Systematic Combining: an abductive methodological approach for the study of theater criticism in Portugal

Abstract

Theatre criticism, as a cultural journalism subgenre, is an increasingly scarce phenomenon in Portugal. In 2014, and according to the Portuguese Association for the Drawing and Circulation Control, there were only five publications that regularly published theatre reviews. Why so few? Is theatre criticism doomed to disappear? Therefore, our research main objective was the study and understanding of theatre criticism in Portugal by historically and conceptually analyzing its development and the evolution of its practices so that, ultimately, we could predict future scenarios and outlines about this phenomenon. Having this into account, we needed to adopt a less conventional, but equally effective, methodological approach in order to address our specific research needs. Thus, we adopted Dubois and Gadde’s (2002) Systematic Combining has our main research methodology. This methodology allowed us to conduct our research in an abductive way, where theory and empirical research developed simultaneously, through the structured combination of the inductive and deductive reasoning, and by defining paths that started within theory and moved towards empirical data, and vice-versa. Thus, the main goal of this paper is to provide a general overview about the research undertaken with particular focus on its methodological design.