Theoretical Framework

Gareth Morgan and Linda Smircich make a solid case urging qualitative researchers to ‘approach discussions of methodology in a way that highlights the vital link between theory and method – between the world view to which the researcher subscribes, the type of research question posed, and the technique that is to be adopted as a basis for research’ (1980: 499). As such, I find it necessary to elucidate a few thoughts regarding my epistemological approach to this research endeavor. Going into this project, I hypothesized that, given the great social, cultural and economic differences existing between native and foreign residents, their experiences of and meanings for this place would greatly differ. However, how they would differ, or even ifthey would differ, remained uncertain.

My epistemological approach to this research is based upon a constructivist world view which conceives that social groups actively create a perceptionof reality; a reality that is both ‘pluralistic and plastic,’ as Thomas Schwandt alleges. Constructivism places an ‘emphasis on the world of experience as it is lived, felt, [and] undergone by social actors.’ As such, constructivists are ‘deeply committed to the … view that what we take to be objective knowledge and truth is the result of perspective. Knowledge and truth are created, not discovered by the mind’ (Schwandt, 1994: 125, emphasis added). Applied to human geography, this implies that while the physical and environmental characteristics of the external world certainly influence our human experience of this world and what it means to us (as place, landscape, etc.), ultimately the meaning and experiences are human creations that reside with us rather than ‘out there’. In other words, the objective qualities of the external world contribute to a variety of subjective realities or experiences that human groups actively create, negotiate and share.