From Judy.Brown at vuw.ac.nz Sun Jul 6 00:37:48 2008 From: Judy.Brown at vuw.ac.nz (Judy Brown) Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2008 16:37:48 +1200 Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] Interpretive Masters/Phd Proposals Message-ID: <7A8436AD0EB8F4428BEC320CC109A242022E5AAF@STAWINCOMAILCL1.staff.vuw.ac.nz> Hi All I have just joined this list on my return from the (very stimulating) 3rd Interpretive Policy Analysis Conference at Essex University. I am keen to foster post-graduate students interested in undertaking Masters/PhDs using interpretive and critical methods. One challenge we have encountered is finding examples of interpretive/critical thesis proposals (traditionally most of the proposals presented have followed positivist templates). Would any list members be able to send me copies of interpretivist/critical thesis proposals or point me in the direction of any resources for writing up such proposals that I can pass on to students? I will, of course, also encourage students working in this area - one is about to start a PhD on information systems from an interpretive perspective - to join the list. Best regards Judy Brown. Judy Brown Professor of Accounting School of Accounting and Commercial Law Victoria University of Wellington PO Box 600 Wellington New Zealand From D.Yanow at fsw.vu.nl Sun Jul 6 04:55:59 2008 From: D.Yanow at fsw.vu.nl (Dvora Yanow) Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2008 10:55:59 +0200 Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] Interpretive Masters/Phd Proposals References: <7A8436AD0EB8F4428BEC320CC109A242022E5AAF@STAWINCOMAILCL1.staff.vuw.ac.nz> Message-ID: <5286BEEC21FADA47A24AA92D8BC9270E016FD177@fswmail01.scw.vu.nl> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/pipermail/interpretationandmethods/attachments/20080706/e76e50aa/attachment.html From patrickthaddeusjackson at gmail.com Sun Jul 6 09:33:47 2008 From: patrickthaddeusjackson at gmail.com (Patrick Thaddeus Jackson) Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2008 09:33:47 -0400 Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] Interpretive Masters/Phd Proposals In-Reply-To: <5286BEEC21FADA47A24AA92D8BC9270E016FD177@fswmail01.scw.vu.nl> References: <7A8436AD0EB8F4428BEC320CC109A242022E5AAF@STAWINCOMAILCL1.staff.vuw.ac.nz> <5286BEEC21FADA47A24AA92D8BC9270E016FD177@fswmail01.scw.vu.nl> Message-ID: <31D4BAA0-3738-480F-A580-E94EE67EE1C3@gmail.com> Speaking for myself I get nervous about graduate students -- or anyone else -- who comes to me and says things like "I want to do a piece of interpretive / critical research" (except, of course, for students in my methodology courses who are given assignments in those terms). The style of research, I strongly feel, ought to follow from the kind of research question, and not the reverse. In my teaching I distinguish between topics and questions, such that any topic can yield a variety of questions; methodology enters at the question-level, and sets the research agenda from that point on. Setting out to do a piece of interpretive research is analogous to setting out to do a piece of Marxist research, or a piece of rationalist research: it puts an unquestioned and unquestionable set of substantive presuppositions before the research itself, and thus makes itself unable to ask the broader question of whether or not those substantive assumptions are the appropriate ones for the task at hand. That said, in practice scholars gravitate towards one or another methodology, at least in my experience -- which means that the kinds of questions that they characteristically ask fit more easily into some methodological boxes than they do into others. There's a fine line between selecting a methodology on ideological grounds and researching questions that arise from a certain methodological tradition to which one feels drawn; I'm pretty sure that no one does either of these things purely, but I think it's important to go through the exercise of grounding research in questions derived from topics rather than in methodologies. Otherwise we just end up with semi-autonomous circles of scholars plugging away at abstruse issues of interest only to themselves and the fifteen other people who actually read their articles and books -- at least a topic could in principle be of interest to other scholars, even if they didn't like the way it was cashed out in a particular methodological manner. Once the research question is formed, I'm with Dvora: every social- scientific research proposal contains about the same things. Lit review (sketch of the scholarly conversation one wishes to join and location of one's own research within it -- so both a literature summary and a literature critique); initial guess about what you expect to find (because you have one, you really do -- might as well be explicit about that up front); methodology and methods section about how you plan to go about answering the research question and evaluating that initial guess (note that not all guesses are hypotheses, since hypotheses imply testing and a whole bunch of other things that only make sense if one makes a set of dualist assumptions about the relationship between the mind and the world -- initial guess is a broader category, and also encompasses propositions that one sets out to interactively improve or attempt to validate, not just to falsify). If a proposal didn't have these elements I'd be hard-pressed to call it a social-scientific research proposal in the first place. PTJ On Jul 6, 2008, at 4:55 AM, Dvora Yanow wrote: > Hi Judy! Great question; thanks for posting it. > > But I'm a bit confused: are you referring to the overall structure > of a research proposal? And if so, in what way(s) should it be > different from a more positivist one? > > I'm thinking that a proposal for any kind of research would begin by > developing the parameters of the research area (a.k.a. research > question), pointing to the relevant epistemic community whose > conversation the proposer wishes/intends to join (signalled > typically through both terminology/concepts and citations), followed > by a methods section. > > Is it in the latter area that you're seeking templates -- meaning, > specifically, how one talks about research that is not based on > hypotheses and their testing? > > Thanks in advance for the clarification, > Dvora > > Prof. dr. Dvora Yanow > Strategic Chair in Meaning and Method > Faculty of Social Sciences > Vrije Universiteit > De Boelelaan 1081 > 1081HV Amsterdam > THE NETHERLANDS > > d.yanow at fsw.vu.nl > webpage: english.fsw.vu.nl/Organization/index.cfm/ > home_subsection.cfm/subsectionid/8734A0A6-9F25-39C9-729E10151292879E > > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: interpretationandmethods-bounces at malagigi.cddc.vt.edu on > behalf of Judy Brown > Sent: Sun 06-Jul-08 06:37 > To: interpretationandmethods at malagigi.cddc.vt.edu > Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] Interpretive Masters/Phd Proposals > > Hi All > > I have just joined this list on my return from the (very > stimulating) 3rd Interpretive Policy Analysis Conference at Essex > University. > > I am keen to foster post-graduate students interested in > undertaking Masters/PhDs using interpretive and critical methods. > One challenge we have encountered is finding examples of > interpretive/critical thesis proposals (traditionally most of the > proposals presented have followed positivist templates). > > Would any list members be able to send me copies of interpretivist/ > critical thesis proposals or point me in the direction of any > resources for writing up such proposals that I can pass on to > students? > > I will, of course, also encourage students working in this area - > one is about to start a PhD on information systems from an > interpretive perspective - to join the list. > > > Best regards > Judy Brown. > > > Judy Brown > Professor of Accounting > School of Accounting and Commercial Law > Victoria University of Wellington > PO Box 600 > Wellington > New Zealand > _______________________________________________ > Interpretationandmethods mailing list > Interpretationandmethods at listserv.cddc.vt.edu > http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/interpretationandmethods > > > _______________________________________________ > Interpretationandmethods mailing list > Interpretationandmethods at listserv.cddc.vt.edu > http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/interpretationandmethods === Patrick Thaddeus Jackson Director, General Education Program, American University Editor-in-Chief, Journal of International Relations and Development http://profptj.blogspot.com | http://www.kittenboo.com calendar: http://ical.mac.com/onyxdr/Patrick -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/pipermail/interpretationandmethods/attachments/20080706/49e0fefb/attachment.html From Jacque_Amoureux at brown.edu Sun Jul 6 12:34:30 2008 From: Jacque_Amoureux at brown.edu (Amoureux, Jacque) Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2008 12:34:30 -0400 Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] Interpretive Masters/Phd Proposals References: <7A8436AD0EB8F4428BEC320CC109A242022E5AAF@STAWINCOMAILCL1.staff.vuw.ac.nz> Message-ID: Hi Judy, Take a look at Lene Hansen's Security as Practice for an excellent example of discourse analysis. It's explicitly oriented toward helping IR scholars conduct their own discourse analysis. Best wishes, Jack ******************************** Jacque L. Amoureux Ph.D. Candidate Department of Political Science Brown University Box 1844, Prospect House 36 Prospect St. Providence, RI 02912-1844 Phone: 401.265.3866 ________________________________ From: interpretationandmethods-bounces at malagigi.cddc.vt.edu on behalf of Judy Brown Sent: Sun 7/6/2008 12:37 AM To: interpretationandmethods at malagigi.cddc.vt.edu Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] Interpretive Masters/Phd Proposals Hi All I have just joined this list on my return from the (very stimulating) 3rd Interpretive Policy Analysis Conference at Essex University. I am keen to foster post-graduate students interested in undertaking Masters/PhDs using interpretive and critical methods. One challenge we have encountered is finding examples of interpretive/critical thesis proposals (traditionally most of the proposals presented have followed positivist templates). Would any list members be able to send me copies of interpretivist/critical thesis proposals or point me in the direction of any resources for writing up such proposals that I can pass on to students? I will, of course, also encourage students working in this area - one is about to start a PhD on information systems from an interpretive perspective - to join the list. Best regards Judy Brown. Judy Brown Professor of Accounting School of Accounting and Commercial Law Victoria University of Wellington PO Box 600 Wellington New Zealand _______________________________________________ Interpretationandmethods mailing list Interpretationandmethods at listserv.cddc.vt.edu http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/interpretationandmethods -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/ms-tnef Size: 5586 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/pipermail/interpretationandmethods/attachments/20080706/47dd88a5/attachment-0001.bin From Judy.Brown at vuw.ac.nz Sun Jul 6 18:11:08 2008 From: Judy.Brown at vuw.ac.nz (Judy Brown) Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2008 10:11:08 +1200 Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] Interpretationandmethods Digest, Vol 43, Issue 1 References: Message-ID: <7A8436AD0EB8F4428BEC320CC109A242022E5AB3@STAWINCOMAILCL1.staff.vuw.ac.nz> Hi Patrick, Dvora and Jack Many thanks to the three of you for your prompt and generous responses. I realise now that I should have provided a bit more background information, so here goes to clarify: 1. I currently teach a course in Accounting Research Methodology: Interpretive and Critical Theory aimed at just the sorts of issues Patrick raises. Our Honours students take this course and another course focussing on positivist research, for the purposes of exploring different research possibilities and (for students going onto Masters/PhDs) to help them identify research that feels "right" to them. We now have a (growing) group of students pursuing interpretivist/critical theory work. 2. Patrick and Dvora - yes, I totally agree that the overall structure of a PhD proposal is similar for all types of research. It is in the latter area that Dvora identifies that I would really welcome examples - talking about research not based on hypothesis testing - specifically at the proposal stage. We are very short of examples here - particularly in the area of interpretive research. This would be helpful not only to students, but also to those of us supervising to help ensure quality work (not least of all to counter colleagues who still "test" proposals by positivist standards and expect to see hypotheses, statistical tests etc. etc.). While students can look at examples of published research, it is still not quite the same as having proposals to look at. 3. The student about to start will be examining the involvement of accountants in the decision-making processes surrounding information technology governance. In particular, she wishes to explore the ways in which the ideas and attitudes of accountants and IT practitioners might enable or constrain the involvement of accountants in IT governance. An interpretivist methodology will be adopted in order to explore the impact of various "ideational" aspects on IT governance design choice e.g. the ways in which IT governance is conceptualised by accountants and IT practitioners, interpretive schema and institutional 'habits', professional identity, organisational culture and politics. I am meeting her later this week, and will encourage her to join the list so she can tell you more about her interests. 