The Practical Import of Political Inquiry

Brian Caterino

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9783319324425
• eBook ISBN: 9783319324432
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines a basic problem in critical approaches to political and social inquiry: in what way is social inquiry animated by a practical intent? This practical intent is not external to inquiry as an add-on or a choice by the inquirer, but is inherent to the process of inquiry. The practical intent in inquiry derives from the connection between social inquiry and the participant's perspective. The social inquirer, in order to grasp the sense of those who are the subject of inquiry, has to adopt the perspective of the participant in the social world. Caterino opposes the view that research is an autonomous activity distinct from or superior to a participant's perspective. He argues that since the inquirer is on the same level as the participant, all inquiry should be considered mutual critique in which those who are addressed by inquiry have an equal right and an equal capacity to criticize addressors.

© The Author(s) 2016

Brian CaterinoThe Practical Import of Political InquiryPolitical Philosophy and Public Purpose10.1007/978-3-319-32443-2_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: The Practical Import of Political Inquiry

Brian Caterino¹

(1)

Rochester, New York, USA

Abstract

Chapter 1 introduces some of the major themes of the work, such as the practical nature of the participant’s perspective, and delineates this perspective in relation to a number of approaches to the question of practical import put forward by participants in the Perestroika list: primarily realist, post-modern, Wittgenstein and phronetic approaches.

Keywords

Phronetic social scienceUnified scienceParticipants’ perspectiveSocial practice and knowledge

End Abstract

So let’s switch off all the lights and light up all the Luckies, Crankin’ up the afterglow Cause we’re goin’ out of business, everything must go.

Walter Becker and Donald Fagen

This work discusses a basic problem in critical approaches to political and social inquiry : in what way is social inquiry animated by a practical intent . I argue that practical intent is not external to inquiry as an add-on or a choice by the inquirer, but is inherent to the process of inquiry. The practical intent in inquiry derives from the connection between social inquiry and the participant ’s perspective. The social inquirer , in order to grasp the sense of those who are the subject of inquiry, has to adopt the perspective of the participant in the social world. This conception opposes the view that theory or research is an autonomous activity that is distinct from, or superior to, the participant’s perspective of a layman . Conversely, since the inquirer is on the same level as that of the participant, all inquiry is ultimately a form of mutual critique in which those who are addressed by an inquirer have an equal right and an equal capacity to criticize addressors.

This conception of mutual critique is not widely recognized by political and social scientists. Even in reform movements like Perestroika, there has been a tendency to retreat to a defense of the autonomy of research, and in the reaction to Perestroika, this tendency has been even more prevalent. There seems to be a resurgence of neo-positivism in response to the Perestroikan challenge. Although Perestroika started out with good intentions, it ended without a clear notion of committed inquiry. John Gunnell also notes this issue in a recent symposium in Perspectives on Political Science . He argues correctly that, for the most part, the Perestroikan emphasis on the need for interpretive methods was vague and not well developed. ¹ Hoping to fill this lacuna, in the first section I develop this theme through an analysis of some post-Perestroikan discussions of the role of inquiry. Social inquiry is an interpretive enterprise, which aims at mutual understanding . Thus, it is always tied to the participants ’ perspective . Explanations of action have to be intentional accounts, that is, they should explain the reasons why we act. However, explanations are also evaluations, and they inevitably imply a critical and normative stance.

Similar problems plague contemporary notions of critique . Some theorists following Foucault criticize what they see as an externalist notion of critique. They see critique as often addressed from the standpoint of an outsider or from the standpoint of a theorist seeking a truth that transcends the participants ’ perspective . From this superior perspective, critique asserts the authority to command and judge them. The inquirer or theorist knows best. The superiority of the critic is here associated with normative critique. To have a normative perspective, on this view, is to judge others as deficient from the transcendental and universal position.

Taking up this argument, a number of critics have held that any notion of critique has to be non-normative . This position is, however, difficult to defend. It conflicts with the normative character of practical reason in the participants ’ perspective . A notion of mutual critique that is derived from the participants’ perspective does not require an outsider’s perspective. It can be derived from the reflexivity of participants in the social world. Social action in the lifeworld is inherently normative, and stems from the accountability of actors to one another in ordinary interaction. However, this mutual accountability does not place the theorist above the participant; rather, it reveals an internal connection between the theorists’ and the participants’ perspective. Thus, we can employ a conception of critique that is normative without the perspective of the external or dominating inquirer.

The conception of inquiry as a cooperative process has implications for the conception of the researcher as expert . The social researcher cannot take the stance of an outside observer , who is unaffected by meaning and mutual understanding , but neither can he or she take the position of an expert whose knowledge has a privileged access before discursive vindication. As a form of mutual critique, social inquiry requires the consent of those who are the subject of inquiry, not just the inquirer’s own validation.

Social inquiry then is not primarily the search for causal mechanisms or empirical regularities in action. Such regularities are historically conditioned and contingent on conditions. There are no general ahistorical laws of social action. The individual’s own understanding of such regularities is itself an element in action. Following the insight of Merton , we have to take into account that our knowledge of regularities could cause us to change our behavior. ² Merton’s original formation of the self-fulfilling prophecy drew on the work of symbolic interactionist notion of the definition of the situation. We do not behave reactively to stimuli, but act according to our own self-understanding of our condition and our understanding of the world. These shape our expectations . Believing something to be valid, Merton inferred whether it is true or not can bring a state of affairs about. Our actions are not guided by external causal forces, but by our own expectations about the world we inhabit. Later, social theorists like Karl-Otto Apel and Anthony Giddens took this insight in a different direction. Our knowledge of social science is part of our definition of the situation and shapes our expectations, but contra Merton they can also motivate us to act in a way that disconfirms these regularities. Since we can act according to our expectations of ourselves and others, we can modify our action in a way that limits any notion of permanent law like regularities.

