Exampling

Abstract

This chapter examines the theoretico-methodological practice of “exampling.” After all, in concept-driven sociology, examples are the data, assuming the form of specific empirical illustrations of generic patterns. By using concrete “cases” yet disregarding their singularity, concept-driven researchers can empirically instantiate those abstract, initially difficult-to-grasp patterns. As this chapter demonstrates, a generic sociology calls for multicontextual data. In order to identify generic, transcontextual social patterns, one needs to encounter them in multiple social contexts, and the wider the range of contexts in which one collects one’s data, the more generalizable the patterns they reveal. Such contextual diversity is manifested multi-culturally (drawing on examples from diverse cultural contexts), multihistorically (using data from a wide range of historical periods), multisituationally (drawing on examples from diverse social “domains”), as well as at multiple levels of social aggregation (effectively disregarding scale).