Research Methods Lecture 3: Criticisms of Positivism; and the Interpretivist Approach.
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Transcript of Research Methods Lecture 3: Criticisms of Positivism; and the Interpretivist Approach.
Introduction
• In the previous lecture we examined positivism
• Positivism has had considerable influence; but it is subject to many strong criticisms
• In this lecture we examine some of the criticisms, which also imply a completely different approach to social science: interpretivism
Miscellaneous Criticisms of Positivism
• Kuhnian criticisms of notion of rational scientific progress; e.g. K controversy
• Is scientific method practiced at all?
• Duhem-Quine problem suggests crucial tests are impossible
• Dow (1996): complexity of world makes positivist precision impossible/undesirable
Miscellaneous Criticisms of Positivism
• Apparent failure of social science to find ‘laws’
• Science/non-science distinction reflects historical power
• Truth, observations and ‘facts’ are contestable
• Key distinctions: fact/value, observation/theory, fact/theory dubious
Observation or Fact/Theory Distinction
• Is a worker being exploited or paid fairly? Impossible to decide w/o using some theory
• All observations reflect some existing theoretical framework: e.g. ‘that cat is red’
• Observed behaviour can be interpreted differently according to theory/context (e.g. woman dying of CO poisoning (H&S: 120))
• Acts are complex: neutrality = lose richness
Fact/Value Distinction
• Smith was a moral philosopher!
• NB title of Ricardo (1817)
• In Mill, economics is a moral science
• Weber: choice of research topics reflects values
• Bhaskar: standards of inquiry values
• Influential account by Myrdal (1954)
Myrdal’s Criticisms
• Utilitarianism/natural law philosophy plays (unacknowledged) role in neo-classicism
• Language of economics implicitly values entities (e.g. use of ‘principle,’ ‘function’)
• Conscious and unconscious motivations affect interpretations; must admit biases in order to achieve objectivity
Related Criticisms on F/V
• Significance of a cultural (social) event cannot be determined without recourse to evaluation (Weber)
• Positivist accounts implicitly value certain things or are politically motivated (Robbins, 1932: 132, 135)
• Policy makers/funders etc. put pressure on scientists – influence their findings
Interpretivism
• Many of the above criticisms reflect ‘interpretivist’ philosophy of science
• Idealism: Vico, Rousseau, Hegel
• Society different from nature
• Objective of inquiry is verstehen
• Regularities result from rules
Verstehen
• Translation of biblical texts: linguistic but also social exercise - need to understand social context (hermeneutics)
• Problem of incommensurability• Dilthey: observer has to access cultural
world through empathy• To understand the past, need to identify
with it (H&S: 97)
Verstehen• Need to understand from the inside: not
view people as if from the outside
• Verstehen: attempting to reconstruct the subjective experience of actors without distorting the world itself (Weber)
• Task of social science is to find meanings (Winch)
• Starting point of social science is the observation of people’s behaviour or words
Rules versus Regularities
• Any regs in society are not natural causal laws but result from reactions to rules
• Example: traffic lights
• Rickert: nomothetic vs. ideographic
• Weber: social science - deeper study
• Free will vs. determinism
• Reasons are not causes
Implications
• Impossibility of social science?
• Find meanings; verstehen
• Ideal types (Weber): abstracting from the real, emotional, irrational
• Narrative emphasised
• Quantitative methods unlikely to be useful
• Use ethnographic methods
Conclusions
• Interpretivism emerged from its own tradition and as a response to positivism
• Objective observation of causal regularities impossible for various reasons
• Objective of social inquiry is verstehen
• Implies radically different research process
• Interpretivism less influential in economics