AN304 reading
For Wednesday 21/February.
“After Method: Mess in Social Science Research”
- John Law (2002)
Introduction (Pg. 1 – 8)
What happens when social science tries to explain something messy and
complex?
o He believes that you can describe something messy as you will just
end up with a messier description. This book, he states is to imagine
what it would be like if social science was remade to deal with mess.
Stable realities are clear (such as Co2 emissions, and the boundaries of a
nation state.)
Most phenomenon can’t be caught by conventional social science methods
(pains, angels and demons, unpredictability’s, etc.)
Parts of the world are captured in our ethnographies, but parts are not.
o How can we catch the realities we are missing?
o And should we?
We can’t expect single answers from the world the world is complex and
messy.
Maybe to understand we need to use new methods unknown to social science
such as:
o Forms of knowing through embodiment (hunger, pain in or of our
bodies)
o Forms of knowing as emotionally or apprehensive (using our private
emotions to open us to a world of sensibility)
o Forms of knowing through techniques of deliberate imprecision
(learning how to know things without trying to grasp it fully, or rethink
our ideas of clarity)
o Knowing as situated inquiry (to understand that maybe things don’t
make sense in different locations)
, Intimacy no longer means geographical closeness (this creates geographical
complexities)
Agency is now seen as emotive and embodied, rather than as cognitive
Method and data is still seen as key and it is impossible to qualify a degree
without following some set form of learning the appropriate suits of method.
o We should think of method in a more broad and loose way
“The problem is not so much lack of variety in the practice of method, as the
hegemonic and dominatory pretensions of certain versions or accounts of method.”
(Pg. 4)
Standard research methods are important, but he wants a more generous a
broad method.
o Standard methods are good at what they do, but they are badly
adapted to the study of the irregular.
Everything is situated in a specific historical context.
Often it is seen as if you want to understand something properly you must
follow certain rules and methods.
Two criticisms of the importance of rule following in methodology:
o These methods not only describe but also produce what they
understand.
o If methods tend to produce the reality they describe it is obnoxious.
(Pg. 5)
In discourse, some rules may be disputed but never the inherent need for
rules. (this is taken for granted as necessary)
“assumption that the world is properly to be understood as a set of fairly specific,
determinate, and more or less identifiable processes.” (Pg. 5)
It is widely believed that social science is to mean to discover most important
of those definite processes, but he disagrees that this is completely correct.
He believes that the world can not be understood by a specific set of
determining processes.
Events and processes are complex because they exceed our capacity to
know them.
For Wednesday 21/February.
“After Method: Mess in Social Science Research”
- John Law (2002)
Introduction (Pg. 1 – 8)
What happens when social science tries to explain something messy and
complex?
o He believes that you can describe something messy as you will just
end up with a messier description. This book, he states is to imagine
what it would be like if social science was remade to deal with mess.
Stable realities are clear (such as Co2 emissions, and the boundaries of a
nation state.)
Most phenomenon can’t be caught by conventional social science methods
(pains, angels and demons, unpredictability’s, etc.)
Parts of the world are captured in our ethnographies, but parts are not.
o How can we catch the realities we are missing?
o And should we?
We can’t expect single answers from the world the world is complex and
messy.
Maybe to understand we need to use new methods unknown to social science
such as:
o Forms of knowing through embodiment (hunger, pain in or of our
bodies)
o Forms of knowing as emotionally or apprehensive (using our private
emotions to open us to a world of sensibility)
o Forms of knowing through techniques of deliberate imprecision
(learning how to know things without trying to grasp it fully, or rethink
our ideas of clarity)
o Knowing as situated inquiry (to understand that maybe things don’t
make sense in different locations)
, Intimacy no longer means geographical closeness (this creates geographical
complexities)
Agency is now seen as emotive and embodied, rather than as cognitive
Method and data is still seen as key and it is impossible to qualify a degree
without following some set form of learning the appropriate suits of method.
o We should think of method in a more broad and loose way
“The problem is not so much lack of variety in the practice of method, as the
hegemonic and dominatory pretensions of certain versions or accounts of method.”
(Pg. 4)
Standard research methods are important, but he wants a more generous a
broad method.
o Standard methods are good at what they do, but they are badly
adapted to the study of the irregular.
Everything is situated in a specific historical context.
Often it is seen as if you want to understand something properly you must
follow certain rules and methods.
Two criticisms of the importance of rule following in methodology:
o These methods not only describe but also produce what they
understand.
o If methods tend to produce the reality they describe it is obnoxious.
(Pg. 5)
In discourse, some rules may be disputed but never the inherent need for
rules. (this is taken for granted as necessary)
“assumption that the world is properly to be understood as a set of fairly specific,
determinate, and more or less identifiable processes.” (Pg. 5)
It is widely believed that social science is to mean to discover most important
of those definite processes, but he disagrees that this is completely correct.
He believes that the world can not be understood by a specific set of
determining processes.
Events and processes are complex because they exceed our capacity to
know them.
