{"id":884,"date":"2017-02-02T13:57:54","date_gmt":"2017-02-02T13:57:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=884"},"modified":"2017-02-02T13:57:54","modified_gmt":"2017-02-02T13:57:54","slug":"is-interpretation-descriptive-or-explanatory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=884","title":{"rendered":"Is interpretation descriptive or explanatory?"},"content":{"rendered":"

One defining feature of interpretivist approaches to social science is the idea that the goal of analysis\u00a0is to provide interpretations\u00a0of social reality rather than law-based explanations. But of course nobody these days believes in law-based causality in the social world anyways, so the question whether interpretation is to be understood as purely descriptive or as explanatory remains. Here is what I wrote about this issue for an introductory chapter on research design<\/a> in political science. The paragraph, however, will need to be removed from the text to make the chapter shorter, so I post it here instead. I will be glad to see opinions from scholars who actually work with interpretivist methodologies:<\/p>\n

It is difficult to position interpretation (in the narrow sense of the type of work interpretivist political scientists engage in) between description and explanation. Clifford Geertz notes that (ethnographic) description is interpretive (Geertz 1973: 20), but that still leaves the question whether all interpretation is descriptive open. Bevir and Rhodes (2016) insist that intepretivists reject a \u2018scientific concept of causation\u2019, but suggest that we can explain actions as products of subjective reasons, meanings, and beliefs. In addition, intentionalist explanations are to be supported by \u2018narrative explanations\u2019. In my view, however, a \u2018narrative\u2019 that \u2018explains\u2019 by relating actions to beliefs situated in a historical context is conceptually and observationally indistinguishable from a \u2018thick description\u2019, and better regarded as such.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One defining feature of interpretivist approaches to social science is the idea that the goal of analysis\u00a0is to provide interpretations\u00a0of social reality rather than law-based explanations. But of course nobody these days believes in law-based causality in the social world anyways, so the question whether interpretation is to be understood as purely descriptive or as explanatory remains. Here is what I wrote about this issue for an introductory chapter on research design in political science. The paragraph, however, will need to be removed from the text to make the chapter shorter, so I post it here instead. I will be glad to see opinions from scholars who actually work with interpretivist methodologies: It is difficult to position interpretation (in the narrow sense of the type of work interpretivist political scientists engage in) between description and explanation. Clifford Geertz notes that (ethnographic) description is interpretive (Geertz 1973: 20), but that still leaves the question whether all interpretation is descriptive open. Bevir and Rhodes (2016) insist that intepretivists reject a \u2018scientific concept of causation\u2019, but suggest that we can explain actions as products of subjective reasons, meanings, and beliefs. In addition, intentionalist explanations are to be supported by \u2018narrative explanations\u2019. In my view, however, a \u2018narrative\u2019 that \u2018explains\u2019 by relating actions to beliefs situated in a historical context is conceptually and observationally indistinguishable from a \u2018thick description\u2019, and better regarded as such.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[4,8],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7g3hj-eg","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":336,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=336","url_meta":{"origin":884,"position":0},"title":"Explanation and the quest for 'significant' relationships. Part II","date":"February 22, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"In Part I I argue that the search and discovery of statistically significant relationships does not amount to explanation and is often misplaced in the social sciences because the variables which are purported to have\u00a0effects\u00a0on the outcome cannot be manipulated. Just to make sure that my message is not misinterpreted\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Causality"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":206,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=206","url_meta":{"origin":884,"position":1},"title":"Is unit homogeneity a sufficient assumption for causal inference?","date":"December 6, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Is unit homogeneity a sufficient condition (assumption) for causal inference from observational data? Re-reading King, Keohane and Verba's bible on research design\u00a0[lovingly known to all exposed\u00a0as KKV] I\u00a0think\u00a0they regard unit homogeneity and conditional independence as alternative assumptions for causal inference. For example: \"we provide an overview here of what is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Causality"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":220,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=220","url_meta":{"origin":884,"position":2},"title":"Slavery, ethnic diversity and economic development","date":"December 14, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"What is the impact of the slave trades on economic progress in Africa? Are the modern African states which 'exported' a higher number of slaves more likely to be underdeveloped several centuries afterwards? Harvard economist Nathan Nunn addresses these questions in his chapter for the \"Natural experiments of history\" collection.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Development"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/slave-trades.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":324,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=324","url_meta":{"origin":884,"position":3},"title":"Google tries to find the funniest videos","date":"February 15, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Following my recent post on the project which tries to explain why some video clips go viral, here is a report on Google's efforts to find the funniest videos: You\u2019d think the reasons for something being funny were beyond the reach of science \u2013 but Google\u2019s brain-box researchers have managed\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Advertising research"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":517,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=517","url_meta":{"origin":884,"position":4},"title":"In defense of description","date":"September 28, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"John Gerring has a new article in the British Journal of Political Science [ungated here]which\u00a0attempts to restore\u00a0description\u00a0to its rightful place as a respectful occupation for political scientists. Description has indeed been relegated to the sidelines at the expense of causal\u00a0inference\u00a0during the last 50 years,\u00a0and Gerring does a great job in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Classification"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":526,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=526","url_meta":{"origin":884,"position":5},"title":"Correlation does not imply causation. Then what does it imply?","date":"October 9, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"'Correlation does not imply causation' is an adage students\u00a0from all social sciences are made to recite from a very\u00a0early age. What is less often systematically discussed is what\u00a0could be actually going on so that two\u00a0phenomena are correlated but not\u00a0causally related. Let's try to make a list: 1) The correlation might\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Causality"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=884"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":885,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884\/revisions\/885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}