In the 1970s, a number of calls were made for a new kind ofinterpretive social science that would have ethnographyat its center (e.g., Bernstein, 1976; Dallmayr & McCarthy, 1977;Rabinow & Sullivan, 1979). In this chapter I will examine three ofthese calls: Charles Taylor’s proposal for an interpretive approachto political science, Anthony Giddens’s hermeneutically informedsociology, and Clifford Geertz’s interpretive anthropology. In eachcase, interpretation – hermeneutics – was regarded as animportant, even central, element. In each case, immersion in the socialpractices of a community – that is to say, ethnographic fieldwork– was considered crucial (though at the same time, as we shall seelater, ethnography itself was in crisis). In each case – insociology, political science, and anthropology – it was claimed thatthe new approach would resolve core dualisms that had plagued thediscipline. And, in each case, it was said that this would be because wewould study the key relationship of constitution betweenhumans and the world. This chapter begins our exploration of this notion ofconstitution, a notion that will lead us to a new way of practicingfieldwork. Once again, it will turn out to be important to get the ontologyright.