1. MAKING MAKING SOCIAL SCIENCE MATTER MATTER TO US.
- Author
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Adcock, Robert
- Subjects
- *
SOCIAL sciences , *SOCIAL epistemology , *EPISTEMICS - Abstract
This article pursues two line of inquiry in response to Bent Flyvbjerg's advocacy of a phronetic social science in Making Social Science Matter (2001). First, I explore how Flyvbjerg's manifesto relates to the approach employed in his earlier empirical work, Rationality & Power (1998). There are, I argue, notable disjunctions between the practice of Rationality & Power and the preaching of Making Social Science Matter. Second, I explicate and rework Flyvbjerg's contrast between epistemic and phronetic social science with an eye to its reception by a specific disciplinary audience: American political scientists. In doing so, I build on several contributions to Sanford Schram and Brian Caterino's edited volume Making Political Science Matter (2006). My aspiration is, however, rather different from that of the volume: I strive to make epistemic and phronetic into accessible categories of reformist reflection, not provocative banners under which to marshal revolutionary opposition to our disciplinary mainstream(s). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2009
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