Abstract
Sociological theory is one of those endeavours that have difficulties explaining themselves, even though the absence of sociological theory clearly results in dramatic reductions in knowledge and understanding. One of the considerable achievements of Isaac Reed’s book is precisely its explication of how sociological theory contributes to knowledge. Reed shows how theory provides richer understandings of social phenomena. Of course, for many sociologists this has been a basic intuition that informs their practices, but it would not be controversial to claim that the epistemological debates towards the end of the last century generated a great deal of uncertainty about the validity and justification of sociological knowledge. Given this background, I suspect that many sociologists prefer to simply leave aside the questions of epistemology, since even if one were certain of one’s own position it would be extremely difficult to seriously believe that it is possible to convince those of another epistemological persuasion. No doubt this is an unsustainable situation, but it may explain why recent influential epistemological perspectives have talked past one another. Reed rather believes that there is sufficient common ground among the strands of post-positivism to initiate a conversation and that the way to move the discussion forward is through clarifying the actual practices of sociological theorizing. In fact, Reed provides an exceptionally elegant account of these practices and develops a strong case for the centrality of interpretation to theorizing in the social sciences.
Nevertheless, one of the motivations behind Interpretation and Social Knowledge is a certain dissatisfaction with the contemporary scene and the absence of perspective that is associated with the various ‘post’ discourses, like postmodernism and post-Marxism. Reed not only states that ‘a repeated disavowal of the possibility of causal explanation has crippled the interpretation of cultures’ (p. 1), but refers to his own realization that for himself and those he ‘trained with, our metatheoretical frames were much more precise in their negative aspects’ (pp. 12–13). In large part, Interpretation and Social Knowledge is Reed’s attempt to resolve this problem of self-definition. He pursues this goal in what he describes as ‘an epistemological register’. This is decisive in two respects and each of them is indicative of angles from which Reed’s approach could be disputed. First, there may be other ways of responding to this metatheoretical uncertainty. It could, for example, be sourced instead to institutional or political deficiencies. Reed’s position presumes that the existing production of social scientific knowledge is sufficiently justified to be able to answer the question in this manner. Second, Reed contends that the solution to the contemporary epistemological dilemmas lies in working out the proper relation of theory to evidence. Reed’s analysis of the relationship of theory to evidence is often brilliant, but this achievement should not obscure the fact that this is a way of circumscribing the problem. Metatheoretical clarification could involve contesting the notions of evidence and reality themselves or, more salient to this book’s analysis, treating the imbrications and disjuncture between theory and evidence as more contested and problematic. Interestingly, Reed suggests that there is actually little disagreement between theoretical perspectives over what counts as data and evidence. In his opinion, the core controversies reside in the differences between frameworks of justification.
From what has been said already, it should be clear that Reed’s approach to epistemology differs from the legislative model that has shaped many modern accounts of knowledge. Reeds starts from the clarification of what he considers to be the ways in which theory is used, rather than laying down a set of principles independent of these practices. The key claim that Reed makes about the use of theory is in terms of scale. He deploys a contrast between minimal and maximal interpretation. In short, minimal interpretations largely stay close to the established facts and evidence, whereas maximal interpretations are more expansive. Maximal interpretation provides a larger frame of meaning and explores the implications of this disclosure of social meaning. Reed very effectively refers to famous pieces of social scientific argument to make this claim and he scrutinizes their analyses in order to show how theorizing regularly involves a shift towards a ‘maximal’, or more encompassing, interpretation. The corresponding diagrams that Reed provides to detail this elaboration of interpretation somewhat simplify the complexities of theorizing, and they cannot do justice to its ambiguous or indeterminate aspects. Even so, these diagrams are valuable depictions of aspects of theoretical reasoning and they could be useful ways of introducing students, as well as aspiring scholars, to the processes of constructing theories. Indeed, Reed displays an insightful appreciation of the architecture of theorizing and he illuminates how concepts, terminology, argument and narrative are developed in interpretations. There could be some disputing the consistency of Reed’s representation with that of several theorists’ self-understanding of their intentions; however, a linchpin of his analysis is the thesis that theorizing involves ‘re-signification’. The re-signification of conceptualization facilitates the transmission from a more limited to a more expansive system of meaning. ‘Theory’, Reed writes, ‘relocates the facts in a second conceptual space, a larger world unknown to the facts themselves’ (p. 88).
