Interpretation and Method Empirical Research Methods and the Interpretive Turn

368 RE-RECOGNIZING INTERPRETIVE METHODOLOGIES

seeking promotion and tenure, and all seeking research funding, opportunities to present work in

conferences, and publication outlets for research. And the issues arise as well in teaching, cur-

ricular design, and textbook contents.

The final chapters offer two different perspectives on such matters. Timothy Pachirat, in chap-

ter 21, reminds us, in a most poetic fashion, of the human dimension of our research enterprise.

We are in search of meaning, he notes, and we would do well, also, to remember that this is such

a central facet of human endeavor that we remark on those who are incapable, whether from age

or illness, to engage in such meaning making. Meaning making is the unmarked, taken-for-granted

norm—we tend, that is, to note it in its absence, as he observes, as in health-related conditions—

yet the capacity for doing so is central to our lives. Interpretive social science is “merely” an

enactment of this social fact.

In the final chapter, the editors seek to contextualize the methods debates in the context of

scientific identities and practices. As a framework for the observations in that chapter, we build

here on some ideas recently articulated by Michael Burawoy, 2003–4 president of the American

Sociological Association (Burawoy 2005). In response to questions in sociology about disciplin-

ary identity, he has articulated an argument for “public sociology.” He describes the disciplinary

issues in ways that resonate with the current debates in political science and possibly in other

social sciences as well.

Burawoy frames the argument in terms of the questions “Knowledge for whom?” and “Knowl-

edge for what?” thereby generating, in good sociological fashion, a “2 x 2” table. Four modes of

doing social science or being a social scientist then become apparent. In light of the methods

debates engaged in this book, it seems useful to adapt his table somewhat, as a way of casting

these arguments more broadly (see Table IV.1).

Burawoy sees the left-hand question, “Knowledge for what?” in means/ends terms, which

leads him to see knowledge as either instrumental (serving means primarily) or reflexive (asking

what ends are being served). We turn the question slightly, rendering it as, “What purposes are

being served by the knowledge generated by social science?” In sociology of knowledge terms,

then, the question, in a Kuhnian vein, is asking, “Are we in a period of normal science or are we

in a period of change?” Normal science requires little reflexivity, little awareness of one’s own

knowledge-production roles and processes. Its purposes are to further clarify accepted research

procedures and to embed them in established practices. This procedural normalization intertwines

with a methodological positivism in which the generation of knowledge is not problematized.

The dominant scientific identity resides in the upper-left cell of the table: the disciplinary profes-

Table IV.1

Types and Dimensions of Disciplinary Knowledge

Knowledge for whom?

Academic setting, Extra-academic setting,

audience audience

Normal science DISCIPLINE APPLIED (policy, consulting,

Knowledge for what? government, military)

Change CRITICAL ENGAGED/PUBLIC

Source: Adapted from Burawoy (2005).