Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-p566r Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T06:39:55.974Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Concept Formation in Political Science: An Anti-Naturalist Critique of Qualitative Methodology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2008

Mark Bevir
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley. E-Mail: mbevir@berkeley.edu
Asaf Kedar
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley. E-Mail: asafkedar@berkeley.edu

Abstract

This article offers an anti-naturalist philosophical critique of the naturalist tendencies within qualitative concept formation as developed most prominently by Giovanni Sartori and David Collier. We begin by articulating the philosophical distinction between naturalism and anti-naturalism. Whereas naturalism assumes that the study of human life is not essentially different from the study of natural phenomena, anti-naturalism highlights the meaningful and contingent nature of social life, the situatedness of the scholar, and so the dialogical nature of social science. These two contrasting philosophical approaches inspire, in turn, different strategies of concept formation. Naturalism encourages concept formation that involves reification, essentialism, and an instrumentalist view of language. Anti-naturalism, conversely, challenges reified concepts for eliding the place of meanings, essentialist concepts for eliding the place of contingency, and linguistic instrumentalism for eliding the situatedness of the scholar and the dialogical nature of social science. Based on this philosophical framework, we subject qualitative concept formation to a philosophical critique. We show how the conceptual strategies developed by Sartori and Collier embody a reification, essentialism, and instrumentalist view of language associated with naturalism. Although Collier's work on concept formation is much more flexible and nuanced than Sartori's, it too remains attached to a discredited naturalism.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Almond, Gabriel A., and Verba, Sidney. 1963. The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Austin, J. L. 1965. How to Do Things with Words. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ayer, A.J. 1967. Man as a subject for science. In Philosophy, Politics and Society, 3rd Series, ed. Laslett, P. and Runciman, W.. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Bennett, Andrew. 2003. Letter from the transitional president. Qualitative Methods 1 (1): 13.Google Scholar
Berger, Peter, and Pullberg, Stanley. 1965. Reification and the sociological critique of consciousness. History and Theory 4 (2): 196211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berman, Sheri. 1998. The Social Democratic Moment: Ideas and Politics in the Making of Interwar Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bevir, Mark. 1999. The Logic of the History of Ideas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bevir, Mark. 2005. New Labour: A Critique. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Biernacki, Richard. 1995. The Fabrication of Labor: Germany and Britain, 1640–1914. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Brady, Henry E., and Collier, David, eds. 2004. Rethinking Social Inquiry: Diverse Tools, Shared Standards. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Collier, David. 1991. The comparative method: Two decades of change. In Comparative Political Dynamics: Global Research Perspectives, ed. Rustow, D. A. and Erickson, K. P.. New York: HarperCollins.Google Scholar
Collier, David, and Adcock, Robert. 1999. Democracy and dichotomies: A pragmatic approach to choices about concepts. Annual Review of Political Science 2: 537–65.Google Scholar
Collier, David, and Levitsky, Steven. 1997. Democracy with adjectives: Conceptual innovation in comparative research. World Politics 49 (3): 430–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collier, David, and Mahon, James E. Jr. 1993. Conceptual “stretching” revisited: Adapting categories in comparative analysis. American Political Science Review 87 (4): 845–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collier, David, and Seawright, Jason. 2004. Glossary. In Rethinking Social Inquiry: Diverse Tools, Shared Standards, ed. Brady, H. E. and Collier, D.. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Dahl, Robert A., Bewley, Truman F., Rudolph, Susanne Hoeber, and Mearsheimer, John. 2004. What have we learned? In Problems and Methods in the Study of Politics, ed. Shapiro, I. et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Davidson, Donald. 1980. Essays on Actions and Events. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Dewey, John. 1960. The Quest for Certainty: A Study of the Relation of Knowledge and Action. New York: Putnam.Google Scholar
Dilthey, Wilhelm. 1976. Selected Writings, ed. Rickman, and trans. H.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dryzek, John S. 2002. A post-positivist policy-analytic travelogue. The Good Society 11 (1): 3236.Google Scholar
Fischer, Frank. 1993. Reconstructing policy analysis: A postpositivist perspective. Policy Sciences 25: 333–39.Google Scholar
Fodor, Jerry, and LePore, Ernest. 1992. Holism: A Shopper's Guide. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Fuchs, Stephan. 2001. Against Essentialism: A Theory of Culture and Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 2002. Truth and Method. New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Goertz, Gary. 2006. Social Science Concepts: A User's Guide. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hallett, Garth L. 1991. Essentialism: A Wittgenstein Critique. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Hartsock, Nancy. 1983. Money, Sex, and Power: Toward a Feminist Historical Materialism. Boston: Northeastern University Press.Google Scholar
