DOING SOCIAL SCIENCE IN A HUMANISTIC MANNER 381will once again marginalize and devalue interpretive methods and methodology. The danger,
as Van Ausdale and Feagin (2001) (quoted in the first epigraph) recognize, is that “method-
ological melding” typically means giving precedence to positivist purposes and evaluative cri-
teria, such that what is distinctive about interpretivism—its emphasis on meaning making
anchored in specific ontological and epistemological presuppositions—is subjugated, if not
“disappeared” altogether.
Consider, as one example, the mixed signals contained in the executive summary and parts I
and II of the 2004 NSF Report of the Workshop on Scientific Foundations of Qualitative Research
(Ragin, Nagel, and White 2004).^5 Although there is much that is laudatory in these sections—
notably the recognition of the “centrality of meaning systems” and the “researcher’s positionality”
(i.e., that the “investigator is the primary data collection instrument”; 2004, 14)—there is no
mention, much less discussion, of epistemological matters. In this way, the report reinscribes the
fallacious quantitative/qualitative dichotomy, which continues to cloud communication among
scholars, at the same time that it denies interpretive methodologies their full due. For example,
the criterion of “replicability,” described in the report as being “ways in which others might
reproduce this research” (2004, 18), may be appropriate for the evaluation of positivist qualita-
tive research but, as discussed in chapter 5 (this volume), it is inappropriate for the evaluation of
interpretive research, which contests the possibility of universal causal laws.
Equally worrisome is the NSF report’s general endorsement of “attempts to combine qualita-
tive and quantitative methods in social research” (Ragin, Nagel, and White 2004, 15). In the one-
page summary, it is evident that positivist understandings of research inform the discussion. From
a methodological perspective, combining quantitative and qualitative methods is a coherent strat-
egy only if and when they are understood as sharing similar ontological and epistemological
presuppositions. Interpretive views, for example, of triangulation (discussed in chapter 5) or of
numerical analysis as a way of “world making” (the implication of McHenry’s chapter 10; see
also Yanow forthcoming), however, are not suitable as partner research strategies for method-
ologically positivist methods because of their different epistemological underpinnings, and this
understanding is eclipsed by the report’s treatment of “qualitative” methods. To be recognized as
a genuinely scientific undertaking, to be judged on its own terms with apt evaluative criteria, and,
hence, to be treated as a legitimate alternative to research informed by methodological positiv-
ism, research that endorses interpretive ontological and epistemological presuppositions needs
explicit recognition as interpretive research.^6
How might this subjugation of interpretive research be understood? We find some answers to
this question in perspectives offered by science studies and the sociology of the professions, as well
as in the debates about the meaning of “science” within interpretive epistemic communities. Situat-
ing methodological debates within these contexts highlights the extent to which the issues are cen-
tral to practices enacting professional identities, that is, in the establishment and maintenance of
communities of practice that share epistemic orientations and in the discourses that accompany and
define them. We argue that the subjugation of interpretive research must be vigorously contested
not only because of its inherent methodological differences, but also because a fully articulated
interpretive methodology offers a historical opportunity to reclaim the “human” sciences.
PERSPECTIVES FROM THE SOCIOLOGY OF THE PROFESSIONS
AND SCIENCE STUDIES
The methods conversation (some might say debate) that this book engages is taking place in a
context far greater than “just” methods of accessing, generating, and analyzing data. It is taking