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The Objects of Social Science ELEONORA MONTUSCHI Continuum The Objects of Social Science This page intentionally left blank The Objects of Social Science ELEONORA MONTUSCHI Continuum The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London, SE1 7NX 370 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017-6503 © Eleonora Montuschi 2003 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. First published 2003 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 0–8264–6634–6 (hardback), 0–8264–6635–4 (paperback) Typeset in Times New Roman by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, Guildford and King’s Lynn Contents Preface vii Introduction: Objectivity, Science and Social Science 1 1. A Skewed Comparison 1 2. What Model of Science for Social Science? 6 3. What Model of Knowledge for Social Science? 8 4. What Model of Object for Social Science? 13 Chapter One: Anthropological Objects 21 1. From Positivism to Interpretivism 21 2. Anthropological Objects I: Cockfighting in Bali 25 3. Anthropological Objects II: Witchcraft in the Bocage 28 4. Anthropological Objects III: Nuer ‘Sacrifice’ and Txikao ‘Couvade’ 31 5. Complex Anthropological Objects 39 Chapter Two: Sociological Objects 42 1. Received Paradigms 42 2. Against Prescriptive Assumptions: Indexical Social Objects 44 3. Sociological Objects: Stages of Research and Levels of Construction 49 4. A Classic Example: Suicide 56 vi Contents Chapter Three: Historical Objects 61 1. The Normative View: Explaining History by Hempelian Laws 61 2. ‘What’ do Historians Explain? 70 3. Quantitative and Qualitative History: Samples of Research 75 4. Making History in Museums 79 Chapter Four: Economic Objects 83 1. Economic Theory and Methodological Concern 83 2. Rhetorical Objects of Economic Practice 84 3. Realist Objects of Economic Practice 90 4. The ‘Partial’ Object of Economics 96 Chapter Five: Geographical Objects 103 1. A Natural or a Social Science? 103 2. ‘Space and Place’: Quantitative Reconstructions 104 3. ‘Space and Place’: Qualitative Reconstructions 107 4. ‘Space and Place’: Realist Reconstructions 110 5. The Possible Worlds of Human Geography 115 Notes 121 Bibliography 147 Index 157 Preface The roots of this book are the lectures and seminars in the philosophy of the social sciences I have been giving in the last few years at the London School of Economics, and previously at Oxford. The book also elaborates on work I contributed to a series of seminars on the epistemology of the social sciences at the University of Pavia between 1995 and 1998.1 Though trained in the philosophy of science, I have always found social science a rich, often intriguing domain of investigation, and a fertile reservoir for philosophical analysis. In looking at both the natural and the social sciences, I find especially the differences in their epistemologies and in their ontologies instructive.