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Showing posts from December, 2021

Is Interpretive Political Science Just Journalism? A Comparison of Wildland, On the Run, and Evicted.

Two of the major leaders in the political science interpretivist movement are Dvora Yanow and Peregrine Schwartz-Shea. They hold occasional chautauquas in which issues related to interpretivism are discussed. On one occasion, it was said that interpretivism is often accused of being little more than a glorified form of journalism, and not worthy of any claims to being “scientific.” I will contest that claim in this post. I will use three well received books concerning American politics. These are: Wildland , by Even Osnos, which uses a journalistic approach. This will be compared with two exemplary applications of the methods used in interpretive political science: On the Run , by Alice Goffman and Evicted , by Matt Desmond. [1] One major difference here, in my view, is that political science writing, if it is to make a claim to being “scientific,” contains a causal theme within its narrative. Journalism is generally narrative without disciplining itself to formulating any causal expl