4. Jack - many thanks for the lead to Hansen's work. I have already Googled it and it looks fascinating - it will be on my next book order!! Cheers, Judy. From patrickthaddeusjackson at gmail.com Sun Jul 6 21:39:23 2008 From: patrickthaddeusjackson at gmail.com (Patrick Thaddeus Jackson) Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2008 21:39:23 -0400 Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] Interpretationandmethods Digest, Vol 43, Issue 1 In-Reply-To: <7A8436AD0EB8F4428BEC320CC109A242022E5AB3@STAWINCOMAILCL1.staff.vuw.ac.nz> References: <7A8436AD0EB8F4428BEC320CC109A242022E5AB3@STAWINCOMAILCL1.staff.vuw.ac.nz> Message-ID: <26FB774E-E865-41FE-B099-FE9FA628C88E@gmail.com> On Jul 6, 2008, at 6:11 PM, Judy Brown wrote: > 3. The student about to start will be examining the involvement of > accountants in the decision-making processes surrounding information > technology governance. In particular, she wishes to explore the ways > in which the ideas and attitudes of accountants and IT practitioners > might enable or constrain the involvement of accountants in IT > governance. An interpretivist methodology will be adopted in order > to explore the impact of various "ideational" aspects on IT > governance design choice e.g. the ways in which IT governance is > conceptualised by accountants and IT practitioners, interpretive > schema and institutional 'habits', professional identity, > organisational culture and politics. I am meeting her later this > week, and will encourage her to join the list so she can tell you > more about her interests. Judy: One question I would ask the student is what, if anything, is "interpretive" about this research question. "The impact of various 'ideational' aspects" sounds like pretty standard neopositivism to me: code a variable like "professional identity" or "organizational culture" and then test to see whether the variable is significantly correlated with an outcome of interest across cases. I see interpretive methods here, but no interpretive methodology. "Attitudes cause an outcome" is not the kind of proposition one needs anything complicated to evaluate; Mill's Methods ought to do the job just nicely. Of course, one could also ask a research question here that *would* require a non-neopositivist research design. But "the impact of X on Y" wouldn't be it. For example, one could propose an ethnographic account of accountants working in IT governance, seeking to bring to light the interpretive horizon within which they work; that isn't hypothesis-testing, but it also isn't causal (so such a study couldn't be about "impact"). Or one might make a relational turn, and discuss IT governance as emerging someplace between a variety of conflicting parties and strategies, and hence examine the detailed transactions that take place between (e.g.) IT practitioners and accountants in the process of constituting "IT governance." That's causal, but it's not "X causes Y" (or statistical-comparative) causal. I think it's great that you have a multiple-methodology sequence for your students; I agree, that's the best way to allow students to experiment, and to find the right methodological approach for the question at hand. But the flip-side of that, I think, is that if one has a neopositivist question then one should use a neopositivist methodology in an attempt to answer it. PTJ === Patrick Thaddeus Jackson Director, General Education Program, American University Editor-in-Chief, Journal of International Relations and Development http://profptj.blogspot.com | http://www.kittenboo.com calendar: http://ical.mac.com/onyxdr/Patrick From wjkellpro at aol.com Mon Jul 7 17:28:40 2008 From: wjkellpro at aol.com (wjkellpro at aol.com) Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2008 17:28:40 -0400 Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] What is The Right Way to do Interpretive Social Science? Message-ID: <8CAAE8F8F134EAD-1148-35AA@webmail-nc13.sysops.aol.com> ? Hi All! ? Recently there has been some talk about how grad students can go about doing an interpretive social science study, so I thought I would toss this into the discussion for folks to consider.? I would like to know your opinions.? ? Here is how I think a Polanyian interpretive social science would structure a scientific study of behavior.? ? Suppose a graduate student or professional social scientist sets out to do an interpretive study of why George Bush (GB), acting as Commander-in-Chief, ordered the preemptive strike on Iraq, which has since resulted in the prolonged Iraq War.? How would this study be structured?? That is, how would one plan to both approach the study, and later present it, say, for publication? ? To make the problem I have in mind clearer, I will suggest the structure that I envision for such a study.? I would plan on three parts: fact-finding, interpretation, and evaluation.? This is the three part structure I find in Polanyi?s book, The Study of Man (SM). ? Fact-finding. What were the relevant circumstances in which GB acted?? This would probably start with the 911 Commission Report. ?Other historic sources would include narratives from the press and other media.? There are already numerous books and journal articles alleging facts that might be relevant for portraying the factual circumstances, including the administration?s response to the 911 attack.? ? Using these sources, I would try to pin down the sequence of GB?s actions leading up to the initial invasion.? I might also use the Freedom of Information Act to learn what I could about White House meetings. I would try to interview people close to GB, and GB himself.? ? Interpretation. Once I have a clear record of GB?s actions leading up to the order to invade, I would try to interpret what his reasons were for making the order.? All the above sources could be reviewed for what they say about his reasons, including his speeches, and my personal interview of him, and those close to him.? ? As a result of this research, I would expect to have: a) his reasons as stated in his own words, b) his reasons as stated in the opinion of those close to him, and c) speculations about his unstated reasons as stated in all the above sources, except himself.? ? Given a long list of reasons, I would wonder about the weight of each in his mind.? Did he really believe the WMD story, or that an Iraq/Al Qaeda connection existed?? Or, did he covertly covet Iraq?s oil?? Or, did he use the nation?s military to avenge his father?s honor, in the belief that Saddam contemplated the assignation of GB?s dad?? Or, did he see the 911 attack as somehow providing him with an opportunity to spread democracy in the Middle East?? What else could he have been thinking? ? ? Evaluation. Polanyi points out that social scientists generally see themselves as trying to understand and explain human behavior; even if they are merely gathering and reporting statistics, they are concerned with human behavior.? He criticizes this self-understanding.? He sees it as containing the unexamined assumption that they know what is ?human? in the term ?human behavior.?? ? He agrees with Aristotle that the defining characteristic of humans is their ?rationality.?? But he defines that term more broadly than Aristotle does, so that it includes the vast tacit dimension of human thought.? He also shows that human thought strives for knowledge that it can hold with ?universal intent.?? He sees this as a motive which includes a large degree of respect for other rational minds.? Indeed, such respect for others is a core element of human rationality.? It is a large part of the tacit dimension.? It is also a big departure from Aristotle?s thought about rationality. ? Thus, to classify behavior as ?human? requires far more thoughtfulness than is generally practiced in social science today.? If scientists are concerned with knowing the facts, or the truth, then they must address the question as to whether the conduct under study manifests the degree of rationality that would be sufficient to merit the classification ?human behavior.?? This would include assessing the degree of concern, or respect, for the welfare of the people who could foreseeably be impacted by one?s behavior. ? In other words, for Polanyi, every social science study of human behavior already entails an appraisal of that behavior as being rational enough to merit membership in the category ?human.?? Such studies become statements of who we, as humans, are.? Through social science, we define ourselves.? But we are doing so thoughtlessly.? This is not responsible professional conduct. We are educating ourselves as to who we are, without rationally examining our methods.? This has moral consequences.? For the current practice of social science, everything people do qualifies as ?human behavior.?? We abandon the use of reason at exactly the point where it is most needed. ? So, for a Polanyian social science, one must ask how well GB?s behavior, and his reasons therefore, measure up to the level of human rationality.? To me this means I have to ask whether a rational person, or more exactly, a rational president, would have acted as GB did under the circumstances.? I would make this determination so as to more reasonably ?classify GB?s conduct along a gradient of rationality, and measure its fit into the category of human behavior.? I.e., was it fully human, or some gradient less than that? ? I know that this is unfamiliar territory for social science.? But it seems to me that Polanyi is right, and that this is what must be done.? Besides SM, he also models this three step approach in Personal Knowledge. There, he evaluates what natural scientists think of themselves as doing in the course of their professional work.? He shows that their self-understandings are full of false and irrational myths.? In other words, current natural science falls far short of its full potential for human rationality.? ? Whether my study of GB would come to a similar conclusion about his degree of rationality?or not, would depend on the facts and reasons that I settle on in the first two steps. ? So, this is what I would advise grad students to consider as a proper interpretive social science method.? That is, establish the relevant facts, interpret these for the meanings that the actors understood for themselves, and check for meanings of which they may not be aware, or may not state.? Then appraise the mix for its degree of rationality under the circumstances, with a view to measuring its degree of human rationality. ? Feedback? ? Bill Kelleher ? ? See my papers on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) at: http://ssrn.com/author=1053589 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/pipermail/interpretationandmethods/attachments/20080707/eda99e2b/attachment-0001.html From Judy.Brown at vuw.ac.nz Mon Jul 7 18:11:24 2008 From: Judy.Brown at vuw.ac.nz (Judy Brown) Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2008 10:11:24 +1200 Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] Interpretationandmethods Digest, Vol 43, Issue 1 References: Message-ID: <7A8436AD0EB8F4428BEC320CC109A242022E5AC3@STAWINCOMAILCL1.staff.vuw.ac.nz> Many thanks Patrick - this is really helpful. It is indeed the ethnographic/relational aspects that are of interest - and I agree on reflection that "impact" is a (and my) bad choice of word implying a neopositivist approach. I will print all this exchange out - as the basis for some discussion when I meet the student concerned later this week. Your response strikes bang on part of the issue faced when positivist colleagues assume interpretivist work is really looking for "causal variables" (e.g. contingency theory). "Relational/interpretive horizon" rather than "impact" talk is a far more helpful way of conceptualising what is involved. But, of course, it may also be me presupposing too much that it is really the enthnographic/relational aspects that are primary in this study because that it is the approach that I would want to take... so this reinforces for me the need to "sense-check" my understanding with the student. It is, after all, her thesis not mine!! So many thanks again... ________________________________ From: interpretationandmethods-bounces at malagigi.cddc.vt.edu on behalf of interpretationandmethods-request at malagigi.cddc.vt.edu Sent: Tue 8/07/2008 9:27 a.m. To: interpretationandmethods at malagigi.cddc.vt.edu Subject: Interpretationandmethods Digest, Vol 43, Issue 2 Send Interpretationandmethods mailing list submissions to interpretationandmethods at listserv.cddc.vt.edu To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/interpretationandmethods or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to interpretationandmethods-request at listserv.cddc.vt.edu You can reach the person managing the list at interpretationandmethods-owner at listserv.cddc.vt.edu When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Interpretationandmethods digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: Interpretationandmethods Digest, Vol 43, Issue 1 (Judy Brown) 2. Re: Interpretationandmethods Digest, Vol 43, Issue 1 (Patrick Thaddeus Jackson) 3. What is The Right Way to do Interpretive Social Science? (wjkellpro at aol.com) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2008 10:11:08 +1200 From: "Judy Brown" Subject: Re: [Interpretationandmethods] Interpretationandmethods Digest, Vol 43, Issue 1 To: Message-ID: <7A8436AD0EB8F4428BEC320CC109A242022E5AB3 at STAWINCOMAILCL1.staff.vuw.ac.nz> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Hi Patrick, Dvora and Jack Many thanks to the three of you for your prompt and generous responses. I realise now that I should have provided a bit more background information, so here goes to clarify: 1. I currently teach a course in Accounting Research Methodology: Interpretive and Critical Theory aimed at just the sorts of issues Patrick raises. Our Honours students take this course and another course focussing on positivist research, for the purposes of exploring different research possibilities and (for students going onto Masters/PhDs) to help them identify research that feels "right" to them. We now have a (growing) group of students pursuing interpretivist/critical theory work. 2. Patrick and Dvora - yes, I totally agree that the overall structure of a PhD proposal is similar for all types of research. It is in the latter area that Dvora identifies that I would really welcome examples - talking about research not based on hypothesis testing - specifically at the proposal stage. We are very short of examples here - particularly in the area of interpretive research. This would be helpful not only to students, but also to those of us supervising to help ensure quality work (not least of all to counter colleagues who still "test" proposals by positivist standards and expect to see hypotheses, statistical tests etc. etc.). While students can look at examples of published research, it is still not quite the same as having proposals to look at. 3. The student about to start will be examining the involvement of accountants in the decision-making processes surrounding information technology governance. In particular, she wishes to explore the ways in which the ideas and attitudes of accountants and IT practitioners might enable or constrain the involvement of accountants in IT governance. An interpretivist methodology will be adopted in order to explore the impact of various "ideational" aspects on IT governance design choice e.g. the ways in which IT governance is conceptualised by accountants and IT practitioners, interpretive schema and institutional 'habits', professional identity, organisational culture and politics. I am meeting her later this week, and will encourage her to join the list so she can tell you more about her interests. 4. Jack - many thanks for the lead to Hansen's work. I have already Googled it and it looks fascinating - it will be on my next book order!! Cheers, Judy. ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2008 21:39:23 -0400 From: Patrick Thaddeus Jackson Subject: Re: [Interpretationandmethods] Interpretationandmethods Digest, Vol 43, Issue 1 To: interpretation and methods group Message-ID: <26FB774E-E865-41FE-B099-FE9FA628C88E at gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes On Jul 6, 2008, at 6:11 PM, Judy Brown wrote: > 3. The student about to start will be examining the involvement of > accountants in the decision-making processes surrounding information > technology governance. In particular, she wishes to explore the ways > in which the ideas and attitudes of accountants and IT practitioners > might enable or constrain the involvement of accountants in IT > governance. An interpretivist methodology will be adopted in order > to explore the impact of various "ideational" aspects on IT > governance design choice e.g. the ways in which IT governance is > conceptualised by accountants and IT practitioners, interpretive > schema and institutional 'habits', professional identity, > organisational culture and politics. I am meeting her later this > week, and will encourage her to join the list so she can tell you > more about her interests. Judy: One question I would ask the student is what, if anything, is "interpretive" about this research question. "The impact of various 'ideational' aspects" sounds like pretty standard neopositivism to me: code a variable like "professional identity" or "organizational culture" and then test to see whether the variable is significantly correlated with an outcome of interest across cases. I see interpretive methods here, but no interpretive methodology. "Attitudes cause an outcome" is not the kind of proposition one needs anything complicated to evaluate; Mill's Methods ought to do the job just nicely. Of course, one could also ask a research question here that *would* require a non-neopositivist research design. But "the impact of X on Y" wouldn't be it. For example, one could propose an ethnographic account of accountants working in IT governance, seeking to bring to light the interpretive horizon within which they work; that isn't hypothesis-testing, but it also isn't causal (so such a study couldn't be about "impact"). Or one might make a relational turn, and discuss IT governance as emerging someplace between a variety of conflicting parties and strategies, and hence examine the detailed transactions that take place between (e.g.) IT practitioners and accountants in the process of constituting "IT governance." That's causal, but it's not "X causes Y" (or statistical-comparative) causal. I think it's great that you have a multiple-methodology sequence for your students; I agree, that's the best way to allow students to experiment, and to find the right methodological approach for the question at hand. But the flip-side of that, I think, is that if one has a neopositivist question then one should use a neopositivist methodology in an attempt to answer it. PTJ === Patrick Thaddeus Jackson Director, General Education Program, American University Editor-in-Chief, Journal of International Relations and Development http://profptj.blogspot.com | http://www.kittenboo.com calendar: http://ical.mac.com/onyxdr/Patrick From wjkellpro at aol.com Mon Jul 7 18:39:01 2008 From: wjkellpro at aol.com (wjkellpro at aol.com) Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2008 18:39:01 -0400 Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] How Rational is IT Governance? Message-ID: <8CAAE9962FCFCE6-1180-6D2D@webmail-nb12.sysops.aol.com> Hi Again! I admit, I don't know anything about the subject. But based on Judy's last email, I offer this suggestion: ? How Rational is IT Governance? ? This study seeks to understand the ways in which the ideas and attitudes of accountants and IT practitioners enable or constrain the involvement of accountants in IT governance.? ? Facts. [A]? According to the official image of IT governance the ideas of all those who are, or may be, impacted by its policies and practices are always solicited and seriously considered whenever policy decisions are taken.? Also, policies are constantly monitored for their fairness and effectiveness. Here are the facts showing that this is?IT's official position?? printed info, interviews with officials, etc. [B]? According to research conducted in our 2008-2009 study of accountant opinion, 60% of those interviewed/surveyed are of the opinion that IT governance is conducted with no regard whatsoever for their opinions, and that policies are implemented with a ?my way or highway? spirit.? 20% agree that sometimes their views are sought, and policies are implemented with some consideration of their impact on the dignity of the accountants.? 20% agree that their views are always taken into consideration, and that they love their masters.? Many accountants self-restrict their input into IT governance so as to avoid the risk of humiliation in case their input is ridiculed or rejected, etc. ? Interpretation. A gap exists between the way IT governors see themselves, and are seen by a majority of accounts under their management.? We interpret the continuation of this gap as being due to the rigidity and lack of open-mindedness of the power elites.? Here are our reasons for this interpretation ? ? Evaluation. IT governors are not fulfilling their full potential for human rationality.? Human rationality contains a large measure of respect for other people.? Yet, IT governors are misfeasant in their management practices, thus manifesting a large deficit of the ordinary care that rational governors in these circumstances would show for accountants. Contrary to the official image they propagate, their practices actually constrain the resourceful and creative involvement of accountants in IT governance.?? ? More rational practices and policies would include??1,2,3,... End. ? ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/pipermail/interpretationandmethods/attachments/20080707/eed9def9/attachment.html From patrickthaddeusjackson at gmail.com Mon Jul 7 22:39:39 2008 From: patrickthaddeusjackson at gmail.com (Patrick Thaddeus Jackson) Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2008 22:39:39 -0400 Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] What is The Right Way to do Interpretive Social Science? In-Reply-To: <8CAAE8F8F134EAD-1148-35AA@webmail-nc13.sysops.aol.com> References: <8CAAE8F8F134EAD-1148-35AA@webmail-nc13.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: On Jul 7, 2008, at 5:28 PM, WJKELLPRO at aol.com wrote: > So, this is what I would advise grad students to consider as a > proper interpretive social science method. That is, establish the > relevant facts, interpret these for the meanings that the actors > understood for themselves, and check for meanings of which they may > not be aware, or may not state. Then appraise the mix for its > degree of rationality under the circumstances, with a view to > measuring its degree of human rationality. Bill's suggestions provide an interesting roadmap for doing a certain kind of normative evaluation of social action, by comparing what people do with an idealized standard of human rationality. Setting aside for the moment any question about Polanyi (since I am in no way an expert on Polanyi) and dealing just with the recommendation itself, I must disagree with Bill's advice on two counts. First, whatever else this is, it isn't explanatory social science. Second, the proposed technique runs into some perhaps insurmountable operational problems, particularly when it comes to "establishing the relevant facts" and describing "meanings of which they [the actors] might not be aware, or may not state." My biggest disagreement here is with the notion that social science is supposed to be about issuing normative appraisals of actions. That strikes me as a deeply problematic conflation of two different intellectual operations, explanation and evaluation. Explanation is about determining how and why things happen, and as such says nothing whatsoever about the moral and ethical status of of those happenings; evaluation is about rendering a judgement on some happening or condition, and is logically independent of any particular explanation of how or why we have that situation or occurrence. Both of these operations are important intellectual functions, but they aren't the same thing -- they're logically disjoint. This is apparent from Bill's two illustrative sketches of studies. Bill asks "why George Bush (GB), acting as Commander-in-Chief, ordered the preemptive strike on Iraq, which has since resulted in the prolonged Iraq War" but the subsequent elaboration doesn't actually answer that question! Instead, it answers the parallel question "was it rational for GB to have ordered the preemptive strike on Iraq?" (I don't want to get into the rest of the causal chain that Bill posits, except to say that it is far from clear that the preemptive strike on Iraq was the cause of the prolonged Iraq War; I'd personally cite something like the reconfiguration of US foreign policy identity as the main cause, but there are other takes on this question. The point is that the social-scientific jury is very much out on this issue.) Bill also asks about "the ways in which the ideas and attitudes of accountants and IT practitioners enable or constrain the involvement of accountants in IT governance" but the subsequent elaboration doesn't answer this question, but the parallel question "how rational is the use that IT practitioners make of accountants?" I don't want to be misunderstood here. I'm all for normative and ethical evaluation of action. But let's be clear that such an evaluation is not the same thing as an explanation of why that action took place. Explanations are, by design, ethically neutral -- which is not to say that the terms and notions used in an explanation don't have ethical commitments built into them. They obviously do, since it's not possible to have a commitment that doesn't have ethical content at some level (which was half of Weber's point, many years back). But an explanation is not an evaluation, because the use of social-scientific concepts to explain something is logically distinct from the use of those concepts to evaluate something (which was the other half of Weber's point). That said: if one is going to do ethical evaluation, I don't think that Bill's proposal is the best way to go about doing it. Bill's procedure requires the analyst to first "establish the relevant facts," which he illustrates through techniques of data-collection which basically take first-hand and other participant accounts as though they were true and accurate (such as consulting the 9/11 commission report). This makes no sense to me, since what that data will likely yield is not any analytically rigorous facts but instead a particular, perhaps peculiar, political and discursive construction of "the facts." That's interesting stuff, but to my mind not particularly useful for figuring out whether the actions undertaken were in any sense rational ones. In fact, I think that would be very interesting data to use in an analysis of the social production of facts, which could be part of an explanation of how and why something happened . . . but that would tell me nothing whatsoever about whether that thing that happened was rationally justified. For "rational" I would need to know the situation as it was, not the situation as it was later constructed to have been. But where I really get lost is in Bill's suggestion that the analyst then proceed to elucidate "meanings of which they [the actors] might not be aware, or may not state." That either looks like a license to introduce whatever the analyst believes that the actors should have concluded, or a warrant to import some universal theory about interests or motivations or whatever as a supplement to what the actors actually said and thought. That's a door that I'm never comfortable opening, since once we do then a) there is no reason to take the experienced world of the actors at all seriously, since we can just replace it with what we already know to be the case; and b) we are then placed in the unenviable position of having to transcendentally justify our preferred universal framework. Marx couldn't do it, Habermas hasn't been able to do it, the rational choice people can't do it . . . so either there's a solution that they haven't thought of yet, or one abandons the attempt altogether and just rests on faith in the normative rightness of one's account of motives and interests and the human person. Either way, the whole exercise is called into question because we are now tossed into a debate about the ultimate status of the theoretical apparatus that the analyst is using to pierce through the actors' partial account of things to get to what is "really going on" -- and that's not a debate that is likely to end any time soon, if at all. Personally, I think a much more consistent way to go about ethical evaluation is to elaborate some ethical rules and then see if actions were carried out in accordance with them. Why muddy the analytical waters with efforts to accurately describe the state of mind of the actors, or to ascertain what it "rationally" ought to have been? Even if such a description were possible -- and there are good reasons, deriving from Wittgenstein, to doubt that it is even in principle possible to describe a subjective mental state -- that would only give us a sense of what people thought. This would neither explain their actions nor give us much purchase on ethically evaluating them (to say nothing of their consequences -- that would require a social- scientific explanation of the results of some action, and certainly couldn't rest content with some actor's evaluation of the results of their action). To sum up: I can't agree that Bill's proposal is the best way to think about "interpretive social science" or even that it constitutes a "proper interpretive social science method." I think Bill is sketching a procedure for doing ethical evaluation of social action -- and it's not a procedure that I would recommend, given certain operational difficulties that it presents. I stick by my four-part suggestion for a good social-scientific research proposal, interpretive or otherwise: 1) research question; 2) review of scholarly literature to situate the study; 3) initial guess at an answer to the research question; 4) methodological plan for evaluating the initial guess and answering the question. PTJ === Patrick Thaddeus Jackson Director, General Education Program, American University Editor-in-Chief, Journal of International Relations and Development http://profptj.blogspot.com | http://www.kittenboo.com calendar: http://ical.mac.com/onyxdr/Patrick -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/pipermail/interpretationandmethods/attachments/20080707/dc6caa34/attachment-0001.html From D.Yanow at fsw.vu.nl Tue Jul 8 04:34:06 2008 From: D.Yanow at fsw.vu.nl (Dvora Yanow) Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2008 10:34:06 +0200 Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] Interpretationandmethods Digest, Vol 43, Issue 1 References: <7A8436AD0EB8F4428BEC320CC109A242022E5AC3@STAWINCOMAILCL1.staff.vuw.ac.nz> Message-ID: <5286BEEC21FADA47A24AA92D8BC9270E016FD19F@fswmail01.scw.vu.nl> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/pipermail/interpretationandmethods/attachments/20080708/76be9c8a/attachment.html From patrickthaddeusjackson at gmail.com Tue Jul 8 10:42:21 2008 From: patrickthaddeusjackson at gmail.com (Patrick Thaddeus Jackson) Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2008 10:42:21 -0400 Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] Interpretationandmethods Digest, Vol 43, Issue 1 In-Reply-To: <5286BEEC21FADA47A24AA92D8BC9270E016FD19F@fswmail01.scw.vu.nl> References: <7A8436AD0EB8F4428BEC320CC109A242022E5AC3@STAWINCOMAILCL1.staff.vuw.ac.nz> <5286BEEC21FADA47A24AA92D8BC9270E016FD19F@fswmail01.scw.vu.nl> Message-ID: <4B9AEF29-0C81-43B5-AE56-DD04FCF4E550@gmail.com> On Jul 8, 2008, at 4:34 AM, Dvora Yanow wrote: > One approach to social science is to try to piece together "what > really happened" (whatever methods one uses to do that). Another is > to problematize whether we can ever do that in light of a > phenomenological-hermeneutic understanding that that can never be > known -- which then shifts us to inquiring into the multiplicities > of the experience or perception of that event, speech, act, etc. > Both (can) entail "interpretation" -- as does the interpretation of > statistical data. But what "interpretive" signifies in methodology/ > methods is rather different. > > I suppose, Patrick, that this is why you prefer to refer to these as > "relational" methods/methodologies? Actually, for me "interpretive" and "relational" catch up two different things (and, full disclosure, I rarely if ever self-identify as an "interpretivist" -- I suppose I was scared/persuaded away from that term by Heidegger and Wittgenstein, both of whom argued that "to interpret" meant something like "to explicate" or "to lay out" rather than "to explain"). Both are ontological matters, but they're different kinds of ontology. "Interpretive" for me lives in the realm of philosophical ontology, i.e. claims about our "hook-up" to the world and how knowers and things known are connected to one another. This is the realm of the classical Cartesian mind/body problem, and it's also the place where Derrida and other poststructuralists