I NTERPRETATION & R EALISM Gurminder K Bhambra 16 th October, 2013

PositivismInterpretive critique LegislatorsInterpreters MonologueDialogue ObjectivityValid Subjectivities ObservationEmbodiment ProfessionalismPartisanship Knowledge as TruthKnowledge as Power Singular (universal)Plural

S OCIAL I NQUIRY AS I NTERPRETATION Social inquiry is seen to be about understanding rather than explanation A number of different philosophical movements are associated with the position German hermeneutics (e.g. Gadamer), Phenomenological approaches (e.g. Schutz), Ordinary language analysis (associated with Wittgenstein) Gadamer deepens interpretative inquiry with his emphasis upon the historicity of understanding Focuses on prejudice and the unification of science and hermeneutics

N ATURAL S CIENCE VS. S OCIAL I NQUIRY Science is concerned with generalisations and social inquiry is concerned with particulars We do not think our inquiry is complete until we have understood why something was done Human beings are constituted in language and therefore, social inquiry is hermeneutic i.e. understanding society and social action as text Issue of prediction Methodological self-alienation Idea of human behaviour established in conventions and rule-following; the human community is the source of meaning.

G ADAMER ‘Anti-foundationalism’ Knowledge as the willingness to learn, not as the will to power Opposed to the Enlightenment’s prejudice against prejudice He does not believe that Reason can provide its own foundations. I think, therefore I am Thinking, I cannot not be and be for (and by) others Science is based in a lifeworld that is not a product of Reason Rather, what we understand as reason is a product of our lifeworld Gadamer is not a critic of the products of science, but of its self-understanding and the misuse of that self- understanding

C RITICISMS OF G ADAMER General conservatism of interpretation The model of science and methodology The problem of power. If actors could have done otherwise, how do we know when they are doing otherwise (as an aspect of will) or merely appearing to do so as a consequence of our failures to understand the rules they are following? What is the role of an explanatory undertaking in the social sciences?

I SSUES OF I NTERPRETATION Limits of hermeneutical understanding? Systematically distorted communication and failures of understanding Aim of critical theory is emancipation But, who is to educate the educators? Gadamer’s critique of science is naive, but his critique of positivism as alienation is profound

R EALISM AS A LTERNATIVE TO P OSITIVISM Realists argue that critiques of scientific social inquiry are effective as critiques of positivism and empiricism But that they have relativist implications or open up the way to anti-naturalist approaches Realism can avoid these consequences. Issue for realists, is that anti-naturalism in social inquiry is based upon a false conception of science

R EALISM Realism is a transcendental project concerned to establish how the world must be for science as an activity to be possible Philosophy is the self-understanding of science concerned with the conditions for the production of knowledge. Distinction between epistemological and ontological realism

R EALISM Epistemological “A natural account of the way in which scientific theories succeed each other - say, the way in which Einstein’s Relativity succeeded Newton’s Universal Gravitation - is that a partially correct/ partially incorrect account of a theoretical object - say the gravitational field, or the metric structure of space-time, or both - is replaced by a better account of the same object or objects. But if these objects don’t really exist at all, then it is a miracle that a theory which speaks of gravitational action at a distance successfully predicts phenomena; it is a miracle that a theory which speaks of curved space-time successfully predicts phenomena.” (Putnam 1978: 19) Ontological How must the world of physical objects be, for science to be possible? There are ‘real objects’ outside particular theoretical statements of them, even though we may never grasp those objects except in fallible and historically changing constructions

R EALIST C RITIQUES OF P OSITIVISM Empiricists, it is argued, are concerned with the mere association of events. We want to know how the events are associated; that is, to identify causal mechanisms that operate as real forces with the character of necessity Realists make a distinction between the real and the actual Real effects need not be actualised Realism as a philosophy of science is unstable between epistemological realism and more pragmatic approaches

I MPLICATIONS FOR S OCIAL S CIENCE Realism is concerned to establish that scientists act by intervening in the world and manipulating the operation of its structures to make a difference in the production of their effects. This implies that social science is about objects which are also actors and this must distinguish social inquiry from natural science. Realism in the social sciences offers no means of establishing the reality of social structures