Jay White (1999) declared “all research is fundamentally a matter of storytelling and narration. Any type of knowledge, even scientific knowledge, that we might have about public administration is basically a story grounded in language and discourse and expressed in narrative form” (p. 6). This is known as the linguistic turn, sparked in the late 1960s by such postmodern theorists as Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Roland Barthes, and Michel Foucault, and poses interesting normative and methodological challenges for public administration and policy studies. This paper will first clarify interpretivism and its various interpretations; discuss the centrality of narratives and human action to assist in understanding the wide-ranging
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Phenomenologists, for example, seek to describe the structures of experience without relying on theories or assumptions. Interpretivism is associated with the post-behavioralist movement and phenomenology is concerned with “understanding the beliefs, meanings, feelings, and attitudes of actors in social situation” (White, 1999, p. 48). Waugh and Waugh (2004) explain the appeal of phenomenology in the field of public administration, suggesting it provides an approach for dealing with complex and complicated societal problems by relying on the understanding, the verstehen, of those most knowledgeable about the problems and their causes. They state that phenomenology “offers a methodology for dealing with the public by reaffirming that public officials are part of that public and, thus, have a responsibility to deal with them as fellow citizens rather than as customers or clients “ (p. …show more content…
Governance is a defined as “series of disparate social practices that are constantly being created and recreated through concrete and meaningful human activity” (p. 5). Furthermore, “people’s understanding of governance varies with the narratives they tell and with the prior theories they use in constructing those narratives” (p. 15). Noting that modernists rely on reified concepts such as institutions and systems to offer explanations of governance, Bevir asks, “why would they postulate such as reified ontology rather than a constructivist and historical one?” (p. 65). Instead, Bevir takes an interpretivist approach, one that is historicist and
Phenomenologists, for example, seek to describe the structures of experience without relying on theories or assumptions. Interpretivism is associated with the post-behavioralist movement and phenomenology is concerned with “understanding the beliefs, meanings, feelings, and attitudes of actors in social situation” (White, 1999, p. 48). Waugh and Waugh (2004) explain the appeal of phenomenology in the field of public administration, suggesting it provides an approach for dealing with complex and complicated societal problems by relying on the understanding, the verstehen, of those most knowledgeable about the problems and their causes. They state that phenomenology “offers a methodology for dealing with the public by reaffirming that public officials are part of that public and, thus, have a responsibility to deal with them as fellow citizens rather than as customers or clients “ (p. …show more content…
Governance is a defined as “series of disparate social practices that are constantly being created and recreated through concrete and meaningful human activity” (p. 5). Furthermore, “people’s understanding of governance varies with the narratives they tell and with the prior theories they use in constructing those narratives” (p. 15). Noting that modernists rely on reified concepts such as institutions and systems to offer explanations of governance, Bevir asks, “why would they postulate such as reified ontology rather than a constructivist and historical one?” (p. 65). Instead, Bevir takes an interpretivist approach, one that is historicist and