Critical Research in the Social Sciences

CRITICAL RESEARCH IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES A TRANSDISCIPLINARY EAST-WEST HANDBOOK Edited by Roger Heacock and Édouard Conte Published by the Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Institute of International Studies Birzeit University and the Institute for Social Anthropology Austrian Academy of Sciences 2011 Critical Research in the Social Sciences: A Transdisciplinary East-West Handbook Edited by Roger Heacock and Édouard Conte Published by the Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Institute of International Studies Birzeit University and the Institute for Social Anthropology Austrian Academy of Sciences On behalf of the TEMPUS Joint European Program (JEP) “Social Science Methodology for Palestine” (CASOP): Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Institute, Birzeit University (Majdi Al-Malki, Coordinator), the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna (Andre Gingrich, Grantholder) and IREMAM (Institut de Recherches sur le Monde Arabe et Musulman) Aix-en-Provence, France English translation: Nadim Mseis (Chapters 3, 7, 10) First Edition - 2011 © All Rights Reserved ISBN ???????????????? Birzeit University, P.O.Box 14, Birzeit - Palestine Tel: +972 2 2982939, Fax: +972 2 2982946 E-mail: [email protected] Website: http://home.birzeit.edu/giis Design & Layout By: Al Nasher Advertising Agency, Ramallah - Palestine Table of Contents Chapter One Disciplinary Building Blocks, Space-Time Reconfigurations 7 By Édouard Conte and Roger Heacock Chapter Two The Ethics of Social Science Research 65 By Laleh Khalili Chapter Three The Silence of Phenomena: Approximating the Question of Method 83 By Esmail al-Nashif Chapter Four Historical sociology and the renewal of the social sciences 123 By Elizabeth Picard Chapter Five Quantitative Versus Qualitative Approaches in Demography 147 By Youssef Courbage Chapter Six Anthropological Comparison as a Research Method in Arabia: Concepts, Inventory, and a Case Study 165 By Andre Gingrich Chapter Seven Researching in an Unsuitable Environment: The Palestinian Case 191 By Majdi Al-Malki Chapter Eight The Stakes and Uses of Law in the Social Sciences: A Focus on the Palestinian Experience 213 By Bernard Botiveau Chapter Nine The Portrayal of Islamic Family Law in Europe 241 By Nahda Shehada Chapter Ten The Crisis of Methodology in Arabic Publications: The Lebanese Case 259 Ghassan Al-Ezzi Chapter Eleven Conclusion Revisiting the Theses on Feuerbach 291 By Roger Heacock and Édouard Conte CRITICAL RESEARCH IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES A TRANSDISCIPLINARY EAST-WEST HANDBOOK CHAPTER ONE DISCIPLINARY BUILDING BLocKS, SPace-TIME ReconfIGUratIONS By Édouard Conte and Roger Heacock The present handbook can only serve its purpose to the extent that it is critical, that is to say, that it proposes alternative avenues of approach, by raising red flags and green ones, as the case may be, or at the very least flashes the orange light of caution in the face of those researchers who are starting out, or who experience epistemological doubts about their relationship to the subject of their scientific curiosity. This collective effort is thus to be seen as the attempt to incarnate or at least to suggest critical avenues of approach to the many fascinating questions posed by the world in which we live and work. We ask the reader’s indulgence, because we the criticizers also need to be criticized, as we undoubtedly will be. If this happens, and if we do benefit from the critical dialogue with our readers, will we consider that we have contributed to the development of a contemporary reading of the requirements of social science methodology. - 7 - Critical Research in the Social Sciences: A Transdisciplinary East-West Handbook I. Building Blocks 1. Is the Expression “Social Science” a Contradiction in Terms? The processes that constitute and transform human societies are co-determined in infinitely complex fashions by overarching contingencies as well as multiple manifestations of individual agency. Can they be apprehended and cogently compared in terms of rationally definable causality, in other words “scientifically”? Or is the student of society, disposing of necessarily limited and selective data or sources, reduced to developing intuitive approaches biased by his or her own intellectual heritage, social position, political constraints and convictions, or career and material interests? Putting this query provisionally on one side, let us first ask how one could hope to apply a valid, if not “scientific” method in studying collective phenomena. These are by definition fluid, unique in their configurations, causes, and outcomes, and non reproducible. Hence they cannot be subjected to experimentation. Even controlled comparison is difficult to frame. Is it then at all “reasonable” – a term so cherished in