like to play, along with analytical philosophy since at least Kant and arguably before then (Hobbes' nominalism -- names for things are arbitrary conventions, and don't correspond to any putative essence of those things -- might be read this way, for example.) Some philosophers would argue that this is epistemology, not ontology; I'd disagree because the very notion that we can separate how we know things about the world from how we observers/knowers are connected to the world is itself a notion that only makes sense given a certain understanding of how we are connected to the world! To say "there's a world that we're connected to, and then there's how we go about generating knowledge of that world" is a dualist position, positing a radical difference between mind and world such that the world exists in some sense "out there" and our knowledge- production strategies are intended to bridge the gap between mind and world. But that dualist -- or, in its contemporary idiom, "realist" (and please, please, don't repeat the unfortunate philosophical error of calling this dualism "positivist," since actual positivists like Carnap and Hempel were quite ambivalent about the status of a mind- independent world) -- ontological presupposition is far from the only one we might stand on. The ideal-typical polar opposite of dualism wold be "monism," a rejection of the separation between mind and world and the assertion of continuity instead. Note that this isn't "idealism," which would be the rejection of a mind-independent world and an exclusive focus on mind; idealism, in its way, is just as dualist as realism, except that it privileges one side of the duality. Ditto "materialism," which isn't monism for very similar reasons. Monism in this sense simply means the rejection of a mind/world split as sensible or comprehensible; mind and world are in some sense made of the same stuff, and the fact that individual minds appear distinct from the world is an intriguing puzzle in need of an explanatory solution (I still think that the pragmatist work on "experience" is the best way to go about doing this; James and Dewey suggested that we needed to start with "situations" rather than knowers or objects. Hans Joas' _The Creativity of Action_ is a marvelous contemporary statement of this position, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention John Shotter's brilliant _Cultural Politics of Everyday Life_ in this context as well.) Long set-up for a very brief point: for me, "interpretive" and "monist" are virtual synonyms. Both name a way of conceptualizing our hook-up to the world that rejects a mind/body split. That said, there are obviously a lot of ways to go about producing knowledge in a monistic/interpretive vein (and I'm limiting this to knowledge-production in the terms I articulated a couple of posts ago: knowledge is explanatory and directed at empirical phenomena, which means that I'm excluding normative and ethical reflection/assessment). In order to get from a general claim about a hook-up to the world to a specific set of research questions and analytical techniques, we need some kind of scientific ontology: a catalog of entities, processes, concepts, and the like which define the object of analysis. "Relational" for me is a statement of scientific ontology, not a statement of philosophical ontology; to be a relationalist is to direct attention to the dynamics of social transactions rather than, say, the decisions of actors or the functional integration of systemic principles. To know that someone is a relationalist, or is adopting a relational approach in a given study, is to know how they are conceptualizing what they are studying. To know that someone is an interpretivist is to know how they understand the status of their work, and how they are designing their research overall; philosophical ontology speaks to research design and the place of an individual research-project in a broader knowledge-producing context, while scientific ontology speaks to particular techniques for data- collection and data-analysis. Standing somewhere between these two is "causality," which somewhat partakes of both kinds of ontological assumption, since it's both about the hook-up to the world and a set of substantive notions about the world. [FYI, when I teach "interpretive research" I actually teach participant-observation ethnography, plus a little qualitative life- course interviewing. but I don't do either of those in my own empirical work, which is another reason I am not comfortable self- identifying as an interpretivist.] A perhaps quicker and easier way to get at these distinctions is to think about the opposites of "interpretivism" and "relationalism." To pick up on something else Dvora said, I think that the opposite of interpretivism is "realism." But the opposite of relationalism is not realism -- clearly not, because we have "relational realists" all over the place (including the late Charles Tilly). No, the opposite of relationalism is "essentialism" or "substantialism." And all of these logical combinations are possible: relational realism, essentialist realism, interpretive essentialism, and interpretive relationalism. What are not possible are positions like "interpretive realism" or "relational essentialism," because those are internally contradictory stances. What you got in this post is the compressed-onto-a-microdot version of the analytical core of the book I'm working on at the moment. When chapters are ready for eyes other than mine I'll make them available, in case people are interested in commenting. PTJ === Patrick Thaddeus Jackson Director, General Education Program, American University Editor-in-Chief, Journal of International Relations and Development http://profptj.blogspot.com | http://www.kittenboo.com calendar: http://ical.mac.com/onyxdr/Patrick -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/pipermail/interpretationandmethods/attachments/20080708/1e23255b/attachment-0001.html From D.Yanow at fsw.vu.nl Tue Jul 8 13:20:27 2008 From: D.Yanow at fsw.vu.nl (Dvora Yanow) Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2008 19:20:27 +0200 Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] Interpretationandmethods Digest, Vol 43, Issue 1 References: <7A8436AD0EB8F4428BEC320CC109A242022E5AC3@STAWINCOMAILCL1.staff.vuw.ac.nz><5286BEEC21FADA47A24AA92D8BC9270E016FD19F@fswmail01.scw.vu.nl> <4B9AEF29-0C81-43B5-AE56-DD04FCF4E550@gmail.com> Message-ID: <5286BEEC21FADA47A24AA92D8BC9270E016FD1A8@fswmail01.scw.vu.nl> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/pipermail/interpretationandmethods/attachments/20080708/637e7548/attachment.html From wjkellpro at aol.com Tue Jul 8 19:19:58 2008 From: wjkellpro at aol.com (wjkellpro at aol.com) Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:19:58 -0400 Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] Explanation and Ethical Evaluation Message-ID: <8CAAF68460FADC2-43C-2B6F@webmail-nd10.sysops.aol.com> Hi All! Congratulations to Patrick for such a splendid statement of his case against my examples of Polanyian social science (PSS).? I will try to explain my position in relation to what I see as his most salient points. These are: 1) the relationship of explanation and ethical evaluation.? 2)? My two illustrative sketches for social science studies.? 3)? Interpreting the meanings and mental states in the minds of other people.? In the hope of avoiding confusion, I will send these as three different posts. Before one can explain human behavior, one must make numerous personal judgments. Out of all of what William James calls the "blooming, buzzing confusion" in the world, one must first focus on that behavior which one regards as human.? Out of all the human behavior going on, one must focus on a particular event, or instance of behavior.? Already, one is deeply involved in discriminating between the relevant and the irrelevant.? But how is this discrimination done?? One must have a conception in mind by which to sort the "wheat" from the "chaff."? That is how a person knows one from the other.? No one can prepare a research proposal without first making all these, and other, personal judgments.? It is done everyday in social science. One of the problems Polanyi calls attention to is that social scientists are making all these judgments either without being aware of it, or actually denying that they are doing so.? Hence, they are either intellectually dishonest, or they fail to fulfill their responsibility as scientists to be as fully rational as they can be.?? Part of being rational, in Polanyi?s sense, is to be aware of what you are doing.? In Personal Knowledge he criticized natural scientists, in large part, both for their lack of self-awareness and for their false self-understandings.? That approach also applies to social scientists. Suppose that the primary aim of social science is to explain "how and why" human behavior, or human events, happened the way it did.? This already presupposes a conception of what is human.? But social scientists rarely, if ever, justify that presupposition.? But skipping, or dodging, or denying the necessity of this justification has huge consequences.?? The most distinctive dimension of human behavior, indeed, that which makes it human, is treated as if it does not exist.? Talk about ignoring the elephant in the room!? So, in effect Polanyi is challenging social scientists to acknowledge what they are actually doing, and to do it in a fully rational manner. Because the dimension of rationality is not examined, one effect is that human behavior is equated with all the activities of people ? no matter how rational or irrational these may be.? Simply by questioning this established practice, Polanyi threatens a revolutionary change in social science.? As I have said in prior postings, Polanyi has no problem with Aristotle?s time-honored maxim, in my words, ?persons are rational animals.?? But?Polanyi broadens the conception of rational far beyond the logical, to include the whole of human intelligence.? Thus, besides our language skills and the capacity for logical consistency, human rationality includes a resourceful problem solving ability, and a gift for astute means-ends practical thinking.? These qualities are all emergent properties of evolution, with their roots in animal intelligence.? While we excel in these, our most distinctive quality is our capacity to recognize the intrinsic value of other humans.? In short, to be rational is to be respectful of others.?? Polanyi defends this thesis in many ways (see my paper, Respect and Empathy as Method?, at ? ?http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/JELJOUR_Results.cfm?form_name=journalBrowse&journal_id=998969 .) While distinctively human behavior is rational, not all human behavior is equally rational.? This is true for logical reasoning, practical thinking, and for the gradients of respect the behavior manifests.? Because distinctively human behavior is rational, it can be explained by reference to the reasons the actors acted upon.? These reasons can be criticized for their degree of rationality under the circumstances.? Some behavior, like Hitler?s, has pathological causes.? Hence, it is not within the realm of the rational, and its reasons have no ranking in rationality. Ancient Greek democracy was based on a slave economy.? If slavery shows a lack of respect for human dignity, then those Greeks acted in a less than fully rational manner.? But their behavior was not so irrational as to manifest pathological causes. This judgment of the Ancient Greeks gauges the degree of rationality in their behavior.? Thus, the existence of Greek democracy can be explained, in part, by their insensitivity to the dignity and intrinsic worth of those people they forced into slavery.? In this, they failed to fulfill their full potential for human rationality.? A society of fully rational folks would not reduce their fellows to chattels. This is a judgment.? But it is not the sort of judgment that a priest makes when he condemns lovers for having sex out of wedlock.? Nor is it like the judgment of an abolitionist when he condemns all slavery as an abomination.? It is far more like the judgment a doctor makes about the state of a patient?s health after a thorough examination.? All judgments of this sort are normative, or norm-based, but not all judgments are moral/ethical judgments.? A judgment of the degree of rationality in human behavior is like the judgment of an Olympic diver?s performance; it is an appraisal of an achievement. In short, one reality of human behavior is that it manifests varying grades of rationality.? Therefore, an explanation of human behavior cannot be complete without accounting for its gradient of rationality.? Indeed, to ignore this range of rationality is itself a less than rational act.? For social scientists to ignore it, as if all rationality was equal, is professionally irresponsible. More later. Bill Kelleher PS Half of The Study of Man is meant to show why thinking in natural science is not separated by a logical gap from the thinking that would go on in a Polanyian social science.? Polanyi specifically distances himself from Weber?s theory of value neutral explanation, at SM 101.? ? ? ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/pipermail/interpretationandmethods/attachments/20080708/923cd656/attachment-0001.html From patrickthaddeusjackson at gmail.com Tue Jul 8 22:08:38 2008 From: patrickthaddeusjackson at gmail.com (Patrick Thaddeus Jackson) Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2008 22:08:38 -0400 Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] Explanation and Ethical Evaluation In-Reply-To: <8CAAF68460FADC2-43C-2B6F@webmail-nd10.sysops.aol.com> References: <8CAAF68460FADC2-43C-2B6F@webmail-nd10.