Historical-Interpretivism: A Methodological Toolkit

• In Event: History of Sociology and Social Thought Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Roundtable 3: Excavating Method in the Production of Sociological Thought

Abstract

The historical method shares many ontological priors with the post-structuralist/hermeneutic social science tradition known as interpretivism. Even though many ground-breaking texts in comparative-historical sociology employ aspects of both traditions and are legible under both frameworks, there has been no systematic attempt to integrate them into a coherent methodological framework. This paper is a response to this need. Synthesising methodological and empirical literature from both traditions, I outline the principles and methodological toolkit of a qualitative social scientific paradigm I call historical-interpretivism. I propose three pillars of a historical-interpretivist strategy: curious abduction, contextualised self-interpretation, and entangled comparison. I additionally offer four principles for comparative case selection under this tradition. Taken together, this methodological infrastructure supplies the foundations for a rigorous analysis that is historical and social scientific, descriptive and explanatory, but also transparent and open to critique. The paper offers guidance to scholars with explanatory research ambitions who are interested in both excavating meaning-making and taking local contingencies seriously. It offers a stepwise procedure that promises sharpened analytic leverage to projects of this nature and introduces a standard of rigour to interpretivist scholarship.

Author

• Emil Anne Wolff, Leiden University