ARTICLES

The Double-bind in Social Research Methodology

Olga F. Ivashchuk
Pages 53–68| Published online: 02 October 2024

Ivashchuk, Olga F. 2024. “The Double-bind as the Functional Equivalent of Contradiction in Social Research Methodology.” Marxism & Sciences 3(2): 53–68.
https://doi.org/10.56063/MS.2408.03211.

ABSTRACT

The article attempts to compare two methodological figures whose core is a logi-cal contradiction: double-bind, introduced by Gregory Bateson, which appeals to Russell’s theory of types, and Hegel’s logical form of contradiction, work with which assumes a culture of movement in contradiction and the skill of solving it. Both methods proved very productive in a wide range of methodologically anti-Weberian socio-anthropological studies of the twentieth century in the West and in Russia, and both were enacted at a crucial moment in modelling the most complex transdisciplinary phenomena. Among them a therapy of mental pathol-ogy (G. Bateson) and learning of the deaf-blind (A. Mescheryakov-E. Ilyenkov), creativity (N. Elias and E. Ilyenkov), social power relations linking human indi-viduals as having a social nature (the Marx’s in origin concept of “aperto homine” by N. Elias and Marx’s “ensemble of social relations” by E. Ilyenkov), ambiva-lence of practices of presenting oneself to others (by I. Hoffmann) and contradic-tory nature of the ideality as a representation (by Ilyenkov). Analyzing the meth-ods of research work that prescribes double-bind or contradiction as a philosoph-ical category, the author traces what differences at the “output” the difference of these approaches leads to at the “input.” The decisive difference is that a meth-odology that treats double-bind only negatively limits its analysis to the mecha-nisms of social production of evil, while a methodology of contradiction resolu-tion demonstrates the ability to raise and address questions about the social production of creative individuality or high cultural patterns.

KEYWORDS: Homines aperti, double-bind, power-balance, contradiction, schizo-phrenia, typhlo-surdopedagogy, power of judgment, talent, creativity.
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