Small Questions and Big Answers

Bent Flyvbjerg joins the melee of the science wars and states that he knows how to make social science matter again. Suffering from physics envy, the social sciences have attempted to adopt natural science methods, believing that analytic rationality is the best way to understand the world around us. According to Flyvbjerg, such an attempt is a mistake as since the social sciences seek to explain human phenomena, and therefore requires a more reflexive, context-dependent analysis, natural science methods cannot work. Instead, we should focus on adopting a phronetic approach, “by anchoring [our] research in the context studied and thereby ensuring a hermeneutic ‘fusion of horizons’”(132).

I was struck by this particular quote:

The task of phronetic social science is to clarify and deliberate about the problems and risks we face and to outline how things may be done differently, in full knowledge that we cannot find ultimate answers to these questions or even a single version of what the questions are (140).

I can see that there is something unsatisfying about the end result of phronetic social science. We can come up with some ideas about a problem, but as for the quest for the holy grail of the universal answer, Flyvbjerg seems to state that it is not going to happen. Is it true that there are no true answers? It is important to emphasize that Flyvbjerg believes that no one studying the social sciences can find the universal truth, as “predictive theories and universals cannot be found in the study of human affairs” (73). Additionally, with the above quote, is Flyvbjerg going into normative territory? While Flyvbjerg does not go so far as to state here that social scientists should outline how things should be, he later then states that the goal of phronetic research is “to produce input for ongoing social dialogue and social praxis rather than definitive, empirically verifiable knowledge,” which appears to have more of a normative focus (115). Kate’s post does an excellent job of pointing out that there are pros and cons to this approach.

What are the boundaries of phronetic research? What we should do, according to Flyvbjerg, is to study “both the small, local context, which gives phenomena their immediate meaning, and the larger, international and global context in which phenomena can be appreciated for their general and conceptual significance” (136). The links between phronetic research and ethnography seem to be evident to me with this statement, but I agree with Kate that Flyvbjerg seems to be a little condescending towards ethnography with the later quote: “the phronetic researcher becomes a part of the phenomenon studied, without necessarily ‘going native’ or the project becoming simple action research” (132). Keeping yourself from getting to embedded in your research but at the same being invested enough to gain valuable insights seems to be a delicate and difficult act to manage. Additionally, what is the issue with action research when phronetic scholars wish to answer the “so what” question and have a practical grounding to their work?

I was confused by Flyvbjerg’s claim that it is unproductive to pit knowledge of the particular against the knowledge of the general (scientific), as it seemed to be a weak attempt to mend fences. Flyvjberg states that instead we should think about these two ways in conjunction and that “we should only criticize the dominance of these phenomena to the exclusion of others in modern society and in social science” (49). So does this mean that there is actually a place for nomothetic, quantitative research in the social sciences? According to Flyvbjerg, he does seem to think so, but that this “practical social-science activity does not require advanced graduate and post-graduate specialized institutions of higher learning,” which seems to me like a form of academic smack talk and to be of the same unproductive nature he warned us against before (166-7).

Appreciating ambiguity, instead of looking for the how-to guide to social phenomena, is what should be the goal of social scientists according to Flyvbjerg. Part of our struggle this semester has been the discovery that we have not been able to come up with answers to our questions. Perhaps being comfortable with such ambiguity can change us, according to Flyvbjerg, from (KKV?) manual-clutching novices to experts.

*My page numbers may be a little off, as I was reading from the the Kindle version of this book