Paradigm, specialty, pragmatism: Kuhn's legacy to methodological pluralism

Conventional economics maintains that a critical test of the veracity of robust economic theory is its capacity to generate plausible economic predictions, irrespective of the realism of the theories' underlying assumptions. This methodological argument even holds for relatively less conventional approaches to economics such as behavioural, heterodox, experimental, and institutional. Following upon research in behavioural economics, I argue that such a methodology can easily result in the illusion of causality, the omission of potentially key variables, and closing the doors to key analytical questions as well as to publication bias. This generate perverse analytical results, with severe consequence for public policy. I argue that methodological pluralism is critical to the construction of robust economic theory, irrespective of ones' political orientation. Examples are drawn from financial markets, labour markets, and macroeconomics to illustrate this pluralistic perspective to economic analyses.

This paper presents an investigation of the research methods curriculum in public sector sociology courses. It is based on an analysis of CNAA course documents for degrees in sociology and the social sciences, and undertaken with the aim of contributing to the current debate on the content of the undergraduate curriculum in sociology. The survey results suggest several trends in curricular policy: in particular an increasing emphasis on practical competence and familiarity with procedures and techniques, and a greater recognition of `methodological pluralism', although qualitative methods are still given only a marginal place in many courses. There was little evidence of progress in the teaching of quantitative skills, nor was computing yet seen to be a core element of the curriculum. The documents also revealed a continuing problem over the place of methods teaching as a whole in relation to other parts of the curriculum as reflected both in time allocation and in assessment weighting. It is argued that if the claims of sociology to practical and vocational relevance are to become genuine for students wishing to pursue research in a variety of careers, then research methods teaching needs to be brought out of the ghetto. It is the contention of the authors that this is not just a pragmatic consideration: such a change would also benefit sociology as a discipline.

This paper seeks to elucidate the geographies of brands and branding through interpreting their geographical entanglements. Focusing upon goods and services, it argues, first, that the object of the brand and the process of branding are geographical because they are entangled in inescapable spatial associations. Second, these spatial associations matter because they are geographically differentiated and uneven. Third, geographically entangled brands and branding are closely related to spatially uneven development through the articulation and reinforcement of economic and social inequalities and unequal and competitive sociospatial relations and divisions of labour. Despite their apparent pervasiveness and significance for geographical inquiry, the geographical entanglements of brands and branding have been under-investigated in Geography and hardly recognized and poorly specified in other social science research. A critical account is provided that demonstrates the entangled geographies of brands and branding in their: (1) geographical origins, provenance and sociospatial histories; (2) spatial circuits of value and meaning and uneven development; and (3) territorial and relational spaces and places. Reading the changing forms, extent and nature of the geographical entanglements of brands and branding provides a novel but relatively overlooked window to consider and illustrate the vital spaces at the intersections of economic, social, cultural and political geographies, the tensions between relational and territorial notions of space and place and the politics and limits of brands and branding. Learning from wider social science, the paper demonstrates the importance of geography by projecting more clearly specified and sophisticated treatments of space and place into accounts of brands and branding.

Debates regarding research methodologies in construction, engineering and management (CEM) literature are long-standing. However, in the growing literature on offsite manufacturing (OSM), such debates are lacking and some studies conflate different components of research methodologies such as research design, methods, data sources, data types, and analytical techniques. This study examines the components of research methodologies reported in the OSM literature and how they compare with the established relationships between the key components of research methodologies. We analyse 74 articles on OSM sampled from 26 journals and find that quantitative methods, case studies, primary data, bibliometric database and modelling are the most preferred methodological approaches. The methodological components reported also cohere with established relationships between components of research methodology, other than the relationship between research methods and data sources. The findings reveal a growing hybridisation of research designs, data sources and analytical techniques, which suggests that methodological plurality is emerging in the OSM literature. This re-echoes concerns regarding the dominance of quantitative methods and the limited use of theory in CEM research, and consequently highlights the need for diversity in methodologies to expand knowledge boundaries.

Resilience is often promoted as a boundary concept to integrate the social and natural dimensions of sustainability. However, it is a troubled dialogue from which social scientists may feel detached. To explain this, we first scrutinize the meanings, attributes, and uses of resilience in ecology and elsewhere to construct a typology of definitions. Second, we analyze core concepts and principles in resilience theory that cause disciplinary tensions between the social and natural sciences (system ontology, system boundary, equilibria and thresholds, feedback mechanisms, self-organization, and function). Third, we provide empirical evidence of the asymmetry in the use of resilience theory in ecology and environmental sciences compared to five relevant social science disciplines. Fourth, we contrast the unification ambition in resilience theory with methodological pluralism. Throughout, we develop the argument that incommensurability and unification constrain the interdisciplinary dialogue, whereas pluralism drawing on core social scientific concepts would better facilitate integrated sustainability research.

