STUDYING THE CAREERS OF KNOWLEDGE CLAIMS 231cially suitable toward this end. Convergence between NHI and the methods outlined here—a
convergence rooted in the shared treatment of legal institutions as constitutive, porous, and
dynamic—is thus one of the notable features of this essay.
At this point, a more extended introduction to frame analysis and science studies is in order.
Following these introductions are two applications that demonstrate the use (and usefulness) of
these interpretive-historical methods.
FRAME ANALYSIS
The concept of an interpretive framework or “frame” has been used by scholars across a variety of
disciplines to illuminate the problem of meaning (see e.g., Bateson 1972; Burke 1965 [1935];
Fish 1980; Goffman 1974; Rein 1983; Schon and Rein 1994). This work holds in common the
idea that individuals hold frameworks of interpretation, which select and organize among raw
experiential data, thereby making it meaningful. Frames are sets of taken-for-granted assump-
tions. These sets of assumptions shape understandings of reality or “definitions of the situation”
(W.I. Thomas 1923).^11
This constructivist idea that understandings of reality are prefigured by interpretive frame-
works can be traced back to Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge (1985 [1936]) and the work of
William James (1950 [1869]). For sociologists, this constructivism has found well-known ex-
pression in the phenomenology of Schütz (1962) and Berger and Luckmann (1966). In political
science, the idea of a frame has been utilized in policy studies. Drawing on the work of Yanow
(1995a) and others, Swaffield (1998, 205) has used the concept of framing to analyze the “points
of view” that attach to competing policy prescriptions in a comparative context. In a U.S. policy
context, Linder (1995) has isolated the discursive elements that underlie competing problem defi-
nitions. Linder’s attention to underlying discursive elements is significant, for in order to study
interpretation as a process, we must maintain an important analytic distinction.
This analytic distinction is between baseline categories of thought (taken-for-granted be-
liefs and assumptions) and the interpretive products of these categories (definitions of the situ-
ation). When an individual confronts and construes a situation, baseline categories shape the
way this situation is made meaningful. For example, a baseline belief in essential sex differ-
ences produces the view that sex segregation in the workplace is natural and inevitable. Alter-
natively, a baseline belief that gender roles are socially constructed produces the view that sex
segregation is an expression of social hierarchy and not inevitable. In both cases, beliefs about
gender (baseline categories) shape a view of the origins and fairness of sex segregation (a
definition of the situation).^12
In using the term “frame,” some political scientists have blurred this analytic distinction be-
tween baseline assumptions and their interpretive products. Schon and Rein (1994, 23), for ex-
ample, define frames as “underlying structures of belief, perception, and appreciation.”^13 Because
they use one concept, a frame, to encompass both baseline categories of thought and their prod-
ucts, the process of interpretation is hidden.^14
There are other reasons the analytic distinction between baseline categories of thought and
their products should be maintained. By analytically isolating these baseline categories, it be-
comes possible to show how authors use a single set of assumptions to produce knowledge claims
in a variety of contexts. Scholars, after all, tend to make claims about a variety of things. A
discursive relationship between these knowledge claims can then be identified through their par-
ent assumptions.