A hermeneutic analysis of the Denver International Airport Baggage Handling System - Information Systems Foundations: Constructing and Criticising - page 64

Critical hermeneutics does emphasise the fact that social reality is historically
constituted. And one of the key differences between a purely interpretative
approach and critical hermeneutics is that the researcher does not merely accept
the self-understanding of participants, but seeks to critically evaluate the to-
tality of understandings in a given situation. 1 The researcher analyses the
participants' own understandings historically, and in terms of changing social
structures. The hermeneutic-dialectic perspective, therefore, as an integrative
approach, emphasises both the subjective meanings for individual actors and
the social structures which condition and enable such meanings and are con-
stituted by them.
This concept of historicality has also been called 'contextualisation' where Klein and
Myers (1999, p. 73) refer to Gadamer's (1976, p. 133) observation: '… the hermeneutic
task consists, not in covering up the tension between the text and present, but in con-
sciously bringing it out'.
The distance of the investigators from the source text can be manifold. It might be due
to one or any combination of:
1. time : the months or years or even millennia since the original text was written;
2. language: where the language of the text is no longer in day-to-day use or has been
substantially modified;
3. culture : where the original text was created by an author within a cultural context
alien to the investigator;
4. intention : where the original text's author set out intentionally to mislead, omit or
twist events and facts to serve their own ends;
5. social milieu: where the prevailing social norms and accepted behaviours of that
time and place of the text's creation have become forgotten or have changed.
It is the investigator's responsibility to acknowledge that they have a historicality factor
to account for and that the text under investigation may well be a puzzle of many dimen-
sions.
In addition to burdens that come with the text (historicality), there are burdens already
surrounding the investigator - their prejudices that will colour their own interpretations
of the text. These prejudices are actually 'pre-judgments', expectations of understanding.
Butler (1998, p. 288) extends the notion of prejudice by including a reference to Heide-
gger's (1976) notion of 'tradition' and suggesting that prejudice is actually a combination
of lived experiences, tradition and a sort of socialised comfort zone he refers to as 'das
Man'. Butler (1998, p. 288) acknowledges the powerful influence exerted on individuals:
According to Gadamer (1975), tradition influences a social actor's attitudes
and behaviour through authority, and such authority is transmitted through
time and history via cultural mechanisms. Heidegger (1976) argues that it is
the quiet authority of das Man (roughly translated as 'the they' or 'the anyone')
which provides reassurance in the face of existential turbulence. The state of
being 'situated' or 'tuned' under the sway of das Man, (e.g. as operationalised
through public opinion or group norms), provides one with familiar and
comfortable surroundings; self-reflection precipitated by existential turbulence
(a 'breakdown') shatters this tranquility and brings about an 'unhomliness'
(Unheimlichkeit) of existence.

1

This relates to our later issue on the actual nature of the dialectic whereby we must actively seek all the issues - both
those that are in favour of the argument and those best ones that are against.