Dear all The second CamPoS seminar of Michaelmas term will be given by Petri Ylikoski <https://blogs.helsinki.fi/pylikosk/ <https://blogs.helsinki.fi/pylikosk/>>, Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the University of Helsinki. Details as follows:
Time: Wednesday 4 November, 1-2:30pm Place: Online via Zoom: details below. Title: Learning from case studies Abstract: The case study is one of the most important research designs in many social scientific fields, but no shared understanding exists of the epistemic import of case studies. One of the perennial challenges of case study research has been the problem of generalization. Social scientists expect to learn something more general from case studies, but articulating how this “generalization” works has proved to be difficult. From early on, there has been an agreement that case studies cannot produce statistical generalizations and that statistical measures of representativeness are not adequate for the purposes of case study research. However, a generally acceptable alternative view has failed to emerge. Sociologist Howard S. Becker argues in his 'What About Mozart? What About Murder? Reasoning from Cases' (2014) that case study research is about learning about social mechanisms. Rather than being about timeless generalizations about relations between variables, case studies help us to learn about social mechanisms, or logics of situation, that produce great variety of social experiences depending on contextual details. My aim is to provide a philosophical reconstruction of this idea. For Becker, the notion of a mechanism is basically a useful metaphor that captures salient dynamical features of some recurring social situations. I suggest that a more systematic ideas about mechanism-based theorizing developed within so-called analytical sociology could be employed to make sense of case studies. Zoom details: https://cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/97363221036?pwd=MGZmc0w0bnFNRnBwNUVDSzIxVm5Sdz09 Meeting ID: 973 6322 1036 Passcode: 535019 The following CamPoS seminars will run during Michaelmas Term: 18 November: Haixin Dang (Leeds): Epistemic Responsibility and Scientific Authorship 2 December: Ariane Hanemaayer (Brandon/Cambridge): Nominalism in the social sciences: promises and pitfalls You can also follow us at https://twitter.com/CamPhilSci <https://twitter.com/CamPhilSci> All the best Matt Dr Matt Farr • Research & Teaching Associate in Philosophy of Science University of Cambridge • Department of History & Philosophy of Science Free School Lane | Cambridge | CB2 3RH w mattfarr.co.uk <http://www.mattfarr.co.uk/> | e mw...@cam.ac.uk <mailto:mw...@cam.ac.uk> | t 01223334559 _____________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: https://lists.cam.ac.uk/pipermail/phil-events/ Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