Hawkesworth, Mary. 2006. Feminist Inquiry: From Political Conviction to Methodological Innovation. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Hempel, Carl. 1942. The function of general laws in history. Journal of Philosophy 39: 3548.Google Scholar
Husserl, Edmund. 1970. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, trans. D. Carr. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, James. 2006. Consequences of positivism: A pragmatist assessment. Comparative Political Studies 39 (2): 224–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kittel, Bernhard. 2005. The American political methodological debate: Where is the battlefield? Qualitative Methods 3 (1): 1218.Google Scholar
Knorr Cetina, Karin. 1999. Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Lane, Jan-Erik, and Stenlund, Hans. 1984. Power. In Social Science Concepts: A Systematic Analysis, ed. Sartori, G.. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Lin, Ann Chih. 1998. Bridging positivist and interpretivist approaches to qualitative methods. Policy Studies Journal 26 (1): 162–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luebbert, Gregory M. 1991. Liberalism, Fascism, or Social Democracy: Social Classes and the Political Origins of Regimes in Interwar Europe. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1969. A mistake about causality in social science. In Philosophy, Politics and Society, 2d series, ed. Laslett, P. and Runciman, W.. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Marsh, David, and Savigny, Heather. 2004. Political science as a broad church: The search for a pluralist discipline. Politics 24 (3): 155–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oren, Ido. 2006. Can political science emulate the natural sciences? The problem of self-disconfirming analysis. Polity 38 (1): 72100.Google Scholar
Patomäki, Heikki, and Wight, Colin. 2000. After postpositivism? The promises of critical realism. International Studies Quarterly 44: 213–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patrick, Glenda M. 1984. Political culture. In Social Science Concepts: A Systematic Analysis, ed. Sartori, G.. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Peirce, Charles. 1998. Pragmatism. In Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings, Vol. 2: 1893–1913. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Pitkin, Hannah F. 1972. Wittgenstein and Justice: On the Significance of Ludwig Wittgenstein for Social and Political Thought. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Quine, Willard van Orman, and Ullian, J.. 1970. The Web of Belief. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Ricoeur, Paul. 1976. Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press.Google Scholar
Ringer, Fritz. 1997. Max Weber's Methodology: The Unification of the Cultural and Social Sciences. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Rorty, Richard. 1980. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Sartori, Giovanni, ed. 1984. Social Science Concepts: A Systematic Analysis. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Sartori, Giovanni 1991. Comparing and miscomparing. Journal of Theoretical Politics 3 (3): 243–57.Google Scholar
Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1966. Course in General Linguistics, trans. Baskin, W., ed. Bally, C. and Sechehaye, A.. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Schutz, Alfred. 1972. The Phenomenology of the Social World, trans. G. Walsh and F. Lehnert. London: Heinemann Educational Books.Google Scholar
Schwartz-Shea, Peregrine, and Yanow, Dvora. 2002. “Reading” “Methods” “Texts”: How research methods texts construct political science. Political Research Quarterly 55 (2): 457–86.Google Scholar
Searle, John R. 1969. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. London: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sewell, William H. Jr. 1980. Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sewell, William H. Jr. 1996. Three temporalities: Toward an eventful sociology. In The Historic Turn in the Human Sciences, ed. McDonald, Terrence J.. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Shapiro, Ian, Smith, Rogers M., and Masoud, Tarek E., eds. 2004. Problems and Methods in the Study of Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Skinner, Burrhus F. 1938. The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis. New York: Appleton-Century.Google Scholar
Stedman Jones, Gareth. 1983. Languages of Class: Studies in English Working Class History, 1832–1982. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles. 1971. Interpretation and the sciences of man. Review of Metaphysics 25 (1): 351.Google Scholar
Tickner, J. Ann. 1998. International relations: Post-positivist and feminist perspectives. In New Handbook of Political Science, ed. Goodin, R. E. and Klingemann, H.-D.. Oxford: Oxford University Pres.Google Scholar
Wahrman, Dror. 1995. Imagining the Middle Class: The Political Representation of Class in Britain, c. 1780–1840. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Watson, John B. 1924. Behaviorism. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Weber, Max 1949. “Objectivity” in social science and social policy. The Methodology of the Social Sciences. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society, 2 vols., ed. Roth, G. and Wittich, C.. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Wendt, Alexander. 1999. Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winch, Peter. 1958. The Idea of a Social Science. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 2001. Philosophical Investigations. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Yanow, Dvora. 2003. Interpretive empirical political science: What makes this not a subfield of qualitative methods. Qualitative Methods 1 (2): 913.Google Scholar