Real Social Science: Applied Phronesis

2013

In Making Social Science Matter (2001), Bent Flyvbjerg proposed a radical challenge to positivistic versions of social inquiry and rational choice. Social inquiry according to Flyvbjerg is not really a ‘science’. The latter, he claimed had roots in the notion of epistemé or what Aristotle viewed as certain and reliable knowledge. Flyvbjerg viewed this type of knowledge as ‘theoretical’. As realized in modern nomological views of science, particulars are subsumed and governed by general laws. In contrast to this nomological version of social inquiry, Flyvbjerg claimed that knowledge of the social world was phronetic in Aristotle’s sense. It is practical, context bound, and independent of theoretical knowledge. Phronesis required the wisdom, insight and skill of an interested participant in social life. Flyvbjerg’s work found a sympathetic ear in the spreading discontent with the rational choice theories and quantitative approaches dominant in major political science journals.Yet such...

In Bent Flyvbjerg, Todd Landman, and Sanford Schram, eds., Real Social Science: Applied Phronesis, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 285-297, 2012

The term ‘phronetic social science’ was coined in Making Social Science Matter (Flyvbjerg 2001). However, as pointed out in that volume and by Schram (2006), phronetic social science existed well before this particular articulation of the concept, but it was just not organized, recognized or named as such. Rather, it occurred here and there as scholars had adopted phronesis-like methods for their own purposes. The present title is the first organized volume of empirical–practical work in phronetic social science. Before Making Social Science Matter, phronesis, as a critical term of Aristotelian philosophy, had been theorized and its continuing importance as a key concept in Western thought had been convincingly argued by distinguished philosophers like Hans Georg Gadamer, Hannah Arendt, Alasdair MacIntyre and Richard J. Bernstein, among others. But no one had developed the theory and philosophy of phronesis into a practical methodology that could be applied by researchers interested in actually practising a phronetic social science. Making Social Science Matter developed such a methodology. Its implications were discussed and developed further in Making Political Science Matter (Schram and Caterino 2006). After these two theoretical–methodological contributions, it was evident that an important next step in demonstrating the usefulness of phronetic social science would be to illustrate, with concrete examples, how applied phronesis works in practical, empirical social science research. The contributions on applied phronesis contained in the present volume make clear that this next step has now been taken.

2020

In this article, I aim to clarify why the idea of prudence or practical rationality, as embodied in Aristotle's concept of phronesis, is an object of special interest to some prominent social scientists such as G. H. von Wright and B. Flyvbjerg. I raise the hypothesis that if the concept of phronesis is elaborated upon as a value-rationality, as von Wright suggests, one can find some methodological hints for re-enchanting the status of the social sciences. Specifically, one can take a new stance in the debate whether or not social sciences can meet the requirements of so-called normal science, as the natural sciences do. As a crucial premise for outlining both the methodological advantages and disadvantages of phronetic social sciences in Flyvbjerg's sense, I point out the role of what I call provocative humanism, which displays a developed vision of von Wright's theory of provocative pessimism.

Journal of Political Power, pp. 1-32, 2014

Clegg, Flyvbjerg and Haugaard debate the strengths and weaknesses of a Foucauldian-Nietzschean critique of power compared to a tradition exemplified by Lukes and Habermas. Flyvbjerg and Clegg argue that the pursuit of universal normative principles and of rationality without power may lead to oppressive utopian thinking. Drawing on the Aristotelian tradition of phronesis they propose a contextualist form of critique that situates itself in analysis of local practices to render domination transparent and open to change. While Haugaard accepts there cannot be a universal view that transcends the particularities of context, he argues that the phronetic approach is crypto-normative because it implicitly presupposes unacknowledged liberal normative premises; moreover, any use of ‘truth’ as a criterion follows Enlightenment principles of verification.

