A Pragmatist Approach to Causality in Ethnography

Abstract

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Performance regulation in a networked healthcare system: From cosmetic to institutionalized compliance

“…These interviews lasted between 45 and 90 minutes and often included a demonstration of coding practice to the interviewer. We analysed the interviews of both studies using ‘abductive analysis’ (Tavory and Timmermans ), meaning that we coded all transcripts both inductively (also in a comparative fashion based on the 2013 and 2016 data) and deductively by using a coding scheme derived from our theoretical framework, and moved between data and theory iteratively. Details about the respondents and the coding scheme are included in the online appendix.…”

The Problem of “Cameo Appearances” in Mixed-methods Research: Implications for Twenty-first-century Ethnography

“…Despite the distinct logics undergirding qualitative and quantitative sampling schemes, contemporary ethnographic studies published in mainstream U.S. sociological journals commonly present findings in terms of causation and generalizability (see Abend, Petre, and Sauder 2013). In response to ensuing critiques that ethnography has adopted little more than the patina of causality, and in recognition of what seems to be an epistemic paradigm that demands publishable ethnographic research to yield causal, generalizable claims, a dawning methodological literature has attempted to articulate a kind of causation (and associated causal logics and languages) tailored specifically to ethnography (e.g., Katz 2001Katz , 2002Katz , 2015Luker 2008;Small 2009Small , 2013Sørenson 1998;Tavory and Timmermans 2013). As in the MMR field, pragmatism provides the philosophical basis for this alternative conception of causality in the ethnographic research field.…”

“…MMR proceeds largely on the philosophical basis of pragmatism, which, as described by Abbas Tashakkori and Charles Teddlie (2003a), provides a framework for deploying a range of methods based on the research question at hand and getting beyond "paradigm wars" (see also Onwuegbuzie, Johnson, and Collins 2009). The classic pragmatist paradigm entailed an experimentally fallibilist methodological orientation that privileged close, detailed observation of everyday experience and focused on the use-value of research for moral and political purposes (e.g., Addams [1902Addams [ ] 2002Dewey 1938;Peirce [1992] 1999; see also Tavory and Timmermans 2013). As extended to MMR, pragmatism serves as the contemporary rationale for selecting a set of methods deemed most likely to yield useful findings.…”