Tension points in real social science: A response

Abstract

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 (Cambridge, 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 behavior and instead situate their work in ongoing political struggles as they occur in specific contexts.The three short essays in this symposium on issues raised by our collection are most welcomed not just for their generous compliments but also for their thoughtful criticisms that help move the debate about our work further. The key issue is what to make of the idea of phronetic social science now that it is associated with a growing number of research projects across the social sciences. In our volume, we suggest that the case studies provided by our colleagues highlight how phronetic social science is not just context--specific and designed to be relevant to addressing issues people are confronting, but that it is research that is sensitive to power relations and the tension points that those power relations create. Focusing on tension points, we suggest, is key to making phronetic social science useful. These tension points highlight how power relations are standing in the way of addressing the particular problems being studied. The same can be said for this response. We focus on selected tension points our commentators have provided in the name of helping to make progress on moving phronetic social science forward. (Our commentators have given us much to consider but space limitations prevent us from considering all.)Our first tension point comes from Brian Caterino's ideas of 'mutual understanding' and 'collaboration' between researchers and actors. He appears to be arguing that phronetic social science must have these features, but we disagree. Phronetic researchers may decide such mutual understanding will form part

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