Within this AEQ forum, the authors call for a dialogue and examination of research methods in the field of adult and continuing education. Using the article by Boeren as a starting point, the authors analyze both qualitative and quantitative research trends and advocate for more methodological diversity and plurality in current research approaches.

This book introduces the concept of ailment as a new theoretical approach in the field of care studies and the wider social sciences. Ailment refers to the bothering that troubles, afflicts and plagues the body, its embodied mind and larger collectives and societies. Care is often the most ethical response to many ailments, but responses to ailment also include neglect and even abuse. Throughout history, individuals, households and communities have responded to ailment in their everyday practices, and there have been collective social efforts to respond to it, efforts that vary with the ethical standards and resources of a given time and place. We demonstrate how contemporary responses to ailment remain inadequate because they fail to acknowledge its nature as unpredictable and changing from one day to the next, rather like care. Ailment mobilises concrete, embodied and emotional responses in immediate social encounters, along with gendered, racialised and classed divisions of labour that extend to a global scale. We urge that attention be paid to how ailment bothers and affects individuals, their own ailment and care needs, and the ailments of others, including the ailment of earth itself, as revealed by the ongoing climate crisis. Different chapters of the book reflect on ailment and analyse social and care policies, the marketisation and financialisation of care, embodied care work and divisions of care labour.

Over the years the research endeavours in social sciences have been directed towards producing profound discoveries about humankind and the society they live in. Now-a-days qualitative research has been flourishing in many fields of the social sciences. Rapid social change and the resulting diversification of life scenarios are increasingly confronting social researchers with new social contexts and perspectives. There is a specific relevance for qualitative research to the study of social contexts and life situations. This has lead to the development of several social theories and social research methods which have still continued to develop in order to understand the diverse social problems. The challenge for social scientists and researchers worldwide is to continue in the search for a unified consensus on what methodology is to be adopted for research for meeting the emerging diverse needs of humankind and the society. This thought has led to the proliferation of pluralism or multi-method research in which the researcher synthesizes multiple research methodologies in order to study social problems in a holistic way. This concept of pluralism in research has to a greater extend subverted methodological tribalism which had existed till the recent past. This paper focuses on the philosophical assumptions as guidelines to research paradigms have influenced the development of social research theory and social research methods towards pluralism. This paper intends to explore pluralism in qualitative Social Science researches as it may be applied methodologically and philosophically. In this context, the paper heeds a thought on refocusing pluralistic qualitative research in terms of its needs and demands based on the level and depth of the study undertaken. Key Terms: Qualitative research, methodological pluralism, research paradigms, philosophical assumptions

This collective scholarly monograph offers an interdisciplinary analysis of the relationship between the future and the present. It is based on the premise that the future does not exist merely as a passively awaited temporal horizon, but rather as an active mental, institutional, and strategic construct that enters into today’s decision-making processes. Through scenarios, predictions, value-based visions, and anticipatory strategies, the future influences our actions, education systems, policymaking, and economic behavior. The aim of the monograph is to identify and analyze the mechanisms through which projections of the future are reflected in the present, while also showing how today’s decisions actively shape the trajectory of what is yet to come. The central research question is articulated as follows: How can the dynamic relationship between future projections and present-day decision-making under conditions of uncertainty be scientifically modeled and understood? The answer is elaborated in the concluding chapter. The text is structured into ten thematic chapters covering a broad range of areas: from theoretical approaches to forecasting, game theory, and the economics of productive consumption, to the analysis of “black swan” events, the impact of extraordinary disruptions on financial systems, and issues of migration, energy security, digital dominance, and institutional transformations in the legal framework of investment. The monograph employs a wide spectrum of research methods: both qualitative and quantitative analysis, scenario-building and forecasting techniques, the Delphi method, case studies, comparative historical approaches, and statistical modeling. Its scientific relevance is strengthened by an interdisciplinary framework and methodological plurality, corresponding to the complexity of the subject matter. This publication is intended for academics, policymakers, strategic decision-makers, advanced students, and all those seeking an analytical framework for responsible decision-making in an age of profound uncertainty. It offers tools for critical thinking about the future ‒ not as a passive inevitability, but as a domain that can be actively shaped through science, values, and deliberate action.

