Bridging the gap between research traditions: on what we can really learn from Clifford Geertz

Abstract

Interpretive researchers, also in our field, often refer to Geertz' work. They focus on taking the natives' point of view, thick description and reading culture as a text. In this paper, it is argued that these guidelines cannot provide good reason to accept one interpretation of a social phenomenon over any other interpretation. On closer inspection, however, Geertz' work displays a stronger approach. This approach on important points fits Lakatos' ideal of sophisticated falsificationism. This reexamination of Geertz' actual approach urges to reconsider the strict dichotomy that is often made between interpretive and other types of research in Public Administration and Political Science.

The ‘toxic trio’ (domestic violence, substance misuse and mental ill-health): How good is the evidence base?

“…However, they are not the only significant factors, singly or in combination, and the social and economic context in which these issues are experienced is inextricably implicated in their consequences for children. Our overall answer to the question posed in this article's title is that the evidence is by no means good enough or 'thick' enough (Tholen, 2018) to justify the dominant position of the so-called 'toxic trio' in English child protection policy and practice. Parents we consulted wanted professionals and researchers to avoid all use of the 'toxic trio' language without creating alternative labels or jargon which might be equally unhelpful.…”

Reimagining Livelihoods: An Ethnographic Inquiry into Anticipation, Agency, and Reflexivity as India's Impact Ecosystem Responds To Post‐Pandemic Rebuilding

“…Our research organically led us down the path of a hermeneutic spiral (Tholen 2018), with each conversation challenging our notions and shaping our participant interactions. This new understanding helped shape how livelihoods came to be represented in the articulation of subsequent job roles.…”

“…As a starting point, our own understandings had been shaped by studying the Reimagining Livelihoods project's narratives and communication materials, interviews with the two impact sector professionals who had initiated it, as well as an analysis of the demographic and socioeconomic data that had been foregrounded in the existing personas of the role holders. Our conversations with our research participants prompted a return to this material, where adopting an interpretive approach (in a Geertzian manner of sensemaking (Tholen 2018)) rendered visible the assumptions which the initiative had incorporated as a given on one hand, and brought into view its invisible negotiations on the other, in the manner which only a bottom-up emic gaze could unearth. As an example, the project had conceptualized the urban and the rural as having distinct permutations of how jobs/work could be created (Vasudevan and Kaushal 2020a).…”

Género E Interseccionalidades en La Formación Inicial Docente en Chile

“…Así, una sociedad es una forma de codificación simbólica y una performance que involucra significados y vínculos (Glasser 2018). De esta manera, esta investigación adopta este enfoque y nivel epistemológico, asumiendo como cuestiones claves el cómo las personas y sus vínculos/construcciones con alteridades generan prácticas, conceptualizan, entienden y viven el mundo desigual, imprimiendo motivaciones, conocimientos y legitimaciones (Cossu 2021;Tholen 2018).…”