The discussion around the postulate of adequacy initiated by Max Weber among others and revived by Alfred Schütz remains the subject of controversy even today. With a look back at Weber’s and Schütz’s respective epistemologies, I will argue that there is indeed much more than a strict neo-Kantian stance in Weber’s and much more than a pure transcendental egology in Schütz’s. I delineate some basic characteristics of sociological interpretation, including the contributions of phenomenology for the understanding of the social world. To address the realities most often associated with macro-sociological perspectives, I also consider configurations of meaning that depart from the usual themes of phenomenological sociology. There is no contradiction in this movement between objects and levels of analysis. Rather, from the minute critique of everyday life (Bégout, 2005) to large-scale historical sociology (Wolf, 2010), there is a need for interpretive or hermeneutical methodologies.

The interpretation of social activity necessarily involves a hermeneutic, a theory of knowledge and method of interpretation that has now become common in the human sciences (Rabinow, 1979; Bleicher, 1980; Ricoeur, 1986; Thouard, 2011; Côté & Michel, 2021). The hermeneutic condition entails the reflexive and dialogical relationship implied by the human sciences, whose objects refer to self-referential, self-interpreted, and self-describing realities (Geertz, 1973, 9f.; Searle, 1995; Quéré, 1999: 14, 25). Charles Taylor advances this perspective in arguing against the narrow conceptions of empiricism which were rife in political science:

We make sense of action when there is a coherence between the actions of the agent and the meaning of his situation for him. We find his action puzzling until we find such a coherence. It may not be bad to repeat that this coherence in no way implies that the action is rational: the meaning of a situation for an agent may be full of confusion and contradiction; but the adequate depiction of this contradiction makes sense of it. Thus, we necessarily have a hermeneutical circle. Our conviction that the account makes sense is contingent on our reading of action and situation. But these readings cannot be explained or justified except by reference to other such readings, and their relation to the whole. (Taylor, 1985: 24)

Taylor emphasizes how implicit meanings and norms are not only in minds, but also in practices, in relationships, and in mutual action. Debates around the hermeneutic condition invite a deeper investigation into what is involved in the description, explanation, and understanding of social activity. While the metaphor of text and reading is useful (Ricoeur, 1986: 197–221), we should not lock ourselves into too narrow a vision of interpretation and reduce social activity itself to a semiotic object. Gadamer developed this point in the 1960s when he proposed defining philosophical hermeneutics by first examining the case of the “work of art”. The understanding of a work of art, he asserts against Schleiermacher, is not “a second creation, the reproduction of the original production,” nor does it entail the “restitution or restoration of past life” (Gadamer, 1996 [1960]: 186). This criticism need not entangle us in the idea of “great art” which would only belong to the past and which would require disinterested contemplation on our part. Rather, following Gadamer, we can extend the question of interpretation to the human sciences and their linguistic condition. Successful understanding entails “reflective mediation with present life” (Gadamer, 1996 [1960]: 188). Understanding is not an operation by which the subject of knowledge seeks to “coincide” with or “adhere” to its object, but rather a way of clarifying an enigmatic configuration of meaning and its own historical situation through the detour of objects and signs that appear distant or obscure at first.

In what follows, I consider how this reflective mediation is common to hermeneutic and phenomenological approaches. With recent developments in epistemology and sociological theory in mind, I argue that this hermeneutic lesson applies well beyond the case of the work of art or the text to include interpretive approaches that seek to describe, explain, and understand social activity. A return to certain hermeneutic principles should not neglect the initial terrain that Weber and Schütz first outlined. Extending their discussion of social action and intersubjective meaning, I argue that there is a particular type of performativity of interpretation, specific to elucidating and explanatory understanding (deutendes and erklärendes Verstehen), which must be assumed on both sides of the signifying process: on the side of the object to be interpreted (the semiotic object, the analytically constructed research object and its epistemic field), and on the side of the interpreter (the subject of knowledge and its position in the chain of interpretants, its situation). Alongside hermeneutics, I also appeal to other basic principles concerning the forms of reasoning and argumentation in the human sciences.

The whole article tends toward strategies of writing, as I am convinced writing is a key element of the question of adequacy. I emphasize that we must not reduce writing to its cognitive and formal process alone. Nor is writing to be understood as a simple means of communicating research results. On the contrary, writing will be approached as a material and semiotic practice that produces knowledge at all stages of research, sometimes even long before entering the field and collecting data, from the first signs of curiosity and the initial prefiguration, up to sharing knowledge and public debate. Hence, narrative and rhetoric are to be understand here as encompassing both cognitive, ethical, and material realities of social research, that is, embodied, practical, localized, connected realities (Schindler & Schäfer, 2021: 14–16).

Weber and Explanatory Understanding

The principle of adequacy intervenes in Weber’s theory of the ideal type as “adequacy on the level of meaning” (sinnhafte Adäquanz). In this case, adequacy is supposed to reflect logical consistency between the subjective meaning or motive of action and the basic theoretical concepts and empirical generalizations of sociology; these ideal–typical concepts are the abstract and systematic reconstruction of the objective meaning context, or “configuration of meaning” (Sinnzusammenhang) (Weber, 1978: 11 ff). But first and foremost, the principle of adequacy intervenes within a debate on causal analysis in the historical sciences, notably in his 1906 article, translated into English under the title “Critical studies in the logic of the cultural sciences” (Weber, 2011: 113–188). Weber seeks to distinguish the sociological approach, which for him is that of a “science of concrete reality,” from the traditional positions, positivist as well as historicist, which compete in the fields of legal sciences, economics, and history (Bruun, 2007: 78–144). The notion of adequate causality also intervenes at various moments in the work, including studies on forms of legitimate domination and power, religious ethics, the city, and the development of capitalism in East Prussia. As I will attempt to demonstrate, the question of adequacy for him takes on a strong hermeneutic dimension through his efforts to identify analytical tools or forms of explanation and to ensure the relevance of the sociological argument.

