Locating The Deep Structure of Social Scientific Inquiry?
I found Abbott’s fractal theory thesis powerful. Because this is a course on methodology, I too would like to discuss the author’s notion of knowledge creation. Please allow another quote from page five, where he concludes: “There is only…a universal knowledge emerging from accommodation and conflict rather than from axioms, a universal knowledge that provides tentative bridges between local knowledges, rather than systematic maps that deny them, a universal knowledge that aims…at allowing interchange among people who differ fundamentally.” (5)
These lines seems fairly cordial to ethnography, generally. It is hard not feel, however, that Abbott is saying that social scientific knowledge is, in a measure, exclusive. To fall back here on a concept I cannot seem to escape (or do without), perhaps we can read him as arguing here that even the most reflexive researcher works from a subjectivity (sensibility) that is profoundly shaped by ‘local’ (Roman…) culture (to use the term loosely), which, including as it does the social scientific training and the rest, obviously cannot be escaped, even if one works as a critical, interpretive anthropologists, collaborating with ‘informants’ in (re)formulating the research question.
While this may be apparent, it suggests, a question: Does Abbott’s metaphor of the city and its exploration, here, imply that the social scientific enterprise ‘originates/emanates’ in some interesting sense from some particular ‘location’? I am reminded here of Weber’s project “to understand how it is that ‘in the West alone there have appeared cultural manifestations that—at least we like to tell ourselves this—in their development go in the direction of universal significance and validity.’” (xii, Introduction, Vocation Lectures).
Abbott (foot)notes in his discussion of morality that he “may have failed to get beyond universalism as a hegemonic discourse—but for want of ability, not of effort.” (219) This seems an actually humble ‘admission’, buried in a cogent and erudite book.
Concomitantly, we can ask: Does Abbott succeed in envisioning, through fractals, “an idea of difference that does not entail subordination” (211)? But are these useful or suitable grounds upon which to appraise/interrogate Abbott’s analysis? Indeed, what are the merits and demerits of Abbott's notion of pervasive self-similarity? It has the merit, for starters(in addition to its remarkable explanatory power), of at least encouraging a more methodologically plural social science.
These lines seems fairly cordial to ethnography, generally. It is hard not feel, however, that Abbott is saying that social scientific knowledge is, in a measure, exclusive. To fall back here on a concept I cannot seem to escape (or do without), perhaps we can read him as arguing here that even the most reflexive researcher works from a subjectivity (sensibility) that is profoundly shaped by ‘local’ (Roman…) culture (to use the term loosely), which, including as it does the social scientific training and the rest, obviously cannot be escaped, even if one works as a critical, interpretive anthropologists, collaborating with ‘informants’ in (re)formulating the research question.
While this may be apparent, it suggests, a question: Does Abbott’s metaphor of the city and its exploration, here, imply that the social scientific enterprise ‘originates/emanates’ in some interesting sense from some particular ‘location’? I am reminded here of Weber’s project “to understand how it is that ‘in the West alone there have appeared cultural manifestations that—at least we like to tell ourselves this—in their development go in the direction of universal significance and validity.’” (xii, Introduction, Vocation Lectures).
Abbott (foot)notes in his discussion of morality that he “may have failed to get beyond universalism as a hegemonic discourse—but for want of ability, not of effort.” (219) This seems an actually humble ‘admission’, buried in a cogent and erudite book.
Concomitantly, we can ask: Does Abbott succeed in envisioning, through fractals, “an idea of difference that does not entail subordination” (211)? But are these useful or suitable grounds upon which to appraise/interrogate Abbott’s analysis? Indeed, what are the merits and demerits of Abbott's notion of pervasive self-similarity? It has the merit, for starters(in addition to its remarkable explanatory power), of at least encouraging a more methodologically plural social science.
posted by Jacob at 1:55 PM
1 Comments:
Expanding on the previous post (and acknowledging that this course is only mostly about methodology)...
Abbott, a self-described eclectic, writes in his preface that he has long "tried to eradicate some obnoxious intellectual boundaries, in particular that between interpretive and positivistic work in sociology and kindred fields." (x) He argues compellingly in ch. 2 that "the customary sharp distinction between quantitative and qualitative analysis is foolish" (58). Ultimately, Abbott sees himself as offering, through his "internalist" (4), fractal theory of radical self-similarity--"the idea of microcosm" (3)--"a principled defence of eclecticism and indeed of a certain form of relativism." (xii) [For a more general overview of Abbott's project, I'd recommend the publisher's description on the book's back cover! Also, p. 28, of course, contains a rather useful discussion of "methodological manifolds"]
"[T]he fractal model," Abbott notes, "is at once a model for the way things do occur and a recipe for making real change happen." "It is," then, "a model for method." (59). To be sure, Abbott's project, he notes, is normative inasmuch as he thinks that social scientists must "become explicit about what is implicit in our practices." (5) Discerning what exactly is implicit in one's practices, here, is of course the big task. (See the post above, perhaps).
Abbott offers us a means by which to better understand disciplinarity and its politics, the character of interdisciplarity, the 'slippage' of terminologies in the social sciences, and much else. For our purposes, it may be of special interest, his observation that "[t]he fractal cycle indelibly marks careers that begin in its different phases." (25)
In many senses, then, I think one chooses to ignore or take lightly Abbott's analysis at their own risk. His warnings regarding constructivism, for example, I found instructive.
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