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: <99047E88-4EFA-4333-AA69-AC5D18E46EC5@gmail.com> I have no objections to Bill's claim about social scientists operating with implicit models of things like human social action; indeed, making such models explicit is part of what Weberian ideal- typification is all about in the first place. So we're on the same page there. The difference, I think, comes in precisely what is of interest in applying those explicit models to particular cases. Both Bill and I seem to disagree with the rational-choice notion of what one does with presumptions of rationality, which is to look for the hidden rationality in any bit of human behavior; rational-choice theory is often about demonstrating that -- and in what precise way -- some behavior is rational, particular some behavior that looks irrational at first glance (like gift-giving, or dueling, or becoming a suicide bomber). So we agree that what is interesting about particular cases are their deviations from the ideal-type, not their correspondence with it. But then we diverge. Bill claims: > Ancient Greek democracy was based on a slave economy. If slavery > shows a lack of respect for human dignity, then those Greeks acted > in a less than fully rational manner. But their behavior was not so > irrational as to manifest pathological causes. > This judgment of the Ancient Greeks gauges the degree of rationality > in their behavior. Thus, the existence of Greek democracy can be > explained, in part, by their insensitivity to the dignity and > intrinsic worth of those people they forced into slavery. In this, > they failed to fulfill their full potential for human rationality. > A society of fully rational folks would not reduce their fellows to > chattels. > > This is a judgment. But it is not the sort of judgment that a > priest makes when he condemns lovers for having sex out of wedlock. > Nor is it like the judgment of an abolitionist when he condemns all > slavery as an abomination. It is far more like the judgment a > doctor makes about the state of a patient?s health after a thorough > examination. All judgments of this sort are normative, or norm- > based, but not all judgments are moral/ethical judgments. A > judgment of the degree of rationality in human behavior is like the > judgment of an Olympic diver?s performance; it is an appraisal of an > achievement. > > In short, one reality of human behavior is that it manifests varying > grades of rationality. Therefore, an explanation of human behavior > cannot be complete without accounting for its gradient of > rationality. Indeed, to ignore this range of rationality is itself > a less than rational act. For social scientists to ignore it, as if > all rationality was equal, is professionally irresponsible. If I read this right, Bill is claiming that the moral status of an institution like slavery is, or can be, a causal explanation for that institution. The logic runs: slavery is an irrational social institution ("A society of fully rational folks would not reduce their fellows to chattels"); the Greeks had slavery; hence the Greeks were not fully rational, and this lack of full rationality explains why the Greeks had slavery. Obviously this is not the way that Bill expressed the claim, because if he had expressed it this way then the logical flaw would become strikingly apparent: this is a circular argument. The claim uses the moral status of slavery to argue for the irrationality of the individuals and the society that upheld it (more on that in a moment), and then proposes to deduce why that society has slavery from the irrationality of the individuals and the society that upholds it. We know that the Greeks are irrational because they had slavery, and they had slavery because they were irrational. [Aristotle keeps coming up in this discussion; that's appropriate in many ways, because this kind of argument is vintage Aristotle. Except that Aristotle used it to argue *for* slavery: slavers are inferior to free men, which is what justifies enslaving them, and the primary evidence for the inferiority of slaves is that they are enslaved to free men. Slaves are slave-ish, which justifies their enslavement. Replace "slave" with "irrational societies" and see what you get.] So as a causal explanation of a social institution, the moral status of that institution simply doesn't measure up. There is one way to make that argument work, though, and that is to build moral status into the structure of the universe. If the universe tends towards the Good, say, the existence of a Not-so-Good social institution might be explained in terms of the moral failings of the people responsible: they're standing in the way of universal moral progress, and the fact that they are doing so is producing all sorts of nasty effects, like slavery. Of course, to do this, you'd have to be either Kant or Hegel, and if you're Hegel then you have to deal with the rather striking problem that for Hegel slavery *implies* recognition of the humanity of the Other -- making it not so irrational after all. (If you're Kant, well, you have a bunch of other problems, like the fact that standards of rationality have altered over time.) Absent this rather drastic step, I can't see any way to make the moral status of an institution of an action count as an explanation of that institution or action. Of course, this is a very different thing from saying that the social norms in force at a given point in time explain the existence of an institution or an action. That's a claim I'm perfectly happy with, because it brackets the ultimate normative status of the thing explained in favor of a focus on the socially operative principles at a given point in time (and, perhaps, how they changed; c.f. Neta Crawford's argument about the abolition of colonialism because of, and through, global normative change.) What does the explaining in the "social norms" argument is not the moral status of the institution, but the judgment of contemporaries about the moral status of the institution. Subtle difference, but important, I would say. As for Bill's comparison of the judgment of slavery with the judgment of a diver's performance: sure, I'd buy that, if the rules for appraising human society were anywhere near as clear as the rules for appraising a diver's performance! Yes, judges in Olympic sporting events have a measure of discretion; that's part of why there are more than one of them, and why we get complicated aggregation formulas (or not-so-complicated formulas, like "toss out the East German judge's score," which used to be the operative rule in many international sporting competitions :-) and the like. But the range of discretion is considerably smaller than the range of discretion which we have in appraising a whole society. And those standards change over time -- and change considerably more than do the rules of diving or baseball or almost any other major sport. Also, note: judging that a diver did thus-and-so and did not deviate from the ideal is *not* an explanation of that diver's performance. It is an evaluation of that performance. Interesting, important, critical to the sport -- but not an explanation! PTJ === Patrick Thaddeus Jackson Director, General Education Program, American University Editor-in-Chief, Journal of International Relations and Development http://profptj.blogspot.com | http://www.kittenboo.com calendar: http://ical.mac.com/onyxdr/Patrick -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/pipermail/interpretationandmethods/attachments/20080708/f3fc7249/attachment.html From D.Yanow at fsw.vu.nl Wed Jul 9 03:13:36 2008 From: D.Yanow at fsw.vu.nl (Dvora Yanow) Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2008 09:13:36 +0200 Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] Explanation and Ethical Evaluation References: <8CAAF68460FADC2-43C-2B6F@webmail-nd10.sysops.aol.com> <99047E88-4EFA-4333-AA69-AC5D18E46EC5@gmail.com> Message-ID: <5286BEEC21FADA47A24AA92D8BC9270E016FD1C3@fswmail01.scw.vu.nl> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/pipermail/interpretationandmethods/attachments/20080709/6b43e8cb/attachment-0001.html From wjkellpro at aol.com Wed Jul 9 15:27:25 2008 From: wjkellpro at aol.com (wjkellpro at aol.com) Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:27:25 -0400 Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] How To Do Interpretive Social Science. Message-ID: <8CAB010F38D25B3-164C-2BD3@webmail-nc20.sysops.aol.com> ? Hi All! After re-reading my post of 7-7-08, I must say that Patrick?s critique of it is based on a misstatement of what it is about.? It suggests a three step way of conducting an authentic interpretive social science study.? The three steps are 1) fact gathering; 2) interpreting the reasons for the actions under study; and, 3) appraising, or evaluating, the gradient of rationality manifested in 1 and 2.? About this, Patrick wrote: Bill asks "[Suppose a graduate student or professional social scientist sets out to do an interpretive study of] why George Bush (GB), acting as Commander-in-Chief, ordered? the preemptive strike on Iraq, which has since resulted in the? prolonged Iraq War" but the subsequent elaboration doesn't actually? answer that question! Instead, it answers the parallel question "was? it rational for GB to have ordered the preemptive strike on Iraq?" Actually, the message says nothing about answers, because its about methods.? My next sentence is:? "How would this study be structured?? That is, how would one plan to both approach the study, and later present it, say, for publication?" Once the facts are established, and the reasons for Bush?s order have been interpreted therefrom, the next step is evaluation. Bill Wrote: "So, for a Polanyian social science, one must ask how well GB?s behavior, and his reasons therefore, measure up to the level of human rationality.? To me this means I have to ask whether a rational person, or more exactly, a rational president, would have acted as GB did under the circumstances.? I would make this determination so as to more reasonably classify GB?s conduct along a gradient of rationality, and measure its fit into the category of human behavior.? ? Whether my study of GB would come to a similar conclusion or not, [about Bush?s rationality] would depend on the facts and reasons that I settle on in the first two steps. So, this is what I would advise grad students to consider as a proper interpretive social science method.? That is, establish the relevant facts, interpret these for the meanings that the actors understood for themselves, and check=2 0for meanings of which they may not be aware, or may not state.? Then appraise the mix for its degree of rationality under the circumstances." Also, check out my earlier post on IT Governance.? Its another model of how to do a complete interpretive social science study.? (No answers, just a model method.) Social Science in Current History. In my opinion, social science methodology is in a transitionary period.? The old mechanistic, causal model, based in 19th Century physics, is on the wane.? That model dominated social science for most of the 20th Century.? One of its pillars comes from the distinction David Hume made, over 200 years ago, between the "is" and the "ought."? This has also come to be known as the "fact/valu e" distinction.? In social science, this distinction shows up as that between "explanation" and "evaluation."? Patrick seems to be a proponent of that view, in the excellent company of Max Weber, among others. One of Polanyi?s most significant contributions to the understanding of social science methodology is his demonstration of the delusional character of that distinction in both the natural and the social sciences.? The notion that explanation is "value neutral" is an instance of social scientists misunderstanding what they actually do in social science.? Personally, I think it?s a bad idea to perpetuate this self-delusion by teaching it to grad students.? No social science explanation is possible, much less complete, without numerous evaluations at every step in the process.? Might as well do it openly. So, what does anybody think about that? Bill Kelleher ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/pipermail/interpretationandmethods/attachments/20080709/4fb90189/attachment.html From patrickthaddeusjackson at gmail.com Wed Jul 9 16:16:40 2008 From: patrickthaddeusjackson at gmail.com (Patrick Thaddeus Jackson) Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2008 16:16:40 -0400 Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] How To Do Interpretive Social Science. In-Reply-To: <8CAB010F38D25B3-164C-2BD3@webmail-nc20.sysops.aol.com> References: <8CAB010F38D25B3-164C-2BD3@webmail-nc20.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: <1EEAF7A2-5944-48BE-8413-1FEDA21BA0DC@gmail.com> Two quick comments on Bill's most recent post. First, Bill states: > Actually, the message says nothing about answers, because its about > methods. Of course it is. My point was that even the illustration doesn't answer a causal question; it answers an evaluative question. To me this says, quite simply, that Bill's proposed interpretive research method is a proposal for doing normative evaluations ("how rational is/ was this action?") instead of producing causal explanations ("why did this action occur?"). Second, Bill claims: > One of Polanyi?s most significant contributions to the understanding > of social science methodology is his demonstration of the delusional > character of that distinction in both the natural and the social > sciences. The notion that explanation is "value neutral" is an > instance of social scientists misunderstanding what they actually do > in social science. > > Personally, I think it?s a bad idea to perpetuate this=2 0self- > delusion by teaching it to grad students. No social science > explanation is possible, much less complete, without numerous > evaluations at every step in the process. Might as well do it openly. I reiterate my claim that there is a great deal of difference between the observation that the concepts that we work with in the sciences have value-commitments embedded in them (of course they do, neither of us deny that), and the assertion that this presents some sort of problem for the fact/value distinction. I think this latter assertion is an instance of misunderstanding what "value neutral" means when it comes to explanations. Leaning on Weber as a place to start, I have teased this argument out at somewhat greater length elsewhere (actually, one web-accessible version of it is here: http://www.jpox.eu/component/streams/view,content/cid,192/) , but in a nutshell: the difference between a value-claim and a explanatory claim is that a value-claim simply states a moral position and then codes the world according to it, whereas an explanatory claim takes that position and tried to use it to generate some facts about the world -- facts that observers not sharing that value-commitment could still appreciate, because they would be able to see the logic of how the world looks when viewed through that value-commitment. This is not to say that explanatory claims are "falsifiable" or any of that other Popperian nonsense; rather, it is only to make the point that there is a logical difference between stating a value-commitment and using that value-commitment to produce facts out of empirical data and observation. I'd also like to tease apart two senses of the term "evaluation": normative value-commitments, and practically competent discretion. I defy anyone to locate a social-scientific (or natural-scientific!) concept that isn't "evaluative" in the first sense; in that way I think that Bill is correct, even though I disagree with the conclusions he draws from this. But from my perspective, the most relevant "numerous evaluations at every step in the process" of doing social-scientific research are issues of technical competence; what we train students to do is to be able to utilize their professional sensibilities in ways that carry them past the necessary ambiguities of real-world research problems and puzzles and data. The world is not self-interpreting; we have to make sense of it. The fact that the dominant method of sense-making in the contemporary social sciences revolves around shoving observations and instances into little discrete boxes called "variables" and then devising more and more technically sophisticated ways of testing for systematic associations between those little boxes is testimony to the conceptual poverty of our line of work. Researchers always make practical evaluations when going from one step in a research project to the next -- they have to, since methodological rules and methodical procedures are always in some way insufficient to guide actual empirical work (and this is a general feature of formal rules and procedures, not a failing of social science methodologists; Wittgenstein figured that out decades ago, but news of this seems to be taking its own sweet time to percolate through the social sciences) -- and the fact that these days many if not most most social scientists are only taught to make statistical-comparative variable-based evaluations is a travesty. End of sermon :-) and end of my comments on this listserv for a while -- I have some book chapters to write! PTJ === Patrick Thaddeus Jackson Director, General Education Program, American University Editor-in-Chief, Journal of International Relations and Development http://profptj.blogspot.com | http://www.kittenboo.com calendar: http://ical.mac.com/onyxdr/Patrick -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/pipermail/interpretationandmethods/attachments/20080709/54219479/attachment-0001.html From wjkellpro at aol.com Thu Jul 10 14:19:14 2008 From: wjkellpro at aol.com (wjkellpro at aol.com) Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:19:14 -0400 Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] =?utf-8?q?Patrick=E2=80=99s_Sermon=2E?