[Interpretationandmethods] Interpretationandmethods Digest, Vol 43, Issue 1

[Patrick Thaddeus Jackson]

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

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