Making Social Science Matter : Why Social Inquiry Fails and How it Can Succeed Again

Rating:
Summary: Empowering Stuff
Review: On the back of this book is a short endorsement: "This is social science that matters." Fairly innocuous, I'm sure you'll agree. Yet it wasn't the quotation that caught my eye: rather the name of the endorser, one M. Pierre Bourdieu. As anyone familiar with his work will know, Bourdieu - currently the world's leading sociologist - does not endorse books, because (he argues) to do so is to play the 'back-slapping' and unmistakeably self-interested game of citations and counter-endorsements which makes or breaks today's academic careers. So why, then, does the ascetically-principled high priest of Sociology deign to break the habit of a lifetime for this unassuming work? The simple answer is: it really is that good. This is the first work of social theory/methodology for a long time which actually made me enthusiastic about the future of the social sciences outside the insulated groves of academia. By re-inventing the Aristotelian concept of "phronesis" - essentially a form of reasoning which is neither scientific (in the sense of following universal rules) nor technical (being something which is simply 'done' without rational reflection), but geared towards the "deliberation of values with reference to praxis" - Flyvbjerg finds a solid ground from which to start fighting back against previously devastating critiques which quite rightly ask questions such as "social science: so what?". Rather than seeking to answer this criticism by producing universal rules along the lines of the natural sciences, he argues, social science should aim to generate "power-conscious" interventions geared towards opening dialogue and generating consensus which will enable society to move forward. Social science, for Flyvbjerg, becomes an arena of expertise which seeks not to tell people "what to do" or "why they are doing", but rather to ask "where they are going" and "is this desirable?". As someone on the verge of 'losing his faith' in the pursuit of social science as a meangingful discipline with something to offer back to its object of study, this book has totally rejuvinated my enthusiasm and, as such, I find it hard to recommend it highly enough. Flyvbjerg is far from inscrutable - he falls back on unconvincing Habermasian talk of consensual validity when trying to explain how social research will actually make an impact, and his appropriation of Foucault and Nietzsche as methodological mentors makes me nervous - but for me this only adds to the book's charm. Consistent with the author's argument, no line of thought, not even the positivist search for 'socal rules', is rejected out of hand, but rather "thought through" in the hope of extracting the good bits and throwing out the waffle. And that is precisely how I believe this book should be read - and you definitely *should* read it - except that waffle is refreshingly thin on the ground.

Rating:
Summary: Empowering Stuff
Review: On the back of this book is a short endorsement: "This is social science that matters." Fairly innocuous, I'm sure you'll agree. Yet it wasn't the quotation that caught my eye: rather the name of the endorser, one M. Pierre Bourdieu. As anyone familiar with his work will know, Bourdieu - currently the world's leading sociologist - does not endorse books, because (he argues) to do so is to play the 'back-slapping' and unmistakeably self-interested game of citations and counter-endorsements which makes or breaks today's academic careers. So why, then, does the ascetically-principled high priest of Sociology deign to break the habit of a lifetime for this unassuming work? The simple answer is: it really is that good. This is the first work of social theory/methodology for a long time which actually made me enthusiastic about the future of the social sciences outside the insulated groves of academia. By re-inventing the Aristotelian concept of "phronesis" - essentially a form of reasoning which is neither scientific (in the sense of following universal rules) nor technical (being something which is simply 'done' without rational reflection), but geared towards the "deliberation of values with reference to praxis" - Flyvbjerg finds a solid ground from which to start fighting back against previously devastating critiques which quite rightly ask questions such as "social science: so what?". Rather than seeking to answer this criticism by producing universal rules along the lines of the natural sciences, he argues, social science should aim to generate "power-conscious" interventions geared towards opening dialogue and generating consensus which will enable society to move forward. Social science, for Flyvbjerg, becomes an arena of expertise which seeks not to tell people "what to do" or "why they are doing", but rather to ask "where they are going" and "is this desirable?". As someone on the verge of 'losing his faith' in the pursuit of social science as a meangingful discipline with something to offer back to its object of study, this book has totally rejuvinated my enthusiasm and, as such, I find it hard to recommend it highly enough. Flyvbjerg is far from inscrutable - he falls back on unconvincing Habermasian talk of consensual validity when trying to explain how social research will actually make an impact, and his appropriation of Foucault and Nietzsche as methodological mentors makes me nervous - but for me this only adds to the book's charm. Consistent with the author's argument, no line of thought, not even the positivist search for 'socal rules', is rejected out of hand, but rather "thought through" in the hope of extracting the good bits and throwing out the waffle. And that is precisely how I believe this book should be read - and you definitely *should* read it - except that waffle is refreshingly thin on the ground.