Making Making Social Science Matter Matter To Us

Abstract

This article pursues two line of inquiry in response to Bent Flyvbjerg's advocacy of a phronetic social science in Making Social Science Matter (2001). First, I explore how Flyvbjerg's manifesto relates to the approach employed in his earlier empirical work, Rationality & Power (1998). There are, I argue, notable disjunctions between the practice of Rationality & Power and the preaching of Making Social Science Matter. Second, I explicate and rework Flyvbjerg's contrast between epistemic and phronetic social science with an eye to its reception by a specific disciplinary audience: American political scientists. In doing so, I build on several contributions to Sanford Schram and Brian Caterino's edited volume Making Political Science Matter (2006). My aspiration is, however, rather different from that of the volume: I strive to make epistemic and phronetic into accessible categories of reformist reflection, not provocative banners under which to marshal revolutionary opposition to our disciplinary mainstream(s).