Interpretive Methodologies and Methods

Ron Schmidt, Sr., rscmidt@csulb.edu (California State University, Long Beach)

This Conference-related Group provides a forum for the discussion of methodologies and
methods related to interpretive research, as well as issues arising from their location within
contemporary political science.

Interpretive methodologies and methods are informed by philosophical traditions such as
hermeneutics, phenomenology, pragmatism, and symbolic interaction. Notwithstanding their
differences, these traditions presuppose that the meaningfulness and historical contingency of human life sets the social realm apart from nature. Although diverse in their modes of accessing and analyzing data, research processes in the interpretive tradition are typically characterized by an empirical and normative prioritizing of the lived experience of people in research settings (what Clifford Geertz referred to as “experience-near” research), a focus on the meaning(s) of acts, events, interactions, language, and physical artifacts to multiple stakeholders, and a sensitivity to the historically-contingent, often-contested character of such meanings.

We call for papers, panel, and roundtable proposals that explore interpretive methodological
issues or that apply interpretive methods (e.g., political ethnography, ethnomethodology,
discourse analysis) in ways that demonstrate their “comparative advantage” for empirical
research across the subfields of political science. Proposals that reflect on how political science itself is situated in the webs of meaning and historical context that it studies will be especially welcome.