Methodological troubles as problems and phenomena: ethnomethodology and the question of ‘method’ in the social sciences

Across the disciplinary frontiers of the social sciences, studies by social scientists treating their own investigative practices as sites of empirical inquiry have proliferated. Most of these studies have been retrospective, historical, after‐the‐fact reconstructions of social scientific studies mixing interview data with the (predominantly textual) traces that investigations leave behind. Observational studies of in situ work in social science research are, however, relatively scarce. Ethnomethodology was an early and prominent attempt to treat social science methodology as a topic for sociological investigations and, in this paper, we draw out what we see as its distinctive contribution: namely, a focus on troubles as features of the in situ, practical accomplishment of method, in particular, the way that research outcomes are shaped by the local practices of investigators in response to the troubles they encounter along the way. Based on two case studies, we distinguish methodological troubles as problems and methodological troubles as phenomena to be studied, and suggest the latter orientation provides an alternate starting point for addressing social scientists' investigative practices.     

The Genesis of American Capitalism: an Historical Inquiry into State Theory

Abstract We usually think that we know what 'the state' is, even when we embark on a theoretical quest for it. Somehow, the state is closely associated with Government - including bureaucracy and army. Or we sometimes think of it differently, in terms of city-state or nation-state. I had the first notion in mind when I started to research the socioeconomic context of the making of the U.S. constitution. But the historical research forced me to face the vagueness of the concept, and to recognize that it is not only useless, but actually harmful in our understanding of modern societies. This paper is made-up of three parts: the historical narrative of U.S. constitution-making is sandwiched between, first, a deconstruction of the concept of state and, third, an attempt at establishing a new concept of state. I discard along the way the dichotomies of state/civil society and base/superstructure. And I argue for a close integration of theory and history in social analysis.     

Refracted Knowledge: Viewing Families Through the Prism of Social Science

I reinforce a vision for family science in which we routinely step back from our research to consider the fit of the empirical world with the reality of everyday life. This vision suggests that we pursue the methodological advances of the past decade but remain mindful of the limitations of the scientific approach. Such mindfulness will help us attend to both similarity and variability in families and in family‐life experience. A responsible social science also requires that we attend to rhetoric or how we communicate. I reflect on the practice of humility as a way to achieve these goals.     

After inclusion. Thinking with Julian Go's ‘Thinking against empire: Anticolonial thought as social theory’

This contribution engages Go's generative invitation to think against empire by thinking through the epistemic and disciplinary implications of such endeavour. I zoom in on the need to explicitly address the purpose and ethos of scholarly inquiry and how that translates into decolonial academic praxis. Thinking with Go's invitation to think against empire, I feel compelled to constructively engage the limitations and impossibilities of decolonising disciplines such as Sociology. I glean from the various attempts at inclusion and diversity in society and argue that adding or including Anticolonial Social Thought/marginalised voices and peoples in the existing corridors of power—such as canons or advisory boards—is at best a minimal rather than a sufficient condition of decolonisation or going against empire. This raises the question of what comes after inclusion. Rather than offer a ‘correct’ or single alternative anticolonial way, the paper explores the pluriversally inspired method(ological) avenues that appear when we commit to thinking about what happens after inclusion when the goal is decolonisation. I expand on my ‘discovery’ and engagement with the figure and political thought of Thomas Sankara and how this led me to abolitionist thought. The paper then offers a patchwork of methodological considerations when engaging the what, how, why?—questions of research. I engage with questions of purpose, mastery, and colonial science and turn to the generative potential of approaches such as grounding, Connected Sociologies, epistemic Blackness, and curating as methods. Thinking with abolition and Shilliam's (2015) distinction between colonial and decolonial science, between knowledge production and knowledge cultivation, the paper invites us to not only think of what we need to do more of or better when taking Anticolonial Social Thought seriously, but also what we might need to let go of.     

