This article explores the potential of the focus group to generate analyzable social interaction. We investigate the ways in which group interaction may lead to new insights using examples from a 2011 study on transformation at a South African university campus. Certain aspects of sociable interaction, such as communicative interaction, power and agency, conflict, as well as exchange are touched upon and their roles in the intersubjective construction of reality are emphasized. We also look at the role of the facilitator in setting up a successful focus group session and the ways in which a naturalistic interactional setting may compensate for the relative unnatural nature of the group situation. Our argument is for the realization of the potential of the focus group as a qualitative method of data collection that is inherently geared towards generating understanding of contested issues, as it allows for an exciting positioning of the researcher between that of interviewer and participant observer, readily able to experience interactional exchange first hand while subtly directing the group conversation into areas of special interest. We believe that the unique epistemological possibilities of the focus group merit a re-engagement with the method by any social scientist interested in the dynamics underlying the social construction of reality, as it offers a window into the ways in which unfolding reality is intersubjectively contested, debated, and finally agreed upon.

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This article is the first in a series of three installments representing a doctoral project carried out at the University of the Free State in South Africa. The aim of this article is to establish an apodictic ontic and epistemic foundation for the construction of an integral framework for sociological practice. To this end, manifest reality is meditated upon in a realist phenomenological manner, thus yielding an etiological framework aimed at reflecting reality in itself, and not as the object of a specific scientific paradigm. Situated against the backdrop of the ontological turn in the social sciences, the argument is developed that contemporary science represents an ill-founded attempt at empirically describing a reality that is fundamentally trans-empirical. It is posited that any scientific enterprise which is founded exclusively on an empirical analysis of “objective” reality can ultimately yield only partial truths. To remedy this situation, the role of intersubjectively constructed meaning-frameworks and subjectively constituted qualia of manifestation during the generation of reality are acknowledged, facilitating an account thereof that enlivens the positivistic “world-as-described” by integrating it with the hermeneutically navigable “world-as-agreed-upon” and the individually encountered/embodied “world-as-witnessed.” The resulting etiological framework facilitates a grasp of the higher order unity of these “worlds” by facilitating the emergence of an aperspectival mode of being that transcends the empirico-perspectival mental consciousness structure characteristic of modern and postmodern epistemologies. In so doing, a universally valid layer of knowledge is laid bare which can serve as a contextualizing point of reference for the continued perspectival exploration of particular conditioned aspects of reality.

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Transformation has come to be a defining characteristic of contemporary societies, while it has rarely been studied in a way that gives acknowledgement to both its societal effects and the experience thereof by the individual. This article discusses a recent study that attempts to do just that. The everyday life of a South African is explored within the context of changes that can be linked, more or less directly, to those that have characterized South Africa as a state since the end of apartheid in 1994. The study strives to avoid the pitfalls associated with either an empirical or solely constructivist appreciation of this phenomenon, but rather represents an integral onto-epistemological framework for the practice of sociological research. The illustrated framework is argued to facilitate an analysis of social reality that encompasses all aspects thereof, from the objectively given to the intersubjectively constructed and subjectively constituted. While not requiring extensive development on the theoretical or methodological level, the possibility of carrying out such an integral study is highlighted as being comfortably within the capabilities of sociology as a discipline. While the article sheds light on the experience of transformation, it is also intended to contribute to the contemporary debate surrounding the current “ontological turn” within the social sciences.