p.16-17 the natural sciences are better at testing hypotheses to demonstrate
abstract principles and law-like relationships, while the social sciences are better at producing situated knowledges
about how to understand and act in contextualized settings.
p.19 Phronetic social science, therefore, is centrally about producing research
that has relevance to decisions about what can and should be done, and also how to do it.
p.20 phronetic social science... privileges producing
knowledge that improves the ability of those people to make informed decisions about critical issues confronting them...
Phronetic social science is ultimately about producing knowledge that can challenge power not in theory but in ways
that inform real efforts to produce change... Phronetic social science produces research that can inform practical
wisdom about how to conduct affairs in a particular setting
p.28 Narrative analysis can illuminate the ways in which individuals experience,
confront and exercise power in ways that are useful if one adopts the phronetic approach
p.30 Stories and narrative accounts of events provide a fundamental form
of empirical information for social scientists that have different levels of analysis... there is the relational level,
in which the story can reveal relationships... as well as the temporal, spatial and other contextual dimensions that are related
to the event that is being recounted.
p.31 a narrative can involve a story told about... evaluations of ongoing
events
p.32 narrative analysis... its final advantage is
central to phronesis; namely, it allows the social scientist to uncover... power relations and institutionalized constraints
as they are confronted (or not) through social and political engagement
p.33 there is an upper limit for the number of narratives that can be collected
and analysed where the whole story is maintained and where the analyst starts to lose control over the information.
p.33 narrative analysis... seeks a different 'way of knowing' that is opposed to the positivistic*
spirit of the natural science model.
*[Wikipedia] Positivism asserts that the only authentic knowledge
is that which allows positive verification.... Positivism is a philosophy of science based on the view that in the
social as well as natural sciences, data derived from sensory experience, and logical and mathematical treatments of such
data, are together the exclusive source of all authentic knowledge. Obtaining and "verifying" data that can be received from
the senses is known as empirical evidence.
p.35,36 There are thus strategies for overcoming some of the inherent limitations to narrative analysis
that are useful to take into consideration if narrative analysis is to be used for phronetic social science... If narrative
analysis is to be useful for this approach, then it needs to tackle the problems of authenticity, faithfulness, representativeness
and generalizability.
p.49 Phronesis begins with turning away from ideas and theory, and depending
instead on the observation of practice that can be trusted.
p.51 A recurring tension in War and Peace is between those military officers who believe that battles
can be fought according to plans (e.g., Tolstoy's satirical description of Carl Maria von Clausewitz, who in 1833 would write
On War) and those who realize that battles can perhaps be prepared for, but they cannot be planned
p.52 When intelligence systems dependent on principle confront unforeseen situations to which
their principles are not readily applicable, their circuits jam. Phronesis continues to function, in part because
such intelligence does not try to make present circumstances conform to long-term plans. Unencumbered by obligation
to follow a predetermined plan, phronesis can respond to whatever requires response, seeing exactly what is at hand
and using the resources at hand.
p.53 Habitus provides the embodied practical wisdom that guides decisions made in conditions of inevitable
uncertainty.... choices... stem from practical dispositions that incorporate ambiguities and uncertainties
that emerge from acting through time and space... Actors are... strategic improvisers who respond dispositionally
to the opportunities and constraints offered by various situations.
p.55 Bourdieu thus suggests a crucial qualification of phronesis. Practical
wisdom is generally specific to a particular field - it predisposes strategies that work in that field, but not necessarily
elsewhere.
p.57 The game for which the scholastic must develop a feel involves this movement between fields, becoming
caught up in one field's stakes and then suspending that engagement. There is a profound ethics and a politics in
this capacity for alternating engagement
p.59 Foucault's frequently quoted statement: 'My point is not that everything is bad, but that everything
is dangerous, which is not exactly the same as bad'... This sentence best exemplifies the need for phronesis,
both in everyday life as Foucault depicts it, and also in Foucauldian social science.
p.61 The issue is not whether we confront power; the only question is how we do so: how well
we use its force and evade its traps.
p.61 [Foucault quoted] My point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous,
which is not exactly the same as bad. If everything is dangerous, then we always have something to do... I think that the
ethico-political choice we have to make every day is to determine which is the main danger.
