110 MEANING AND METHODOLOGY
If, on the one hand, developing a single set of evaluative criteria is inconsistent with interpre-
tive methodology’s context specificity and commitment to historically grounded understanding
of the world, and yet, on the other hand, one accepts the necessity of evaluative judgment, how is
one to proceed? This chapter offers a list of criteria developed inductively, of value for its brevity,
for its historical specificity, and for its connections to interpretive research practices and pur-
poses. As a suggested set of common criteria it offers those working within an interpretive gestalt
a starting point for discussion of research quality that should be tied, ultimately, to the specifics of
the research question under consideration. Giving reasons for our judgments to the members of
our epistemic communities is the best that we can do.NOTESAn earlier version of this chapter was presented in the panel, “What does it mean to do interpretive work?
Evaluative criteria and other issues,” at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Chi-
cago, IL, September 2–5, 2004. Thanks to Dvora Yanow for organizing the panel and inviting me to partici-
pate and for her patient editing and friendly debates on this and other projects.- There are numerous indicators of this lack of pluralism in political science, but most relevant to my
purpose here is the lack of graduate training in, and in parts of the discipline even awareness of, interpre-
tive methodologies (Schwartz-Shea 2003, 2005). Thus, the interpretive epistemic community in political
science still struggles for recognition, whereas disciplines like anthropology, sociology, communication,
education, and organizational studies have thriving communities of interpretive scholarship (in some cases,
more so in substantive research and theoretical areas than in methods) with journals, funding, and faculty
positions on par with other epistemic communities in those fields. I do not mean to suggest that there
aren’t raging battles over methodology in these disciplines. Rather, interpretive communities have a place
at the table, and the fights are among equals or near equals. In contrast, in disciplines like political science
the situation of interpretive communities is better described as invisibility or marginalization in the face
of hegemony. - “This essay thus appeals to the universality of the scientific method rather than to a divisive plural-
ism” (Laitin 2003, 7). Those arguing that a “mature” discipline has a hegemonic paradigm include Kuhn
(1970) and Lakatos (1970). - Epistemic communities and their associated research gestalts divide disciplines and cross their bound-
aries in all of the social sciences, although the degree of pluralism varies notably across disciplines (Klein
1993). One consequence is that, for example, a quantitatively trained sociologist may share more with a
mathematician interested in applied statistics than with her feminist departmental colleague who, with his
collaborator in cultural studies, examines the political meanings of rap music. - Indexicality is “the tendency for a given object, event, phrase, or identity to take on different mean-
ings in different contexts. [Interpretive researchers] don’t just want to know what something means, pure
and simple, or how a person categorizes the world, always and forever. [They] want to explain [for example]
how and why the identity of ‘welfare recipient’ is significant in one setting but irrelevant in another, a sign of
selfishness in one setting and of self-sacrifice in another” (Soss, chapter 6 this volume, p. 139). - Within the field of comparative politics, there is a qualitative research tradition known as “compara-
tive historical analysis” (Mahoney and Rueschemeyer 2003a), similar to case study research in other fields
and often referred to as “small ‘n’ research.” Even though quantification is not feasible for these comparative
case studies, these qualitative researchers speak the language of variables and causal models and endorse
goals of prediction and generalizability. See Adcock, chapter 3, this volume, for an analysis of positivist and
interpretive approaches to comparative case study research. Researchers across the social sciences who use
game-theoretic or formal modeling techniques also share the variables gestalt when it comes to testing the
models’ implications. For example, see Morton (1999). - The term “qualitative-interpretive” is necessary in this context to distinguish this research from
qualitative-positivist research. What can be confusing for those reading across disciplines is that the label
“qualitative” can mean very different things. For example, in political science, as discussed in note 5, “quali-
tative” research has most often meant “qualitative-positivist” research. In contrast, in the many fields repre-