Reed argues that there are three predominant ‘epistemic modes’ in the human sciences: realist, normativist and interpretivist. ‘Epistemic modes dictate the conceptual method by which theory is brought into contact with evidence, structure the expectations about what such contact can accomplish, and provide more or less well-formed criteria of validity that are used to evaluate the knowledge that is thereby produced’ (p. 7). According to Reed, realism contends that theory should be logically coherent and consistent with the laws or regularities that are found in social reality itself. Realism seeks to disclose the fundamental structures of the social and it tends to embrace the laboratory model of scientific enquiry. That is, realism investigates invisible and underlying regularities, hence this epistemic mode can lead to quite abstract theories, which are nevertheless grounded ontologically. Normativist, or rather normativism as Reed terms it, is an epistemic mode that is shaped by the notion that ‘knowledge itself has a politics’ (p. 68). In this sense, normativism does not refer to the more conservative strands of moral sociology, but to critical perspectives that are oriented towards utopian ideals. Normativism, as represented here by studies like Habermas’s The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere and Leela Ghandi’s Affective Communities, seeks to reveal the normative dimension of social relations and those emancipatory tendencies that are only partially realized. The third epistemic mode Reed demarcates is interpretivism. Interpretivism focuses on meaning and its aim is the restitution or reconstruction of social meaning. In Reed’s opinion, interpretivism involves a dialogue or interchange between two systems of meaning: that of the social life under investigation and the meaning system of theory. For instance, he demonstrates how Clifford Geertz used theoretical conceptions taken from utilitarian philosophy and psychoanalysis to excavate the meanings that are inherent in the already meaningful social action of the Balinese cockfight. However, where Geertz was equivocal about the precise status of the knowledge acquired through interpretation, it is critically important to Reed’s argument that interpretivism is not considered to be merely arbitrary or speculative. Reed argues that interpretivism is conditioned by the epistemic constraints of ‘localized verification’, that is, interpretation has to be adequate and appropriate to the context’s surface meanings, and coherence ‘from above’, which concerns the general theoretical reconstruction and the adjudication of contradictions.
Reed’s commitment to interpretivism is self-evident. At the centre of interpretivism is the investigation of the ‘landscapes of meaning’. Reed’s choice of the metaphor of landscape is intended to convey a number of features of the interpretivist mode of enquiry and its theoretical re-significations. In particular, it is meant to indicate a deep concern with the texture of meaning in social life, an appreciation of the undulations and contextual specificities of meaning, and the contours and framing that emerge through clarifying the details and filling in the pieces of the landscape. It could be argued that engaging with the terrain and interpretation are generic features of social enquiry; however, I take it that Reed’s point is that epistemic modes are about the determination of priorities. For realism and normativism, interpretation is a means that is subordinated to other ends. Reed’s claim that interpretivism endorses theoretical pluralism possesses a certain pragmatic validity, yet I suspect that it is liable to provoke some dissatisfaction. It is often hard to see how different theoretical perspectives can be simultaneously correct. I suspect that stronger claims about argument and justification are needed in order to evaluate diverse contributions. Be that as it may, Reed wants to overcome the binary between explanation and interpretation in the human sciences.
Reed, first, seeks to initiate a move beyond the dominant mechanistic conception of causality and to introduce the originally Aristotlean idea of ‘forming causes’. Forming cause is meant to be a more apposite description of the type of explanation that ensues from interpretivism’s epistemic mode. Reed’s intention here of situating the explanation of ‘forcing causes’ is broadly correct but the revised notion of ‘forming cause’ is, to my mind, the product of a misplaced aspiration to make a claim to causal explanation. I think that the significance of exploring the implications of meaning and the way it shapes social action can be demonstrated without recourse to some notion of causality. There is a tension between the more open-ended features of social meaning that interpretivism highlights and the claim to derive a causal explanation from understanding. Reed’s notion of forming causes plays on two senses of form: the forming that results from the general background meaning and the more technical sense of formal, that is, of rules and structures. It may be misleading to consider either of these senses as causes, but Reed is correct that there is a need to reach a better understanding of the status of the knowledge generated through interpretation and the epistemological innovation that is signalled by the notion of forming causes is definitely worth developing. Second, Reed’s position leads him to propose that action and motivation are themselves formed by meaning and to argue then against the claim that social explanation focuses on agency and motivation. This claim is in many respects correct; however, in this instance I found Reed’s conclusions less compelling, particularly because they derive from a slightly limited conception of the problem of social action. For instance, social action, as Reed is aware, is related not just to meaning, but also to power and the historical contexts of interaction. The outcomes of action are influenced and even conditioned by meaning, yet it is necessary to take into account the contingencies of action processes, since action involves the possibility of realizing different alternatives. It is this specificity that explanatory understanding needs to take into account. Social meaning enfolds agency and, for that matter, power. However, I would argue that it is only generative through its combination with action.
Interpretation and Social Knowledge deserves a wide readership. Even those who disagree with Reed’s position will reach a clearer sense of their own standpoint through reflecting on his arguments. Reed is a generous reader of sociological texts and his book is worth reading for its accomplished and perspicacious explication of the theoretical structure of famous social scientific discussions, such as those by Weber, Skocpol and Sahlins. I wonder whether epistemological questions can be discussed today without a stronger grounding of them in their social-political context. Reed might consider this assertion as evidence of normativism’s influence, but I suspect that he takes the sociopolitical context of the genesis of knowledge for granted and that there may be value in making it explicit. Interpretation and Social Knowledge is a valiant contribution to interpretivism’s epistemological mode. The reservations that I have expressed about Reed’s reconceptualization of explanatory understanding are not meant to diminish the significance of this project. Reed appreciates the debilitating effects of epistemological prevarication, although his book is unlikely to rectify this situation, simply because the field of theory can be divided according to different criteria. Nevertheless, Reed has provided a remarkable sketch of several ways in which theory is used in the human sciences.