Interface methods: renegotiating relations between digital social research,STS and sociology

This paper introduces a distinctive approach to methods development in digital social research called ‘interface methods’. We begin by discussing various methodological confluences between digital media, social studies of science and technology (STS) and sociology. Some authors have posited significant overlap between, on the one hand, sociological and STS concepts, and on the other hand, the ontologies of digital media. Others have emphasized the significant differences between prominent methods built into digital media and those of STS and sociology. This paper advocates a third approach, one that (a) highlights the dynamism and relative under‐determinacy of digital methods, and (b) affirms that multiple methodological traditions intersect in digital devices and research. We argue that these two circumstances enable a distinctive approach to methodology in digital social research – thinking methods as ‘interface methods’ – and the paper contextualizes this approach in two different ways. First, we show how the proliferation of online data tools or ‘digital analytics’ opens up distinctive opportunities for critical and creative engagement with methods development at the intersection of sociology, STS and digital research. Second, we discuss a digital research project in which we investigated a specific ‘interface method’, namely co‐occurrence analysis. In this digital pilot study we implemented this method in a critical and creative way to analyse and visualize ‘issue dynamics’ in the area of climate change on Twitter. We evaluate this project in the light of our principal objective, which was to test the possibilities for the modification of methods through experimental implementation and interfacing of various methodological traditions. To conclude, we discuss a major obstacle to the development of ‘interface methods’: digital media are marked by particular quantitative dynamics that seem adverse to some of the methodological commitments of sociology and STS. To address this, we argue in favour of a methodological approach in digital social research that affirms its maladjustment to the research methods that are prevalent in the medium.     

The question of mathematical social theory revisited: Some methodological considerations

Methodologically, the most advanced social science discipline is considered economics, especially its neoclassical version. A number of practitioners in the other social sciences, especially sociology and political science, perceive economics as a scientific exemplar in methodological (and theoretical) terms. This methodological exemplar has been, particularly in the last decades, attempted to emulate by some of these social scientists. The outcome of this emulation, by adopting and extending its methods, of neoclassical economics in parts (but not all) of sociology, political science, and elsewhere has been rational choice theory as a general social paradigm. This paper tries to show that many misapplications of the methodology of neoclassical economics in rational choice theory have ensued from such methodological emulation. That neoclassical economics does not necessarily contain or lead to a mathematical rational choice model is the core argument of this paper. The paper fills in a gap created by the current literature’s focus on the methodological bases of mathematical rational choice theory in neoclassical economics.     

Understanding governmental activism

This article seeks to understand an understudied phenomenon: governmental players joining forces with non-governmental players in contentious actions against policies they want to prevent or redress. This behaviour, which we call ‘governmental activism’, problematizes important assumptions in the social movement literature on state–SMO dichotomies and on seeing ‘the state’ as a homogeneous and unified actor that solely provides the context for SMO activities. Governmental activism also problematizes assumptions on cooperation and ‘new’ modes of coordination in the governance literature. To understand governmental activism, we build on the strategic interaction perspective from social movement studies and on third-phase institutionalism from political science. In our analysis, we show the particulars of governmental activism. Our arguments are illustrated by empirical material on a case of municipal amalgamation in the Netherlands.     

Is Social Work Research Distinctive?

What makes social work research distinctive? And how is our answer linked to how we do social work research? Drawing on UK research council statements about social work research as a starting point, I argue that it makes some degree of sense to ask what is distinctive about social work research. But the more significant question is what might make social work research distinctively good? I suggest six benchmarks. These address the case for methodological excellence; inquiry marked by rigour, range, variety, depth and progression; active conversation with the social science community; consistency with broader social work purposes; attention to aspects of the research enterprise that are close to social work; and taking seriously aspects of the research mission that seem on the face of it far from social work. However, social work and social work research will be the poorer if we over‐emphasize the distinctives at the expense of commonalities in fostering and assessing best practice and best purpose.     

Can we,should we,measure ethnicity?

Feminist social science is marked by its diversity, its ethos of inclusiveness and its critical power. These qualities are best exemplified in feminisms' acknowledgement, at the epistemological level, that men as well as women are crucial participants in the feminist enterprise. Moreover, epistemological justifications for positioning men within feminism is matched by a commitment to think through the methodological implications of men's involvement as both researchers and researched. In particular, inclusiveness pushes at the boundary of what counts as feminist methodology, and it forces us to rethink the underlying principles of feminist research work. In this article, two key feminist methodological principles—rapport and empathy, and democracy—are interrogated in the light of a series of in-depth interviews with a group of powerful, authoritative and uniformed men (senior police officers). It is suggested that while there may be a temptation to dismiss the interviewing relations which evolved as ‘non-feminist’, they are also indicative of feminist methodological vitality and strength as well as its capacity to accommodate the fractured subjectivities of research participants. The paper concludes by positing a re-conceptualization of interviewing principles which not only appreciate diversity in feminist epistemological and methodological commitments, but also variability and difference in feminist research relationships.     