The question of the practical import of inquiry was once again raised by the Perestroika movement in American Political Science. While this movement did raise important questions about the relevance of research to social and political life, for the most part, the discussion remained at best a reform movement within the discipline of political science that had only a general programmatic content. Too many in Perestroika remain tied to the questions of rigor versus relevance. ³ This problematic situation is defined by a separation of experts (academics) from laymen . While I don’t deny the role of expertise , this is a separation I want to overcome.

I hope to lay out a distinctive path to the questions of the practical import of social inquiry in relation to some of the claims and major theories associated with this movement. Undoubtedly, some of these are more detailed and less programmatic than those found in the Perestroikan discussion list. They all have limitations that in the end require a better formulation.

Some Proposed Alternatives

Ian Shapiro , one of the major figures in the Perestroika movement, is known for his critique of rational choice theory and advocacy of a problem-driven political science . His work, The Flight from Reality in the Human Sciences, addresses the connection of political and social inquiry to practical intent . ⁴ Being problem driven, political science is always concerned with practice. Shapiro’s project is marred, however, by the attempt to rehabilitate the distinction between realism and idealism. This leads to a tendentious reading of interpretive social theory . He equates interpretive theory and idealism. Here, Shapiro’s main interlocutor is the version of Wittgenstein developed by the Cambridge Historical School of Skinner, Pocock, and Dunn. From his “realist” perspective, interpretive social inquiry is no more than a form of linguistic idealism. It detaches the search for meaning from the causal explanation of social processes. I think this reading is flawed and overly selective. I want to show that interpretive social theories and critical theories are not idealist but based in practical action in the social world and not on an abstracted level of meaning.

One of the problems that arises with Shapiro ’s notion of realism is that its aim is to restore a scientific image of man by opposing it to idealism. Interpretive social theory sees forms of understanding to be a practical force that generates will and action, and thus needs no correction by realism. It does not exclude “causal” explanation in its broadest sense, but sees causal analysis as tied to reasons, not to observed variables—a point I will take up in the Conclusion. A different form of realism, which does not rest on the need to restore the integrity of causal explanatory science, is found in the work of Raymond Geuss, who, though his work is quite relevant to the issues raised here, was not, to my knowledge, a participant in the Perestroikan discussions. In Real Politics, Geuss relies on the difference between realism and idealism, but interprets it more in terms of prudence than in terms of causal explanation. ⁵ He starts from the position that politics is implicitly and explicitly a normative exercise. However, he denies that the normative foundations can be developed through what he sees as a decontextualized universalism found in Rawls, and to a lesser extent in Habermas . Geuss’ realism points in the direction of the phronetic approach developed by Flyvbjerg and Schram .

Anne Norton took a different path to a more activist policed science. She attempts to incorporate the material within the symbolic order. Practices cannot simply be observed or found independent of meaning, but are embedded in our frames of meaning. The nature of meaning, however, is holistic. In her work 95 Theses, Norton develops a culturalist approach to politics. ⁶ Practices are not discrete objects but are always embedded in cultural frames of meaning. Individual meanings emerge against the context of other meanings in which it is difficult to isolate discreet elements. Meaning does not represent the world, but is disclosed in, and by, linguistic worlds. Norton employs a strong contextualist position: she holds that meaning is entirely internal to a culture. She also expands the symbolic reach of culture. The latter is composed not just of language but of material objects. Within culture, such material objects are also saturated with meaning. Here, culture is not so much an entity or an object, but a matrix or a network of culture. It is a medium of meaning through which individuals are linked. For her, it is the “between” that creates a field of relations. Thus, Norton tries to undercut the distinction between materialism, realism, and idealism.

Norton is skeptical of any model of social science that, like natural science, approaches inquiry as the construction of a relation between independent and dependent variables . Given her holism, she doubts the claims of social scientists that there are elements that can be isolated, and distinct variables that can be determined independent of culture. As she argues:

The discourse of variables implicitly invests each variable with an abstract conceptual integrity and autonomy. The use of variables thus tends to diminish where it does not foreclose, the recognition of causal reciprocities and the imbucation of variables with one another ⁷

Norton ’s view might be reformulated though hermeneutics . Interpretation is a circular process. It goes back and forth between elements in the network of meaning. The individual elements then do not simply vary the way independent and dependent variables do. There is a mutual implication in which changes in one element may change the very character of all the terms in a field. It may be difficult, if not impossible, to identify an independent variable in this multi-causal context.

While Norton does not entirely reject the use of variables, she does not think that it ought to have a central role in social research. Instead, social researches ought to show “how a particular relation is allied with others” or “delineating systems (discursive and structural) in which meaning is embedded.” ⁸

While Norton ’s view is broadly consistent with interpretive social science, I think her over-reliance on holism leads to difficulties. She attributes all of the symbolic power to create meaning to acts of world disclosure and little or no force to the communicative power of individuals. Forms of authority are themselves given in world-disclosing practices. In this way, she sees theory as a literary act. ⁹ The cultural text that we interpret is more like a literary one than the one in which we make statements in assertions. “If language is political,” she notes, “politics is linguistic.” Norton contends that linguistic production establishes authority just as political practice does. In her reading, the authors of the constitution establish the authority of “we the people” through its own textual performance. Literature establishes authority just as much as overtly political works. This seems especially true in Norton’s view of works written by colonial and post-colonial writers. Such works either establish or undermine social hierarchies or relationships of authority.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Introduction: The Practical Import of Political Inquiry
• 2. The Practical Import of Political Inquiry: Perestroika’s Last Stand
• 3. On the Concept of Non-normative Critique
• 4. Conclusion: Toward a Practical Political Theory
• Backmatter