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Model Cases: On Canonical Research Objects and Sites PDF

215 Pages·2021·2.91 MB·English
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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 critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637. Published 2021 Printed in the United States of America 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 1 2 3 4 5 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

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