Improving phronetic social science: a critique (original) (raw)
Related papers
Tension Points in Real Social Science: A Response
British Journal of Sociology, vol. 64, No. 4, pp. 758–762, 2013
Social science today often contents itself with trying to explain particular events in terms of general models without understanding those events as experienced by the people being studied and without providing findings that might help people address the problems they are experiencing. It can be argued that the recent development of social science has focused too much on its own ‘evidence-inference methodological core’ and has lost sight of what is being studied, who is being studied, and how the results of research can challenge popular understanding, misconceptions, and power relations. At the most basic level, our edited volume Real Social Science: Applied Phronesis (Flyvbjerg, Landman and Schram 2012) is designed to provide examples of research that is situated in real communities, grows out of the concerns of people in those communities and is conducted in ways that can help those people address those concerns. These examples demonstrate that what we are calling ‘phronetic social science’ (as originally coined by Bent Flyvbjerg) offers a meaningful approach for making social science useful and relevant to real people experiencing real problems. Phronetic social science calls for social scientists foregoing the attempt to build generic models of social behaviour and instead situate their work in ongoing political struggles as they occur in specific contexts.
Important Next Steps in Phronetic Social Science
In Bent Flyvbjerg, Todd Landman, and Sanford Schram, eds., Real Social Science: Applied Phronesis, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 285-297, 2012
The term ‘phronetic social science’ was coined in Making Social Science Matter (Flyvbjerg 2001). However, as pointed out in that volume and by Schram (2006), phronetic social science existed well before this particular articulation of the concept, but it was just not organized, recognized or named as such. Rather, it occurred here and there as scholars had adopted phronesis-like methods for their own purposes. The present title is the first organized volume of empirical–practical work in phronetic social science. Before Making Social Science Matter, phronesis, as a critical term of Aristotelian philosophy, had been theorized and its continuing importance as a key concept in Western thought had been convincingly argued by distinguished philosophers like Hans Georg Gadamer, Hannah Arendt, Alasdair MacIntyre and Richard J. Bernstein, among others. But no one had developed the theory and philosophy of phronesis into a practical methodology that could be applied by researchers interested in actually practising a phronetic social science. Making Social Science Matter developed such a methodology. Its implications were discussed and developed further in Making Political Science Matter (Schram and Caterino 2006). After these two theoretical–methodological contributions, it was evident that an important next step in demonstrating the usefulness of phronetic social science would be to illustrate, with concrete examples, how applied phronesis works in practical, empirical social science research. The contributions on applied phronesis contained in the present volume make clear that this next step has now been taken.
Journal of Political Power, pp. 1-32, 2014
Clegg, Flyvbjerg and Haugaard debate the strengths and weaknesses of a Foucauldian-Nietzschean critique of power compared to a tradition exemplified by Lukes and Habermas. Flyvbjerg and Clegg argue that the pursuit of universal normative principles and of rationality without power may lead to oppressive utopian thinking. Drawing on the Aristotelian tradition of phronesis they propose a contextualist form of critique that situates itself in analysis of local practices to render domination transparent and open to change. While Haugaard accepts there cannot be a universal view that transcends the particularities of context, he argues that the phronetic approach is crypto-normative because it implicitly presupposes unacknowledged liberal normative premises; moreover, any use of ‘truth’ as a criterion follows Enlightenment principles of verification.
Real Social Science: Applied Phronesis
2012
Back cover text: Real Social Science presents a new, hands-on approach to social inquiry. The theoretical and methodological ideas behind the book, inspired by Aristotelian phronesis, represent an original perspective within the social sciences, and this volume gives readers for the first time a set of studies exemplifying what applied phronesis looks like in practice. The reflexive analysis of values and power gives new meaning to the impact of research on policy and practice. Real Social Science is a major step forward in a novel and thriving field of research. This book will benefit scholars, researchers, and students who want to make a difference in practice, not just in the academy. Its message will make it essential reading for students and academics across the social sciences.
Purpose, Framework and Methodology in Social Sciences: " An Old Puzzle Revisited "
Methodology has been a matter of discussion in the social sciences since its foundations. This essay aims to underline the inefficiencies introduced to research by a priori reasoning in the form of certain framework, and within methodological prioritization. Furthermore, it aims to suggest alternative strategies to specific forms of social inquiry. In its own method, the essay employs a critique of a well-respected economics and Islamic Law Professor Timur Kuran's work on the possible causes of the divergence between the economic trajectories of Middle East and Western Christendom, and a meta-methodological discussion on the inefficiency of the developmental framework in certain research .
State Power: A Strategic-Relational Approach - By B. Jessop
The British Journal of Sociology, 2009
Throughout the postwar period in the West, social theorists have grappled with the problem of self/identity, both in terms of conflicts between individual needs and social demands and in light of significant and destabilizing social transformations. On the nature of the social changes wrought by modernity there is widespread agreement. While by no means affecting everyone equally, these changes include the pluralization of authorities, the deinstitutionalization of private life, the decline of overarching systems of meaning, the reconfiguration of time and space, global flows of people and products, and much more. We now find ourselves in a situation of fluidity and flux, without the old rituals and stable institutions, disembedded from tradition and external ordering criteria, and flooded by media imagery, new technologies, and a consumption ethic. Our lives are more mobile, more individualized, and managed with fewer and weaker communal ties. To this general agreement about social conditions, there is also broad consensus that these conditions create major challenges for identity formation and maintenance. Where social theorists disagree is on what these conditions and challenges mean. In Self and Social Change, Matthew Adams provides a clearly written and concise summary of key theoretical accounts of the meaning of social change for psychic life and the experience of self. The sociological tradition has long emphasized the negative impact that social transformations can have on individuals and has coined a rich vocabulary to describe adverse effects: alienation, anomie, atomization, the iron cage, and the like. Adams calls this tradition the 'psychosocial fragmentation thesis,' and discusses a number of more recent contributions to it, from Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man, to Riesman et al's The Lonely Crowd, Putnam's Bowling Alone and Sennett's The Corrosion of Character. The central tenet of this thesis, he argues, is that the deterioration of social life leads, more or less straightforwardly, to a self that is isolated, alienated, and adrift. Against this 'declensionist' account, Adams contrasts the more optimistic 'reflexivity thesis' championed by Anthony Giddens, and in various forms by all those whose analysis is premised on a reflexive and calculating actor. For Giddens, a range of cultural options are available to address each of the 'tribulations of the self' brought about by social instability. Rather than succumbing to fragmentation, for instance, an identity can be reflexively constructed that purposively incorporates many diverse elements. In the face of powerlessness in an anomic public realm and/or inadequate social mastery in personal relationships, identity can be strengthened through direct efforts at active control. The pluralization of
Book review symposium: Real Social Science: Applied Phronesis
2013
In Making Social Science Matter (2001), Bent Flyvbjerg proposed a radical challenge to positivistic versions of social inquiry and rational choice. Social inquiry according to Flyvbjerg is not really a ‘science’. The latter, he claimed had roots in the notion of epistemé or what Aristotle viewed as certain and reliable knowledge. Flyvbjerg viewed this type of knowledge as ‘theoretical’. As realized in modern nomological views of science, particulars are subsumed and governed by general laws. In contrast to this nomological version of social inquiry, Flyvbjerg claimed that knowledge of the social world was phronetic in Aristotle’s sense. It is practical, context bound, and independent of theoretical knowledge. Phronesis required the wisdom, insight and skill of an interested participant in social life. Flyvbjerg’s work found a sympathetic ear in the spreading discontent with the rational choice theories and quantitative approaches dominant in major political science journals.Yet such...