In his definition of the basic concepts of sociology, Weber integrates elements that come from two quite different horizons: that of an updating of the “philosophies of life” and the hermeneutic perspective (with Dilthey and Simmel) and that of the critique of historicism (with Windelband and Rickert). Several commentators have noted the ambiguity of Weber’s central theses when he confronts the “teleological” reasoning of action or the rational interpretation “in finality” (zweckrational). The theory of the ideal type in his methodological essays, the presentation of fundamental concepts in Economy and Society, and Weber’s sociology more broadly, advance a profoundly comparative and historical approach, thereby developing a wide range of schemes of interpretation. However, he often deliberately restricts or purifies this approach in the direction of ideal–typical constructions that are instrumental or rational “in finality”. This criticism is found in Schütz’s The phenomenology of the social world, and in the work of other commentators (Sahay, 1971; Bruun, 2007; Runciman, 1972; Strasser, 1983; Habermas, 1987).

But what appears forcefully in Weber’s epistemology and philosophy of science is also the other side of his nominalism, namely the dependence of any ideal–typical explanation or construction on the hermeneutic circle which links the subject of knowledge not only to the intended object, but to its own situation. I will try to show this by invoking the case of causal explanation in historical narrative. My reading of Weber on this point is largely indebted to (but not limited to) the theses that we have come to associate with “narrativist” currents (Aron, 1967; Mandelbaum, 1967; Winch, 1990; Stone, 1979; Ricoeur, 1983; Abbott, 1992; Kalberg, 1994). In short, if sociology has any power of elucidation or clarification, it is because it integrates the historical individuality that it aims to understand (an event, a process, a phenomenon, a relationship, an idea, a value…) to a larger signifying set. And it is the judgment and causal imputation which allow us, according to Weber, to identify “determining” or “indifferent” elements of the singular case.

This work of imputation is a work of interpretation and narrative construction at the same time. Imputation is first carried out by selection. In the 1906 essay, Weber offers this example: the experiences related by Goethe in his letters to Charlotte von Stein could find their place in the constellation of the poet’s personal qualities, in his way of conducting himself and conceiving his life; they could also shed light on an ethos typical of a certain environment, in a certain era; they could be integrated into a psychology of eroticism; they could also lend themselves to personal appreciation or meditation. It is not only that Weber recognizes the relevance of the autobiographical narrative – many other materials and many other analytical series are mobilized in his sociology. Above all, his point underlines the work of abstraction and selection leading to a diversity of configurations of meaning, and requiring the articulation of levels of analysis that are also very diverse.

The construction of the “ideal type,” on which so much emphasis has been placed, thanks to which Weber intended to better grasp historical individualities (by purification, reduction, focusing), is therefore only one moment of this work which leads, notably in his sociology of religion, to comparative, multifactorial, and highly provisional analyses. Ricoeur describes this other characteristic operation of causal imputation as a “probabilistic imaginary construction” (Ricoeur, 1983: 257f.; see also Aron, 1967: 201–208; Kalgerg, 1994: 94–139; Sivado, 2020: 57–60). Causality as Weber understands it consists of establishing the relative significance of an event or phenomenon within a historical process. Probabilistic judgment or imagination breaks down the complex of relationships observed and methodically grasped as a unity into discrete elements, and it is these elements that can become candidates for the title of “cause” (Weber, 2011: 184–186). Probabilistic judgment is of course susceptible to gradation, in that the explanation can suggest that an event or phenomenon “weighs” more than another. An element of the historical explanation is said to be “causally adequate” if, by removing it by imagination, we consider that the situation described could not be as it was. Ricoeur sums up the frequently tortuous way undertaken in Weber’s essays on this question very well. Singular causal imputation “consists essentially in the construction by imagination of a different course of event, then in weighing the probable consequences of this real event, finally in the comparison of these consequences with the real course of events” (Ricoeur, 1983: 257f.). I would add that in the human sciences, causal relationships are arguments that adequately account for contingent paths. Causal attribution reconstructs the unity or continuity of what reasoning first decomposed into variables, factors, structures, etc.; it translates or transposes into the proposition the effectiveness of the relational field of social praxis, its symbolic mediations, its institutions; it is always conditional and partial, linked to a context.

The case of historical explanation sheds light on the ubiquitous narrativity of Weberian sociology and how the interpretive understanding of subjective meaning is always taken up in a second-degree explanation, in analytical schemes, which must be explained as clearly as possible. Thus, methodological tools such as the ideal type or causal imputation express Weber’s concerns with the issues of his time, namely the process of rationalization, the situational analysis of power relations and conflicts between groups, or the contemporary debates around democracy (Roth, 1979: 119–128, 195–206; Jacob, 1996: 82–88). These concerns are central to the philosophy of science in his work, which problematizes the postulate of adequacy. Now let’s see how Schütz poses the problem.

Schütz and the Typicality of Social Action

For Schütz, the postulate of adequacy is above all a plea in favor of certain experiential and meaningful qualities of social action, which it was not for Weber. The intersubjective dimension and the typicality of the social relationship are intrinsic qualities that the interpreter must be able to deepen and extend, particularly when the time comes to understand more precisely how ideational objectivations such as those conveyed in language and culture are constitutive of social reality.

