The Retroductive Cycle: The Research Process in Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis

Abstract

This chapter argues that the concept of retroduction, as distinct from induction and deduction, can be developed to frame the methodological implications of anti-essentialist approaches to social science research. Although prominent in debates over how best to understand the production of theories in the natural sciences, the concept of retroduction is also relevant to a set of debates in the philosophy of social science. In particular, we argue that it can support a post-positivist picture of the study of social and political phenomena. Drawing on Reichenbach’s distinction between ‘context of discovery’ and ‘context of justification’, the chapter develops the idea of a ‘retroductive cycle’ as a meta-methodological logic within which to understand the research process in poststructuralist discourse analysis and critical empirical research more generally.