= Message-ID: <8CAB0D097890B07-908-1DCF@webmail-nc06.sysops.aol.com> ? AMEN BRO! ? We definitely agree on this very important point about "competent discretion."? Polanyi calls it "connoisseurship."? His main book, Personal Knowledge, focuses a lot on the personal dimension of knowing, knowledge, and all sorts of doing, especially doing science.? I urge you to stop what you are doing, rush to your library, get a copy, and just read Chapter 4, "Skills" (a mere 20 pages).? It's a great intro to his thought.? Later, when you are not so busy, you can read the rest, if you want to (I think you will want to). ? Bill ? PS ? Thanks for the terrific interchange on the philosophy of social science.? I'm not finished replying to you comments, so I'll go ahead and keep on posting stuff.? After you finish a couple of chapters maybe you'll have time to get back to me. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/pipermail/interpretationandmethods/attachments/20080710/fc2c2257/attachment.html From psshea at csbs.utah.edu Fri Jul 11 15:41:03 2008 From: psshea at csbs.utah.edu (psshea at csbs.utah.edu) Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 13:41:03 -0600 Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] Interpretationandmethods Digest, Vol 43, Issue 1 In-Reply-To: <5286BEEC21FADA47A24AA92D8BC9270E016FD19F@fswmail01.scw.vu.nl> References: <7A8436AD0EB8F4428BEC320CC109A242022E5AC3@STAWINCOMAILCL1.staff.vuw.ac.nz> <5286BEEC21FADA47A24AA92D8BC9270E016FD19F@fswmail01.scw.vu.nl> Message-ID: <20080711134103.mownb2edts00k4s0@webmail.csbs.utah.edu> All, I've been out of country and came back to all this discussion - which has been great. I thought I'd add my 2 cents to Judy's question about research design. In case it helps, below is what I recently put in a syllabus. I think it hits many of the points already made but focused on communicating to a student audience - which is part of Judy's task. In discussing the difference in design in a NSF sponsored seminar on "the scientific status of qualitative research," Charles Ragin used a "prospecting" metaphor to defend the more open design process characteristic of those doing qualitative and interpretive research (tho as he agreed with me last year on APSA panel on funding, NSF does not recognize "interpretive" research.) Whether that metaphor is apt can be debated, but it can help variables-researchers (PTJ - does that get me around the realist/positivist labels?) to get some sense of why not everything can (or should) be spelled out in interpretive/relational research proposals. Peri Schwartz-Shea PADMN 6289-030 Research Design Part I ? Qualitative-Interpretive Research Design Professor Schwartz-Shea Course Description The first half of this course, conducted by Schwartz-Shea, will focus on research design for qualitative-interpretive research projects. The second half, conducted by Prof XXX, will focus on research design for quantitative projects. The overall purpose is to acquaint students with the general components of research design so that they have the essential vocabulary for communicating effectively with Major Research Paper (MRP) supervisors. The concept of ?research design? focuses on the preparatory stages of research: the formulation of a research question, justifications for its theoretical and practical significance, methods for accessing and generating data appropriate to the question, choice of analytic techniques, and standards of research quality. Research designs are used to convince those who would invest in the research that a research topic is not only significant but can be feasibly completed by the particular researcher. Those investing in the research are, most commonly, a faculty supervisor but also, at times, funding agencies and, always, the researcher him- or her-self! A research design also constitutes a record of the researcher?s initial ideas and plans that he or she can consult during the research process. Although this general concept is applicable to qualitative-interpretive, quantitative, and ?mixed method? research, there are significant differences in the philosophical and practical approaches among these types. Most notably, quantitative researchers expect that a design should be perfected as much as possible before ?testing? begins; changes from the design may even be designated as ?errors.? In contrast, interpretive researchers expect that a design will change during the research process as the researcher learns more about the topic; indeed, it is even acceptable for the initial research question to evolve during the research process. The first half of the course will help students to understand the significant differences as well as the commonalities among quantitative, qualitative, and interpretive research approaches. A key commonality is that all approaches depend on three basic ways in which evidence is generated: observation of people, talking with people, and reading of the documents (and artifacts) that people produce. Quantitative researchers, of course, approach these tasks assuming that the evidence generated by these processes will be turned into the quantitative indicators that constitute a ?data set.? As we shall see, qualitative-interpretive researchers approach the data-generating tasks quite differently because they do not assume the superiority of quantitative data. In order to grasp the interpretive approach to data generation, class members will conduct several ?field exercises.? We will also explore a few of the many data analytic techniques that interpretive researchers apply to their data upon exiting ?the field.? There is one more complication that bears mentioning. The most common advice given to students about research design is: ?Use the methods that best suit the question!? Although this statement is not wrong, it glosses over the sometimes, subtle ways in which methodological presuppositions affect the way in which questions are posed. Quoting Dvora Yanow : > RE: [Interpretationandmethods] Interpretationandmethods > Digest,Vol 43, Issue 1 > > Judy, > > Both for your student and for your colleagues, it might be useful to > have a look at Peri Schwartz-Shea's chapter in our edited book > "Interpretation and Method: Empirical Research Methods and the > Interpretive Turn" (M E Sharpe, 2006), where she talks about the kinds > of assumptions a variables-oriented reader would look for as an entree > to discussing the variety of alternative evaluative criteria for > interpretive work that have been developed by qualitative > methodologists over the last 20 years. > > I can also heartily suggest Martyn Hammersley's "Reading Ethnographic > Research: A Critical Guide" (Longman, 1990; there is a 2nd ed., which > I've not seen), which situates these concerns within their > methodological context. Although himself taking a more realist > position, he gives interpretive ones a fair shake. > > Patrick articulated a response to Bill Kelleher's post that got to > what for me is the heart of things. I don't want to repeat the points > he made, but I do want to underscore one of them. For me, the heart > of an interpretive approach entails problematizing not only what are > considered the "facts" of a situation, but challenging that very term. > It seems to me, Bill, that by taking 'facts' as your starting point, > you put your analysis in the presuppositional context of a real world > that can be known, objectively -- the kind of position that Rorty > sought to grapple with in his 1979 discussion of theories mirroring > nature. > > One approach to social science is to try to piece together "what > really happened" (whatever methods one uses to do that). Another is > to problematize whether we can ever do that in light of a > phenomenological-hermeneutic understanding that that can never be > known -- which then shifts us to inquiring into the multiplicities of > the experience or perception of that event, speech, act, etc. Both > (can) entail "interpretation" -- as does the interpretation of > statistical data. But what "interpretive" signifies in > methodology/methods is rather different. > > I suppose, Patrick, that this is why you prefer to refer to these as > "relational" methods/methodologies? > > Dvora > > -----Original Message----- > From: interpretationandmethods-bounces at malagigi.cddc.vt.edu on behalf > of Judy Brown > Sent: Tue 08-Jul-08 00:11 > To: interpretationandmethods at malagigi.cddc.vt.edu > Subject: Re: [Interpretationandmethods] Interpretationandmethods > Digest,Vol 43, Issue 1 > > Many thanks Patrick - this is really helpful. It is indeed the > ethnographic/relational aspects that are of interest - and I agree on > reflection that "impact" is a (and my) bad choice of word implying a > neopositivist approach. I will print all this exchange out - as the > basis for some discussion when I meet the student concerned later this > week. Your response strikes bang on part of the issue faced when > positivist colleagues assume interpretivist work is really looking for > "causal variables" (e.g. contingency theory). > "Relational/interpretive horizon" rather than "impact" talk is a far > more helpful way of conceptualising what is involved. > > But, of course, it may also be me presupposing too much that it is > really the enthnographic/relational aspects that are primary in this > study because that it is the approach that I would want to take... so > this reinforces for me the need to "sense-check" my understanding with > the student. It is, after all, her thesis not mine!! So many thanks > again... > > ________________________________ > > From: interpretationandmethods-bounces at malagigi.cddc.vt.edu on behalf > of interpretationandmethods-request at malagigi.cddc.vt.edu > Sent: Tue 8/07/2008 9:27 a.m. > To: interpretationandmethods at malagigi.cddc.vt.edu > Subject: Interpretationandmethods Digest, Vol 43, Issue 2 > > Send Interpretationandmethods mailing list submissions to > interpretationandmethods at listserv.cddc.vt.edu > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > > http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/interpretationandmethods[1] > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > interpretationandmethods-request at listserv.cddc.vt.edu > > You can reach the person managing the list at > interpretationandmethods-owner at listserv.cddc.vt.edu > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of Interpretationandmethods digest..." > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: Interpretationandmethods Digest, Vol 43, Issue 1 (Judy > Brown) > 2. Re: Interpretationandmethods Digest, Vol 43, Issue 1 > (Patrick Thaddeus Jackson) > 3. What is The Right Way to do Interpretive Social Science? > (wjkellpro at aol.com) > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2008 10:11:08 +1200 > From: "Judy Brown" > Subject: Re: [Interpretationandmethods] Interpretationandmethods > Digest, Vol 43, Issue 1 > To: > Message-ID: > > <7A8436AD0EB8F4428BEC320CC109A242022E5AB3 at STAWINCOMAILCL1.staff.vuw.ac.nz> > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > Hi Patrick, Dvora and Jack > > Many thanks to the three of you for your prompt and generous > responses. I realise now that I should have provided a bit more > background information, so here goes to clarify: > > 1. I currently teach a course in Accounting Research Methodology: > Interpretive and Critical Theory aimed at just the sorts of issues > Patrick raises. Our Honours students take this course and another > course focussing on positivist research, for the purposes of exploring > different research possibilities and (for students going onto > Masters/PhDs) to help them identify research that feels "right" to > them. We now have a (growing) group of students pursuing > interpretivist/critical theory work. > > 2. Patrick and Dvora - yes, I totally agree that the overall > structure of a PhD proposal is similar for all types of research. It > is in the latter area that Dvora identifies that I would really > welcome examples - talking about research not based on hypothesis > testing - specifically at the proposal stage. We are very short of > examples here - particularly in the area of interpretive research. > This would be helpful not only to students, but also to those of us > supervising to help ensure quality work (not least of all to counter > colleagues who still "test" proposals by positivist standards and > expect to see hypotheses, statistical tests etc. etc.). While > students can look at examples of published research, it is still not > quite the same as having proposals to look at. > > 3. The student about to start will be examining the involvement of > accountants in the decision-making processes surrounding information > technology governance. In particular, she wishes to explore the ways > in which the ideas and attitudes of accountants and IT practitioners > might enable or constrain the involvement of accountants in IT > governance. An interpretivist methodology will be adopted in order to > explore the impact of various "ideational" aspects on IT governance > design choice e.g. the ways in which IT governance is conceptualised > by accountants and IT practitioners, interpretive schema and > institutional 'habits', professional identity, organisational culture > and politics. I am meeting her later this week, and will encourage her > to join the list so she can tell you more about her interests. > > 4. Jack - many thanks for the lead to Hansen's work. I have already > Googled it and it looks fascinating - it will be on my next book > order!! > > Cheers, Judy. > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2008 21:39:23 -0400 > From: Patrick Thaddeus Jackson > Subject: Re: [Interpretationandmethods] Interpretationandmethods > Digest, Vol 43, Issue 1 > To: interpretation and methods group > > Message-ID: <26FB774E-E865-41FE-B099-FE9FA628C88E at gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes > > On Jul 6, 2008, at 6:11 PM, Judy Brown wrote: > >> 3. The student about to start will be examining the involvement of >> accountants in the decision-making processes surrounding > information >> technology governance. In particular, she wishes to explore the > ways >> in which the ideas and attitudes of accountants and IT > practitioners >> might enable or constrain the involvement of accountants in IT >> governance. An interpretivist methodology will be adopted in order >> to explore the impact of various "ideational" aspects on IT >> governance design choice e.g. the ways in which IT governance is >> conceptualised by accountants and IT practitioners, interpretive >> schema and institutional 'habits', professional identity, >> organisational culture and politics. I am meeting her later this >> week, and will encourage her to join the list so she can tell you >> more about her interests. > > Judy: > > One question I would ask the student is what, if anything, is > "interpretive" about this research question. "The impact of various > 'ideational' aspects" sounds like pretty standard neopositivism to > me: > code a variable like "professional identity" or "organizational > culture" and then test to see whether the variable is significantly > correlated with an outcome of interest across cases. I see > interpretive methods here, but no interpretive methodology. > "Attitudes > cause an outcome" is not the kind of proposition one needs anything > complicated to evaluate; Mill's Methods ought to do the job just > nicely. > > Of course, one could also ask a research question here that *would* > require a non-neopositivist research design. But "the impact of X on > Y" wouldn't be it. For example, one could propose an ethnographic > account of accountants working in