A Post-Parsimonious Proposition

Abstract

This article is at once a critique, a challenge, and a risk, first in the form of instructive parody, moving on to engage more seriously with the critique of “parsimonious” social science embedded within it, and finally suggesting ways to embrace and advance a legacy of new political science. Employing satire, the article begins by outlining the various methods within the field of mainstream political science currently being used to tackle the (impossible) empirical project of exploring an “ideal world.” Next, although protocol cautions emerging political scientists to tread lightly with critiques of entrenched methods, established scholarship, and renowned journals, it argues that substantive analyses of this less than “ideal world” are still urgently interwoven with provocative interrogation of this less than ideal discipline. Beyond critique however, the goal of this commentary is both to affirm the risk-taking trajectory of “new” political science that has beckoned many into the field and to insist upon the continuation of this forward move(ment): opening up space for, and claiming as political responsibility, a stake in methodological creativity and a more robust set of political associations.

Notes

¹ This research has prompted initial criticism from the Qualitativists for (E)Quality Campaign, resulting in: “The Pernicious Costs of Coding in Interpreting an Ideal World” (QQC, 2013). Unfortunately, we do not have the space to publish this critique.

² Final note from the editors: We strongly encourage all scholars to cite this review so that we may cite all of your cites and keep this journal the most referred, vetted, foremost, leading, and flagship, dare we say, ideal publication in the discipline!

³ Timothy Kaufman-Osborne, “Political Theory as Profession and as Subfield?” Political Research Quarterly 63 (2010), p. 662.

⁴ G.J. Kasza, “The Marginalization of Political Philosophy and its Effects on the Rest of the Discipline,” Political Research Quarterly 63:3 (2010), p. 701.

⁵ David M. Ricci, Politics, Scholarship, and Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984), p. 292.

⁶ George Steinmetz (ed.), The Politics of Method in the Human Sciences: Positivism and its Epistemological Others (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), p. 20.

⁷ Ricci, Politics, Scholarship, and Democracy, p. 294 (italics mine).

⁸ Alan Wolfe, An End to Political Science: The Caucus Papers With Marvin Surkin (New York: Basic Books, 1970), p. 304, cited in Clyde W. Barrow, “The Intellectual Origins of New Political Science,” New Political Science 30:2 (2008), p. 52.

⁹ Sheldon S. Wolin, “Political Theory as a Vocation,” The American Political Science Review 63:4 (1969), p. 1081.

¹⁰ Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (New York: Doubleday, 1959).

¹¹ Ludwig Wittgenstein and Cora Diamond (eds), Wittgenstein's Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1967), p. 44.

¹² Wolin, “Political Theory as a Vocation,” p. 1073.

¹³ Michel Foucault, “Space, Power, and Knowledge,” in Simon During (ed.), The Cultural Studies Reader (New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 134–141.

¹⁴ Wendy Brown, “Political Theory is Not a Luxury,” Political Research Quarterly 63:3 (2010), p. 683.

¹⁵ John Gunnell, “Professing Political Theory,” Political Research Quarterly 63:3 (2010), p. 678.

¹⁶ Brown, “Political Theory is Not a Luxury,” p. 685.

¹⁷ Bent Flyvbjerg, Making Social Science Matter (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 4.

¹⁸ William Connolly, Appearance and Reality (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 232.

¹⁹ James Farr and Raymond Seidelman (eds), Discipline and History: Political Science in the United States (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1993), p. 394.

²⁰ Wolin, “Political Theory as a Vocation,” p. 1071.

²¹ Kaufman-Osbourne, “Political Theory,” p. 667.

²² Brown, “Political Theory is Not a Luxury,” p. 681.

²³ Kaufman-Osborne, “Political Theory,” p. 668.

²⁴ Ibid., 662.

²⁵ Kasza, “The Marginalization of Political Philosophy,” p. 698.

²⁶ Kaufman-Osborne, “Political Theory,” p. 662.

²⁷ Howard Zinn, Artists in Times of War (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003).

²⁸ Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens (Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983), p. 49.

²⁹ These are questions which I explore in more detail in a forthcoming chapter: Alix Olson, “Archiving Optimism,” in Agitation with a Smile: Howard Zinn's Legacy and the Future of Activism (New York: Paradigm, 2013).

³⁰ James Jasper, The Art of Moral Protest (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 138.

³¹ Janet R. Jakobsen makes a similar point in her compelling article “Collaborations.” Janet R. Jakobsen, “Collaborations,” American Quarterly (2012), pp. 827–831.

³² Ricci, Politics, Scholarship, and Democracy, p. 301.

³³ Wendy Brown, “At The Edge,” Political Theory 30:4 (2002), p. 256.

³⁴ Pierre Bourdieu, “Social Scientists, Economic Science, and the Social Movement,” in Gisele Sapiro (ed.), Sociology is a Martial Art: Political Writings by Pierre Bourdieu (New York: The New Press, 2010), p. 128.

³⁵ This is an issue of particular concern to, and addressed by, the work of Howard Zinn. See Howard Zinn, “The Uses of Scholarship,” in Howard Zinn on History, 2nd ed. (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2011), pp. 69–80.

³⁶ NPS, 2013.

³⁷ Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (New York: Random House, 1977), pp. 27–28.

³⁸ Clyde W. Barrow, “The Intellectual Origins of New Political Science,” New Political Science 30:2 (2008), pp. 215–244.

³⁹ Ibid., 241.

⁴⁰ Aimee Carillo Rowe, “Romancing the Organic Intellectual: On the Queerness of Academic Activism,” The American Studies Association (2012), p. 799.

⁴¹ Brown, “Political Theory is Not a Luxury.”

⁴² Ricci, Politics, Scholarship, and Democracy, p. 299.

⁴³ Anne Norton, “Response, ‘Or the Question is Who is To Be Master That's All’,” The Good Society 15:1 (2006), p. 28.

⁴⁴ Brown, “Political Theory Is Not a Luxury,” p. 682.

⁴⁵ Craig Calhoun, “Academic Freedom: Public Knowledge and the Structural Transformation of the University,” Social Research 76:2 (2009), p. 579.

⁴⁶ Brown, “Political Theory Is Not a Luxury,” p. 682.

⁴⁷ Jeff Maskovsky, “Beyond Neoliberalism: Academia and Activism in a Nonhegemonic Moment,” American Quarterly (2012), p. 819.

⁴⁸ Theodore J. Lowi “The State in Political Science: How We Become What We Study,” in Discipline and History: Political Science in the United States (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1993), p. 394.

⁴⁹ Farr, Discipline and History: Political Science in the United States, p. 394.

⁵⁰ Farr and Seidelman, Discipline and History, p. 7.

⁵¹ William E. Connolly, The Terms of Political Discourse (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974), p. 214.

⁵² Ricci, Politics, Scholarship, and Democracy, p. 309.

⁵³ Gunnell, Professing Political Theory, p. 36.