Interpretivism

Conceptual Overview and Discussion

The motivation for focusing on a case is in part the need to examine that case in detail. The details are important because, it is argued, we can fully grasp human meaning only when we have a detailed account. When we move to an analysis of variables and factors that avoid comprehension of the meaning of a situation or a process, then we cannot recover meaning. The goal of case study research is to grasp the totality of a situation or process. Hence, the study of a single case or a few cases allows for description of details of social action by individual social actors or collectivities, large and small. Such details are often deemed idiographic aspects of phenomena because we are trying to “graph” the unique (Latin idios) features that appear to us through the five senses, in particular visual observation. An idiographic observation attempts to make sense of a situation or a process. In the arts and humanities, interpretation is also central. For example, in an avant garde novel written by Virginia Woolf or James Joyce we are given information in the form of detailed streams of consciousness, with relatively little outside interpretation by a narrator, and we are therefore required to read between the lines in order to grasp what the narrative is about. A novel like Proust's Remembrance is the epitome of an idiographic approach. However, even a seemingly straightforward novelist, such as Mark Twain, hints at deeper meanings. A key problem in trying to comprehend interpretivism in social science is the question of how to differentiate social science from the arts [Page 487]and humanities. How is a case study scientific? Is the phrase social science merely an empty use of the word science, or are there really three categories of knowing: (1) hard science, (2) soft science, and (3) the arts and humanities?