Very brief interjection, and only on two points.

1. Hard and Soft
There was indeed a time when the term "soft" was applied to the social sciences, especially those concerned with qualitative research. In fact, in the 1950s, there was an on-going joke (referring to a term by Freud, which I'll refrain from mentioning) that said social scientists had "physics envy" and wished that social research could also be a hard science.

However, times have also changed here. There are indeed empirical means of generating qualitative findings. That its — in line with Popper — the findings can be falsified as can various kinds of claims about the findings. Qualitative research should not disregarded as necessarily soft. As with everything, the matter is "how" it is done, not what it being looked at. Such is the differences between alchemy and chemistry, astrology and astronomy.

Those not trained in empirical, qualitative research might mistakenly think that we're back 40 years. But this is an error.

2. There is no inherent dichotomy
Qualitative research (and I'd prefer to avoid a long discussion on this) is generally concerned with description, interpretation of what is described, and some challenge of meaning. On the last point, one can generally approach meaning from two angles, often called etic and emic. The etic is an imposition of meaning on a system. An emic one tries to accurately reflect the meanings inherent in the practices themselves as understood by those engaged in them. Both are valuable. At UNIDIR and at the SNAP project, we were concerned with both when dealing with security. From an etic perspective, we wanted to make claims about patterns of violence, whether or not the people engaged in those patterns of violence would describe them that way. The emic perspective (from work in cultural research) was rigorously attentive to the premises, practices, and meanings as understood by those engaged in those practices.

There is no reason that a research design cannot make use of qualitative and quantitative approaches in order to answer a question. My book, Media Pressure on Foreign Policy (Palgrave) was chiefly concerned with understanding media pressure — i.e. what is it, and how do I know it when I see it? But upon arriving at a theory of pressure, it became possible to measure it (as time series data) as well. If something happens, it may happen often or infrequently. Whether you choose to measure it is strictly in accordance with the question you have asked and what an answer necessitates.

I don't suspect that this thread will necessarily disagree that soft is a dated euphemism, or that qualitative and quantitative approaches — while different — can't work together.

And before anyone pounces: Empirical work can indeed be conducted in a constructivist paradigm as well as a positivist one.

Derek Miller


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On Friday, July 15, 2011 at 7:09 PM, Lubomir Savov Popov wrote:

> Dear Jude,
>
> The question regarding a "secular" social science will involve quite of a talk. In brief, most social scientists believe that they are "secular," even when they use "qualitative" or soft approaches. In the humanities, there a large number of people who stick to their politics and insist that science is always value laden. They actually often produce ideology rather than science. Therefore, they can do it the way they feel like. This discredits the soft paradigms and makes discussion very complex.
>
> Like you, I also disagree with the rigorous "quantitativism" of the evidence-based trends. This might change in the future because these trends enter into soft areas like architecture, nursing practice, and social work, where the soft paradigms has established a foothold. Currently the quantitative tilt is imposed by the traditions of US National Science Foundation and National Institute for Health (NIH). They fund only (or predominantly?) that type of grants. It is very rare to get grants for "qualitative" research projects. Pure architecture research grants range from $3,000 to $8,000. I exclude here the NIH grants for facilities for the elderly that can go up to $300,000 (over several years). Granting agencies shape our scholarly behavior very strongly.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Lubomir
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of CHUA Soo Meng Jude (PLS)
> Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2011 11:12 PM
> To: [log in to unmask] (mailto:[log in to unmask])
> Subject: Re: projection before analysis
> ...
> ...
> While on this track, is there any hope for a kind of "social scientific" account of design, approaching a kind of theology of design, especially since as John Milbank has argued, there is just no such a thing as the "secular" or "secular social science", and that "social science is just simply bad theology"?
>
> Jude