ASOK15225U Å - CANCELLED - How to theorize?: On the art and role of theorizing in social science

Education in the social science is most often divided into courses in theory, on the one hand, and courses in methods (quantitative and qualitative), on the other.

This distinction is usually treated as self-evident. We see it in every aspect of the social science, e.g. conferences, networks, working groups, textbooks and journals. If we take a closer look at this business as usual a surprising fact comes to the surface. Method in this distinction explicates how to conduct empirical research in the right way. Theory, on the other hand, presents and discuss the results of theorizing.

There are of course also more specific courses (conferences, journals, textbooks) about results in different subfields of research, but there are almost no courses (etc.) about how to theorize. Theorizing in social science is a practice, i.e. a “know-how” rather than a “know-that”.

Theorizing is learnt by doing and by being more or less intuitively influenced by “the intellectual styles” of role models (“the master thinkers”) and their paradigmatic works, rather than by following some explicit rules of procedure. In this course we will fil out this lack.

We will investigate the “method”, “craft” or “art” of theorizing. An important part of that task will be to investigate the meaning and role of theory in social science. Few social scientists deny the significance of theorizing, but how do we do it?