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