Table Of ContentInterpretation and Method
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Interpretation and Method
Empirical Research Methods and the Interpretive Turn
Second Edition
Edited by
Dvora Yanow
and
Peregrine Schwartz-Shea
R
O Routledge
U
T
LE
D Taylor & Francis Group
G
E
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 2014 by M.E. Sharpe
Published 2015 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Interpretation and method : empirical research methods and the interpretive turn / Edited by Dvora Yanow and
Peregrine Schwartz-Shea. — 2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7656-3539-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-7656-3540-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Political science—Methodology. 2. Political science—Research—Methodology. I. Yanow, Dvora.
II. Schwartz-Shea, Peregrine, 1955–
JA71.I575 2013
320.072—dc23 2012031557
ISBN 13: 9780765635402 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 9780765635396 (hbk)
. . . human behavior always comes with meaning,
with intentions and purposes.
That is to say, the way others see and react to what you do
is powerfully affected by what they think you mean,
what you are trying to do
and why.
So if the social scientist wants to describe the sequence of the interaction,
he cannot omit what it means to the actors.
He studies not just behavior
but action.
—Sam Beer, “Letter to a Graduate Student”
As a culture, we were aware of the seals and the walruses on top of the ice,
but we didn’t know what they were doing underneath the ice.
—Joe Seungetuk, Inupiaq artist and writer
Address to the Public Administration Theory Annual Conference,
University of Alaska-Anchorage, June 19, 2003
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Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Wherefore “Interpretive?”
An Introduction xiii
I. Meaning and Methodology 1
1. Thinking Interpretively
Philosophical Presuppositions and the Human Sciences
Dvora Yanow 5
2. Contending Conceptions of Science and Politics
Methodology and the Constitution of the Political
Mary Hawkesworth 27
3. Figuring Authority, Authorizing Statistics
Kirstie M. McClure 50
4. Working with Concepts
Challenging the Language-Reality Dichotomy
Douglas C. Dow 64
5. Generalization in Comparative and Historical Social Science
The Difference That Interpretivism Makes
Robert Adcock 80
6. Neither Rigorous nor Objective?
Interrogating Criteria for Knowledge Claims in Interpretive Science
Dvora Yanow 97
7. Judging Quality
Evaluative Criteria and Epistemic Communities
Peregrine Schwartz-Shea 120
vii
viii
II. Generating Data 147
8. Talking Our Way to Meaningful Explanations
A Practice-Centered View of Interviewing for Interpretive Research
Joe Soss 161
9. Ordinary Language Interviewing
Frederic Charles Schaffer 183
10. Seeing with an Ethnographic Sensibility
Explorations Beneath the Surface of Public Policies
Ellen Pader 194
11. Ethnography, Identity, and the Production of Knowledge
Samer Shehata 209
12. High Politics and Low Data
Globalization Discourses and Popular Culture
Jutta Weldes 228
13. The Numeration of Events
Studying Political Protest in India
Dean E. McHenry, Jr. 239
III. Analyzing Data 255
14. Making Sense of Making Sense
Configurational Analysis and the Double Hermeneutic
Patrick Thaddeus Jackson 267
15. Studying the Careers of Knowledge Claims
A Guide
Pamela Brandwein 284
16. Critical Interpretation and Interwar Peace Movements
Challenging Dominant Narratives
Cecelia Lynch 300
17. Political Science as History
A Reflexive Approach
Ido Oren 309
18. Value-Critical Policy Analysis
The Case of Language Policy in the United States
Ronald Schmidt, Sr. 322
ix
19. Stories for Research
Steven Maynard-Moody and Michael Musheno 338
20. Don’t Judge a Cartoon by Its Image
Interpretive Approaches to the Study of Political Cartoons
Ilan Danjoux 353
21. How Built Spaces Mean
A Semiotics of Space
Dvora Yanow 368
22. On Not Just Finding What You (Thought You) Were Looking For
Reflections on Fieldwork Data and Theory
Cai Wilkinson 387
23. “May I See Your Color-Coded Badge?”
Reflections on Research with “Vulnerable” Communities
Michael Orsini 406
IV. Re-Recognizing the Human Sciences Through
Interpretive Methodologies 421
24. We Call It a Grain of Sand
The Interpretive Orientation and a Human Social Science
Timothy Pachirat 426
25. Doing Social Science in a Humanistic Manner
Dvora Yanow and Peregrine Schwartz-Shea 433
References 449
About the Editors and Contributors 495
Index 501