p.61 That last line expresses what I understand to Foucault's version of phronesis: the capacity
to make choices every day as to which is the main danger, because no course of action will ever be without
danger.
p.62 Foucault then reasserts that there is no existence outside relations of power: 'We evolve in a world
of perpetual strategic relations'
p.72 The phronetic and narrative approaches have been seen to be
especially appropriate for analysis of power
p.72-73 power... should also be seen as constituted in dense networks
and entanglements that comprise the normalcy of everyday life
p.73 Power is... wrapped up in what knowing counts as knowledge;
counts as truth; counts as rationality. Such terms have meaning only in context and all contexts are marked by power relations
p.73 those facts 'that we call our data are really our own construction
of other people's constructions and what they and their compatriots are up to'
p.73 The basis for grasping social reality is not so much
the construction of elegant and internally coherent models of action, but an understanding that the social world has
a historical and narrative structure: the one is understood through the other.
p.73 Foucault teaches us that... power is inseparable
from its effects.
p.74 The apparatus itself is the system of relations that can be
established between these elements... between these elements... there is a sort of interplay of shifts of position
and modifications of function which can also vary widely... which has as its major function at a given historical
moment that of responding to an urgent need. The apparatus thus has a dominant strategic function. [Foucault]
p.74 power is only visible in its effects... Power produces its own truths
p.76 Power is... a way of talking about the structuring of social action
in normal ways... is 'more a question of ongoing and active structuring of the possible field of action of the others - a
process that is always open to resistance, transformation and renegotiation'
p.78 These virtual facts are produced through key performance
indicators, which create 'a field of objects on which power will be able to intervene in order to control production'...
Key performance indicators construct specific forms of knowledge as a strategic ideal... The point of the performance
norms is to create virtual objects around which reality can be related normatively... What the key performance indicators
do is to construct a series of virtual realities represented in the norms that are actually recorded around those measures
constructed. The measures construct the environment of the project
p.79 the specific key performance indicators are made non-negotiable
with each other: each establishes its own norm and it is only outstanding performance across all norms
that will generate rewards... In such a system, the most important criteria for managing power relations positively
are the actual measures used, since the tendency will be for on-site managers to manage the measures, because reward
is related to establishing high performance-related norms. A great deal of care thus has to go into the construction
of the measures
p.163-164 March and Olsen (1989), writing about political institutions, observed that
much of the richness of ecological theories of politics stems from the way in which the actions of each
participant are part of the environments of others. The environment of each political actor is, therefore, partly
self-determined as each reacts to the other... When environments are created, the actions taken in adapting to an environment
are partly responses to previous actions by the same actor, reflected through the environment. A common result is
that small signals are amplified into large ones, and the general implication is that routine adaptive
processes have consequences that cannot be understood without linking them to an environment that is
simultaneously, and endogenously, changing. (p. 46)
p.173-174 As Flyvbjerg correctly argues, one of the most difficult and yet vital tasks is thus to construct
a set of phenomena as a problem
p.246 Social science, Flyvbjerg argues, should be recast based largely upon Aristotle's conception
of phronesis or practical wisdom mixed with a healthy dose of Foucault's understanding of power. This reinvigorated
social science trumps natural science in the understanding of social phenomena by emphasizing contexts, interpretations
and an in-depth understanding of existing power relations.
p.246 For Aristotle, phronetics as an intellectual virtue was not gained by stepping back
and contemplating reality from an objective distance, as if that were possible, but it came from getting one's hands
dirty by actively confronting the problems of the day.
p.248 phronetic research... embraces a situational ethics that is firmly rooted in 'the
socially and historically conditioned context' with sets of validity claims that can be judged by a 'community of
social scientists'. Phronetic research also involves 'dialoguing with a polyphony of voices'
where the researcher's voice should not claim 'final authority'... truth is determined by full dialog in the community
with each validity claim tested 'in competition with other validity claims and other interpretations'
p.251 phronesis for Aristotle is not merely a form of knowing, but it is realized through action. 'To be
a man of practical wisdom, one must not only know [what one ought to do] but he must also be able to act accordingly'
