60 MEANING AND METHODOLOGY
propositions. This involves formulating and evaluating propositions about recurring relation-
ships among factors, but doing so with the expectation that the range of this recurrence is limited
by certain scope conditions. Belief in the distinctiveness and desirability of this variant of mod-
ernist social science is fundamental to the common identity of comparative historical analysts. It
underpins the self-conception of their approach as one that is “historical” and sensitive to “con-
text.” Comparative historical analysts hold it to be ahistorical (and prima facie implausible) to
seek or employ theory with a universal form, whether pitched at a macro, micro, or whatever
level. This belief supports their practice of combining the modernist endeavor to formulate and
evaluate generalizing propositions about recurring relationships with efforts to specify bound-
aries to that recurrence. For comparative historical analysts, it is these latter efforts that specifi-
cally mark out their approach as one that is sensitive to context.
To understand the agenda of comparative historical analysis, it is essential to recognize that its
proponents view their approach as occupying a sensible middle ground. Such recognition need
not, however, entail endorsement of this image or of the presuppositions upon which it is con-
structed. Thus, a Parsonian or a rational choice theorist may want to contend that, when push
comes to shove, theoretical pluralism is just another take on the long-standing empiricist hostility
to the necessary role that an explicit and internally coherent set of theoretical premises must play
in any rigorous social science. On the other hand, a large ‘n’ statistical analyst may contend that
mid-range “general” propositions, if they meet modernist standards, differ from “universal” propo-
sitions only in presentation, certain factors having been removed from the proposition itself and
presented instead in the alternative form of scope conditions. Finally, for an interpretive social
scientist, all such methodological contentiousness may appear as much bustle over little, so long
as it offers only contained variations upon a modernist vision of social science’s agenda.Interpretive Social Science and the Pursuit of the “General”The interpretive turn in American social science involved more of a departure than just assert-
ing that the meaningful character of human action matters and merits central attention. This
had, after all, been a basic belief of Parsons. Indeed, the modernist stance, in most, if perhaps
not all, of its varieties is quite capable of bringing meanings within the reach of its analyses. In
order to do so, it approaches meaningful human action in a particular way: Meanings are con-
ceptually isolated from action and then categorized as occupying one position within a broader,
abstractly conceived range of possible meanings. Actions are, in turn, understood in relation to
a range of possible positions on a similarly isolated action factor. With this conceptual work
accomplished, efforts to characterize relationships between positions on the meaning and ac-
tion factors can begin. The kind of conceptual treatment of meanings that makes such efforts
possible is elaborately exemplified in the categorization of possible “value-orientations” con-
structed by Talcott Parsons and Edward Shils (1951). But similar conceptual work takes place,
albeit usually in less sophisticated and self-conscious forms, whenever social scientists seek to
bring meanings within the reach of modernist analyses that establish and evaluate relationships
between factors.
Interpretive social science stands in basic contrast to such analyses. Interpretivists diverge
from modernist practices of knowledge construction at their most basic step: They are skeptical
of the act of conceptually isolating factors, without which it is impossible to even formulate the
propositions about recurring relationships to which modernists aspire. As an alternative starting
point, interpretivists set out to grasp meaning and action together as parts of a complex, situated
whole. They inquire into the making, remaking, and implications of meanings as a point of entry