Making social science matter: Why social inquiry fails and How it can succeed again. (Book Reviews).

Bent Flyvbjerg.

Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. x, 204. $19.95 (paper).

An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he or she predicted yesterday did not happen today. According to most economists, this joke is not all that funny. In the opinion of Bent Flyvbjerg, a professor of planning, the prevalence of jokes such as this one is an expression of a deep problem with the social sciences in general and economics in particular, which consists of their desire to emulate the natural sciences. To be sure, discussions of the relationship between the natural and the social have a long history in Western thought, and four possible configurations may be identified (Mirowski 1994, pp. 10-7). First, some argue that the natural and the social are identical in some sense. Second, others defend the idea that the natural and the social are disjunct but individually lawlike in some sense. Third, yet others believe that the natural is objective stable, whereas the social is patterned on it but is not stable. Finally, some support the position that the natural and the social a re both unstable and hence jointly constructed as mutually supportive. Most economists are partisans of the first configuration, which is an artifact of the historical genesis of the neoclassical program. As explained by Mirowski (1989), economists are led to defend the first position as a result of the earlier efforts to appropriate the formalisms of mid- 19th-century energy physics and adapt them to the language of utility and prices, thereby asserting the extreme near identity of physics and economics. Now, Flyvbjerg is a strong opponent of the first configuration and develops an alternative methodology for the social sciences.

In contrast with the self-confidence frequently expressed by economists, Flyvbjerg believes that the social sciences are increasingly coming under attack for their failure to live up to the standards erected by the natural sciences. The first part of his book is devoted to explaining why social science will never be able to develop the type of explanatory and predictive theory that is the ideal and hallmark of natural science. From Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus, we learn that context and judgment are irreducibly central to understanding human action. From Pierre Bourdieu and Harold Garfinkel, we subsequently find out that a theory of context and judgment is impossible. After having thus deconstructed the conventional ideal for the social sciences, the second part of Making Social Science Matter sets out to reorient mainstream social theory and social science methodology based on the Aristotelian concept of phronesis, which "goes beyond analytical, scientific knowledge (episteme) and technical knowledge or know-ho w (techne) and involves judgments and decisions made in the manner of a virtuoso social and political actor" (p. 2). In other words, phronesis deals with the concrete, the practical, and the ethical and therefore implies a reflexive analysis and a discussion of values and interests aimed at social commentary and social action. In order to convince his readers of the importance of a phronetic social science, Flyvbjerg first uses it in an effort to defend the case study method and next gives it a more modern flavor by including considerations of power, based on appeals to the work of Michel Foucault, Jurgen Habermas, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Making Social Science Matter closes with a set of methodological guidelines for the practice of phronetic social science and with an illustration of how it may be carried out in practice. In the concluding chapter, Flyvbjerg attempts to convince his reader one final time that three goals need to be achieved in order for social science to matter again. First, we must abandon our ineffective efforts to emulate the natural sciences. Second, we must take up problems that matter and address them in ways that matter. Finally, we must effectively communicate the results of our research efforts to the community at large.

As the earlier classification of the possible relationships between the natural and the social has illustrated, Flyvbjerg is not alone in his calls for a separation of the social from the natural. However, it is not entirely clear of which configuration he is a partisan. For instance, his appeals to Habermas and Dreyfus would place him in the second grouping, based on the argument that the natural and the social are disjunct but lawlike because of purposes. At the same time, his incorporation of the insights of Nietzsche and Foucault would lead one to believe that he is a partisan of the fourth option since both have argued that the natural and the social are both unstable and hence jointly constructed out of will. Flyvbjerg's inconsistent appeals, combined with somewhat surprising frequent invocations of the problematic philosophy of Thomas Kuhn as well as a caricatured description of the natural sciences, which themselves have encountered many obstacles in their efforts to live up to the standards supposedl y characterizing them (Pickering 1992), may lead economists to believe that they have no reason to pick up Making Social Science Matter, but nothing could be further from the truth. In his discussion of the importance of context and judgment to human action, for example, Flyvbjerg argues quite persuasively that the rational mode of thinking is inadequate for comprehending the total spectrum of human activity. Even worse, "rationality may endanger sensitivity to context, experience, and intuition" (p. 24). These discussions resonate with appeals to bounded rationality on the part of an increasing number of neoclassical economists. Yet, whereas these endeavors are more often than not inspired by efforts to strengthen the neoclassical program rather than developing an alternative (Sent 1997, in press), Flyvbjerg calls for an abandonment of neoclassical economics and especially its natural science roots and aspirations. Now, economists may be tempted to counter such appeals with the claim that economics is one of the most successful social sciences precisely because it is the hardest one. But, as Flyvbjerg would ask, does economics matter? Wall Street firms prefer to hire physicists because they have a real as opposed to fake natural science background (Bass 1999). Academic economists had little to no role to play in the final decisions concerning the North American Free Trade Agreement, but political and moral arguments prevailed (Klamer and Meehan 1999). Though the spectrum auction has been claimed as a victory for game theory, a closer look at the developments reveals that the story is a bit more complicated (Nik-Khah 2001), and the prevalence of jokes such as the one at the start of this review ought to make economists pause and take a serious look at the alternatives suggested by Making Social Science Matter.

References

Bass, Thomas A. 1999. The predictors: How a band of maverick physicists used chaos theory to trade their way to a fortune on Watt Street. New York: Henry Molt.

Klamer, Arjo, and Jennifer Meehan. 1999. The crowding out of academic economics: The case of NAFTA. In What do economists know? New economics of knowledge, edited by Robert F. Garnett, Jr. London: Routledge, pp. 65-85.

Mirowski, Philip. 1989. More heat than light: Economics as social physics, physics as nature's economics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Mirowski, Philip. 1994. Doing what comes naturally: Four metanarratives on what metaphors are for. In Natural images in economic thought: "Markets read in tooth and claw," edited by Philip Mirowski. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 3-19.

Nik-Khah, Edward. 2001. Economic theory and the spectrum auctions. Dissertation proposal, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN.

Pickering, Andrew (editor). 1992. Science as practice and culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Sent, Esther-Mirjam. 1997. Sargent versus Simon: Bounded rationality unbound. Cambridge Journal of Economics 5(1): 23-38.

Sent, Esther-Mirjam. In press. Game theorists versus Herbert Simon: Playing games with bounded rationality. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.