5/5 Super Buch. Sollte man unbedingt gelesen haben, wenn man in den Sozialwissenschaften unterwegs ist, aber eigentlich auch für andere Disziplinen interessant. Dann aber vielleicht etwas schwerer zugänglich. Alles in allem ein sehr lehrreiches Buch zur Frage, wie man zu Ideen und Erkenntnissen kommt. ## Highlights ### Small N Analyses Small-N comparison attempts to combine the advantages of single-case analysis with those of multicase analysis, at the same time trying to avoid the disadvantages of each. On the one hand, it retains much information about each case. On the other, it compares the different cases to test arguments in ways that are impossible with a single case. By making these detailed comparisons, it tries to avoid the standard criticism of single-case analysis—that one can’t generalize from a single case—as well as the standard criticism of multicase analysis— that it oversimplifies and changes the meaning of variables by removing them from their context. Small-N analysis has been characteristic of a number of areas in social science. The field of comparative politics has been built on small-N comparison, as has historical sociology. ### Social Construction Similarly, universal predicates are in general uninteresting even if they are consequential. Thus, the idea that this or that aspect of reality—gender roles, say,or accountancy is socially constructed is not particularly interesting. Everything is socially constructed in some in some sense, and probably even in a relatively strong sense. The interesting questions involve how gender roles are socially constructed or what the consequences of the constructed nature of accounting experts are. ### How to find the real puzzle in the social sciences We often come at an issue with only a gut feeling that there is something interesting about it. We often don't know even what an answer ought to look like. Indeed, figuring out what the puzzle really is and what the answer ought to look like often happen in parallel with finding the answer itself. This is why many if not most writers of social science dissertations and books write the introductions to their dissertations and books last, after all the substantive chapters have been written. Their original research proposals usually turn out to have just been hunting licenses, most often licenses to hunt animals very different from the ones that have ended up in the undergraduate thesis or the doctoral dissertation. ### Positivism and Interpretivism The first two debates concern methodology proper. One strand of social science argues that social life can be measured. These measures are independent of context, replicable by different people, and comparable for accuracy and validity. By contrast, another strand of social science holds that measurement of social life is not possible or—what is the same thing—that the things that can be measured are unimportant or meaningless. Events that seem to be measurable in fact acquire meaning only when it is assigned to them in interaction. Hence, there can be no decontextualized, universal measure. This opposition is quite drastic. For the first group, social research takes the form of measurement and counting. For the second, it takes the form of interaction and interpretation. These two positions are called positivism and interpretivism. ### Metacritiques, Critiques, and responses for major stands in social science ![[Metacritiques, Critiques, and responses for major stands in social science.pdf]] ### How to Solve a Problem 1. Understand the Problem: What is rhe unknown? What are the data? What ate the “conditions"? Draw a figure. Introduce suitable notation Separate the parts of the conditions. 2. Devise a Plan: Have you seen this problem before or something like ip Do you know another problem with the same unknown? If you have a related problem and its solution, how can you use that here? Can you restate the problem? Solve a part of it? Solve an analogous problem? Solve a bigger problem of which it is a part? 3. Carry Out the Plan: Check each step. Are they really correct? Can you prove it? 4. Look Back: Can you check the result? Can you derive the result differently? Can you use the result to solve another problem? ### All (methodological) Roads are always open We see then, that within a particular tradition of methods that is widely understood as strongly behaviorist, it is still possible to move in either direction. Farkas’s move is strongly toward behavior that can be measured. Lesthaeghe's is toward a cultural construct (the rise of individualism) that can be "measured" only as an implicit commonality among existing sets of measured variables. Once again, we see that a commitment at one level to one or the other side of a fractal heuristic does not translate into a commitment at the next level. All roads are always open.