Interpretation and Social Knowledge: On the Use of Theory in the Human Sciences

by Isaac Ariail Reed

For the past fifty years anxiety over naturalism has driven debates in social theory. One side sees social science as another kind of natural science, while the other rejects the possibility of objective and explanatory knowledge. Interpretation and Social Knowledge suggests a different route, offering a way forward for an antinaturalist sociology that overcomes the opposition between interpretation and explanation and uses theory to build concrete, historically specific causal explanations of social phenomena.

Genres: Sociology, Philosophy

194 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Isaac Ariail Reed (1978-unknown) was born in Durham, NC, where he attended the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics before leaving for the northeast for college. Isaac writes social and political theory, cultural sociology and historical sociology and, occasionally, cultural commentary.

Reviews

[Jie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A clear, well written/organized book. Overall it’s a generalization of sociological theories of which Reed reorganizes into three epistemological modes, viz realism, normativism and interpretivism. According to Reed, substantially, social science is about producing the maximal knowledge which requires the alignment of ontology-epistemology-methodology of which the meaning making undoubtedly predominates the sense making. The most striking conclusion of this book is how interpretivism should outplay the positivism, since the meaning system cements the contextual situation of social actions where positivists perceive /alter/set the relationship between theory and reality.
Generally speaking Reed’s writing system is smooth and refined, though a bunch of abstruse and abstract theories involved. As an undergraduate majors in political science rather than sociology, this kind of reading nudges me to think beyond the qualitative-quantitative binarism, foregrounding the interpretation as preliminary rather than complementary.
The one star deducted is for the generalization problem mentioned approaching the ending part. Still it remains ambiguous and doubtful how this interpretivism can be generalized(according to Reed the purpose of social science is to produce maximal interpretation which does not level the applicable generalization) and conflicting theories be matched to varying contingencies(according to Reed the contention will be addressed by the most fitting theory when theories contradict each other, so herein the selection principle is highly contingent and pragmatic *termed as practical rationality*).
This book is time consuming but rewarding.

[Alec · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a dense book, but a good one. Clocking in at just under 200 pages, reading it well requires some patience on the part of the reader. Reed is a social theorist but a careful one, and his definitions are slowly introduced, explicated and developed through the course of the book. Many of the examples he uses were unknown to me before, including Leela Ghandi's Affective Communities and Susan Bordo's essay on anorexia. Others I was dimly aware of, including Clifford Geertz's work on the deeper meaning of Balinese cultural patterns, notably his now famous essay on the multiple meanings of the Balinese cockfight. The point of these examples is to illustrate the possibility of what Reed calls "maximal interpretations," or interpretations that go beyond "minimal facts" to construct a theoretical model (or models, as he ultimately suggests is preferable) that provide accounts of causation. He contrasts realist and normative accounts of social phenomena with interpretive ones, and argues, in essence, that any advance in the human sciences depends on embracing an interpretive "epistemic mode," one that privileges the actually existing plurality of theories for social phenomena and is best represented by the Geertz and Bordo essays. So the Balinese cockfight has a number of theoretical interpretations, and explicating them while covering the minimal social facts of the cockfight itself creates a maximal interpretation that suggests or points to (but rarely defines totally) a particular meaning. The resulting explanations are maximal interpretations that can tell us things about causality, but they will not be as reductionist as a comprehensive theory as, by nature of the human sciences, they must embrace meanings that are contradictory, even though they produce motivations on the part of human actors. A good breakdown of the central arguments are provided in Leslie MacColman's review from 2015, which is available online.

[Laksh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reed does a great job explaining why interpretation isn’t just an add-on to social science but really central to how we know anything about society. I liked the way he broke things down into realist, normative, and interpretive approaches, and how he showed each in action. Some chapters get pretty abstract, and it’s not exactly a fast read, but I came away with a clearer sense of why debates about method (quantitative vs qualitative or smth) often miss the bigger picture. It’s a book that takes some effort, but it pays off if you care about theory and how we use it.

[Simon Deng · Rating 5 out of 5]

To be a traveler.

[Carly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful defense of interpretivism and valiant effort to make clear how causality would work in such a paradigm. Remarkably clear explanations of critical realism (not so much of field theory). Also, not entirely clear that the final upshot is so different from Sewell. Room for refinement but extremely exciting material.