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

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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.

This is a provocative and important book, maybe even pivotal. Bent Flyvbjerg says that he's arguing for a new approach to social science, but I think his thesis is considerably more radical than that: he's effectively calling for social "science" to be abandoned and instead replaced with a sort of applied social practice analogous to medicine and civil engineering, endeavors which draw on science but necessarily go well beyond it.

Flyvbjerg begins by arguing that social science never has been, and probably never will be, explanatory and predictive in the way that the natural sciences are, especially the physical sciences. A main reason is that context and judgment are key to any kind of practical social science, yet they can't be reduced to theoretical terms. The arguments here borrow from the critique of AI presented by Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus.

These limitations are fatal flaws for the project of social science modeled on natural science, so Flyvbjerg instead revisits Aristotle's classification of "intellectual virtues" and argues that, rather than aspiring for the virtues of episteme (associated with science) or techne (associated with technology), social science is better associated with phronesis, which is concerned with practical action in particular human situations, and thus deliberately and reflexively brings in context and judgment, along with considerations of values and interests. And because particularities are so important in making practical judgments and decisions, high-quality case studies are an important tool for phronetic social science.

The one element Flyvbjerg finds missing in Aristotle's conception of phronesis is explicit consideration of the issue of power, and he explores the ideas of Habermas, Nietzsche, and Foucault to help redress this. He finds Habermas' aims to be laudable, but his approach to be ultimately idealistic to the point of being infeasible. Nietzsche and Foucault turn out to be of greater value, largely because of their emphasis on contextualizing genealogical analysis.

Flyvbjerg next distills a set of methodological guidelines associated with his phronetic social science framework, and finally illustrates the framework with an interesting case study involving city planning (his specialty) in Denmark.

I greatly enjoyed this book, surely in large part because I tend to agree with Flyvbjerg's thesis and reasoning, and I guess it's not a coincidence that the philosophers he draws on are among my favorites. I also found the book to be well written and smoothly translated from the original Danish, though the chapters related to power were somewhat tough going at times.

Overall, I highly recommend this book to anyone with a serious interest in social science. However, at least a modest background in both social science and philosophy are probably prerequisites, since this is a fairly sophisticated book aimed more at an academic audience rather than the general reader.

Flyvbjerg's genius lies in his ability to tie the past to the future in exploring the relevance of social science. Flyvbjerg starts with the past by using Aristotle's concept of phronesis to connect with the historical value of social science. Social science, the science of human affairs, is uniquely situated to explore phronesis (practical knowledge and ethics). Yet, as Flyvbjerg elegantly describes, social science has fell away from the important concepts of context, experience and intuition. These concepts should be at the core of social science. For too long social science has attempted to imitate the natural sciences in developing context independent explanations and predictions. Flyvbjerg is successful in describing how a social science that no longer attempts to imitate natural science would flourish in the pursuit of phronesis.

Flyvbjerg defends the rational for doing the kind of socially relevant science that I have come to value as a PhD student in occupational science. Flyvbjerg defends my study of social issues, such as health disparities that exist in inner cities, by drawing on Nietzsche, Foucault and Bourdieu in a way that is readable and efficient. He asserts that there is a space for social science to be important, thus the term science that truly matters. By going beyond the attempts to imitate or compete with natural science, social scientists have room to claim their own territory. He essentially leaves the social scientists with a reason to continue believing in the importance of the work they do. He gives social scientists the tools to protect themselves against the attacks of the natural science.

Yet, Flyvbjerg does not merely attempt to defend the current form of social science. Flyvbjerg attempts to correct the flailing trajectory of social science by proposing a methodology for current and future social science research. This methodology is not so much an imperative as a push towards phronesis. Flyvbjerg's proposed methodology effectively shifts the focus of this book from the philosophical past to a practical present. Flyvbjerg gives guidance to the newly empowered social scientist through defining important indicators to create a social science that matters. These important methodological considerations should be part of the decision making process for anyone considering social research.

Flyvbjerg's vision for the future culminates in what I like to think of as a call to arms. He calls on social scientists to take up problems that matter in ways that matter. Once these problems are addressed results must be effectively communicated to fellow citizens. This creates a social science relevant and important that is delivered where it matters the most, to the people. For the social scientist, this call to arms can be as rousing as Mel Gibson's William Wallace in Braveheart. For the survival of social scientists there is only one possible future, making science that matters.

