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Change Research: Narrating Social Change from the Bottom-Up

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Abstract

This essay provides a review of Bent Flyvbjerg’s critique of conventional social science research, including its limitations in applied fields such as social work, followed by a specification of his alternative for a “phronetic social science.” I detail how I with two colleagues practiced phronetic social science in our collaboration with Philadelphia housing activists, including most especially the role of interpretive narrative analysis as part of our case study research. In conclusion, I discuss the somewhat ironic challenges of trying to increase the legitimacy of such activist research in applied fields like social work where an obsession with being seen as scientific is prevalent as a means to improve prestige of applied research. I discuss how we need less top-down research which focuses on a “what works” agenda that serves the management of subordinate populations and more research that provides bottom-up understandings of a “what’s right” agenda tailored to empowering people in particular settings. Real social science research needs to listen to how people on the bottom experience their own subordination so that we can help them overcome their subjugation. Good social science includes taking the perspective of the oppressed in the name of helping them achieve social justice. In the end, there are a number of tension points between the model of conventional social science and phronetic social science that starkly highlight how we need to change research in order do research that promotes positive social change.

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Fig. 1

Adapted from Melnyck and Fineout-Overholt 2005; Stetler et al. 1998

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Funding

This paper reports on research that was funded in part by a 2004 grant from the William Penn Foundation to the Affordable Housing Coalition.

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Correspondence to Sanford F. Schram.

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There are no conflict of interests.

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The research was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Bryn Mawr College.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants (even government officials) included in the study.

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Schram, S.F. Change Research: Narrating Social Change from the Bottom-Up. Clin Soc Work J 45, 261–269 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10615-016-0611-4

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