History, Comparison and Context in “Middle-Range” Theorizing: Between Nomothetic and Idiographic Modes of Qualitative Research

Rudra Sil, University of Pennsylvania

A highly cited article by Falleti and Lynch (2009) defines “context” in the social sciences as “the relevant aspects of a setting in which an array of initial conditions leads to an outcome of a defined scope and meaning via causal mechanisms.” This is a helpful way to capture the interactions between (particular) contexts and (general) causal mechanisms, with the former acting to mediate the effects of the latter across a given set of cases. Nonetheless, it is worth exploring what this might mean for the epistemological status of “context” in comparative-historical research. Specifically, the analytic significance of similarities and differences across historical contexts can vary depending on whether one is pursuing explanations for a general pattern of variation across time and/or space or constructing narratives intended to provide a deeper understanding of actors’ subjective efforts at meaning-making in a given spatio-temporal settings. This paper aims to outline a pragmatic approach to comparative-historical analysis that occupies an intermediate position between the stripping of context necessitated in nomothetic endeavors aimed at macro-causal explanations and the emphasis on contextual particularities that account for singular outcomes within specific settings (whether treated as a “case” or not). This position stresses contextualized comparison aimed at supporting modest, “middle range” propositions (borrowing Merton’s language) that are partially portable and provide what Weber called “explanatory understandings” in relation to small sets of historical cases that share certain contextual attributes but not others. Such an approach can produce propositions that include portable mechanisms but are not too far removed from particular contexts and thus easier to translate within newer cases that have similar contextual attributes in relation to problems of similar scope. As a bonus, it also provides greater scope for engagement and dialogue between general theoretical propositions and case-specific narratives (whether causal or interpretive).

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 Presented in Session 140. Historical Forces in Comparative and Methodological Phenomena