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Mending Fences: Beyond the Epistemological Dilemma

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Patricia Ewick
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In his presidential address, Frank Munger (2001) asks us to consider a reconciliation between inquiry and activism. Although Munger uses the broader and more inclusive term “social inquiry” as his counterpoint to activism, I would like to focus on a particular type of inquiry, one that has deep roots in the Law and Society Association (LSA) and one that is most opposed to activism: social science inquiry. In short, I would argue that tensions that historically have kept the projects of inquiry and activism separate emerge out of a particular brand of inquiry known as empiricism and, among other things, its commitment to value freedom.

Type
Presidential Address
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , 2001 , pp. 21 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 by the Law and Society Association

References

Alexander, Jeffrey (1990) “Beyond the Epistemological Dilemma: General Theory in a Postpositivist Mode,” 5 Sociological Forum 531–42.Google Scholar
Allen, Hillary (1986) “Psychiatry and the Construction of the Feminine,” in Miller, P. & Rose, N., eds., The Power of Psychiatry. Cambridge, MA: Polity.Google Scholar
Harding, Sandra (1991) Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women's Lives. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Munger, Frank (2001) “Inquiry and Activism in Law and Society” (herein).Google Scholar