Property,wealth, and social change: Piketty as a social science engineer

This paper applauds the vision and originality of Piketty's Capital and Ideology. We draw attention to the distinctive methodological perspective which he adopts, which we liken to call “social science engineering.” This allows a problem oriented perspective on long‐term global social change which sidesteps siloed disciplinary debates in social science and history about the meaning of modernity, the rise of capitalism, the formation of social groups, and the primacy of nations. We bring out how his theory of property permits him to take forward his overarching insight that economic growth leads to wealth accumulation. This, therefore, challenges long standing sociological perspectives by insisting that modernity is a conservative, rather than a revolutionary and transformative process. We build on this essential contribution by noting some areas where his work can push forward even further, notably that his focus on shifting relativities obscures qualitative historical changes, and more particularly means his analysis of the 20th century is not as provocative as that of the 19th century.     

A cosmopolitan approach to the explanation of social change: social mechanisms,processes, modernity

In recent years social science has been characterized by a cosmopolitan turn. Of the many questions that arise from this the most important are those that concern the implications for explaining social change. While cosmopolitanism is centrally about social change, much cosmopolitan theory due to its normative orientation lacks a capacity for explanation. The problem of explanation is also a problem that besets all ‘big question’ approaches in social science. In this paper a broad definition of cosmopolitanism is given and elucidated by an outline of its epistemological, ontological and methodological frameworks. Emphasizing the latter two, a relational conception of cosmopolitanism is developed as an alternative to dispositional/agency based and systemic accounts. First I argue that there are four main kinds of cosmopolitan relationships, which together constitute the social ontology of cosmopolitanism. These are the relativization of identity, the positive recognition of the other, the mutual evaluation of cultures, and the creation of a normative world culture. A methodological framework is advanced that distinguishes between the preconditions of cosmopolitanism, its social mechanisms and processes (of which three are specified: generative, transformational and institutionalizing) and trajectories of historical change. The argument is made that cosmopolitan phenomena can be accounted for in terms of this ontological and methodological framework. The advantage of this approach is that it offers cosmopolitan analysis a macro level account of social change that is broadly explanatory and which can also account for both the diachronic and synchronic levels of the emergence of cosmopolitanism as both a counter‐factual normative cultural model and as a part of social and political practices and institutional arrangements.     

Present in the World Economy: The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (1996–2007)

To think through what new, perhaps transformative, way of life and struggle might be in the process of being invented by social forces moving on the terrain of the world economy, we must look into real concrete organizations binding people together. Only then can we begin to see what might be most radical about contemporary social movements: the putting into dialectical relation of two relatively autonomous, spatially specific, modes of struggle: a local ‘wars of position’ and a ‘war of movement’ that takes place on the terrain of the world economy. This article deals with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), which has just won a 10-year-long campaign to raise the income and better the living conditions of tomato pickers in Southwest Florida. For all its specificity, this campaign presents us with a concrete organizational experience from which we can think more generally about the political significance of what has been variously and vaguely termed ‘the new internationalism of social movements’, ‘the anti-globalization movement’, or ‘globalization from below’.     

Government Influence on the Social Science Paradigm*

A scientific paradigm includes a set of widely shared understandings that specify a discipline's research methodologies and substantive priorities. The impact of government sponsorship of academic social research on the paradigms of four social science disciplines is evaluated using a probability sample of 1,079 faculty members in the fields of anthropology, economics, political science, and psychology. The results indicate that federal government funding is allocated according to topical and methodological priorities that are distinct from the disciplines' self-defined priorities. It is also found that: (1) federal support of academic research has a significant impact on the substantive and methodological plans of social scientists; (2) social scientists who are financially dependent on government assistance are particularly responsive to government influence; (3) the condition of financial dependency on government funding is in part a product of prior federal investment in social research. An “externalist” thesis holds that the scientific paradigm is not autonomous and is significantly shaped by such outside factors as the political system, and these findings provide support for this thesis.     

