DOING SOCIAL SCIENCE IN A HUMANISTIC MANNER 389RECLAIMING HUMAN SCIENCE
As ideas about knowledge and the sciences were developing, two terms emerged in the German
literature to denote the separation of the study of the human world from the study of the rest of
creation. Naturwissenschaften designated the latter, usually translated as “natural sciences.”
Geisteswissenschaften designated the former, and it is often translated as “human sciences” as a
closer rendering of the German than “social sciences.”
One test of whether a science qualifies as “human” is whether its scientists willingly apply
their own theories and research findings to themselves, seeing themselves as a part of humanity
rather than being “above” or “superior to” (or simply “the exception to”) those they study. For
example, discussing a study of scholars “utterly committed to highly deterministic models of
social causation,” H. Becker reports that it “was only in discussing their own lives that the
deterministic theories were not adequate explanations; when they talked about other people,
more conventional social science talk worked just fine” (1998, 30; emphasis added). In con-
trast, the interpretive practice of reflexivity would encourage researchers to attend to and ana-
lyze their possible personal power vis-à-vis those they study, to ask, in effect, whether they,
too, are “determined” by external factors. Indeed, it might be argued that interpretive research
philosophy and practice work against scholarly hubris in ways that other philosophies and
methodologies do not. Besides reflexivity, interpretive research traditions emphasize getting
out of one’s office into the field to talk with people—in Hoffmann’s scenario, to eat noodles
instead of downloading data sets about noodles—a tradition supporting human connection.
Similarly, interpretivism admits the possibility of local knowledge, potentially humbling and
decentering scholarly expertise.
Alford and Hibbing provide an example of the kind of social science that we would seek to
avoid. They warn the reader not to dismiss an evolutionary theory of political behavior “be-
cause of unscientific aversion to its implications” (2004, 707), a comment that implicitly in-
vokes the mantle of methodologically positivist “science” to inoculate their theory against
criticism. But one of their admonitions to reformers shows the dangers of this approach:
People do not wish to be in control of the political system; they only want those who are in
control to be unable to take advantage of their position.... Current American foreign policy
might be improved, for example, if decision makers realized that, like Americans, people in
Afghanistan and Iraq do not crave democratic procedures. Kurds simply do not want to be
dominated by Sunnis; Sunnis do not want to be dominated by Shiites; Uzbekis by Tajiks;
and Tajiks by Pashtuns. (2004, 713; emphasis in original)The authors do not cite empirical work to support these representations of the named peoples’
political desires. Their advice implies that American foreign policy makers need not consult di-
rectly with Sunnis, Shiites, Uzbeks, Tajiks, or Pashtuns. A deductively developed, a priori, sup-
posedly universal theory—the evolutionary theory of political behavior—is presented as sufficient
evidence for understanding what people generally desire of politics.
In contrast, it is their focus on context—geological, chronological, or cultural—that makes
many interpretive researchers especially concerned about the connections between the academy
and politically powerful elites.^19 “Knowledge for whom?” is a legitimate and pressing concern
for interpretive researchers as they consider research topics. And this concern, in turn, connects to
the interpretive emphasis on local, tacit knowledge and the ways in which its existence is threat-