Introduction

I
In this chapter we know that Posts and their opponents: postpositivism,
poststructuralism, postmodernism, postcolonialism are the space of
epistemological argument in social theory, then, comes to be defi ned. Regardless
of what the “posts” actually are or are not, thinking about social knowledge is, in
this Manichean account, a dispute about whether science (and perhaps modernity)
is good or bad. The debates about method are, without a doubt, real: they denote
signifi cant divergences in the practice of gathering and colligating evidence in
social research. But in their connotations, they encode the same paralyzing
epistemological dilemma. Also 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.
In the normative epistemic mode theory is what enables research to be a
dialogue between investigator and investigated— between an ethnographer and
her subjects, between a historian and the lives he recreates, between a critic and
the text she reconsiders and reframes. And Interpretive social research, must push
beyond the surface reports of actors and the immediate meanings available in the
investigator’s evidence to grasp some deeper set of meanings that in here in the
action under study. As we know that by revealing the way social meanings act as
forming, as opposed to forcing, causes, the interpretive epistemic mode can offer a
synthetic approach to social knowledge, and enable the researcher to build social
explanations and deliver social critique. Training in social theory involves
learning how to map this discourse in useful ways, and to pay close attention to
the way in which theoretical discourses encode their own historical conditions of
productionA theory of social knowledge should, instead, be built through critical
reflection upon what it is that researchers do when they call on social theory to
help them comprehend their evidence.
Chapter one

Knowledge

The construction of social knowledge occurs at the intersection of two

meaning-systems, one of Theory and one of Fact. Let us begin briefly, with the
latter.

The problems that surround what Robert Merton called “establishing the
phenomenon” have long been the subject of methodological disputation in social
research. Methodology is a reflection on the efficacy of our various techniques
for establishing facts-survey data and in-depth interviewing, quantitative versus
qualitative approaches to the historical archive, and so on. All of these
methodologies (and the disputes about them) are, however, confronted by the
problem that, in the case of human affairs, many of the most essential facts of the
matter-the social facts –are not immediately observable. Rather, they are
observable through what Emile Durkheim called their “individual
manifestations.”

For example when one states that, in 1692, after examination by the
village doctor, was determined by a set of adults in Salem village, Massachusetts,
and its environs that the fits and screams of “afflicted” girls were due to their
being under an “evil hand”, one is stating a rather uncontroversial fact. We know
this happened-that these adults made this determination. But understanding this
fact already involves understanding the possible meanings for the people of
seventeenth-century Massachusetts of the physically observable behavior of the
term “doctor” and the expectations that other people had of doctors, and so on. It
is in this way that social facts are “thick.
Chapter Two

Reality

A theory provides reasoning for why something may occur or explain

patterns in behaviour. Theories appear from many sources with varying quantities
of evidence to reinforce their argument. Some with little to no evidence, and some
with considerably more. A theory can never be considered wholly true as a well
evidenced theory that is widely considered fact at a particular point in time may,
in the future be found false with the finding of new evidence. Similarly, a theory
with little evidence may, in time be backed up by evidence gained through the
development of new technologies and research techniques.

We can say that theo- retical signs are “grounded” in a general and
consistent social reality. Then (and here is the key point): in the realist
epistemic mode, every case or instance that grounds evidential interpretation is
made to point back to the singular referent — social reality — to which theory
points di- rectly.
The referential meanings of this sign-system allow her to discover
what is underneath her data. This does not imply that the interpretations
produced proceed only and singularly from theory to evidence. But a clear
and coherent framework for the evidence is provided, precisely because the
underly- ing structures that will do the explaining are drawn from a
coherently developed, general account of social life.
Theory is expected to be in principle general, to work referentially,
and to be consistent with itself in the abstract. That is the essence of the
realist epistemic mode. The idea is that models are built and “tested” with
cases.
The problem, ultimately, for the naturalist analogy is that social life
may not be “intransitive”. That social reality exists outside the head of the
investigator, and indeed outside the heads of any subset of individual humans
engaged in it, is taken as evidence for the “intransitivity” of society, social
structure, etc.

The principle of realist signification is that unity in theory can bring

together disparate cases under the same general scheme; theory has direct
referents in social reality, and these referents are what enable evidence to be
sorted and causal claims to be made. That subjectivity and history render the
naturalist approach to so- cial knowledge problematic has been the refrain of
antiscientism argu- ments for over a century in academic social studies in the
West

The empirically responsible social research is impossible. This is a

discursive effect: realism’s constant use of ontological language makes it hard
to keep in mind that mechanism is a metaphor, derived originally from the
mechanical clocks that surrounded the men who launched the scientific
revolution in the West.
we should look for a way to integrate the core ambition of scientific
realism (causal explanation) and its core insights into social life (that social life
does proceed, some of the time, with a rather frightening regularity) into a
different epistemic mode.

