Book Review: Making Social Science Matter: Why Social Inquiry Fails and How It Can Succeed again

Abstract

Bent Flyvbjerg Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, x + 204 pp., $37.95 (paperback). As a science born out of modernity, contemporary sociology has long grappled with its theoretical and methodological locations. Having taken the natural sciences as its benchmark in terms of producing valid, generalizable and predictive theory, modern sociology is often critiqued for its inability to produce such theory in relation to the social world. Indeed, argues Flyvbjerg, this endeavour is fraught at the outset. Social science cannot produce this kind of theoretical knowledge and neither should it attempt to as the human world is far too complex and our understanding of it is always context dependent. What is required, he goes on to argue, is not a turn towards postpositivist or postmodernist reductionism, but a new way of conceptualizing social science so that it can reclaim its position as a practical, intellectual activity. Flyvbjerg revisits (and reinterprets) Aristotle's concept of phronesis as a means of creating a way forward. Using the first section of the book to deconstruct social science as a science and show why it cannot succeed on the terms it has traditionally set itself, Flyvbjerg draws on the works of Habermas, Foucault, Bourdieu and Giddens (among others) to build a convincing case for a phronetic social science. The second section of the book focuses on this notion of phronesis and how it can be used to make social science matter again. In demonstrating its usefulness, the book concludes by drawing on some of Flyvbjerg's research to describe and apply phronesis as a methodology for social inquiry. Phronesis is one of Aristotle's three intellectual virtues. While the virtue of episteme informs scientific knowledge through the application of analytical rationality, and the virtue of techne informs technical knowledge through the application of practical instrumental rationality, the virtue of phronesis informs ethical action through the application of practical value rationality. At heart, Flyvbjerg's argument for phronesis is about reinstating value-rationality as the basis for research. However, in contrast to previous forms of value rational social research, which was often judged on its epistemic virtues and ability to create social science `theories', Flyvbjerg claims that judgements should be based on the phronetic virtues of research, especially its ability to contribute to ethical social praxis. With Flyvbjerg drawing on western sociologists and philosophers to outline what he means by ethical action, this is an aspect of phronesis that will undoubtedly generate much discussion and debate. …