Making Social Science Matter was written in Danish and translated into English, very beautifully, by Steven Sampson. It is a fine addition to sociological theory, and deserves a careful reading. It is a new addition to the venerable tradition set down by Peter Winch, Hubert Dreyfus, Harold Garfinkel, and many others, who claim that the canons of natural science do not apply to understanding human society. Various reasons are given supporting this view, but they all agree with Richard Lewontin (p. 3), who opines that "social science has set itself an impossible task when it attempts to emulate natural science and produce explanatory and predictive, that is, epistemic, theory." Among the prominent reasons are that social theory is inherently value-laden because we are both the subject and the object of study, society is the product of human consciousness, which is self-incomprehensible, and most simply, human society is far too complex to either explain or predict.

Flyvbjerg develops this theme with insight and flair, although he tries to do two other things as well, with less success. The first is to show that the concept of "power" must be central to all social theory. He fails to show this and his treatment of power is quite standard and rather restricted to left-critical and post-modern treatments. The second is to apply his theory of what social science should be to his own life-experience. Here too his treatment is quite mundane and lacking in insight. He would have done better to drop these two themes, and simply refer to the great hermeutic social thinkers, such as Aristotle, St. Thomas Acquinas, J. J. Rousseau, Alexis de Tocqueville, Bernard Mandeville, and Compte de Montesquieu, and the other greats whose works exemplify this approach to social understanding.

Flyvbjerg's approach is to contrast three forms of knowledge in Aristotle: episteme (theoretical knowledge), techne (technical know-how) and phronesis, which he treats as wisdom gathered through personal life experience and emotive identification with the life-forms studied and their myriad activities. The social-science-as-natural-science folks believe that the height of social knowledge is episteme in the form of Grand Theory, whereas in fact meaningful social knowledge consists of phronesis in the form of case studies by wise and perceptive viewers.

"At present," Flyvbjerg claims, "social science is locked in a fight it cannot hope to win, because it has accepted terms that are self-defeating. We will see that in their role as phronesis, the social sciences are strongest where the natural sciences are weakest: just as the social sciences have not contributed much to explanatory and predictive theory, neither have the natural sciences contributed to the reflexive analysis and discussion of values and interests, which is the prerequisite for an enlightened political, economic, and cultural development in any society."

It should be clear that by "social science" Flyvbjerg means "sociological and anthropological theory," because his remarks simply do not apply to psychology, economics, or biology, and his treatment of power is too weak to consider his analysis as applicable to political science. Obviously areas like paleontology, neuroscience, epidemiology, and many other areas of social science are quite impervious to the Flyvbjerg critique.

Flyvbjerg is absolutely correct in his support for thickly descriptive ethnographic and historical research, and in his claim that phronetic approaches are important contributions to social science. His error is thinking that this research conflicts with more traditional approaches to explanation in sociology and anthropology. In fact, the research he supports is synergistic with analytical and empirical studies aimed at understanding human society.

Sociology and anthropology are intimately connected to paleontology and evolutionary biology simply because Homo sapiens is a species that evolved to its present position by virtue of the same biological laws that apply to all other species. Of course, there are staggeringly important human specificities, but there are many social species, and until some 30,000 years ago we were not alone in exhibiting these specificities. There is much to learn about human society by comparing and contrasting with other social species---see for instance the recent book Superorganism, by Bert Hölldobler and E. O. Wilson, or my edited collection Moral Sentiments and Material Interests.

I appreciate Aristotle and Machiavelli, but I also have learned an enormous amount about society by reading widely and deeply in animal behavior theory. I love Levi-Strauss, but I also appreciate Donald Brown, who has shown how human values are represented in hundreds of societies, and Frasier's Golden Bough, which gives insight into human religion by cataloging hundreds of religious forms around the world.

Flyvbjerg makes his case by setting up straw men and choosing only examples that support his point of view. One example of a straw man is the notion that the natural sciences can "explain and predict" while the social sciences cannot. Physics can explain phenomena only under highly controlled circumstances, certainly not in general. Physics has changed our lives so much because engineers can reproduce these controlled circumstances in the real world. Except for astronomy and atmospherics (in the age of satellit supercomputers), physics cannot explain or predict much in the way of natural events. Social theory can easily do as well as the natural sciences in situations in which carefully controlled experimentation is infeasible for one reason or another.