In The phenomenology of the social world, Schütz expresses dissatisfaction with Weber’s treatment of “subjective meaning”. To arrive at a correct definition of social action and to claim an understanding of the subjective meaning of action, a careful analysis of the meaning constituting process is necessary. This is achieved not from elementary forms of behavior oriented by values as Weber does with his typology of social action, but by starting from the subjective act of consciousness, the particular “attention” of the subject which then enters “a highly complex and ramified area,” a whole “system of perspectives” allowing self-understanding and self-interpretation, the interpretation of others, as well as the interpretation of contemporaries, predecessors, and successors (Schütz, 1967 [1932]: 9, 142f., 207–214). By explicitly referring to Bergson and Husserl, the inquiry into the meaningful action moves toward the problem of temporality and historicity. These dimensions, which could seem incidental to Weber, become more central here. The subject’s lived experience refers to more or less distant and taken-for-granted patterns of experience, background knowledge and capacities, as Schütz will later explain in The problem of social reality. Subjective self-interpretation or the project of action, the “in-order-to motive” (Um-zu-Motiv), are both continuous and intersubjective processes mediated by multiple ideational objectifications (Schütz, 1967 [1932]: 33–34). Because they are not immediately given to consciousness, the distinct regions of the life-world—including the temporalities that Schütz associates with the world of predecessors, the world of contemporaries, and the world of successors—present a “multiform structure” which will be experienced by the subjects of the interaction according to “typical” models. To designate this typicality of subjective meaning, Schütz will also speak of “polythetic act” and will always emphasize its processual, emergent, continuous character (Schütz, 1967 [1932]: 97–138; 1962: 71 ff.; 1964: 260–262).

The problem of the typicality of the action will constitute a formidable project in the human sciences, following or distinguishing itself from the work of Schütz. It will inform micro-sociological perspectives which examine the more or less established, more or less anonymous forms of daily life, the way in which people understand each other and explain what they do, the tacit rules of intersubjectivity and interpretive practices, the symbolic repertoires of action and relational strategies (Berger and Luckman, 1966; Giddens, 1976). The exchanges between phenomenology and the social sciences have been nourished by other contributions, including those from analytical philosophies of language, pragmatics, ethnography, critical theory, feminist studies, and cognitive studies. For example, for Daniel Cefaï the description of experience necessarily involves “deciphering regular forms of behavior,” but just as much “apparatus/dispositifs for the use of objects, ways of saying and doing, distributions of processes in space and time, practices of exchange, cooperation and conflict, networks of perspectives on perspectives on the world” (Cefaï, in Benoist and Karsenti, 2001: 48). In this way, he understands the ideational objectivations and the typicality of action through their materiality, their mediality, and their practical instantiations – considerations which, moreover, were not totally absent from the research of Husserl himself (Bégout, 2005: 89, 115, 142–168). However, the challenge that phenomenology will continue to raise is that of the “institution” and the “reproduction” of meaning, as Jocelyn Benoist has reiterated (Benoist and Karsenti, 2001: 19–42).

Schütz formulates the postulate of adequacy very succinctly in The problem of social reality:

Each term in a scientific model of human action must be constructed in such a way that an act performed within the life-world by an individual actor in the way indicated by the typical construct would be understandable for the actor himself as well as for his fellow men in terms of common-sense interpretations of everyday life. Compliance with this postulate warrants the consistency of the constructs of the social scientist with the constructs of common-sense experience of the social reality. (Schütz, 1962: 44)

Essentially, adequacy here requires some sort of correspondence or congruence between scientific constructs and typifications of the life-world. But Schütz’s postulate of adequacy remains ambivalent: are scientific concepts and models simply derived from lived experience and the ideational objectivations specific to it? Are they a pure repetition or do they add something that is not already there? Would the ordinary experience of the lived world be perfectly obvious, recognized, and shared equally by all? Would common sense constructions, if they indeed exist, present themselves as both the origin and culmination of all interpretive explanation? The postulate has been widely commented on and criticized (Zijderveld, 1972; Giddens, 1976; Gorman, 1977; McLain, 1981). I will retain here McLain’s proposition: “The ultimate significance of the notion of adequacy is that it constitutes a call for reflexivity on the part of both social scientist and social actor that bears upon both the outcome of scientific investigation and the development of social consciousness” (McLain, 1981: 112). Subsequent developments of interpretive sociologies, of ethnographic approaches – that is to say, all the disciplines that take up the challenge of the phenomenological description and the interpretation of social activity – invite a continued interrogation. This entails not only examining the relationship between scientific discourse and everyday discourse, but also the possibilities of critically and reflectively engaging with both the scientific institution and the social discourse that sustains it.

The Performativity of Interpretation

Although part of intellectual traditions and epistemologies that were sometimes convergent but very distinct, Weber and Schütz addressed the question of adequacy from what can be characterized as a post-positivist perspective. In this context, adequacy does not refer to empirical testing or formal logic, but to the effort to elucidate the meaning of social activity, which must pass through an interpretation of self-interpretive and self-descriptive forms. Often this type of elucidation or explanation adopts a narrative framework, as in ethnography, history, or the novel. But narrativity is only one of the features of explanation, and if there is a relationship that is not accidental between all these enterprises seeking to describe human experience, it is also necessary, after Weber and after Schütz, to integrate other essential features of the sociological argument.

