Thick Evaluation

Kirchin, Simon

doi:10.1093/oso/9780198803430.003.0006

Cited by 12 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…As the study progressed, we also began to see that DE-PENDENCY is not just any thick concept: it exhibits what Kirchin (2013aKirchin ( , 2017 calls "evaluative flexibility." This phenomenon occurs "when a thick concept is used to imply a pro idea in one context, but a con idea in another" (Kirchin, 2013a, p. 13).…”

Section: Methodological Purposesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A first purpose of invoking thick concepts is to make an epistemological point about the relationship between facts and values (Abend, 2008; De Vries & Gordijn, 2009; Gorski, 2013; Sayer, 2011, 2017; Thacher, 2015). For these authors, thick concepts challenge the notion of a strict dichotomy between fact and value commonly assumed in mainstream epistemologies of the social sciences (Davydova & Sharrock, 2003; Gorski, 2013).…”

Section: Two Purposes For Thick Concepts In the Social Sciencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Thick Concepts in Social Research: What, Why, and How?

Weele

2021

International Journal of Qualitative Methods

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Thick concepts are concepts that describe and evaluate at once. Academic discussion on thick concepts originated in meta-ethics, but thick concepts increasingly draw attention from qualitative researchers working in the social sciences, too. However, these scholars work in relative isolation from each other, and an overview of their ideas is missing. This article has two aims. The first is to provide such an overview, by bringing together these disparate voices on why thick concepts matter for the social sciences and how to work with them in qualitative social research. The second aim is to reflect on the methodological difficulties of working with thick concepts, by thinking through the example of my research on a specific thick concept—the concept of dependency. The article argues that thick concepts are invoked by social researchers for either epistemological or methodological purposes. It then goes on to claim that if we want to take thick concepts as our sensitizing concepts or as our objects of research, these two purposes really ought to be considered in unison: any methodological approach involving thick concepts must factor in the epistemological challenge thick concepts pose to social-scientific research. To show why—and to consider what this requires from qualitative researchers—I draw on insights acquired during my study on dependency. I end with practical recommendations for working with thick concepts in social research.

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Section: Methodological Purposesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Two Purposes For Thick Concepts In the Social Sciencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thick Concepts in Social Research: What, Why, and How?

Weele

2021

International Journal of Qualitative Methods

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“…These questions are especially promising if Y is thick: thick concepts, practices, and institutions have special enabling needs (Abend 2011, 2019; Kirchin 2017; Williams 1985). The concepts of goodness, wrongness, appropriateness, and permissibility are thin, and they don’t demand too much by way of enablers.…”

Section: Relata: Enabler and Enabledmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making Things Possible

Abend

2020

Sociological Methods & Research

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I argue that what-makes-it-possible questions are a distinct and important kind of sociological research question. What is social phenomenon P made possible or enabled by? Results won’t be about P’s causes and causal relationships, but about its enablers and enabling relationships. I examine the character of what-makes-it-possible questions and claims, how they can be empirically investigated, and what they’re good for. If I’m right, they provide a unique perspective on social phenomena, they show how the social world doesn’t come ready-made, and they open up new avenues for research.

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“…Two caveats. First, I restrict my account of the affective disclosure of value to the sort of value we ascribe to objects by deploying thick evaluative concepts (Williams 1985, 140-141; for recent discussions on the subject, see Kirchin 2017). Evaluative concepts are 'thick' insofar as their content provides us with a substantive description of the person, action or event of which such concepts are predicated.…”

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confidence: 99%

Affective Disclosure of Value: emotional experience, neo-sentimentalism and learning to value

Vanello¹

2020

Philosophy

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AbstractThe aim of this paper is to motivate and solve a puzzle regarding the intuition that just as in the absence of perceptual experience we lack an important kind of understanding of sensory properties like colour, in the absence of affective experience we lack an important kind of understanding of value. The puzzle consists in understanding how can a property pertaining to the experience of the subject i.e. the affective component of emotional experience, provide us with a distinctive epistemic access to, and therefore an understanding of, properties that are instantiated by objects distinct from the experience i.e. the evaluative property of the object of experience. I argue that solving the puzzle necessitates us to commit to a metaphysical view of value according to which affective experience and evaluative properties are related by explanatory circularity. The upshot of the paper is that affective experience provides us with the sort of understanding of value that motivates the generation of evaluative concepts.

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Thick Evaluation

Cited by 12 publications

References 24 publications

Thick Concepts in Social Research: What, Why, and How?

Thick Concepts in Social Research: What, Why, and How?

Making Things Possible

Affective Disclosure of Value: emotional experience, neo-sentimentalism and learning to value

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