The representation of substantive context

Broadly speaking, substantive context refers to all the local factors that a researcher needs to take into account in order to make sense of the data that s/he is collecting. There are many aspects of substantive context that a researcher would normally need to consider.

Holstein and Gubrium (2004) make a distinction, for instance, between:

a. ‘bottom up’ or ‘proximal’ context – the situated, interactional contingencies of talk and action that characterise the data generation phase of research

b. ‘top-down’ or ‘distal’ context – the cultural, socio-economic, political and institutional meanings, discourses, relations and forms of organisation that condition the field of action.

It is essential to bring both levels into dialogue with each other. This means, in our view, studying context at both levels:

a. investigating what the cultural and social aspects of the field of action comprise and understanding their power and effectivity (e.g. how has the leisure market become intertwined with educational visitor attractions? How is this market constituted and how has it changed over time? How insulated can attractions remain from the imperatives of marketing and business competition? How do other science centres position themselves within it?), and

b. simultaneously examining the minutiae of data to see whether and in what form traces of these wider aspects show up in talk and interaction, and how they make their influence felt.

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