Meaning Processes and Objectifications

Before returning to this argument, I will open a brief parenthesis. Interpretation as I conceive it is one moment among others in the objectification of experience, or one form of objectification among many others. Clifford Geertz underlines the existence of these degrees of objectification of experience: “The ethnographer ‘inscribes’ social discourse; he writes it down. In so doing, he turns it from a passing event, which exists only in its own moment of occurrence, into an account, which exists only in its inscriptions and can be reconsulted” (2007: 19 ff.). Borrowing from Bruno Latour and Marilyn Strathern, Casper Bruun Jensen puts it like this:

Since ethnography “writes people”, it must contain them somewhere. Those who write must, so to speak, find ways to “load” something (people-ish) from the world into the text. And they do find many different ways. But again, this is poorly understood in terms of correct representation. Instead, it is a matter of scaling and re-scaling gestures, words, and acts into different media (here, the text, but it might also be video, say, or anime) for different reasons than what motivated their occurrence in the first place. Since ethnographers hope to create their own effects in the process, we are in a realm of recursion and performativity. (Jensen, 2021: 131)

Phenomenology and cognitive sciences offer crucial insights into this meaning process. Below are minimal definitions and some of their distinct elements, temporarily disregarding the difficulties inherent in each of these moments:

  • Sensation (information transmitted by the senses)

  • Perception (reaction to stimulation and organization of a mental image)

  • Emotion (a sequence of changes in subjective state, or affects)

  • Thought (conscious activity producing concepts or representations)

  • Expression (the action of transposing or communicating the experience to others through physiognomy, gesture, speech, writing, or any other signs)

  • Reflection (the action of thought on itself and its expressions)

  • Making (production, construction, creation; poiesis and techne)

  • Action (interaction, relationship, cooperation; praxis)

  • Institution (regulation of typical forms of action and social norms)

  • Interpretation (the action of restoring, appropriating, explaining, and clarifying an object by reconstructing its meaning, and the sequences of this action of interpretation with other interpretations)

Considered from the point of view of the whole of the symbolic mediations and materiality of action, “interpretation” is therefore not an entirely arbitrary region of meaning detached from others. On the contrary it is one of its relays, one of the paths that grant access to the experience (see also Ricoeur, 1975; Freitag, 1986; Joas, 1996; Brown, 1999; Barsalou, 2003). When merely reeling off forms of objectification of experience, it becomes obvious that the list is open both “upwards” and “downwards,” so to speak. Sensation is not always and necessarily the primary aspect of experience, and the same experience can lead to various objectifications, trajectories, and detours. It is also reasonable to acknowledge the multiple intertwinings between the forms. For example, there may be sensitivity and emotion in my interpretation of a television report on the civil war in Yemen, or there may be fabrication (poiesis) in the meal that I share with friends. In various instances, there will be interpretation and intentionality in my sentimental experience, and so forth. In many cases, we encounter data, forms and languages that are more or less abstract, more or less transposable or universalizable. Conflicting images may coexist, and sometimes, effects impart a unique “style,” or a personal signature to the experience.

The question of whether there is a hierarchy between degrees of objectification can be approached from various perspectives, including genetic, cognitivist, historical, sociological, and more. For example, one may consider the status of an official written text or an amateur video, as compared to the spontaneous testimony of a victim of police brutality. We can also question what is “lost” and what is “gained” at each level, when comparing, for example, the possibilities afforded by oral expression and bodily performance with the written scenario; conversely, the perspectives opened by the diffusion of the written text and those which were accessible during the live performance.

Interpreting Social Activity

The previous section briefly discussed fundamental dimensions of thought and language within experience, echoing the pioneering work of Mikhail Bakhtin, Valentin Voloshinov, or Lev Vygotsky. More recently, Larraín and Haye invoke what they call a “sociality of thought,” which suggests that all thought is shaped by social discourse. Any act of understanding, even that which seems the most intimate or private, such as remembering, expressing one’s feelings, or telling one’s own story, involves taking a stance in an ongoing social process of exchanges, ideations, and evaluations (Larraín & Haye, 2014). Furthermore, the public sphere, mass media, and digital social networks are inseparable and even concomitant today. This urges us to stretch our thinking about interpretation and sociological reasoning to encompass a broader view of the diffusion of ideas, practices, and symbolic resources within social activity. In fact, scientific discourse circulates widely in the public sphere, alongside a plethora of discourses, images, texts, and cultural objects of all kinds.

Closing this parenthesis, which merely aimed to anchor interpretation in the multiple layers of the symbolic process, I will now argue that there is a peculiar performativity of interpretation. In my opinion, this performativity must be considered if we want to decide on adequacy. Performativity must be ascertained on both sides of interpretive or explanatory understanding: first, on the side of the object intended by the interpretation – speech acts, social rituals, texts, images –; and second, on the side of the interpreter –second-degree understanding, description, and explanation, each implying a specific hermeneutical relation. The performativity of explanation concerns the subject of knowledge and its position in the chain of interpretants, which encapsulates its whole situation in discourse and practice. Moreover, I argue that this theoretical discussion becomes more relevant and fruitful for the humanities and social sciences when it incorporates the question of writing strategies. This approach allows us to envision the practical moment of hermeneutic understanding, embracing its material, ethical, and political dimensions.

My discussion of the performativity of explanation moves beyond the different meanings of adequacy as posed by Weber and Schütz, circling back to the hermeneutic posture. As I have argued elsewhere (Jacob, 2021: 199), when adopted in the human sciences, some of the consequences of the hermeneutic posture can be transposed into forms of reasoning:

  • Complementarity of semiotic methods and objects: the configurations under scrutiny exhibit formal properties that the analysis must account for.