modern “Western” thought – to expect that regularities be brought to light and “laws” formulated? Might ensuing “models”, beyond enabling abstract comprehension, guide present or future conduct or policy? Issues as daunting as these have been at the core of methodological and philosophical debate ever since Auguste Comte (1798-1852) coined the term “sociology” in the mid-nineteenth century. He predicted the emergence of a “positive” social science set in analogy to natural science, and thus ignited a seemingly endless discussion: can the study of social processes be subsumed under the heading of science? Whatever the view held, it became clear that deeply embedded normative visions of fields no lesser than history or law could no longer be taken at face value. Yet, social constellations and processes remained elusive, as did the position of the social actor and analyst: “As soon as we attempt to reflect, observed the great German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920), about the way in which life confronts us in immediate concrete situations, it presents an infinite multiplicity of successively and coexistently emerging and disappearing events, both “within” and “outside” ourselves. The absolute infinitude of this multiplicity is seen to remain undiminished even when our attention is focused on a single object, for instance a concrete act of exchange, as soon as we seriously attempt an exhaustive description of all the individual components of this individual phenomenon, to say nothing of explaining it causally” (Weber 1949: 72, quoted in Scharpf 2007: 3). The intangible character of social phenomena implies that basic units of reference are hard to define: “Social wholes, even if they exist, can never be - 8 - Chapter one - Disciplinary Building Blocks directly experienced either by anthropologist or informant. The scope and scale of social systems and cultural forms beyond the level of direct experience must be imagined” (Moore and Sanders 2006: 17). One could easily substitute the dyad “anthropologist or informant” with “sociologist or respondent”, “historian or sources”, etc. The relationship between analyst and object is a highly delicate issue for all social scientists. The sociologist for one is also a member of society, which makes the establishment of minimal critical distance an arduous exercise. Yet, can the anthropologist pretend to understand a society of which he or she is not a member? Historians who probe a corpus of written sources may find it exceedingly thorny to extract themselves from the cultural or normative “empire” of those who composed them. Is then the construction of a valid general methodology of the social sciences a task impossible? If one fails to consider that “social facts” are constructed rather than pre-given, yes (cf. Durkheim 1982). But not if one accepts that science, social or otherwise, should not be misconstrued with the simple formalization of pre-existing bodies of data just waiting “out there” to be “discovered” and classified. What, asks Weber, are the questions that sources suggest? How are they enunciated? “It is not the actual interconnection of ‘things’ but the conceptual interconnections of problems which defines the scope of the various sciences. A new ‘science’ emerges where new problems are pursued by new methods, and truths are thereby discovered which open up new significant points of view” (Weber 1949: 68 quoted in Bourdieu et al. 1991: 33). In this voluntarist perspective, the validity of results does not necessarily depend on the reproducibility of the configurations studied. It can only be achieved by recognising and understanding the ultimately creative discontinuities that characterize scientific reasoning. Rather than mimic the natural scientist, the social scientist must strive to “inculcate an attitude of vigilance that can use adequate knowledge of error and the mechanisms that can induce it as one means of overcoming it” (Bourdieu et al. 1991: 3). Before developing this iterative approach, it could be useful to recall the obvious: science too is a product of history. The modes in which questions are developed and error analyzed can remain overshadowed by uncomfortable intellectual legacies, not least that of scientism. Such legacies are best made explicit. 2. Overcoming the Legacy of Scientism Social science and history still bear the watermark of the evolutionist and positivist traditions borne by A. Comte (1970). Notwithstanding Comte’s belated recognition in France and the condescendence of contemporary - 9 - Critical Research in the Social Sciences: A Transdisciplinary East-West Handbook historians such as H. Taine or E. Renan toward his ideas, the “father of positivism” decisively influenced Durkheimian sociology. His positive philosophy was also taken up by J. S. Mill (Heilbron 1995: 258-266). Comte posited that human

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