Theorizations about non-theory: an analysis of the Theory Founded by Glaser and Strauss

Abstract

The following paper is a critical review about the central postulates that sustain the "Grounded Theory" of Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss (1967), wich are North American researchers. Our goal is to favor the discussion of those controversial premises that this theory holds. There are two points that we will focus our critical analysis: first, we will emphasize the paradoxical result of the methodological proposal of these authors, which establishes as a premise the discarding of any preexisting theory of research activity; that is, a theory (the Grounded) that claims the discarding of all preconceived theory. Second, we will problematize about the displacement of the subject, as a producer of knowledge, that underlies the formulation of the Grounded Theory; in that sense we will try to reveal how this method of qualitative analysis is explained by the "theoretical design in development" (where incidents, properties and categories are constantly compared from the collected data), in which the researcher´s concerns, preconceptions, expectations and interests are, usually, ignored.