  • Aesthetic experience and immanence of the material: the analysis requires an attentive, active, and pragmatically oriented reading.

  • Intertwined close and distant levels of analysis: the interpretation weaves connections between distinct configurations.

  • Discourse situation and axiology: alongside its principles of problematization, construction, and argumentation, the interpretive explanation is embedded in a discourse situation that it must itself clarify and unfold.

In sociology, this hermeneutic posture takes on several distinct argumentative forms. For example, with Jeffrey Alexander or Charles Tilly, it leads to precise prescriptions for the modelization and description of action. Alexander starts off the discussion by highlighting the fragility of rituals and taken-for-granted assumptions.

Contemporary societies revolve around open-ended conflicts between parties who do not necessarily share beliefs, frequently do not accept the validity of one another’s intention, and often disagree even about the descriptions that people offer for acts. […] Contemporary societies have opened themselves to processes of negotiations and reflexivity about means and ends, with the result that conflict, disappointment, and feelings of bad faith are at least as common as integration, affirmation, and the energizing of the collective spirit. (Alexander, 2004: 528)

The fragility of rituals does not preclude all attempts to understand social activity; quite the opposite, it presents a significant challenge for those striving to understand any social performance. “Is it possible to develop a theory that can explain how the integration of particular groups and sometimes even whole collectivities can be achieved through symbolic communications, while continuing to account for cultural complexity and contradiction, for institutional differentiation, contending social power, and segmentation?” (Alexander, 2004: 52f.) Leaving aside the path delineated by Alexander concerning the “theatricality” of social action, I find it useful to ascertain as he did some basic tasks and categories of interpretive sociology. A summary will suffice: to describe background symbols and foreground scripts of social performance or action; to identify actors, observers and audience of the social performance; to delineate the means, the tools, and the material culture by which the performance is realized; to trace back the physical and verbal gesture, the peculiar aesthetics of the ongoing performance; finally, to establish how power relations, legitimacy, and authority status affect the social performance (Alexander, 2004: 530–533). Here is just one colorful example of the type of explanation Alexander is aiming for. Analyzing Donald Trump’s presidential campaign of 2016, Alexander considers how the political figure Steven Bannon managed have the influence he had over Trump’s presidency. He concludes:

Bannon functions as a performance-enhancing drug. The secret of his power over Trump, and over some large swath of the American people, has been his mythopoetic abilities, writing the script, setting the stage, finding the actors, and directing the mis-en-scene [sic] so effectively that anti-democratic ideas have, for many Americans, come to seem sensible and inspiring, while democratic ideas appear irrational and profane. (Alexander, 2019: 147)

This exploration of “social performance” deviates significantly from the models of phenomenological sociology proposed by Schütz. It does not only consider the knowledge and interpretations specific to a group, but from a more pragmatic view, it also includes their justifications, argumentations, negotiations, alliances, and ruptures. Hypothetically, it considers the entire field of social discourse, inscribed in its places and its practical conditions.

Charles Tilly also envisages the same shift in perspective in the analysis of social movements and political conflicts. His approach favors the description of complex “processes” and “mechanisms” that characterize a political conflict, integrating cognitive, relational, and environmental components (Tilly, 2001). Such processes and mechanisms deserve comparative analysis and, notably, a keen sensitivity to the changes, or emerging phenomena, which define each case. Explaining a conflict, according to this perspective, involves considering singular events and reconstructing their sequences, using both descriptive concepts (state, political actor, repertoires, institutions, etc.) and explanatory concepts (conflict sites, structure of political opportunity, mechanisms, processes, episodes, etc.; Tilly, 1995; Tilly & Tarrow, 2007). How are we to recognize an adequate explanation? Tilly suggests some possible solutions:

These valid analyses break complex sequences into events, each of which invokes its own configuration of causes including the cumulative effects of previous events […] Such analyses immediately yield counterfactuals, specifications of what else could have happened if the causal configuration had occurred differently; thus a valid theory of democratization yields propositions about the conditions for authoritarianism and oligarchy. Within limits, such analyses of variation also yield contingent predictions. (Tilly, 1995: 1605f.)

These principles directly recall the methodological ideas of Weber. Continuing along this path, sociology incorporates both an interpretive and pragmatic perspective. It actively contributes to an investigation that delves into the social processes of production and circulation of meaning (Pharo, 2000: 135–137). These methods put forward modes of reasoning and writing that, in my view, are essential, and on which I will now focus.

Strategies of Writing and Political Stances

I will focus on the contribution of writing to explanatory understanding. As I said, I will insist on rhetoric and argumentation, although it is not possible to approach the cognitive, ethical, and material dimensions of writing as if they were perfectly separate. There are many studies favoring a detailed analysis of the circulation of knowledge considering both writing strategies and the institutional or organizational dimensions of reasoning practices. In addition to argumentation and the objectification of experience, numerous works address the cognitive, ethical, and material aspects of the production of knowledge (Ploder & Hamann, 2021), questions of communication, circulation, reception, localization, distinction, and control linked to scientific practices (Keim & Rodriguez Medina, 2023). I focus on writing as a place of explanatory understanding, and I maintain an analytical rather than descriptive approach. I acknowledge the praxeological stance that invites us to conceptualize writing “as a practice that is simultaneously cognitive, embodied, and material,” and as “a joint activity of different participants” (Schindler & Schäfer, 2021: 13, 27). However, I must put aside most of the enactment of methods, the relationship between methods and practices, practical aspects of data collection and key writing concepts, such as apparatus or assemblage, for instance to stress the reflective and explanatory effect of writing. In conclusion, I will return to the classical postulate of adequacy with a critical stance.

