechanically. ” 138 Sayer (1992), op. cit., p. 88. 139 Lawson (1998), op. cit., p. 172. Ewing Page 126 previously addressed, and, in doing so, contribute to a greater understanding of the characteristics of the event and the causal processes that generated it. Outhwaite succinctly explains this goal from a critical realist perspective as follows: The social scientist directs his or her attention to an object of inquiry which is already defined in certain ways. [and] will typically set to redescribe this object so as to bring out its complexity, the way in which it is determined.as an outcome of a multiplicity of interacting tendencies. The angles from which the researcher pursues Outhwaite’s redescription of a phenomenon reflects his or her vantage point and explanatory goals, and these goals are realised in the causal mechanisms that such research ultimately illuminates. As opposed to a holistic approach, explanatory research that seeks to clarify causal mechanisms must focus upon particular linkages in the causal chain. Such explanations will be necessarily inefficient in totality, but can succeed in improving the understanding of certain processes that are important parts of the conditions leading to the event under study. As Lawson points out, the selection of which causal processes become the focus reflects the researcher’s own