Chapter Three

Utopia

Political theory is part of the theoretical meaning-system that, in a variety

of ways, informs the practice of social research. Normativism is, as an epistemic
mode anyway, is a way of producing maximal interpretations that speak to the
debates of political theory, but that speak to these debates with an intellectual
authority derived from both theory and fact.
The focus on the subjective, on consciousness and on consciousness-in-
society, was a recurrent theme of twentieth-century Western philosophy on both
sides of the Atlantic. The philosophies of conscious-ness are wide ranging, but
one of their recurring concerns is the ways in which human beings appear to
follow rules; to judge each other’s actions for their appropriateness, rationality, or
morality; and to regulate themselves in groups, via norms. In other words, there is,
in some sense of the term, a normative dimension of social life.

The principles implicit in these discussions are also the principles of

deliberative democracy as Habermas understands it; the best argument carries the
day regardless of who makes it, and, in principle, anyone who can make such an
argument is welcome to do so. And we have an important theoretical problem:
how to reimagine the critique of imperialism and the basis for the good society
outside of the Manichean drama of East v.

In the context of oppressive Western civilization, Carpenter found in the

“invert” an exceptional subject position; Gandhi agrees and develops the
implications: Liberated from the dull monochrome of sexual dimorphism, this
constitutively doubled and hybrid intermediary was endowed with variegated
sympathies and desires. Undoubtedly, one could construct a philosophical
argument about the politics of friendship, and one could retell stories about
aberrant Victorians.

So, consider the possibility that the Foucauldian mode of writing history at
least as it has been interpreted by “critical historians” is a specific articulation of a
more general normative epistemic mode. The organization of knowledge can be
inverted, as dystopia can anchor critique within the normative episteme mode.
For, normative resignification can show how supposedly utopian consciousness
contributes, via its elaboration, to social power and domination.
Chapter Four

Meaning

This chapter describes about how understanding the meaning of a culture,

art, and way of life through interpretation and social knowledge. The purpose of
interpretative to understand the meaning of where the process of social progress, a
metaphor that can capture the ways in which meaning is the basis on which social
life takes place.

This chapter also provides examples of research from several experts. Here
are some of the research, first is a study conducted by Gertz about the cockfight in
Balinese culture. Where high-status and masculine a man can be determined by
the animal. Second, Bordo conducting a study of a child who has Anorexia.
Anorexia is a behavior or way of life where the body and mind well based on
culture, and what we do with our body and mind is largely determined by the
current culture. Last research that is conducted by Skocpol. He explained that the
Russian revolutionaries knew about the French Revolution, and the revolutionary
Chinese know about the French revolution and Russia. What is the importance of
this? For Skocpol Sewell, and to interpretivisme, its meaning will be large,
because the landscape of meaning through which the Russian Revolution include
the results and interpretation of subsequent of the French Revolution. And the
results and interpretations furthermore, from the Russian Revolution forms a part
of the landscape of meaning in which the Chinese Revolution occurred. A
different meaning, to different revolution, in the valley different.

In understanding the meaning of a habit, a culture, even history is

necessary to the existence of interpretative maximum. Interpretative maximum is
better or worse, as far as they are responsible for using the evidence and in
accordance with the existing cases.
Chapter Five
Explanation

The compelling fusion of theory and evidence creates a maximal

interpretation that, by power of intellect, reconstructs the critical reader’s
understanding of the social actions under scrutiny. How this fusion happens can
differ according to what I have called epistemic mode. So, different notions of
what theory is for, and how theory does what it does, emerge: realist, normative,
interpretive.

which is to say, the resituating of known facts and actions in a new

intellectual context. And what normativists call critique is, likewise, redescription
from a new perspective, according to which previously acceptable actions become
intolerable, old ways of being and acting are revealed as domineering, and visions
of what can and should be acquire new life. Inquiry generally perhaps even
natural scientifi c inquiry can be understood as recontextualization.

In contrast to this, one of the greatest intellectual contributions of realism

especially clear in the writings of Rom Harré, Roy Bhaskar, and Mario Bunge is
that social researchers can and should attempt to construct causal claims about the
social world.To throw away the possibility of knowing social causes with the
possibility of naturalism is to confl ate the goals of social research with its means.

For, investigation that moves through the hermeneutic circle has not only
been relegated to the less “scientifi c” side of the divide between the humanities
and the social sciences, it has been explicitly theorized in a variety of
nonexplanatory ways. “Interpretation” can mean a philosophical exercise that
reveals the existential conditions of life for all humans. And one could cite other
examples of mechanisms embedded in meaning. Corrections to the new economic
sociology suggest that that market mechanisms are not only embedded in social
ties, but in social meanings political interests and ideologies are spread and
consolidated via elaborate meaning work the decisions of female corporate
executives are made on the terms of schemas of devotion.