Model Cases: On Canonical Research Objects and Sites

215 Pages·2021·2.91 MB·English

by  Monika Krause

Model Cases

Model Cases
On Canonical Research Objects and Sites
monika krause
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago and London
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2021 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in
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Published 2021
Printed in the United States of America
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isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 78066- 5 (cloth)
isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 78083- 2 (paper)
isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 78097- 9 (e- book)
doi: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226780979.001.0001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Krause, Monika, 1978– author.
Title: Model cases : on canonical research objects and sites / Monika Krause.
Other titles: On canonical research objects and sites
Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2021. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: lccn 2020051197 | isbn 9780226780665 (cloth) |
isbn 9780226780832 (paperback) | isbn 9780226780979 (ebook)
Subjects: lcsh: Social sciences—Methodology. | Social sciences—Research. |
Case method.
Classification: lcc h61 .k658 2021 | ddc 300.72/1—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020051197
♾ This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48- 1992 (Permanence of Paper).
Contents
Introduction 1
1 Material Research Objects and Privileged Material Research Objects 14
2 How Material Research Objects Are Selected 33
3 Model Cases and the Dream of Collective Methods 53
4 How Subfield Categories Shape Knowledge 69
5 The Schemas of Social Theory 84
6 The Model Cases of Global Knowledge 101
Conclusion 118
Acknowledgments 127
Notes 129
Bibliography 167
Index 201

Introduction
When biologists seek to answer questions about life and death, development
and disease, they analyze data drawn from particular organisms selected for
study. Some organisms are used more frequently than others and have be-
come “model organisms,” attracting disproportionate amounts of attention
and resources and shaping whole fields of research.
Model organisms include, perhaps most famously, the fruit fly, or Drosoph­
ila melanogaster, which has been the site of pathbreaking findings in the study
of inheritance and in neuroscience beginning in the early 1900s.1 The mouse
has long played an important role in medical research, including research on
cancer and HIV/AIDS.2 Other influential animals include Planaria, a type of
worm; Aplysia, a kind of snail; and certain varieties of rats, frogs, and dogs.
Model organisms can be animals; they can be plants, like Arabidopsis tha­
liana; they can also be considerably “smaller” or “larger” than animals or plants:
microbiological entities, such as proteins, viruses, and bacteria, can be studied
through model systems.3 Ecologists and evolutionary biologists also form co-
alitions to coordinate research on “larger entities,” focusing research on par-
ticular places as stand-i ns for ecosystems—t ypically relatively undisturbed or
pristine ecosystems, such as islands—i n order to combine observations from
many different studies and gain insights about dynamics in ecosystems in
general.4
Researchers in biology and related life sciences are explicitly encouraged
to focus their attention in this way. There are lively debates among research-
ers about the advantages and disadvantages of particular organisms, and
some funders demand that a particular experimental organism be used. The
idea is that conventions around shared research objects have benefits for the
research community as a whole: if different laboratories in different locations
2 introduction
use the same animals, researchers can compare their findings more easily,
and the results of different studies add up in a cumulative way.
In this book, which builds on an article written with Michael Guggenheim,
I invite you to compare practices in the social sciences and humanities with
the ways researchers in the life sciences use model organisms.5 Based on this
comparison, I offer a set of distinctions that can be used to examine patterns in
the production of academic knowledge, starting from the distinction between
material research objects on the one hand and epistemic research objects on
the other hand:6 The material object is the specific object accessed through
particular traces, produced by specific tools and instruments. It is defined by
its role as a tool toward understanding something else, and it is distinguished
from an epistemic research object, whatever it is that researchers are trying to
understand— their target of inquiry, which is a conceptual entity and depends
on specific intellectual and disciplinary traditions.
I argue that scholars in the social sciences and humanities, like biologists,
use material research objects, or stand-i ns, to examine broader questions and
broader sets of objects of epistemic interest. Material research objects are not
always chosen for strategic reasons that are transparent to researchers. I discuss
studies in different fields with a view to what they use as material research ob-
jects, and I ask about how specific cases and places feature in knowledge about
classes of objects and places, and in knowledge about general phenomena.
I will suggest that, as in biology, some material research objects are studied
repeatedly and shape the understanding of more general categories in dispro-
portionate ways. I call these objects “privileged material research objects,” or
“model cases.” Sociologists, historians, and anthropologists thus have a canon
of privileged research sites and objects in addition to a canon of texts. When
urbanists discuss cities, for example, they draw on research concerning some
cities, including Berlin, Chicago, and Mumbai, more than research on oth-
ers, such as Monaco City, Jacksonville, or Dalian. For discussion of populism
among political scientists, Latin America, and more specifically Argentina
(rather than Peru, for example), has served as a privileged reference point.7
Sociological work on the professions is oriented by a number of classic works
on doctors and, to a lesser extent, lawyers and more rarely considers the role
of exterminators or priests.8
At the core of this book is an argument within the sociology of the social
sciences, aiming to conceptualize and describe empirical patterns concerning
material research objects. I would suggest that an analysis of these patterns
is also a useful starting point for addressing normative questions about how
social science research can be improved based on observation about the sum
introduction 3
of practices in research fields and disciplines. The fact that social scientists
use model cases is not inherently “good” or “bad”; it has advantages and dis-
advantages for the knowledge produced. The fact that social scientists use
model cases without reflecting on their use has mostly disadvantages. I will
suggest that we can better exploit the advantages and limit the disadvantages
of privileged material research objects by reflecting on the role they play.
Self- Reflection beyond Abstracted Epistemology
Alongside methodological reflection on the level of individual research proj-
ects, self- observation of the social sciences has traditionally been heavily in-
fluenced by philosophical approaches.9 Reflection has often focused on the
epistemological orientation of different kinds of research; scholars have de-
bated the virtues or faults of “realism” or “interpretivism,” for example. These
labels are sometimes used in gestures of self-i dentification (such as “empirical-
analytical sociology” or “critical work”) and sometimes ascribed in an act of
hostile labeling (such as “positivism” or “identity politics”).
In all cases, these labels are the result of a process of “distillation” or “ab-
straction” of a “position,” which results in a discussion at considerable remove
from anyone’s actual research practices and from the concrete claims and find-
ings we produce, share, and debate. In this practice of distillation, scholars who
proclaim their adherence to “the scientific method” converge with scholars who
most passionately denounce “positivism” or “the ideology of objectivity.” Schol-
ars who identify most strongly with the notion of “critique” often share this dis-
regard of research practice with their most ardent opponents.
In a departure from this circular opposition between ideology and critique
of ideology, I, along with others, see an opportunity to renew the reflection on
the social sciences based on sociological observations of the social sciences—
observations that we judge by standards similar to those we would use to
judge studies of the art world, humanitarianism, or religion. In these fields
as well as in the sociology of culture more broadly, we no longer consider
the remote diagnosis of ideological content as a substitute for the analysis of
actual practices and institutions. Building on earlier calls for a serious sociol-
ogy of sociology,10 there has been increasing attention to the social study of
the social sciences on practice- theoretical terms in the past two decades, with
important impulses from work in the social studies of the natural sciences.11
I take particular inspiration from work on the natural sciences, which
pays attention to the diverse sites, tools, and materials of knowledge produc-
tion. For the social sciences, this means taking seriously the role of historical