An example of cherry-picking examples, Flyvbjerg's examples of successes in the natural sciences are all of the thought-experiment type: Galileo on falling objects, Einstein or general relativity, and the like. Most advances even in physics are not of this type, but rather involve careful and repeated measurement linked to deductive and inductive logic.

Flyvbjerg will appeal to the armchair philosopher who is too ignorant of real advances in our understanding of society to appreciate the value of sustained empirical and theoretical research. I urge the author to give us a new book that appreciates the synergy among episteme, techne, and phronesis, for synergy there surely is.

I am inclined, initially, to confess that as a Danish student of the social sciences, the scholarship of fellow national Flyvbjerg is something I have encountered fairly often - to the point that he becomes a textbook source beyond discussion (and possibly understanding). However, this book goes well beyond the idea of a textbook learning. It has real ambitions for the social sciences and more importantly it gives us the knowledge and the tools to see this ambition through. This is one book that has gotten me really excited about social science again.

The brilliance of this book is, first, the concise manner in which Flyvbjerg shows us the positioning of social science, that is, the 'why' of doing social scientific research. Of particular importance his chapter on Habermas and Foucault should be a textbook storytelling on the circumstances from which social science must depart. Second, Flyvbjerg makes the point that "context matters", and if we are to do relevant social science we must employ context at the center of such research.

This work should be read with some knowledge of critical theory, Bourdieu and Foucault, but it is a breath of life to any serious research on social and societal issues, and to its praise it is written in a sober and accessible style (though he does tend to quote 'at length'). It deserves attention and discussion, and should be read by all kinds of students and academics (undergraduates in social science, graduates in natural sciences who combine interests in science and society, people employed to deal with issues related to science and society at large).

As a doctoral student in occupational science (the study of human occupation), I thoroughly enjoyed this book, as it gave me hope that my qualitative research interests could gain credibility if a reformation such as the one Flyvbjerg proposes were to occur in the social sciences.

Flyvbjerg presents the dilemma of social science: In being compared (and comparing itself) to natural science, social science has received a bad name, labeled a "dumbed down" version of the more esteemed analytical science. Flyvbjerg argues that the two are fundamentally different, and with thoughtful and logical arguments, he proposes a reformed social science. To make his point, Flyvbjerg first recalls three types of knowledge from Aristotle: Episteme (analytic knowledge), techne (technical know-how), and phronesis (practical wisdom). He claims that social science has been held to an epistemic knowledge when it is truly phronesis.

Drawing on the Dreyfus model of learning, which has categorized human learning into five levels (novice, advanced beginner, competent performer, proficient performer, and expert), Flyvberg points out that in the various levels of learners, the highest level consists of experts - such as doctors - who have left rule following behind and use a kind of intuition. Analytical reasoning has yet to capture this clinical reasoning, which is based in drawing upon many case examples and heavily relying on context when making decisions. As an occupational therapist, I have seen experienced therapists use this kind of intuitive knowledge as they synthesize prior learning of the "rules" with experience and context to arrive at clinical reasoning.

Comparing this intuitive knowledge to analytical reasoning, Flyvbjerg describes the problems in today's social science: If a scientific theory should be context independent but the "object is a subject," how can one ever scientifically study a subject without regard for context? How can one ever, as a theory should, predict what will occur in the future? Human activity can't be objectified when it takes human activity to understand it. Flyvbjerg emphasizes the necessity of context in social science, making it impossible for predictive theories to come out of it. He has then carefully set the stage to fully introduce phronesis as a solution.

A phronetic social science asks value laden questions such as, "Where are we going?" "Is it desirable?" "What should be done?" This science, then, relies heavily on case studies and narrative - just as Dreyfus' intuitive-thinking experts did. Flyvbjerg then acknowledges various criticisms that have been made of case studies, such as a small sample size and no generalized applicability. He refutes each of these one by one. For example, a small sample size can be all that is needed if the sample is carefully selected ("critical case") and refutes what is common knowledge. In this case, one "black swan" is all that is needed to prove that not all swans are white. Flyvbjerg discusses how episteme and phronesis are both strong in the areas where the other is weak. He is not suggesting a replacement of natural science; he is merely advocating for a social science which is viewed for its strengths rather than held to a standard of something that it is not. Phronesis, he says, aims not to study universal theory but to study praxis, the practice or enactment of theory, in humans and society.

