To Students in Gov't 2010:
This week's class:
This week the class will be devoted to the issues raised in the
reading for this week by Geertz, Schwartz, Scott, and Verba/Schlozman/Brady
(Hochschild from last week is useful too.) The works advocate different
research techniques and in several of the cases use the alternative methods
to study a similar problem: how people behave as political actors (assuming
that in some sense Geertz's Cohen and Scott's peasants are acting
politically.) VSB use standard survey techniques; the others use more
intensive modes of observation.
We do not want to deal with the substance of their work (though
comparisons among them may be useful for the task we pose). Rather want
to use the alternative approaches to deal with the following issue:
In KKV, the authors say that one ought to choose a topic that is
substantively important and also contributes to social science
literature. Few topics fit that description better than attempting to
understand the roots of terrorism. From a substantive point of view, we need
to know where terrorists (or potential terrorists) are likely to appear. And
this fits a long term social science interest in the roots of political
behavior; in particular extremist/alienated behavior. As social
scientists we want descriptive and causal inference. And this is just
what policy makers need: not only specific descriptions of what
happened when, but inferences as to people or movements or patterns we
have not observed. And we need above all valid causal inferences to
understand what future events may take place. (For a journalistic
approach, see this week's NY Times Magazine Section on Suicide Terrorosts.)
Suppose you are preparing a research proposal to study where terrorists
are likely to come from -- that is, to study the social, psychological,
ideological, political, or
whatever forces that lead individuals to become terrorists, what would you
propose? Assume that money is no object and even assume that access to
societies is about as open as the US (you can survey, you can live in
communities, etc.), what would you do? Note that the question is both
about individuals and about societies -- why does an individual become
potentially active in this way and why do various societies generate higher
rates of such individuals? It is both descriptive: where are terrorists or
portential terrorists likely to be found? And why is that the case?
The obvious answer is "let's do everything". Maybe. But still, we want
to analyze the usefulness of the several approaches. The important point
is to understand the principles of descriptive and causal inference
involved.
