The pragmatic stance is one that sees things in terms of results and consequences. It is not interested in matters of fact or theories of truth, but only in what works. It doesn’t care if people live better or worse under capitalism or socialism, as long as the people do better under one than under the other. The pragmatic person is also not emotionally attached to objects, and therefore, they can let go of things that have no meaning to them.
William James, who coined the word ‘pragmatism’ in 1907, saw that philosophy consists to a large degree of a clash of temperaments: the tough-minded prefer an empiricist commitment to experience and going by ‘the facts’, while the tender-minded favour a priori principles which appeal to ratiocination (James 1979). He promised that pragmatism would settle this dispute by focusing on what makes sense and what works (pragmatism) and so bringing people together, rather than having them argue over’metaphysical differences that could never be settled’ (1907: 28).
A neopragmatist revival of pragmatism emerged around the work of Robert Brandom who developed a theory of pragmatic semantics which liberated linguistic meaning from the representationalism deplored by Rorty and the traditional idea that the function of language is to provide a transcript of reality. His work was heavily influenced by the classical pragmatists, but he was critical of them on several points (Brandom 2011).
He also developed a discourse ethics which scaffolded authentic communicative action free from distortions of power and ideology (Habermas 2003), again drawing on the concept of pragmatism’s original a posteriori epistemology. He was sceptical of Peirce’s inquiry-based analysis of truth as overly idealised, however.
In more recent times, a pragmatic approach to research has emerged that places greater emphasis on the production of actionable knowledge anchored in the experience of respondent groups (Morgan 2014). This pragmatic approach to research is particularly useful for qualitative applied social research on non-government organisational processes.
This article introduces a pragmatic approach to research and provides two project examples of pragmatism in action to demonstrate its utility as a research paradigm for researching NGO process. The discussion links research design to practice through an iterative emphasis on the construction of actionable knowledge anchored in the experiences and understandings of NGO respondents. This enables the pragmatist researcher to maintain connectivity to evolving NGO practice and emergent problems throughout the research process, as opposed to being disconnected from them through an over-emphasis on the production of theoretical insights. This pragmatic perspective is strengthened by presentation and analysis of three selected methodological principles of pragmatism which are used as a framework for detailing the project examples. These are the concept of actionable knowledge, a focus on the construction of dialogue in research and the use of pragmatic assumptions for the construction of research questions and methodologies. This pragmatic lens is further enhanced by a consideration of the ethical issues that arise for researchers working in the context of NGO processes.