IT governance, seeking to bring to > light the interpretive horizon within which they work; that isn't > hypothesis-testing, but it also isn't causal (so such a study > couldn't > be about "impact"). Or one might make a relational turn, and discuss > IT governance as emerging someplace between a variety of conflicting > parties and strategies, and hence examine the detailed transactions > that take place between (e.g.) IT practitioners and accountants in > the > process of constituting "IT governance." That's causal, but it's not > "X causes Y" (or statistical-comparative) causal. > > I think it's great that you have a multiple-methodology sequence for > your students; I agree, that's the best way to allow students to > experiment, and to find the right methodological approach for the > question at hand. But the flip-side of that, I think, is that if one > has a neopositivist question then one should use a neopositivist > methodology in an attempt to answer it. > > PTJ > === > Patrick Thaddeus Jackson > Director, General Education Program, American University > Editor-in-Chief, Journal of International Relations and Development > http://profptj.blogspot.com[2] | > http://www.kittenboo.com[4] > calendar: http://ical.mac.com/onyxdr/Patrick[6] > > _______________________________________________ > Interpretationandmethods mailing list > Interpretationandmethods at listserv.cddc.vt.edu > http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/interpretationandmethods[7] > > !DSPAM:487328792573030612447! > > Links: > ------ > [1] http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/interpretationandmethods > [2] http://profptj.blogspot.com > [3] http://profptj.blogspot.com/ > [4] http://www.kittenboo.com > [5] http://www.kittenboo.com/ > [6] http://ical.mac.com/onyxdr/Patrick > [7] http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/interpretationandmethods > -- Peregrine Schwartz-Shea Professor University of Utah Political Science Department 260 South Central Campus Drive Rm 252 Salt Lake City, UT 84112-9152 (801) 581-6300 phone mail psshea at poli-sci.utah.edu From patrickthaddeusjackson at gmail.com Fri Jul 11 16:00:54 2008 From: patrickthaddeusjackson at gmail.com (Patrick Thaddeus Jackson) Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:00:54 -0400 Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] Interpretationandmethods Digest, Vol 43, Issue 1 In-Reply-To: <20080711134103.mownb2edts00k4s0@webmail.csbs.utah.edu> References: <7A8436AD0EB8F4428BEC320CC109A242022E5AC3@STAWINCOMAILCL1.staff.vuw.ac.nz> <5286BEEC21FADA47A24AA92D8BC9270E016FD19F@fswmail01.scw.vu.nl> <20080711134103.mownb2edts00k4s0@webmail.csbs.utah.edu> Message-ID: On Jul 11, 2008, at 3:41 PM, psshea at csbs.utah.edu wrote: > Whether that metaphor is apt can be debated, but it can help > variables-researchers (PTJ - does that get me around the > realist/positivist labels?) to get some sense of why not everything > can (or should) be spelled out in interpretive/relational research > proposals. It does, but of course "prospecting" is still dualist: digging around for something that is presumably already out there, hidden beneath the ground, just waiting for us to stumble upon it. It's too bad that your course is doing "qualitative"/interpretive first and "quantitative"/large-n second. That format allows the second half of the course to turn to the first half and say "thanks for providing us with the raw data, we'll take it from here." Very David Laitin-esque faux methodological diversity, where everyone gets to play as long as they all play the same game in the end. Okay, this is seriously the last thing I am going to post on the list for a couple of weeks. I mean it. PTJ === Patrick Thaddeus Jackson Director, General Education Program, American University Editor-in-Chief, Journal of International Relations and Development http://profptj.blogspot.com | http://www.kittenboo.com calendar: http://ical.mac.com/onyxdr/Patrick From psshea at csbs.utah.edu Fri Jul 11 19:18:09 2008 From: psshea at csbs.utah.edu (psshea at csbs.utah.edu) Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:18:09 -0600 Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] Interpretationandmethods Digest, Vol 43, Issue 1 In-Reply-To: References: <7A8436AD0EB8F4428BEC320CC109A242022E5AC3@STAWINCOMAILCL1.staff.vuw.ac.nz> <5286BEEC21FADA47A24AA92D8BC9270E016FD19F@fswmail01.scw.vu.nl> <20080711134103.mownb2edts00k4s0@webmail.csbs.utah.edu> Message-ID: <20080711171809.gzk9qpez6oo0swks@webmail.csbs.utah.edu> Patrick will not post again :) but I do have a response. Yes, I agree that "prospecting" is dualist. I kind of liked being first in the sense that I "set the agenda" for the students and they did not "come to me" with a prior sense that ONLY variables-based quantitative research could be scientific. I think they were then more "critical" of the next very traditional prof. Peri Quoting Patrick Thaddeus Jackson : > On Jul 11, 2008, at 3:41 PM, psshea at csbs.utah.edu wrote: > >> Whether that metaphor is apt can be debated, but it can help >> variables-researchers (PTJ - does that get me around the >> realist/positivist labels?) to get some sense of why not everything >> can (or should) be spelled out in interpretive/relational research >> proposals. > > > It does, but of course "prospecting" is still dualist: digging around > for something that is presumably already out there, hidden beneath the > ground, just waiting for us to stumble upon it. > > It's too bad that your course is doing "qualitative"/interpretive > first and "quantitative"/large-n second. That format allows the second > half of the course to turn to the first half and say "thanks for > providing us with the raw data, we'll take it from here." Very David > Laitin-esque faux methodological diversity, where everyone gets to > play as long as they all play the same game in the end. > > Okay, this is seriously the last thing I am going to post on the list > for a couple of weeks. I mean it. > > PTJ > === > Patrick Thaddeus Jackson > Director, General Education Program, American University > Editor-in-Chief, Journal of International Relations and Development > http://profptj.blogspot.com | http://www.kittenboo.com > calendar: http://ical.mac.com/onyxdr/Patrick > > _______________________________________________ > Interpretationandmethods mailing list > Interpretationandmethods at listserv.cddc.vt.edu > http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/interpretationandmethods > > !DSPAM:4877bc0f24829021468! > > -- Peregrine Schwartz-Shea Professor University of Utah Political Science Department 260 South Central Campus Drive Rm 252 Salt Lake City, UT 84112-9152 (801) 581-6300 phone mail psshea at poli-sci.utah.edu From patrickthaddeusjackson at gmail.com Fri Jul 11 20:20:03 2008 From: patrickthaddeusjackson at gmail.com (Patrick Thaddeus Jackson) Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 20:20:03 -0400 Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] Interpretationandmethods Digest, Vol 43, Issue 1 In-Reply-To: <20080711171809.gzk9qpez6oo0swks@webmail.csbs.utah.edu> References: <7A8436AD0EB8F4428BEC320CC109A242022E5AC3@STAWINCOMAILCL1.staff.vuw.ac.nz> <5286BEEC21FADA47A24AA92D8BC9270E016FD19F@fswmail01.scw.vu.nl> <20080711134103.mownb2edts00k4s0@webmail.csbs.utah.edu> <20080711171809.gzk9qpez6oo0swks@webmail.csbs.utah.edu> Message-ID: <4B7E2BF7-567A-4168-927E-BB3EDD56B2CF@gmail.com> Can't resist: When I do this sort of thing I like the large-n stats person to go first, or I teach the large-n stuff first, because so many people find it off-putting and difficult to square with their intuitions about things. Then they're primed for the funkier stuff I'll introduce later on ;-) PTJ On Jul 11, 2008, at 7:18 PM, psshea at csbs.utah.edu wrote: > Patrick will not post again :) but I do have a response. Yes, I agree > that "prospecting" is dualist. > > I kind of liked being first in the sense that I "set the agenda" for > the students and they did not "come to me" with a prior sense that > ONLY variables-based quantitative research could be scientific. I > think they were then more "critical" of the next very traditional > prof. > > Peri > > > > > Quoting Patrick Thaddeus Jackson : > >> On Jul 11, 2008, at 3:41 PM, psshea at csbs.utah.edu wrote: >> >>> Whether that metaphor is apt can be debated, but it can help >>> variables-researchers (PTJ - does that get me around the >>> realist/positivist labels?) to get some sense of why not everything >>> can (or should) be spelled out in interpretive/relational research >>> proposals. >> >> >> It does, but of course "prospecting" is still dualist: digging around >> for something that is presumably already out there, hidden beneath >> the >> ground, just waiting for us to stumble upon it. >> >> It's too bad that your course is doing "qualitative"/interpretive >> first and "quantitative"/large-n second. That format allows the >> second >> half of the course to turn to the first half and say "thanks for >> providing us with the raw data, we'll take it from here." Very David >> Laitin-esque faux methodological diversity, where everyone gets to >> play as long as they all play the same game in the end. >> >> Okay, this is seriously the last thing I am going to post on the list >> for a couple of weeks. I mean it. >> >> PTJ >> === >> Patrick Thaddeus Jackson >> Director, General Education Program, American University >> Editor-in-Chief, Journal of International Relations and Development >> http://profptj.blogspot.com | http://www.kittenboo.com >> calendar: http://ical.mac.com/onyxdr/Patrick >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Interpretationandmethods mailing list >> Interpretationandmethods at listserv.cddc.vt.edu >> http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/interpretationandmethods >> >> !DSPAM:4877bc0f24829021468! >> >> > > > > -- > Peregrine Schwartz-Shea > Professor > > University of Utah > Political Science Department > 260 South Central Campus Drive Rm 252 > Salt Lake City, UT 84112-9152 > > (801) 581-6300 phone mail > psshea at poli-sci.utah.edu > > > > _______________________________________________ > Interpretationandmethods mailing list > Interpretationandmethods at listserv.cddc.vt.edu > http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/interpretationandmethods === Patrick Thaddeus Jackson Director, General Education Program, American University Editor-in-Chief, Journal of International Relations and Development http://profptj.blogspot.com | http://www.kittenboo.com calendar: http://ical.mac.com/onyxdr/Patrick From D.Yanow at fsw.vu.nl Sat Jul 12 10:01:06 2008 From: D.Yanow at fsw.vu.nl (Dvora Yanow) Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 16:01:06 +0200 Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] Interpretationandmethods Digest, Vol 43, Issue 1 References: <7A8436AD0EB8F4428BEC320CC109A242022E5AC3@STAWINCOMAILCL1.staff.vuw.ac.nz><5286BEEC21FADA47A24AA92D8BC9270E016FD19F@fswmail01.scw.vu.nl><20080711134103.mownb2edts00k4s0@webmail.csbs.utah.edu><20080711171809.gzk9qpez6oo0swks@webmail.csbs.utah.edu> <4B7E2BF7-567A-4168-927E-BB3EDD56B2CF@gmail.com> Message-ID: <5286BEEC21FADA47A24AA92D8BC9270E016FD1FC@fswmail01.scw.vu.nl> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/pipermail/interpretationandmethods/attachments/20080712/1e71f536/attachment.html From sohini.guha at mail.mcgill.ca Sat Jul 12 11:24:46 2008 From: sohini.guha at mail.mcgill.ca (Sohini Guha) Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 11:24:46 -0400 Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] (no subject) Message-ID: <730833067A689B46B10E20205A98F04E831581@EXCHANGE2VS4.campus.mcgill.ca> This might be of interest : http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/11/AR2008071102390.html Sohini. From patrickthaddeusjackson at gmail.com Sat Jul 12 12:39:14 2008 From: patrickthaddeusjackson at gmail.com (Patrick Thaddeus Jackson) Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 12:39:14 -0400 Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] Interpretationandmethods Digest, Vol 43, Issue 1 In-Reply-To: <5286BEEC21FADA47A24AA92D8BC9270E016FD1FC@fswmail01.scw.vu.nl> References: <7A8436AD0EB8F4428BEC320CC109A242022E5AC3@STAWINCOMAILCL1.staff.vuw.ac.nz><5286BEEC21FADA47A24AA92D8BC9270E016FD19F@fswmail01.scw.vu.nl><20080711134103.mownb2edts00k4s0@webmail.csbs.utah.edu><20080711171809.gzk9qpez6oo0swks@webmail.csbs.utah.edu> <4B7E2BF7-567A-4168-927E-BB3EDD56B2CF@gmail.com> <5286BEEC21FADA47A24AA92D8BC9270E016FD1FC@fswmail01.scw.vu.nl> Message-ID: <518911CC-F777-4FD9-8535-68A66223396D@gmail.com> The large-n stuff itself. I teach it very faithfully (I was once a math major, after all). PTJ On Jul 12, 2008, at 10:01 AM, Dvora Yanow wrote: > Sorry -- need clarification: what's the referent of 'it' here? > > Large n stuff is offputting? or the way you teach it? (no insult > intended) > > Dvora > > -----Original Message----- > From: interpretationandmethods-bounces at malagigi.cddc.vt.edu on > behalf of Patrick Thaddeus Jackson > Sent: Sat 12-Jul-08 02:20 > To: interpretation and methods group > Subject: Re: [Interpretationandmethods] Interpretationandmethods > Digest,Vol 43, Issue 1 > > Can't resist: > > When I do this sort of thing I like the large-n stats person to go > first, or I teach the large-n stuff first, because so many people find > it off-putting and difficult to square with their intuitions about > things. Then they're primed for the funkier stuff I'll introduce later > on ;-) > > PTJ > > On Jul 11, 2008, at 7:18 PM, psshea at csbs.utah.edu wrote: > > > Patrick will not post again :) but I do have a response. Yes, I > agree > > that "prospecting" is dualist. > > > > I kind of liked being first in the sense that I "set the agenda" for > > the students and they did not "come to me" with a prior sense that > > ONLY variables-based quantitative research could be scientific. I > > think they were then more "critical" of the next very traditional > > prof. > > > > Peri > > > > > > > > > > Quoting Patrick Thaddeus Jackson : > > > >> On Jul 11, 2008, at 3:41 PM, psshea at csbs.utah.edu wrote: > >> > >>> Whether that metaphor is apt can be debated, but it can help > >>> variables-researchers (PTJ - does that get me around the > >>> realist/positivist labels?) to get some sense of why not > everything > >>> can (or should) be spelled out in interpretive/relational research > >>> proposals. > >> > >> > >> It does, but of course "prospecting" is still dualist: digging > around > >> for something that is presumably already out there, hidden beneath > >> the > >> ground, just waiting for us to stumble upon it. > >> > >> It's too bad that your course is doing "qualitative"/interpretive > >> first and "quantitative"/large-n second. That format allows the > >> second > >> half of the course to turn to the first half and say "thanks for > >> providing us with the raw data, we'll take it from here." Very > David > >> Laitin-esque faux methodological diversity, where everyone gets to > >> play as long as they all play the same game in the end. > >> > >> Okay, this is seriously the last thing I am going to post on the > list > >> for a couple of weeks. I mean it. > >> > >> PTJ > >> === > >> Patrick Thaddeus Jackson > >> Director, General Education Program, American University > >> Editor-in-Chief, Journal of International Relations and Development > >> http://profptj.blogspot.com | http://www.kittenboo.com > >> calendar: http://ical.mac.com/onyxdr/Patrick > >> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> Interpretationandmethods mailing list > >> Interpretationandmethods at listserv.cddc.vt.edu > >> http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/interpretationandmethods > >> > >> !DSPAM:4877bc0f24829021468! > >> > >> > > > > > > > > -- > > Peregrine Schwartz-Shea > > Professor > > > > University