Each year the prevalence of digitized information becomes more entrenched, not least with the amount of activity on social media. Yet, new media studies pose a number of challenges to international relations scholarship, which are only beginning to be addressed. With some exceptions IR scholars who conduct this research tend to rely on traditional qualitative methods and have been hesitant to embrace interdisciplinary collaboration—especially with those disciplines outside of the social sciences—as well as methodological pluralism across interpretive and quantitative approaches within the social sciences. This tendency shows a general lack of understanding of what new/social media might mean, not only as a source of and tool for generating information but also as a structural factor in how we conduct IR research and practice international relations. In this way, social media can provoke IR scholars to ask questions about their own discipline. This article aims to address these challenges and to provide suggestions on how to bring structural aspects of new media into IR research. In particular, it incorporates ideas centered on the shifting media ecology as fundamental to examining these structural challenges in terms of practicing international relations and in the visual turn in IR.

Both this and the next chapter deal with mixing methods. I have devoted two chapters to this subject rather than one, because the two interventions I will describe are substantially different, and therefore illustrate the flexibility that methodological pluralism can give to interveners. Although they were both about support for multi-agency working (amongst other things), the intervention reported upon in this chapter drew upon several traditional social science methods (from the applied science and human relations traditions189), as well as second and third wave systems methods, and it involved the presentation of a summative report making recommendations for change. This is common practice in the applied social sciences, despite the strong criticism that summative reports of research results are most likely to make people defensive and unwilling to implement the recommendations (Cronbach, 1982). However, for reasons to be explained, it seemed like an appropriate approach in this instance. In contrast, in the intervention I will present in Chapter 17, this would undoubtedly have done a great deal more harm than good: what was needed in that instance was a strong focus on stakeholder participation and careful work with a variety of agencies to build bridges to enable change. The final report was a record of the activities undertaken, not a judgmental document making recommendations.

Growing interest in qualitative research methods and methodological pluralism in psychology since the 1990s is placed in the historical contexts of long-standing philosophical and scientific rationales and the more recent “qualitative revolution” in other social sciences that began in the 1970s. An examination of areas in which qualitative methods have become most strongly established—applied, feminist, and multicultural psychologies—suggests practical and social motivations as primary and as energizing renewed expression of previously ignored ontological, epistemological, and scientific reasoning in the turn to qualitative methods. Methodological diversification in the arenas of human suffering, women's issues, and cultural politics is traced to psychologists' deeply rooted ethical obligations. The existential philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas articulates an implicit ethics at the heart psychology's increasing acceptance of qualitative methods and provides an understanding of how the emerging methodological...

Historical researchers have consistently argued for history to be taken more seriously in organization studies (Kieser, 1994), even making the case for an ‘historic turn’ (Booth and Rowlinson, 2006; Clark and Rowlinson, 2004), or historical ‘reorientation’ within organization theory (Usdiken and Kieser, 2004). An historic turn would follow from the move towards more historical approaches in the wider social sciences (McDonald, 1996), as well as calls for more engagement with the humanities, both in organizational research (Zald, 1993) and the business school curriculum (Colby et al., 2011). As a historian Sewell (2005: 358) sees the ‘emergence of the diachronic metaphor of social construction’ as a manifestation of an historic, or ‘historical turn’ within social science. He cites the example of Giddens’ (1984) ‘move from the problematic of structure, synchronically understood, to that of the diachronic process of . . . “structuration”‘ (Sewell, 2005: 358). This is reflected in organization studies with the rise of more explicitly social constructionist theories, in particular new institutionalism (Powell and DiMaggio, 2012), in which several foundational studies are based on longitudinal (e.g. Fligstein, 1991) or archival research (DiMaggio, 1991). However, the ontological and methodological shift away from the synchronic excess of structural contingency theory and the reduced reliance on cross sectional correlations does not necessarily represent a conscious turn towards history.

How has sociology evolved over the last 40 years? In this paper, we examine networks built on thousands of sociology-relevant papers to map sociology's position in the wider social sciences and identify changes in the most prominent research fronts in the discipline. We find first that sociology seems to have traded centrality in the field of social sciences for internal cohesion: sociology is central, but not nearly as well bounded as neighboring disciplines such as economics or law. Internally, sociology appears to have moved away from research topics associated with fundamental social processes and toward social-problems research. We end by discussing strategies for extending this work to wider science production networks.

Increasingly, natural resource management is seeing calls for new paradigms. These calls pose challenges that have implications not only for planning and management, but also for the practice of science. As a consequence, the profession needs to deepen its understanding of the nature of science by exploring recent advances in the philosophy of science. We believe that one of the problems inhibiting a better understanding of science is a strongly ingrained belief that science is about methodology. This perspective is reflected in Hetherington, Daniel, and Brown's (1994) recent criticism of Bengston's (1994) methodological pluralism. To initiate discussions that may help bring about a reconsideration of the nature of science, we offer a two‐part definition of science. The first portrays science as a systematic endeavor that shares a common process without mandating a common methodology. The second part is an attempt to highlight and promote an exploration of the normative structure that underlies science.