Flyvbjerg calls on work from many scholars such as Bourdieu, Aristotle and Foucault as he builds a case for phronesis and points out that this way of thinking has been validated by important thinkers of the past. He cites Cartesian anxiety, is the fear that leaving analytic, rational thought will end in relativism, the view that there is no truth or moral principles because everything is subjective, as a common fear among those who are skeptical of social science. To counter this, Flyvbjerg uses Foucault's situational ethics, which rejects this dualism (either rationalism or relativism) by looking at context. How can we answer these difficult questions such as "How should we live?" We must take into account a historical, social, economic, and political context, as well as issues of power. We cannot solve these problems by developing philosophies and theories (which can be just as much an oppressor as the thing from which we seek liberation); the answers must be carried out in relation to specific instances of rationalization and repression in their particular contexts. Theories, say Flyvbjerg and Foucault, must be constantly confronted with praxis. What is done is more fundamental than discourse.

Finally, Flyvbjerg presents a "reformed" social science, one which focuses on values, remembers power, gets close to reality, examines small details, looks at praxis before discourse, studies cases and contexts, asks "How?", values narrative, joins agency and structure rather than taking a dualistic view, and dialogues with a polyphony of voices. This may mean a focus on a social phenomenon, but it always means a focus on actual daily practice in a particular field of interest. Here is where Flyvbjerg's science aligns so well with occupational science, which focuses on context, meaning, action, and daily practice and lived experience (Zemke & Clark, 1996). Flyvbjerg closes with an example of phronesis as carried out by him in a community research setting in Aalborg, Denmark. The story was the culmination of my building excitement throughout the book; the way of thinking he described not only resonated with my own, but here were my partly unarticulated thoughts about how social science could make positive and needed social change, being fleshed out! And working! This book was truly inspiring for a just-starting-out researcher in occupational science who has always felt that the important social issues that we face cannot be properly addressed through natural science. Flyvbjerg gives a coherent, intelligent, logical argument about why we should give up trying to make this square peg fit into a round hole. He does more than merely criticize, though, and has hopeful answers which can benefit all of the social sciences, including occupational science.

Amber, doctoral student in occupational science at the University of Southern California

Zemke, R. & Clark, F. (1996). Occupational science: The evolving discipline. Philadelphia: F. A. Davis. Preface.

This is a shockingly honest and self-critical book about sociology. If you took a women's studies or humanities class in college, you could be excused for thinking that the entire field is dominated by intellectually dishonest hacks. If you'd read much on your own by the time you got to the classroom like I had, you probably also found it difficult to contain yourself throughout the lectures. Fyvbjerg hopes to change that. See, the social sciences have a strange relationship with the scientific method. They want the respect that comes with the findings but none of the rigor that goes along with adhering to its rules.

Aristotle wrote of three types of knowledge: epistme (scientific), techne (technical know-how) and phronesis (understanding and ethics). Instead of trying to shoehorn the study of people into epistme, Fyvbjerg asks social scientists to embrace phronesis. He wants them to abandon the idea that you can distill an infinite amount of human variables into some predictive theory and focus on asking a few simple questions about the subjects they study. "Where are we going?" "Who benefits and who loses?" "Is this desirable?" I've written about phronesis before, and I described it as sort of a practical, intuitive understanding. MSSM is saying that we deserve social scientists who practice this kind of expert knowledge, rather than pseudo-scientists looking for confirmation of their political beliefs.

I have one criticism of this book. It's written in exactly the kind of dense, academic style that he's supposedly trying to get us to give up. As a result, it often feels like it exists in some Ivy League vacuum, rather than the real, gritty world that social sciences live in. It's the wrong tone for a book of this kind of importance and its influence has suffered accordingly. If you can push through it, you realize that you can skip whole sections and pages without missing anything. This is bad for him but good for you. Definitely read this.