The Positivist Post-Positivist Paradigm: Understanding the Social World of the Indigenous People

The positivist-post-positivist paradigm is the most appropriate paradigm for research regarding the subject matter of Northern Frontier, Northern Homeland by Thomas Berger (1988). This paradigm states that social science research pushes towards western cultures causing other regions to adapt to western ideas. According to Travers (2010), “[t]he physical and the social sciences are products of western culture in a specific historical moment. [s]cience is a modern phenomenon, emerging in step with capitalism, industrialism, global expansion, and a liberal philosophy” (p. 9). Ingenious people living in the North are being forced to change the way they live if the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline were to be built. According to Berger (1988), “[i]n developing institutions of government in the North, we sought to impose our own system, to persuade the native people to conform to our political models (p. 236). The indigenous people have their way of living, they hint their food, and they live in a quite and peaceful land where they live off their own economy. The pipeline would destroy the Northern Homeland. In an interview with the President of the National Indian Brotherhood told Berger (1988) in the Inquiry, “[s]uch projects have occurred time and time again in our history. They were, and are, the beginnings of the type of developments which destroy the way of life of aboriginal peoples and rob us of our economic, cultural and political independence” (p. 229). The pipeline would cause high amounts of traffic, and drilling. The noise that would be created due to the pipeline would cause the animals to migrate elsewhere, causing fewer animals to be hunted. The information obtained from scientific research can be used to predict and control nat...

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...erger’s (1988), Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry has enables corporations, governments and the Northern peoples to be able to control, to some degree, what will likely happen to the Northern Homeland, Northern Frontier. In addition, it has allowed us to discover possible perspective outcomes. The positivist post-positivist paradigm has allowed us to understand the social world of the indigenous people.

Works Cited

Berger, T. R. (1988). Northern Frontier Northern Homeland: The Report of the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry (rev. ed.). Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre.

Travers, A. (2010). The Philosophy of Social Science. (SG). Simon Fraser University.

Travers, A. (2010). The Philosophy of Social Science. (Audio Lecture 1). Simon Fraser

University.

Smith, T. L. (2008). Decolonizing Methodologies: research and Indigenous Peoples. Dunedin: Zed Books Ltd.