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Systematic improvisation. Some misunderstandings in Boswell and Corbett’s ‘Embracing impressionism’

Boswell and Corbett’s ‘Embracing Impressionism’ is at heart a spat about authoritativeness. Yanow, others and I have repeatedly argued that interpretive knowledge has its place in the sun next to quantitative or experimental knowledge. I do not think that argument needs repeating here; it has been made persuasively, with reference to a century of nonfoundational philosophy, by many others (Taylor 1985; Fay 1996; Bevir and Rhodes 2010; Wagenaar 2011) No one can be held to account for the philosophical ignorance of others. One relatively small and mostly rhetorical piece of that argument is that interpretive research is systematic. This aspect of the argument is addressed to those adherents of the empiricist modes of social science who claim that qualitative and interpretive approaches are impressionistic and subjective, and, therefore, less worthy, and less authoritative. Boswell and Corbett (BC) take issue with the alleged systematic nature of interpretivism. They claim that interpretive research is much more haphazard and partial – impressionistic is their term – than we make it sound. In fact, they argue that impressionism should be worn as a badge of honor. Interpretive research will be the better for it. Although I agree with some parts of Boswell and Corbett’s argument, I am not quite sure what it is about. First, but probably least important, they present my and Yanow’s work in a decidedly partial way. If I restrict myself to my own book, over and over again I emphasize the desultory, improvisational character of interpretive research, particularly in Chapter 9, where I concede the limitations of methods, and of methods training, and make a plea to think in terms of heuristics, and strategies for problem solving, instead. I draw attention to the powerful feelings that research generates in novice researchers, the fit of the research process to the indeterminate and contested character of the policy process, and the research process as a continuous back-and-forth between the various elements of the research cycle. I quote extensively, and appreciatively, from that classic of research angst, Cerwonka and Mallki’s Improvising Theory (2007). I explicitly frame interpretive research as doing justice to the interactive, dialogical character of understanding (Wagenaar 2011, 242). And in my final chapter I discuss the importance of emergent time as a ‘generative property’ of policy and its research (Wagenaar 2011, 284–289). None of this sits very well with the kind of algorithmic, mechanistic description of interpretive analysis that BC ascribe to me. Perhaps BC’s objection is that I am disingenuous, and that I sweep the improvisational and interventionist aspects of interpretive inquiry under the carpet. BC’s key claim seems to be the following: ‘What distinguishes interpretive research, however, is a commitment to