The Lively Science: Remodeling Human Social Research

Description

The Lively Science is Michael Agar's accessible, idiosyncratic, often humorous, and sometimes controversial explication of his own polestar truth: "Research on humans in their social world by other humans is not a traditional science like the one created by Galileo and Newton." However, if the social world is not a lab, neither is it a collection of random events. The book lays out a clear, straightforward path to carrying out the basic scientific tasks of forming questions and answering them to explore and account for that non-randomness. The author deploys myriad engaging examples drawn from a lifetime of applied and basic research to demonstrate how human science researchers can produce discoveries that are scientifically defensible and useful in the real world. Agar grounds his how-to guide in an approachable discussion of epistemology and draws on thinkers whose writings may be unfamiliar to many social scientists. He blends that work with new intellectual tools, such as complexity theory, disasters research, and conversational analysis. The result is an innovative and practical methodology that is true to the realities and surprises of research by and about humans, yet preserves scientific standards of falsifiability, empiricism, logic, and systematic presentation of results. This book represents the best of Michael Agar's visionary work. With a new foreword by Michael Brown celebrating Agar's enormous contribution to social science methodology, The Lively Science is for all researchers who seek to explore the full potential of a human social science. Cover Endorsements Series Page Half Title Title Page Copyright Page CONTENTS Foreword Foreword Preface 1. Behavioral/Social Science—An Oxymoron? Human Social Science? The Fork in the Road A Trailer for the Movie HSR Ascendant in the Real World Where Book Titles Come From 2. Experiments and Real Worlds The Logic Out of the Lab Buying a Car Ecological Validity The Heartbreak of Timeless Reduction Reductionism Pattern on Drugs Cause Paths Taken, and Not Mill: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly An HSR Parable 3. The Road to HSR Is Paved with Everyday Intentions A Fallen Jesuit Intentionality Intention and Purpose Research Handles to Get a Grip on Intentions Rational Reconstruction An Example Anglos and Saxons The Birth of the Human Sciences The Dismal BSS Sciences Same, Different, and a Little of Both An Example of How BSS Missed a Local Person Time on Our Side Is Reality a Dream? Reality Is Kicking a Rock Dilthey’s Long Ride What Is Human Social Research About? 4. Taking HSR to Court The Anglo-German Hybrid The Courtroom Model Human Social Science: Land of Contrasts Is HSR Only Qualitative? Just Among Us Subjects An Un-reliable Science Writing the Results 5. The Heartbreak of Monotony Where Do New Ideas Come From? An Abductive Parable Abduction in Action HSR Logic 6. When Researcher Meets Subject The “M” and “C” Words Language Translation Getting From Here to There Translation as Intersubjective Science Crossing a Languaculture Canyon The Space Between An Example of Universal Progress: An Anthropologist’s Epiphany The Universal Person When Is a Theory Not a Theory? 7. Human Social Science The Man Who Shocked the World The Experiment Back to Human Universals No Researcher Before His Time In Whose Interests? Exactly Who and Why The Jewish Nun The End Chapter Notes