of Utah > > Political Science Department > > 260 South Central Campus Drive Rm 252 > > Salt Lake City, UT 84112-9152 > > > > (801) 581-6300 phone mail > > psshea at poli-sci.utah.edu > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Interpretationandmethods mailing list > > Interpretationandmethods at listserv.cddc.vt.edu > > http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/ > interpretationandmethods > > === > Patrick Thaddeus Jackson > Director, General Education Program, American University > Editor-in-Chief, Journal of International Relations and Development > http://profptj.blogspot.com | http://www.kittenboo.com > calendar: http://ical.mac.com/onyxdr/Patrick > > _______________________________________________ > Interpretationandmethods mailing list > Interpretationandmethods at listserv.cddc.vt.edu > http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/interpretationandmethods > > > _______________________________________________ > Interpretationandmethods mailing list > Interpretationandmethods at listserv.cddc.vt.edu > http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/interpretationandmethods === Patrick Thaddeus Jackson Director, General Education Program, American University Editor-in-Chief, Journal of International Relations and Development http://profptj.blogspot.com | http://www.kittenboo.com calendar: http://ical.mac.com/onyxdr/Patrick -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/pipermail/interpretationandmethods/attachments/20080712/61103b5e/attachment-0001.html From D.Yanow at fsw.vu.nl Sat Jul 12 12:54:33 2008 From: D.Yanow at fsw.vu.nl (Dvora Yanow) Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 18:54:33 +0200 Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] Methods Cafe at APSA 2008 Message-ID: <5286BEEC21FADA47A24AA92D8BC9270E016FD206@fswmail01.scw.vu.nl> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/pipermail/interpretationandmethods/attachments/20080712/4c1fb40a/attachment.html From wjkellpro at aol.com Sat Jul 12 18:19:15 2008 From: wjkellpro at aol.com (wjkellpro at aol.com) Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 18:19:15 -0400 Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] THE SCIENCE OF INTERPRETIVE SOCIAL SCIENCE. Message-ID: <8CAB28473DA02E2-13C0-80BD@webmail-nd10.sysops.aol.com> THE SCIENCE OF INTERPRETIVE SOCIAL SCIENCE. On 7-7-08 I offered some examples of how one could go about organizing an interpretive social science study.? Examples included a study of Bush's order to invade Iraq, IT governance, and, later, slavery among the Ancient Greeks.? While Patrick has given some trenchant criticisms of my suggestions, he completely mischaracterizes my approach as "ethical" or as "moral."? So I will try to clarify that.? Also, Dvora has raised some important questions about social construction and the idea of? "facts."? I will address these, too. I would like to let people know about some of the implications, for interpretive social science, of Michael Polanyi's writings.? For him, the distinctive quality of humans is their rationality.? He defines this to include the whole of human intelligence.? Included in his idea of rationality is the notion of having respect for other people.? All rationality is not equal, but forms gradients, which can be appraised.? (See my past postings, and below.)? Thus, to act rationally entails a striving for rationality.? Higher degrees of rationality are an achievement, like a great dive in the Olympics. Rational people act for reasons, unless they are crazy.? And rational people shape their behavior so that it shows at least some reasonable degree of respect, or consideration, for others.? Explaining human behavior, as human, then, requires taking its degree of rationality into account.? Appraisal is an i ntegral part of explanation.? A berserk postal worker who randomly shoots some of his co-workers is not acting with any degree of rationality ? i.e., no reasons and no regard for others. ?A psychiatrist would have to look for the a-rational causes of such irrational behavior in order to make sense of it.? But an armed bank robber has reasons for what he is doing.? He may be sane, but he is not displaying a full measure of rationality.? His lack of due regard for the safety of others brings down the degree of rationality in his actions. This lack of rationality is a contributing factor towards making his action possible.? Therefore, it is a necessary part of explaining his behavior.? Let's say that both Harry and Larry need money.? Larry says "let's rob a bank.? I've got a gun."? Harry says "no, somebody could get hurt.? Besides, I don't want to risk prison."? Larry says "the risk is minimal; I've seen it done successfully in many movies.? Nobody will get hurt, if they stay out of the way."? So, Larry robs a bank, and Harry spends the day searching Monster for a job. How do you explain the behavior of Harry and Larry? First fact:? they are both sane human beings; therefore, they both acted rationally.? However, the degree of rationality with which they acted is not the same.? Secondly, they both felt the desire for money, but each calculated the risk of getting caught differently.? Also, each calculated the=2 0risk of harming others differently.? Explanation: For Larry, the desire for money was a primary moving reason, and his lower regard for others was an enabling reason. For Harry, the desire for money was also a primary moving reason, but his higher degree of rationality inhibited his criminal impulses, and guided him to Monster.? In this form of explanation, reasons are causes, but it is also necessary to include a discussion of enabling and inhibiting factors. This form of explanation can be used in all sorts of cases.? Napoleon was ambitious.? He used his power as a military leader to start wars between France and neighboring nations.? George Washington was also ambitious.? But he used his power as a military leader only to free his country.? Both were moved by ambition to exercise military power.? Both caused the deaths of many people.? But were both equally rational?? The necessary elements for an interpretive social science explanation are: a) identify the relevant facts in a situation under study; b) interpret the moving reasons for the actors, including all enabling and inhibiting factors; and, c) appraise the rationality of the actors.? This is not a neopositivist causal model, such as A caused B.? Nor is this a pretence at obtaining objective knowledge.? Interpretation requires human-to-human empathy.? Only because Larry, Harry, George, and Neo are human, we all can strive to grasp their reasons by relating to them as fellow humans.? We study the same facts.? Each makes his or her own interpretations.? Each appraises the rationality of the actors under study.? Then we argue and discuss our reasons with the aim of perhaps reaching a consensus on the explanations for the behavior under study.? The appraisals we make are not moral judgments, but classifications of human behavior according to its gradient of rationality.? Being himself or herself rational, the social scientist will also give all of his or her reasons for the classification.? Other social scientists can criticize these reasons, and offer their own ranking with their own reasons.? ?Principles of appraisal can be formulated.? Experts in subject matter areas will develop a body of knowledge that they agree, by consensus, defines their field.? In the process, interpretive social science knowledge can be cumulative. Explaining by reference to rationality is more a form of categorization than it is an ethical judgment.? Thus, interpretive social science is science, and not ethical evaluation.? All we do is explain behavior, and rank rationality.? Making ethical evaluations is for another profession.? Journalists, politicians, activist citizens, and others can apply the principles of interpretive social science to criticize the practices of their society. Practicing physicians, for example, do not do the same thing as medical researchers in their labs.? The docs apply what the research scientist discovers.? This is the distinction between pure rese arch and the practice of application.? The analysis of gradients of rationality does not entail the practice of rendering ethical judgments. Furthermore, this form of explanation is NOT CIRCULAR.? It is contextual.? The social scientist defines the context to be studied, makes interpretations, and ranks rationality.? That is not circular. However, on a much higher level of abstraction, all human knowledge is circular.? Natural science, for example, assumes the world is material.? Everybody does not assume this.? Hindus and other mystics say the material world is an illusion, and only Spirit is real.? Natural scientists, then, assume the world to be material, and "prove" that the world is material with every experiment.? Every culture defines its own idea of? "factuality."? Polanyi says that the difference is in the degree of plausibility that people will tolerate.? The Azande medicine man will credit the acts of the Great Spirit as the cause of every event, and balk at the very idea of? "natural causes."? Every event in nature that Azandes see, then, they see as proof of the Great Spirit?s power.? In this sense, natural scientist and mystic are engaged in circular reasoning.? But that is not a defect of reasoning, it is the human condition.? People commit themselves to fundamental principles about the world, and then they interpret their experience in ways that confirm those commitments.? If we did not do this, nothing would make sense, and we would all go crazy.? Neopositivist social scientists have their commitments, and we interpretive social scientists have ours.? Because our commitments are more rational than theirs, once the whole social science community is informed about our view, it will become the prevailing view.? Right on! Bill Kelleher --------------- You can access and download for free my papers on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) at: ? http://ssrn.com/author=1053589 ? William J. Kelleher, Ph.D.? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/pipermail/interpretationandmethods/attachments/20080712/10838469/attachment-0001.html From wjkellpro at aol.com Wed Jul 16 20:34:56 2008 From: wjkellpro at aol.com (wjkellpro at aol.com) Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 20:34:56 -0400 Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] =?utf-8?q?Mark_Bevir=E2=80=99s_Methodo?= =?utf-8?q?logical_Gaps?= Message-ID: <8CAB5BC11F4ACF7-9B4-4736@webmail-ng01.sysops.aol.com> ? ? Hello Fellow Interpretationistas! Lately I have been reading essays written, in whole or in part, by Mark Bevir.? I am very impressed by his understanding, and practice, of interpretive social science.? However, I do have a couple of concerns.? One is that his approach seems to dissolve all the traditional "boundaries" in the social sciences.? How can he, or any interpretive social scientist, distinguish between sociology, political science, or history?? What is the methodological rationale, if any, for marking off these boundaries?? Is it only a matter of self-identity?? E.g., "I am employed in the Sociology Department, therefore whatever I do is 'sociology'"? Can anyone point out some literature where this problem has been resolved?? I don't think Bevir has even addressed this issue. Secondly, Bevir's idea of being "critical" also leaves me unsatisfied.? He seems to think that being critical is limited to such things as: a) exposing the actual relativity of claims to know what is true or right with universal intent;? b) revealing the internal contradictions in an ideology, or claim to know;? c) finding distortions of fact; or, d)unmasking deceptions. These are all "critical" tactics from the neopositivist "logical-empirical" point of view, but this very point of view seems to me to be a self-contradiction within the interpretation framework.? In my understanding, there cannot be a "neopositivist" value-neutral?interpretive social science.? Its an oxymoron! Bevir says that he is committed to the view that people generally act for reasons, and that it is his job to interpret those reasons from the human behavior.? But his theory of human rationality seems to me overly technocratic; that is, lacking in any feeling for the respect that is implicit in the major part of human behavior.? He sees people as creatively responding to dilemmas as their traditional ways of acting and thinking are challenged.? But he seems unable to account for the way people generally shape those responses with some element of concern for their impact on others.? He appears to distinguish between capitalist ideologies and socialist ideologies, only by their logical properties.? He doesn?t explain why or how humans are valued differently within either belief system.? In the technocratic view, humans have no more value than any of the other things in the world.? For reasons stated in my prior posts, I would like to ask Bevir how a human could be "rational" without being respectful of others? Consistent with this technocratic theory of rationality, Bevir's method fails to acknowledge any part played by feelings of respect for those whose meanings he sets out to interpret.? And this seems to me to be a methodological self-contradiction.? To interpret the meanings of another, one person must engage the other with a substantial degree of mutuality.? This is a requirement of empathy.? The other is regarded as a person in fundamen tal ways like oneself; that is, sentient, full of meanings, and acting for reasons.? As Polanyi points out, this relationship is a form of companionship.? Even if the other is one of those dead white guys they study in history, to understand him requires a relationship of human mutuality.? So, how can anyone have such a relationship without feeling some respect for the other?? That does not mean one must approve of the other?s behavior, but to know someone person-to-person is to have a respectful relationship.? There is no such thing as an objective interpretation, and Bevir has recognized that.? So, to interpret requires that one person engage the other as a fellow person.? Polanyi calls it an I-Thou relationship. Therefore, the professional conduct of interpretive social science requires having respect for the human subject.? But Bevir's approach seems overly intellectualized and perhaps alienated from the other. I am sure he actually does respect people, but he factors this out of his social science.? But is that intellectually honest, or fully truthful?? If you respect people as you are interpreting their meanings, isn't that a part of your methodology? I think it is, and we Interpretationistas ought to say it. Bill Kelleher ?? ? ? ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/pipermail/interpretationandmethods/attachments/20080716/1638c352/attachment.html From psshea at csbs.utah.edu Wed Jul 16 21:03:32 2008 From: psshea at csbs.utah.edu (Peregrine Schwartz-Shea) Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 19:03:32 -0600 Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] =?utf-8?q?Mark_Bevir=E2=80=99s_Methodo?= =?utf-8?q?logical_Gaps?= In-Reply-To: <8CAB5BC11F4ACF7-9B4-4736@webmail-ng01.sysops.aol.com> References: <8CAB5BC11F4ACF7-9B4-4736@webmail-ng01.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: <487E9A64.2020403@poli-sci.utah.edu> Bill, I don't have the time to respond to your many questions posed here -- but as I've been perusing your posts over the past week or so, I think you might find a lot of interest in a book I'm using for my philosophy of social science course in the fall: Fay, Brian. /Contemporary Philosophy of Social Science: A Multicultural Approach/. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996. He has a ni