Civic Sociology, 2024

Normative sociology and phronetic social science are research programmes that aim to overcome the dead end of positivism and the obfuscating effects of cryptonormativity, promising renewed social science disciplines that engage normatively with the public. In this article, I aim to deepen our understanding of social science's (re)turn to normativity by examining how the disciplinary aims of such programmes fare against their conception of practical reason. I consider Tariq Modood's presentation of the Bristol School of Multiculturalism as a form of normative sociology and begin from its understanding of practical reason after Michael Oakeshott, before specifying Modood's recommendations, also with reference to other prominent versions of normative sociology. I then show that Bent Flyvbjerg's phronetic social science, an Aristotle-inspired programme that has received widespread attention, is a particularly useful object of comparison: it bears high proximity to the Bristol School of Multiculturalism by being contextualist, dialogical, and prising public engagement. Most importantly, it too espouses antirationalist arguments via the emphasis it places on the Aristotelian notion of phronesis (practical wisdom). I argue that Oakeshott's and Aristotle's insights on the character and growth of practical reason both clarify and problematize the disciplinary aims of normative sociology and phronetic social science. Thus, to develop and defend normative social science, it is necessary to address a host of resulting challenges, most centrally the following: phronesis as an intellectual virtue based on one's disposition, character, and experience largely eludes disciplinary-level training of the kind that social scientists and political theorists have received, exercise, or provide to students.

British Journal of Sociology, vol. 64, No. 4, pp. 758–762, 2013

Social science today often contents itself with trying to explain particular events in terms of general models without understanding those events as experienced by the people being studied and without providing findings that might help people address the problems they are experiencing. It can be argued that the recent development of social science has focused too much on its own ‘evidence-inference methodological core’ and has lost sight of what is being studied, who is being studied, and how the results of research can challenge popular understanding, misconceptions, and power relations. At the most basic level, our edited volume Real Social Science: Applied Phronesis (Flyvbjerg, Landman and Schram 2012) is designed to provide examples of research that is situated in real communities, grows out of the concerns of people in those communities and is conducted in ways that can help those people address those concerns. These examples demonstrate that what we are calling ‘phronetic social science’ (as originally coined by Bent Flyvbjerg) offers a meaningful approach for making social science useful and relevant to real people experiencing real problems. Phronetic social science calls for social scientists foregoing the attempt to build generic models of social behaviour and instead situate their work in ongoing political struggles as they occur in specific contexts.

New Political Science, vol. 35, no. 3, pp. 359-372, 2013

For over fifty years, successive waves of critique have underscored that the apolitical character of much of Political Science research betrays the founding mission of the discipline to have science serve democracy. The Caucus for a New Political Science was originally based on such a critique, and the Perestroika movement in the discipline included a call for more problem-driven as opposed to theory- or method-driven work that would better connect Political Science research to ongoing political struggles. In recent years, movements for a public Sociology and public Anthropology as well as dissonant movements in Economics and related fields have added to the insistence that social science research was too often disconnected from the real world. Phronetic Social Science has emerged out of the ferment for change in the social sciences, starting with the much-debated book by Bent Flyvbjerg, Making Social Science Matter (Cambridge 2001). Flyvbjerg critiqued the social sciences for mimicking the natural sciences while proposing an alternative approach that focuses research on helping people address the problems they are facing in the context they are facing them. Today, Phronetic Social Science goes beyond the call for an alternative approach to social inquiry and its growing adherents are providing evidence that this alternative approach to doing research can enrich the social sciences by more effectively connecting research to efforts to address real world problems as people experience them. This essay provides a genealogy of efforts to connect Political Science to politics, a review of the major critiques of mainstream research, an explication of the rationale for more problem-driven, mixed methods research, a specification of the key principles of the phronetic approach, and examples of its application in the public realm. The essay concludes with implications for realizing a more political Political Science by way of taking a phronetic approach.

The Australian Anthropological Society Newsletter, no. 130, pp. 33-34., 2013

Politics & Society, 2004