Ethics and democracy

An anti-naturalist approach overcomes the strict dichotomy between facts and values. Social scientists are free to take up ethically engaged research projects if they are so inclined. This chapter shows how political scientists working within an interpretive, anti-naturalist framework can legitimately take an interest in ethical critique, critical sociologies, and democratic theory. Indeed, anti-naturalist and interpretive philosophy offers social scientists: a better account of the status of values within social reality; an understanding of the ethical significance of the human past; and a critique of technocratic forms of political organization. Interpretive approaches are also linked to a more deliberative theory of democracy. All this implies social scientists have ethical and not just conceptual reasons for adopting an interpretive approach.

Synchronic empirical research

Interpretive philosophy opens a novel range of empirical topics for researchers. This chapter focuses on synchronic research topics (or those pertaining to a single snapshot of time) and argues that anti-naturalism generates distinctive ways of studying beliefs, identities, cultural practices, traditions, and political resistance. Examples are drawn from cutting-edge interpretive research into subjects like the politics of Islam, race, globalization, and democratic civic engagement. In addition, some of the more controversial findings of mainstream social science are engaged, including Samuel Huntington’s thesis that global politics consists of a “clash of civilizations”; Michelle Alexander’s argument that the United States is experiencing a new Jim Crow; and Robert Putnam’s view that American democracy is suffering a decline in civic engagement.

Concept formation

Concept formation is inescapable because social scientists cannot study political reality without making tacit assumptions about the basic relevant concepts. An anti-naturalist approach offers a distinctive form of concept formation, one that avoids naturalist distortions like essentialism, reification, and instrumentalism. In order to make this case, this chapter draws on some of the most influential political science methodology literature as well as top research programs of empirical political science (including critical discussions of voter behavior, the study of so-called “contentious politics,” democratic peace, and selectorate theory, to name a few). The chapter concludes by elaborating on the way that an interpretive social science forges concepts that are sensitive to meanings and human agency.

Philosophical debates

This chapter considers some of the major philosophical traditions that have established the need for an interpretive turn in the social sciences—including phenomenology, post-structuralism, pragmatism, analytic philosophy, and social constructivism. We reject the view that there is only one privileged philosophical route to an interpretive social science. Instead, the philosophical pluralism of the interpretive turn is defended albeit from a uniquely anti-naturalist perspective. Specifically, anti-naturalism corrects the tendency of some advocates of the interpretive turn to drift back into naturalist concepts as well as to distort the proper conception of human agency. Major philosophers of the interpretive turn are critically engaged, including Edmund Husserl, Michel Foucault, Charles Taylor, and Hans-Georg Gadamer.

Introduction

Readers are introduced to the major philosophical paradigms shaping social science research today, including hermeneutics and naturalism. The pervasive influence of naturalism on social scientific research is explained and the interpretive alternative is sketched. As part of this, readers are offered an account of the philosophical origins of today’s social science disciplines with a special focus on the case of political science. At the beginning of the twentieth century a modern, ahistorical, and formal paradigm for the study of politics was formed as scholars increasingly rejected the developmental historical narratives and Hegelianism of the nineteenth century. The chapter concludes with a brief overview of the argument of the book.

Historical sociologies

This chapter continues the examination of interpretive empirical research topics with a focus on large-scale, diachronic studies (or phenomena developing across time). Contrary to widespread belief, an interpretive approach to social science is not limited to the small-scale study of single cases. Anti-naturalism makes possible sweeping forms of historical sociology, meta-narrative, and genealogy that explore some of the most urgent domains of social scientific research today (including topics such as violence, religion, secularism, nationalism, economic history, and the state). As part of this analysis this chapter critically engages the work of top social scientists and theorists like Steven Pinker, Charles Taylor, E. O. Wilson, and Steven Levitt.

Conclusion

Anti-naturalism’s effect on the study of human behavior and society is profound and comprehensive. In terms of empirical inquiry, a new approach to explanation and concept formation is generated. In terms of normative inquiry, the wall dividing the study of values versus facts comes tumbling down. Where naturalism built barriers separating ethics, political theory, and social science, anti-naturalism instead builds bridges and opens access to areas of mutual concern. An interpretive turn also generates a uniquely humanistic approach to civic life, democracy, and public policy....

Public policy

Readers are introduced to how an anti-naturalist framework can ground a distinctively deliberative and interpretive turn in public policy. Over the last three decades there has been an important shift among a minority of public policy scholars toward interpretive and deliberative modes that are critical of naturalism’s justification of rule by supposedly scientific experts of human behavior. Like the interpretive turn more generally, this deliberative remaking of public policy has drawn on a great diversity of philosophical sources, including phenomenology, discourse theory, Dewey’s pragmatism, and post-structuralism. While we embrace the fact that this transformation of policy discourse and practice can be reached by a variety of philosophical routes, we also argue that an anti-naturalist framework can clarify certain confusions that cloud these debates.

Methods

This chapter draws on the latest methodological literature in order to show how an anti-naturalist framework justifies multi-methods in social science research. Contrary to the widespread debate that pits “quantitative” versus “qualitative” methods, researchers are free to use methods from across the social sciences provided they remain aware of anti-naturalist concepts and concerns. Leading methods are analyzed in light of the latest social science, including: mass surveys, random sampling, regression analysis, statistics, rational choice modeling, ethnography, archival research, and long-form interviewing. A full-blown interpretive approach to the social sciences can make use of all the major methods and techniques for studying human behavior, while also avoiding the scientism that too often plagues their current deployment.

Philosophical roots

This chapter explains the basic philosophical concepts and features of the interpretive turn, including: meaning holism, the hermeneutic circle, self-interpretation, the social background, and contingent causality. Sociologists, economists, political scientists, psychologists, and other social scientists can no longer afford to ignore philosophy. This is because philosophical reflection is needed in order to decide the concepts and forms of reasoning that are appropriate to a given domain of empirical study. Interpretive philosophy ought to govern the approach social scientists take to research and what kinds of study they favor. This will be contrasted with some of the fundamental philosophical assumptions found in naturalist approaches to social science.