74 LISA CLAIRE WHITTEN
their environment. The analysis concludes that the ‘clear images’ of positivism can
bring ineffective results which, in the case of Belfast’s visual typography, would give
limited insight into developments in Northern Irish society; by contrast if a postpositivist epistemology was adopted, an alternative type of knowledge could be
discussed which could further elucidate the dynamics of power in Northern Irish
society.
The article is div ided into three sections. The first deals with the central tenets of
positivism and post-positivism; the second proposes two hypothetical research
designs and the final section analyses the diverging effect of the two epistemologies
on research outlined in the preceding discussion.
Literature devoted to positivism and post-positivism is extensive. A comprehensive
overview of the many worthy analyses and developments in the history of both
epistemologies is thus beyond the scope of this discussion.2 That said, given that the
aspiration of this article is to contrast these diverging theories of knowledge without
providing superficial analysis, the discussion will focus on the contributions of three
key political philosophers: Auguste Comte (1798-1857), Michel Foucault (19261984) and Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996). The aim of this article is to use the work of
these thinkers to form two lenses, a positivist and a post-positivist one and to consider
how they produce different understandings of the political murals in Belfast, either as
clear images or as broken images.
In the case of positivism, the work of Comte receives specific attention as his writing
led to the creation of the term and thus sparked the debates that followed. When
considering post-positivism the work of Foucault and Kuhn will be similarly
highlighted. While Foucault is not often discussed as a founding philosopher of postpositivism, his work, along with that of Kuhn, has been central to the diverse
movement encapsulated by the term (Alcoff 2015). Foucault’s research focuses on
particular bodies of knowledge within the social sciences (especially those aspects
relating to psychological theories of normative behaviour and their impact on
2
For a useful introductory overview of the literature see Adcock, Bevire and Stimson (2007).