Abstract
As early as the 1920s, Mannheim (1980, p. 84) criticized the way natural-scientific psychology had anchored is logic of empirical research. Unlike many others, however, he was able to successfully work out his own theories. His work co-founded a research tradition, which is currently of great interest to the social sciences; psychology, however, has remained largely unaffected. For Mannheim, the essential one-sidedness of nomothetic, natural-scientifically oriented methodology lies in its hypostatizing “one type of knowledge”—i.e., theoretical knowledge, abstracted from existential relations and exclusively geared towards universal validity, as it is—“as knowledge per se” and “one type of concepts—the so-called exact concepts, which have their origin […] in definitions” (Mannheim, 1982, p. 217)—as the only type of concept suitable for scientific endeavour.
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- 1.
See the General Introduction to this book on the inadequacy of the “quantitative” versus “qualitative” contrasting of methods.
- 2.
Praxeological methodology is an umbrella term for a number of concrete, well-established research approaches: narration analysis, objective hermeneutics, conversation analysis, discourse analysis, grounded theory in its new variants, and the documentary method. Each of these has its own history and includes a teachable and learnable research practice.
- 3.
All this, proceeds from the assumption that human practice is fundamentally structured by a superordinate—though usually implicit—horizon of sense. We refer to these structures of sense as ‘constructions’, ‘orientations’, and ‘plans of action’. We are aware of the fact that these terms are taken from different, more or less related traditions. At this point, it is of no great importance for our argument to designate how such structures are anchored, or to decide the degree to which subjects are conscious of them. We negotiate these questions in some detail in later sections of this chapter.
- 4.
Attempts to create artificial intelligence must explicate this implicit knowledge, i.e., translate it into a program code. This has proven difficult even for very simplest practical tasks (e.g., in order to transport a glass of water, a robot has to be programmed to ‘know’ that the concavity of the glass has to be constantly pointing upwards—something which goes without saying in our daily routines). Even the simplest cognitive functions or actions require “an almost infinite amount of knowledge; which we take for granted (it is so obvious as to be invisible) but which must be spoon-fed to the computer” (Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1992, p. 148).
- 5.
Goffmann (1981, p. 20), who achieved groundbreaking results, though he did little to explain his method, calls them “naturalistic observations”.
- 6.
Garfinkel’s writings are based on Schütz’s phenomenological sociology, especially on his later writings (see Schütz, 1967/1932).
- 7.
This principle can also be observed in the last example cited above.
- 8.
The following sections will give further detail on these rules.
- 9.
The concept of ‘understanding of the other’ (“Fremdverstehen”) was first formulated by Alfred Schütz (2004, p. 87ff., 95, 146, 219ff., 244ff., 259, 268ff., 304, 317, 399ff.). Methodological writings by Schütz as well as those by Garfinkel refer back to Schütz’s earlier writings.
- 10.
- 11.
In a systems theoretical perspective, this means to take into account the particular logic (“Eigenlogik”), i.e., the self-referentiality of the selected entity—be they autobiographic recounts, table talk or photos—and to analyze the entity in accordance with this particular logic.
- 12.
If the meaning of some self-evident everyday (inter)action—such as flirting—is made explicit, the situation usually changes in a fundamental way. This may, for example, be the case if one of two persons flirting says to the other, ‘We’re flirting so much we’ll miss the green light’. This remark abolishes flirting as the primary frame, i.e., as the frame which determines the interaction. Once the flirting is suspended, the attention of the driver or of the couple may refocus on the traffic, at least momentarily.
- 13.
For a critical examination and elaboration compare Przyborski, (2004, p. 19ff).
- 14.
- 15.
- 16.
- 17.
- 18.
Sometimes, this close exposure to the phenomenon may lead researchers to abandon questions which had directed their endeavours in an initial stage in order to follow more promising paths that better suite the phenomenon.
- 19.
- 20.
See Diekmann (2004, p. 217ff). in more detail.
- 21.
Reconstructive methods also have standards, but these are natural standards. Consequently, the whole logic of standardization is to be based on these natural standards of communication and interaction.
- 22.
- 23.
This also holds for content analysis, at least to some extent: The coding of categories found in openly collected material must be finished before the final interpretation of the material. Different coders are then expected to attain sufficiently identical results by applying the same system of categories to the same material. Utterances not anticipated in the coding rules have to be neglected or to be dumped in a rest category. From the point of view that we are developing her, content analysis (cf. Mayring, 2000) therefore rather belongs to the hypothesis testing side.
- 24.
For a critique of meta-theoretical premises of mainstream psychology see Slunecko (2008).
- 25.
A nomological hypothesis is a universal statement about facts and chains of events occuring within defined conditions. It is a statement about the relation between features which (if they ought to be or already have been operationalized) are also called variables (cf. Diekmann, 2004, p. 107ff.). Relations can take various forms: if-then, the more-the less, etc. Deterministic and probabilistic nomological hypotheses must be distinguished. Deterministic hypotheses formulate their validity without exceptions, while probabilistic hypotheses determine a certain statistical established probability for exceptions. The latter are more common within the social sciences.
- 26.
See for more detail: Przyborski and Wohlrab-Sahr (2008, p. 311ff).
- 27.
What is here treated in a predominantly theoretical way will be empirically charged—through concrete research examples—in our other contribution to this volume.
- 28.
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Przyborski, A., Slunecko, T. (2009). Against Reification! Praxeological Methodology and its Benefits. In: Valsiner, J., Molenaar, P., Lyra, M., Chaudhary, N. (eds) Dynamic Process Methodology in the Social and Developmental Sciences. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-95922-1_7
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