INTRODUCTION xxiWhat leads a researcher to choose to follow an interpretive or some other path is largely the set
of ontological and epistemological presuppositions undergirding the initial shaping of the research
question. The linguistic structure of the word does not mean that these presuppositions are neces-
sarily arrived at prior to methods. It is equally possible—and, in our experience as researchers,
teachers, and readers of others’ work, far more likely—that methodological inclinations of what-
ever sort are arrived at without any conscious attention to their philosophical groundings (espe-
cially when graduate programs do not include philosophy of science discussions in core courses).
“Presupposition” should be taken in a conceptual or logical sense, then, rather than in a chrono-
logical one, to mean what one must suppose—even if one does so un- or subconsciously—about
social realities and their knowability in order logically to hold particular methodological posi-
tions. A phenomenological approach suggests a way to engage the question, Where do presuppo-
sitions come from? They are not necessarily explicitly known, and often not explicitly reflected on
or consciously chosen; there seems instead to be a relationship between presuppositional inclinations
—toward research that resonates, reflecting personality, type of intelligence (see Gardner 1993),
lived experience—and one’s choice of field of study and, hence, methods.
Choices are made also within interpretive modes, including between an empirical interpretive
path and more philosophical or literary critical interpretive traditions, such as “political theory” in
political science and “social theory” in sociology. In drawing a distinction between empirical
research analyzed “interpretively” and interpretive textual approaches to canonical thinkers such
as Aristotle or Weber, we are not intending to signal that empirical researchers do not theorize or
that “theorists” do not engage “real-world” issues. It is, however, our experience as “empirical
researchers” who have immersed ourselves in parts of the “theory” world, especially in feminist,
critical race, and organizational, public policy, and public administration theories, that the two
groups proceed about their theorizing differently: They constitute different epistemic communi-
ties, which frame research questions differently, reason arguments differently, and write differ-
ently. Clearly, at a conceptual level, there are overlaps: Critical content analysts, to take one
example, engage in close readings of organizational, governmental, legal, or other texts that draw
on many of the same techniques used by theorists explicating, for instance, foundational texts for
their meanings. Yet the reading and writing practices and habits of mind of the two communities
are sufficiently different as to render the resulting articles and books qualitatively different in
kind. To some extent this is evident in some of the chapters in this volume: Mary Hawkesworth’s
and Mark Bevir’s chapters (2 and 15, respectively) are recognizable as the work of theorists;
Pamela Brandwein’s and Clare Ginger’s chapters (12 and 19, respectively), as the work of em-
pirically oriented researchers, even though both of the latter analyze texts (the one, legal texts; the
other, policy texts). Although both editors of this volume find inspiration in the interpretive work
of theorists, we have chosen to restrict it to interpretive empirical analysis because it is our sense
that l’analyse du texte is an accepted practice in theory-oriented fields regardless of philosophical
perspective, whereas in empirical fields, such methods as presented here are not widely known,
let alone accepted. In addition, we hope that these examples will provide models that might in-
spire others to do similar work and might provide the means to refute objections that such work
isn’t “scientific.”^24
Thinking about the connections between textual analysts’ and empirical researchers’ interpretive
work, something very interesting becomes clear in reading the chapters in part II and, especially,
part III. Philosophy or theory and method do not seem to be as clearly separable in interpretive work
as they are in quantitative work. One can have a full discussion of, say, various statistical findings
without having to engage either ontological or epistemological questions.^25 For the authors of
chapters in part III, this is hardly the case. It seems that one cannot explain how narratives mean