370 RE-RECOGNIZING INTERPRETIVE METHODOLOGIES
on the part of the founder(s) of the Perestroika e-mail list (and subsequent anonymous posts from
that person or persons and from others) also speaks to the risks of asking for disciplinary change.
Challenging the analyses and ideals of the wider society, including power holders, would also
seem an appropriate role for institutions of higher education. Yet many recent events speak to the
risks of such action, from the reception of University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill’s
challenge to received views of the September 11 attacks (Brennan 2005), to legislative efforts to
curtail tenure (Finkin 2000; Healy 1997), to efforts by student groups to monitor the “objectivity”
of professors’ lectures (Hebel 2004). Underlying much of the debate over the propriety of schol-
arly research and analyses are conceptions of “objectivity” tied to conceptualizations of “sci-
ence,” a topic examined in chapter 4 of this volume.
No 2 x 2 table can do justice to the complexity of the issues briefly reviewed here. The purpose
of this broad framework, as we discuss in our final chapter, is to acknowledge, and to enable
analysis of, the connections between the varied receptions of scholars’ work and the themes of
this book—conceptions of science tied to method.
There is a sense in which social scientists’ relationship with their methods parallels that of
natural and physical scientists with their tools as it evolved from the sixteenth century to the
twentieth. As described by philosophers of technology, early scientists crafted their own tools
and maintained an intimate connection—of knowledge, of practice: a hands-on intimacy—with
them. Think, for example, of Von Leeuwenhoek with his lenses and microscopes, having to grind
and assemble them in order to conduct his observations. Gradually, technology—understood as
the “tools” used in a practice—became increasingly separated from science and its practices,
from investigation.
So it is, today, with social scientists and our “tools,” at a conceptual level if not at a physical
one. The physical relationship used, in fact, to be more palpable: Even with the old mainframe
computers, Fortran, and data punched on cards, analytic technologies and research substance
were much more closely related. One had the hands-on experience of transforming words into
numbers and engaging with machines that processed them. Research seems to be increasingly
more distanced from technology in this day of microprocessors, packaged statistical programs
such as SPSS, and massive databases online.
This is part of what makes methodological debates appear (to some) to be methods fetishism,
as if we were squabbling over hammers versus hoes, diverting energy from studying substantive
matters of greater consequence. This is a misperception both of the importance of the debate and
of the character of methods. To take the latter point first: As argued and demonstrated throughout
this book, methods rest on philosophical presuppositions. These remain embedded in them, even
if they are not taught or discussed or attended to explicitly. Treating methods as “tools” alone
denigrates their significance and denies them their character.
This attitude carries into and supports the wider debate. As noted above, this is one way of
policing professional boundaries. Labeling the debate “fetishism” only serves to dismiss it as
inconsequential, rather than seeing the role that methods and their attendant professional-
disciplinary concerns play in the construction of individuals’ personal and professional identities
(which, for academics, are often closely intertwined). But even more than this, the debate may
well constitute a “myth” of academic practice, serving to deflect collective attention away from
an area of incommensurable values about which there is no consensus—that “knowledge” is
always and deeply “political,” tied to the humanity of its producers (the interpretive position),
rather than able, somehow, to escape the bounds of the physical, social, and historical embeddedness
of its human producers (the methodologically positivist position). Where researchers stand on
this metaphysical issue is often indicative of the gestalt with which they approach their research