Task-based learning approaches for supporting the development of social science researchers’ critical data skills

Conducting social science research is a complex process, and social science students face a number of learning challenges in order to develop their skills. Moreover, new sources and types of data including so-called big data are providing new opportunities for research, but also pose methodological challenges. In this article, we explore a task-based learning approach for teaching social science research methods. We draw on evidence from two case study learning tasks: (i) the collection and analysis of Twitter data; and (ii) designing and conducting a face-to-face and online survey. The students were guided to co-lead the tasks, apply their knowledge and then to critically reflect. The pedagogical framework of task-based learning provides opportunities to embed learning in new ways by integrating knowledge, practice and critical reflection. Task-based learning can create a dynamic learning environment and can empower students to develop their identities as researchers.     

Beyond Presentism and Historicism: Understanding the History of Social Science

The revival of interest in the social scientific past has stimulated a growing literature on the methodology of the history of social science. Existing "presentist" type histories have been criticized for their "Whiggish" assumptions about scientific progress. The critique of presentism is the product of a new school of historians of social science who advocate a "historicist" historiography. My paper is addressed to this discussion and falls into three parts. First, I review the principles of presentist and historicist historiographies, relating their methodological positions to their theories of science. Second, I take up the argument of the "new historicism" in more detail, criticizing its theory of textual interpretation and its theory of social scientific development. I conclude by offering an alternative historiographic model of social scientific development based upon a theory of science that I outline.     

The Common Factors that Connect all Approaches to Family Therapy

I've developed a sort of working document that proposes what family therapists do (on the basis of what they know and value, i.e. competency). I think that if we're talking about a national identity, we could also identify our shared competencies in the way that social workers and social welfare workers did in the mid‐1990s. This compilation is adapted from Sprenkle, Blow & Dickey, 1999; Miller, Duncan & Johnson, 2000; Walsh, 1998; Seaburn, Landau‐Stanton & Horwitz, 1995.     

Editorial

Abstract

The last century has been significant in terms of the development of the social sciences. Thus for instance, sociology, social psychology, politics, education and management have all taken their own pathways to reach some level of maturity. The relatively new addition to this group is, of course, management and its associated organisational theory that arose with Taylor at the turn of the nineteenth century. He pioneered the scientific movement and argued that management should be based on well-recognised, clearly defined and fixed principles, instead of depending on more or less hazy ideas. However, it seems that a management science has only in recent decades become substantive and rich enough to be able to think in the same terms as other branches of the social sciences. It has been enriched by the other social sciences through a process that I refer to as knowledge migration, a process in which knowledge that applies to one scientific area is migrated across to another in a way that validly transforms it to its new context. Thus, knowledge that takes a particular meaning in one of these sciences may end up with a quite different, though thematically related, meaning in another. Whenever a concept is shifted in a valid way from one paradigm that underpins a particular theory in one area of social science to another, the knowledge is migrated rather than transferred.     

Starting somewhere different: methodological cosmopolitanism and the study of world politics

In this article, I contribute to the debate on Ulrich Beck's idea of ‘methodological cosmopolitanism’ from a political science perspective. How fruitful is Beck's idea for the study of world politics? How can a political science perspective turn ‘methodological cosmopolitanism’ into a more transdisciplinary subject of debate? Guided by these questions, I speak to two audiences. First, I offer political scientists a distinct strategy for empirical ‘cosmopolitan political science’ research. At the heart of this strategy is a novel object of research, the ‘cosmopolitan outlook’, understood as a discourse that breaks with the ‘national outlook’ to open possibilities for a world beyond ‘reflexive modernization’. With that, I shift the perspective from structure to discourse and broaden the normative grounds on which to assess cosmopolitan reality. Rather than just considering the emergence of normative cosmopolitan ideals, I build into cosmopolitan research the normative, empirical question of whether we see an emergence of a world beyond reflexive modernization. Second, I address scholars outside the field of political science who are interested in methodological cosmopolitanism by offering the ‘cosmopolitan outlook’ as a novel object of study that could also be explored from other disciplinary perspectives and by proposing they put the question of the purpose of methodological cosmopolitanism centre stage. This question can, I argue, constitute grounds for substantial debates on methodological cosmopolitanism not already precluded through disciplinary premises and concerns. Contributing to such a transdisciplinary debate, I distinguish between the long‐term and immediate purpose of methodological cosmopolitanism, the former being about the development of a cosmopolitan language and grammar and the latter about empirical explorations of the reality of the ‘cosmopolitan outlook’, eventually and in a collective and transdisciplinary endeavour building up to contribute to the former.