In his appreciation of the literary work of Georges Perec, Howard Becker concludes that any sociological description is infused with a tension between a “desire to show and a desire to explain” (Becker, 2001: 75). In any case, description is an important aspect of sociological reasoning, and not simply a straightforward preliminary step to an inquiry. It involves a complex rhetorical game with perceptions, emotions, and conceptual frames, the whole of the symbolic mediations and materiality of action from which we cannot simply escape by invoking, for example, value free science (Behar, 1996; Richardson, 2005; Colyar, 2009; Carnevali, 2010; Ingold, 2018). An anthropologist like Tim Ingold can then cross paths with postpositivist philosophies of science:

A datum is, by definition, that which is given. But what today’s scientists count as data have [sic] not been bestowed as any kind of gift or offering. To collect data, in science, is not to receive what is given but to extract what is not. Whether mined, washed up, deposited or precipitated, what is extracted comes in bits, already broken off from the currents of life, from their ebbs and flows, and from their mutual entailments. (Ingold, 2018: 216)

I am convinced that anthropology and sociology are not very far from each other in this regard. The previous hermeneutical principles already gave us some argumentative structures and strategies of writing suited to explanatory understanding. However, regarding the question of adequacy, the further we move away from positivist models, the more central the ethical and political issues of explanation become. And these issues have obvious repercussions in writing. In her study on the description of morals in Western literature and the social sciences, Barbara Carnevali underlines the proximity between classical literature and works as different as those of Veblen, Mauss, Kracauer, Elias, or Bourdieu when they attempt to describe the symbolic struggles for social recognition and their specific forms. To achieve an adequate description of morals, they use a “mimetic-reflexive” method; they organize practices and their subjective traits into types, then insert into their conceptual definitions exemplifications that will have demonstrative value (Carnevali, 2010: 304). Many will remember the famous Zettelkästen of Niklas Luhmann, or the writing advice given for example by Umberto Eco or Howard Becker. There are plenty of old tricks that are still relevant, but this is beyond the scope of this article.

The discussion on description and interpretation has been profoundly renewed more recently with the extension of autoethnographic practices and the questions raised by subjective engagement in writing (Richardson, 2001; Richardson & St. Pierre, 2005; Colyar, 2009; Vannini, 2015; Dubé, 2016). Drawing on her field experience but also on the reflections of Georges Devereux, Clifford Geertz or Sandra Harding, Ruth Behar for example, strongly insists on the situated nature of any description, and on what she calls the “vulnerability” of the observer, the subject of knowledge who cannot ignore the situation and who accepts the fragility of his/her own position.

It is far from easy to think up interesting ways to locate oneself in one’s own text. Writing vulnerably takes as much skill, nuance, and willingness to follow through on all the ramifications of a complicated idea as does writing invulnerably and distantly […] It does require a keen understanding of what aspects of the self are the most important filters through which one perceives the world and, more particularly, the topic being studied. (Behar, 1996: 13)

Behar goes on to say that at the center of all representation, such as the descriptions of anthropologists or sociologists, there is a dialectic between “connection and otherness” (Behar, 1996: 20), in other words knowing the degree of proximity and distance required by the topic, and the effective relationship with the participants, with the community. Erin Manning has also highlighted the kind of dynamic posture that the practice of writing requires. She focuses on the field of research-creation in art, but her conclusions apply very well to a wide range of interpretive explanation: “What it needs is a re-accounting of what writing can do in the process of thinking-doing. At its best, writing is an act, alive with the rhythms of uncertainty and the openings of a speculative pragmatism that engages with the force of the milieu where transversality is at its most acute” (Manning, 2016: 42). According to her, this requires particular attention to disciplinary models and their limits. The speculative pragmatism she calls for will often lead to a questioning of agreed-upon methods and models, but also to a close examination of the ordinary routines and mundane interactions that make up science.

There are strong arguments drawing our attention to writing strategies and performativity from science and technology studies (STS), and specifically STS “methodography,” which are of great interest when examining reasoning into research problems, “shop work,” or “real life methods” (Greiffenhagen et al., 2011: 95; Engert, 2022: 149–197). The discussion focuses on “how we make method practice explicit and offer accounts of that practice for discussion and analysis […] how method assemblages come to matter in shaping analysis, writing and the worlds of collaborators” (Lippert & Mewes, 2021: 4). As in other domains, the discussion opens new perspectives on social objects and social issues, fostering reflexivity, responsibility, and situated knowledge. Certainly, my own argument is in line with this discussion. Specific practices of writing within ethnographic research processes are most clearly examined by Larissa Schindler and Hilmar Schäfer (2021): jottings, field notes, analytic annotations, compilations, alterations, rearrangements, recontextualizations, collaborations, revisions… all this within power relations, material, and architectural settings, and, why not, with the pressing need to drink coffee. Other specific practices are examined in a more methodological way elsewhere (Creswell, 2009; Lejeune, 2016; Olivier & Payette, 2010).

