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Professor Mary Morgan: 'Narrative Explanation', and 'Measuring Umbrella Concepts in the Social Sciences'

Wednesday 4 March 2020, 2.30PM to 5.30pm

Speaker(s): Professor Mary Morgan, The London School of Economics and Political Science.

Professor Mary Morgan will present the following two papers:

1. At 2.15 pm Narrative Explanation 

Scientists often use narratives to make explanations - not in all sciences, nor in all sites of science, but often enough to be worth examining how they work.  Such form of explanation has traditionally appeared problematic, because ‘proper’ explanations rest on laws (or at least mechanisms) and so embed a level of generality, whereas narrative explanations were thought only relevant for particular cases (as in history).  Examining how such narratives function in science shows that their role is to create a productive ordering of research elements and relate them to each other.  This ordering process is clearly found in the natural historical sciences.  But narrative ordering activities are also evident in studying complex social cases in sociology, anthropology and economics (despite the use of very different methods).  Whereas narratives in these fields begin by establishing coherent accounts in an individual case, the scientific community often extends those narrative accounts to similar cases in their domain.  On examination, it is only when such narratives of particulars involve posing and answering ‘how’ or ‘why’ questions that such accounts offer a narrative that ‘explains’ those other cases in the field.

2. At 4 pm Measuring Umbrella Concepts in the Social Sciences

A number of important social science umbrella terms are relatively well-defined, and invite quantification in their framing, yet their measurement can be, in practice, deeply problematic.  ‘Poverty’, ‘development’ and ‘national income’ provide good examples of the concepts, and the difficulties, involved.  They have acquired measurements, in the sense that scientific structures have devised measuring systems for them.  But the difficulties in combining numbers for the many elements crowded under those umbrella terms raises questions about their representing power and so their integrity as good measurements.  At the same time, since these numbers are regularly used for public action, the accountability, as well as the integrity of the measuring systems, needs consideration.  Whereas the accounting framework of the national income data provides a regime of quality control - for the measurements of poverty and development, there is no obvious audit for quality beyond the institutions that oversee them.  On the other hand, those latter numbers can be used by special interest groups to hold governments to account - so that there may be accountability without audit.

For information about the work and research of  Professor Mary Morgan please follow this link.

Location: Please note, the event will take place at York Medical Society, 23 Stonegate, York Y01 8AW

Admission: Colloquium members and postgraduate students