Integrating ethnographic futures research with critical realism and grounded theory

Abstract

This paper presents Critical Realist Grounded Ethnographic Futures Research (CRG-EFR) as a development of the Ethnographic Futures Research (EFR) method. EFR is a long-established but under documented and developed scenario building method, that directly engages with images of the future held by a defined social group. Responding to the challenge that scenario methods lack theoretical depth compared to established social research methods, CRG-EFR is systematically built to combine the qualities of both, to enhance the scenario building process. Critical realism is established as a basis for understanding present reality and future possibilities, in which predictions are possible as conjectural knowledge of the future and can be systematically developed. EFR is set out as a method for building scenarios from conjectural knowledge of the future. Grounded Theory (GT) is then introduced as a rigorous research methodology that closely resembles the overall procedure of EFR, providing an established basis for the analysis of qualitative data that maintains the emic perspective of the futures of those social groups being researched. The application of the CRG-EFR method is illustrated in a discussion of its use in an ongoing research project, demonstrating how it achieves the methodological rigour necessary to meet quality criteria for grounded theory. The paper concludes by considering the limitations of the CRG-EFR method compared to classical EFR, identifying CRG-EFR as ideal suited for transformative futures research in which culturally embedded insights are foundational to images of the future