This performative aspect of explanation was already evident in the “new rhetoric” of Chaïm Perelman. According to him, arguing requires one to consider the conditions of the intellectual community and the audience that one is addressing (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1988: 17–83). However, we must delve deeper. Perelman’s stance on intellectual community lacks some of the material and embodied qualities that are necessary to grasp the full condition of the writing process. The new rhetoric, perhaps unlike traditional rhetoric, recognizes that there is a plurality of places of enunciation that are difficult to map; there is not only a plurality of voices but also of genres of discourse and publics. This situation means that the “intellectual community” is not self-evident, as Perelman pointed out (see also Cometti, 2000). The extent to which the intellectual community is necessary, presupposed or already there as a prerequisite for any conversation, generally needs to be constructed in the course of the conversation through the exchange of information, the sharing of knowledge, and the debate or confrontation of ideas. This construction of the intellectual community requires working for both the equality of the subjects who speak (because equality is never perfectly achieved), and for inclusion (because a universal audience can exist only as a normative horizon, not as a fact) and inclusion refers to a particular space, necessarily limited, whose openness is conditional.

Looking at the rhetoric of science is perhaps just another way of re-entering the hermeneutic circle, but then with a more acute awareness of its political issues. Martha Nussbaum (1996) emphasizes the importance of philosophy, literature, and the human sciences in collecting knowledge essential to civic culture, rational discussion, the training of critical thinking, and a set of social abilities more often classified as “emotions” (such as empathy and sympathy) but which are just as essential (see also Thellefsen et al., 2008). Her aim is to give practical meaning to moral education and the social imagination, which could then combat stereotypes and inequalities. Can these philosophical and literary contributions to civic culture find a place in sociological writing? Sociologist Richard Harvey Brown argues that the rhetorical perspective and the renewal of interest in reasoning or argumentation in sociology require that we question the relationships between the human sciences and democratic life, as well as between the human sciences and collective action. This goes against purely instrumental, procedural, and utilitarian visions of the dominant political system, particularly in the United States (Brown, 1997). For him, the rhetorical perspective allows a salutary and not simply decorative return to the question of the “common good” inseparable from the dignity of the person. Yet, it also requires fully assuming the existence of a public – or publics – capable of deliberation, of rationally debating not only facts and actions, but also values. The public is not a passive recipient.

The debate on the place of sociological reasoning in the public space is undoubtedly as old as the discipline itself, with different conceptions of science, intellectual work, discussion, and collective action emerging over time (Burawoy, 2005). Recently, Michel Wieviorka and Craig Calhoun (2013) launched a manifesto in which they reiterated the idea that the social sciences support the mission of “telling the truth” about social life – i.e., breaking through appearances and breaking with ideologies, to “reveal and make reality understandable”. The knowledge produced by the social sciences is valuable for not merely providing immediate technical solutions, but also for raising the capacity for collective action, creating and renewing human institutions, and responding to aspirations for a fairer, more inclusive, and more united world. This “public” orientation, they argue, must consider the existence of numerous and diverse audiences. They formulate the challenges to be addressed, including the need to articulate the different disciplinary approaches, to connect global concerns and local issues, and to be alert to conformism or the bureaucratization of research. Certainly, we have writing strategies here that deserve our attention, although nothing a priori perfectly guarantees the adequacy of our proposals. While the authors of the manifesto may present a somewhat simplistic critique of the fragmentation and radicalism of contemporary social movements, they, like Burawoy, point out the risks posed by a “social demand” (piloted unilaterally by public or private authorities) to the critical reflection and the analytical capacity of the social sciences. They warn against the rigidity of codes or ethical charters for research and question the limits of value-free science and the exteriority of science in relation to social issues.

These perspectives are grounded in various conceptions of research, such as contextualized or applied research, intervention research, action research, partnership research, clinical sociology, and more. Therefore, sociological reasoning does not solely emerge from scientific expertise. It is also shaped by activist and civic dynamics. In a broader sense, it emerges from all arenas of reflection where attempts are made to “negotiate the distance” between sometimes very distant, sometimes divergent positions (Meyer, 2004:11). Of course, explanations and writing strategies are not invariably oriented toward consensus. An adequate explanation can shake up conventions. It can also make a dissenting voice heard and speak out against antagonistic positions.

Linda Alcoff takes up these issues in wondering about the problem of “speaking for others,” and about the very possibility of “speaking about others”:

[…] we cannot neatly separate off our mediating praxis that interprets and constructs our experiences from the praxis of others. We are collectively caught in an intricate, delicate web in which each action I take, discursive or otherwise, pulls on, breaks off, or maintains the tension in many strands of a web in which others find themselves moving also. (Alcoff, 1991: 21)

The “evidence” of personal experience, its description and its self-description, reveals what was hitherto unnoticed. Hence the strength of testimony, which can go against hegemonic representations and question inherited categories, can also act as a screen blocking the work of remembering (Scott, 1991; Wieviorka, 1998).

Like any sociological model, including those that incorporate direct testimony and the vivid experience of the observer, interpretive explanation must be based on an argument. I want to reiterate this against too narrow an understanding of the subjectivity and positionality of knowledge. What are the connectors of the sociological narrative? What are its structures, its entities, and its key concepts? What selection or series of objects does it produce? What is the focus? What are the justifications? In the human sciences, explanations must be defended because (as Toulmin argued) they do not impose themselves immediately. This also involves recognizing the non-formal aspects of reasoning, the fragility of language, and the intertwined nature of discourse situations (Toulmin, 1958; Passeron, 1991; Perelman, 2012: 17–25; Amossy, 2012).

The meaning and value of all the “evidence” that supports the explanation refers to the whole argument, that is, to the specific way in which the facts and data fit into the analytical framework, and more broadly, into the research problem statement. This seems to me to apply as much to explanatory understanding as to causal explanations. Direct testimony, the vivid experience of the observer, conceptual syntheses, and analytical framing as well as the objective indicators of the explanation take on meaning in this rhetorical and dialogical space.

