Elucidating Social Science Concepts An Interpretivist Guide [Hardcover]

Concepts have always been foundational to the social science enterprise. This book is a guide to working with them. Against the positivist project of concept reconstruction the formulation of a technical, purportedly neutral vocabulary for measuring, comparing, and generalizingSchaffer adopts an interpretivist approach that he calls elucidation. Elucidation includes both a reflexive examination of social science technical language and an investigation into the language of daily life. It is intended to produce a clear view of both types of language, the relationship between them, and the practices of life and power that they evoke and sustain. After an initial chapter explaining what elucidation is and how it differs from reconstruction, the book lays out practical elucidative strategiesgrounding, locating, and exposingthat help situate concepts in particular language games, times and tongues, and structures of power. It also explores the uses to which elucidation can be put and the moral dilemmas that attend such uses. By illustrating his arguments with lively analyses of such concepts as person, family, and democracy, Schaffer shows rather than tells, making the book both highly readable and an essential guide for social science research.

Contents:  Preface  1. Why Do Concepts Need Elucidating?  2. Grounding: Elucidating How People Understand a Concept   3. Locating: Elucidating Historical and Linguistic Specificity  4. Exposing: Elucidating Power  5. The Ethics of Elucidating

A century after Dilthey, we are familiar with what interpretivists are opposed to. Now we know what one extremely clear-thinking member of the tradition thinks interpretivism ought to mean with respect to social science concepts. Written in a plain-speaking and practical way, the book speaks to more than concepts: although interpretivists lã2