Methodology manuals illustrate this central requirement in various ways. Olivier and Payette summarize the essential idea by noting that when constructing an argument to defend a thesis or a scientific proposition, one develops a series of reasonings that contain several arguments and pieces of information of various kinds. The entire argument (rather than individual isolated segments) constitutes a “proof” (Olivier & Payette, 2010: 69–94). Constructing an argument is a discursive operation that has its own rules. It is also a concrete practice crucial for a valid proof. The argument deploys diverse ways of illustrating, exemplifying, and justifying its assertions (Perelman, 2012: 135–143). Another aspect to recall from Toulmin is that the argument requires not only convincing data and solid reasoning but also anticipating and addressing possible objections. Various fields of argument have distinct logics, institutions, and specific publics or recipients that the reasoning necessarily considers. The criteria and types of justification vary, and the standards of judgment differ from one field to another. The argument can evolve and turn back to its initial presuppositions and most distant foundations. Once again, writing strategies allow one to take a position in a complex argumentative space. Moreover, as several observers have argued, writing is a place for ideas to emerge and be debated (Schindler & Schäfer, 2021: 20).

Writing strategies, as I understand them, cannot be geared exclusively to field notes; much more is to be integrated into the development of the historical and sociological explanation. “Happy serendipity” (Greiffenhagen et al., 2011: 100) that moves reasoning outside existing accounts can be triggered by an odd comment in an interview or inconsistencies in the archives, contradictory memories, opposing opinions and interpretations, unexpected events, and public confrontations. Examining writing practices also reminds us that the boundaries between quantitative and qualitative approaches are not closed, and that certain basic practices are present on both sides. Greiffenhagen et al. give an interesting account of how a mathematical model is achieved through discussions over “plausible possibilities” and “sensible interpretations”:

Models do not build themselves any more than they interpret themselves; it is neither a predominantly mechanical nor purely deductive process. Of course, some standard techniques are involved; they are not starting from scratch. But choices still have to be made, and these are frequently based on intuitions, hunches and ideas of what is needed that have not yet been fully rationalized. (Greiffenhagen et al., 2011: 103)

My research experience mainly concerns semiotic and historical models, but I recognize the type of continuous modification, testing, and checking that all formalization and ultimately all explanation require. In my opinion, “real life methods” involve collaborations, power relations, social and political positioning, and an awareness of the efficiency of history and the many languages that shape the present; all of that must be somehow considered if we want to examine the entire reasoning process, rather than the writing practices themselves exclusively. This is a common “distribution of reflexivity” in ethnographic participatory approaches (Bieler et al., 2021; Colyar, 2009) and I am inclined to make it a central element of the epistemology of the social sciences.

I have departed from the primary field of phenomenological sociology to underscore forms of reasoning and some of the writing strategies widely used in the human sciences. Nevertheless, our initial inquiries into the various degrees of objectification of experience – namely, the institution, circulation, and reproduction of meaning – remain pertinent. It could be argued that the postulate of adequacy is the tipping point of any interpretive explanation. For example, how does sociology manage to shed light on local histories, specific milieus, and their reticular maneuvers through the prism of global processes or transformations (Tilly, 2001; Wolf, 2010)? Conversely, how does it shed light on interconnected global phenomena based on events, singular experiences, and personal trials (Abbott, 1992)? We also encounter such a tipping point when we assume the deep dialogicity of languages and discourses, and the situated character of knowledge (see also Koselleck, 1997; Haraway, 1998; Bevir, 2000; Skinner, 2002). We seek to sidestep the various reductionisms or determinisms that too often accompany even interpretive positions in sociology, notably the idea that social realities are not only analogous to texts but should also be interpreted as purely semantic objects or emergent realities that are entirely linguistic in nature.

Conclusion

The postulate of adequacy debate has transcended Weber and Schütz’s epistemologies. I have argued that those seeking to understand the dynamics of meaning in society must consider both the hermeneutic and the pragmatic dimensions of the explanatory process. They do not only have to ascertain the adequation of their scientific concepts to “historical reality” or “social interaction”. The fields of the history of ideas, rhetoric, or literary studies, and the philosophy of science also exhibit a strong awareness of the multifold meaning and extension of adequation. Debates over contextualism/conventionalism in the history of ideas, for example, realism/constructivism in the philosophy of science, or subjectivity/commitment in ethnography, each put forward a large spectrum or variety of ontological, epistemological, or practical responses, and those other debates float in that sea on which we currently navigate.

Argument and reasoning are inseparable from writing strategies, broadly conceived. Writing is a device for dissemination and knowledge transfer, but also appears as a site of discovery – a site for synthesis, reflection, and critical thinking. The ethical and political dimensions of writing resurface periodically in the human sciences, in different practical contexts – whether engaging in a public debate, participating in commissions of inquiry, or collaborating on research. These ethical and political dimensions of research have become focal points in scientific discourse, often posing challenges and creating tensions between stakeholders. On a more fundamental level, the work of description and explanation takes on a new light when the subject of knowledge is scrutinized with respect to its position within social discourse and writing. Like the notion of “text,” whose meaning extends to multiple forms of expression and sign systems (or semiotic processes), “writing” pertains to all stages of reasoning and argumentation, extending from self-representation and research team interactions to the dynamics with interlocutors and addressees, even when these voices are far from forming a single “community”. The postulate of adequacy no longer aligns solely with the logic of science or ordinary speech. Rather, it brings us back, more directly than Weber and Schütz did, to the fundamental question of what humans collectively desire, how human worlds and their multiple realities are constructed, and how our reflections and explanations engage in the meaningful dialectic of social activity.