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Interpretive research design: concepts and processes, by Peregrine Schwartz-

Shea and Dvora Yanow, Reviewed by Richard Holtzman

Article  in  Critical Policy Studies · January 2014

DOI: 10.1080/19460171.2014.883862

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Interpretive research design: concepts

and processes, by Peregrine Schwartz-
Shea and Dvora Yanow
a
Richard Holtzman
a
Department of History and Social Science, Bryant University,
Smithfield, RI, USA
Published online: 15 Apr 2014.

To cite this article: Richard Holtzman (2014) Interpretive research design: concepts and
processes, by Peregrine Schwartz-Shea and Dvora Yanow, Critical Policy Studies, 8:1, 116-118, DOI:
10.1080/19460171.2014.883862

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 Critical Policy Studies, 2014
Vol. 8, No. 1, 116–123

BOOK REVIEWS

Interpretive research design: concepts and processes, by Peregrine Schwartz-Shea and

Dvora Yanow, New York and London, Routledge, 2012, 184 pp., ISBN 9780415878081

This slim text, the first volume in the Routledge Series on Interpretive Methods, is not an
instruction manual or a ‘how to’ book for doing interpretive research. Peregrine Schwartz-
Shea and Dvora Yanow eschew the instrumental, mechanistic approach to research design
found in most ‘methods’ texts and turn instead to the notion of research as practice. In
doing so, the authors have delivered the book that many in the interpretive research
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community – particularly, those recently introduced to the interpretive perspective and still
trying to find their bearings – have been waiting for.
Schwartz-Shea and Yanow explain that ‘[r]esearch design is about making choices
and articulating a rationale for the choices one has made’ (p. 2). But how does one go
about designing research and articulating choices when engaging an interpretive social
scientific project, concerned with meaning-making rather than hypothesis testing, for
which ‘the scientific method’ is of no use? The authors effectively address this question
in a manner that is practical and systematic, and – because different interpretive
methods follow diverse logics of inquiry – carefully avoid suggesting any prescribed
research design. Their emphasis is directed toward the ‘concepts and processes in
interpretive empirical research design, and the methodological issues they raise, looking
across methods of generating and analyzing data’ (p. 9). To accomplish this aim, the
defining characteristics, questions and concerns of this research perspective are placed
alongside those of positivist-informed approaches (both quantitative and qualitative),
which successfully bring into focus the constitutive elements and rhythms of designing
interpretive research. Refreshingly, Schwartz-Shea and Yanow execute this without
defensiveness or polemics, instead relying on insightful empirical examples, colorful
analogies and clear argumentation to make their text accessible and engaging for a wide
audience.
The book’s eight chapters (not including the Introduction) can be generally categor-
ized into three sections. The first two chapters make a case for the necessities of research
design and consider the logics of inquiry of interpretive research, with a particular
emphasis on the origins of research questions. These chapters are valuable for a number
of reasons, including the authors’ discussions concerning the fundamental distinction
between methods and methodology (p. 4), the often-overlooked differences between
quantitative, qualitative and interpretive research (p. 5), the intertwined nature of ‘field-
work,’ ‘deskwork,’ and ‘textwork’ in interpretive research projects (p. 7), the role of prior
knowledge in developing research questions or ‘puzzles’ (p. 25–26), the notion of a
literature review as the written record of a dinner party conversation (p. 35), and most
significantly, an accessible discussion of abductive reasoning accompanied by effective
demonstrations of the recursive-iterative nature of this logic of inquiry.
Chapters 3 through 6 explore key issues that inform the choices of an interpretive
researcher. The first of these chapters explains that ‘[t]he interpretive orientation toward
 Critical Policy Studies 117

knowledge, with its focus on meaning-making (instead of a priori model specification)

and contextuality (rather than generalizability), ripples through the entire research design
process’ (p. 48). Having established the orientation and logics of interpretive research in
this concept-heavy chapter, the following three chapters deliver highly practical contribu-
tions. Chapter 4 presents valuable insights and recommendations regarding ‘getting going’
on an interpretive research project, specifically addressing the need to make important
choices regarding access to data, the researcher’s roles and accompanying challenges and
the importance of design flexibility. Understanding the character of evidence and how it is
‘generated,’ rather than ‘collected,’ by interpretive scholars is taken up in Chapter 5,
which also includes a short but useful section on the importance of field notes. Chapter 6
is concerned with designing trustworthy research and various means of evaluating this
trustworthiness. It concludes with a convenient table that ‘sums up’ the ‘[c]ontrasting
approaches to research and its design,’ which clearly and concisely draws out and
explicates the fundamental differences between interpretive and positivist approaches
(p. 113).
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The book’s brief last two chapters consider interpretive research designs within
broader contexts. Chapter 7 considers questions regarding the ethics and potential com-
plications that come with working with human participants, the politics of data archiving
and the writing up of research manuscripts. The final chapter pulls back from the authors’
primary purpose to ‘elucidate what it means to conduct research informed by an inter-
pretive approach’ in order to express the desire that their efforts may also ‘enable scholars
from different epistemic communities to converse with one another’ (p. 130). Along with
taking up the challenges of ‘speaking across epistemic communities,’ Schwartz-Shea and
Yanow offer an argument concerning recent calls for ‘mixed methods’ research in the
social sciences. Returning to the fundamental distinction between methods and methodol-
ogies discussed in the Chapter 1, they contend that while mixing methods is unproble-
matic on its face when those methods are informed by conflicting methodologies and their
respective ontological and epistemological presuppositions, the research produced ‘is not
logically consistent or philosophically coherent’ (p. 133). That this timely and relevant
argument is so briefly taken up in the conclusion of this book is a disappointment.
Hopefully, the authors will develop it more fully elsewhere.
Another disappointment, although slight in nature and with no detraction from the
overall effectiveness of the book, is Schwartz-Shea and Yanow’s final two pages of
‘concluding thoughts’ on ‘practicing interpretive research.’ The previous pages are
replete with valuable discussions of the key concepts and processes of interpretive
research design, each practically explained and grounded in empirical examples and
engaging narratives. By the end of the final chapter, the energy and impact of the earlier
writing seem to have been exhausted and the authors do not drive home their contribu-
tions, but rather undersell their significance: ‘We hope to have provided a way to think
about the differences in logics of inquiry across various approaches to science and a
conceptual vocabulary for naming and talking about those differences’ (p. 139). This
text is not simply an introduction to thinking and talking differently about the scientific
enterprise, no more than it is an instruction manual on how to do it. Rather, Interpretive
Research Design: Concepts and Processes is an indispensable handbook that should
have a place on the bookshelf of every politics, policy and public administration scholar
whose work is informed by an interpretive approach. More importantly, in regards to
shaping the future development of these social scientific disciplines, Schwartz-Shea and
 118 Book Reviews

Yanow’s text should have a place on every Research Design and Methods syllabi. That
way, regardless of their methodological persuasions, students will become as familiar
with the practice of interpretive social science research as they are with alternative
approaches.

Richard Holtzman
Department of History and Social Science, Bryant University, Smithfield, RI, USA
Email: rholtzma@bryant.edu
© 2014, Richard Holtzman
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19460171.2014.883862

The power of narrative in environmental networks, by Raul Lejano, Mrill Ingram, and
Helen Ingram, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 2013, 225 pp., ISBN 978-0-262-51957-1
Downloaded by [Richard Holtzman] at 16:29 30 May 2014

The Power of Narrative in Environmental Networks is cutting-edge research that links

networks and narratives: Networks narrate themselves into existence, say the authors. I
take this seemingly offbeat assertion to mean that networks, or discourse coalitions, or
even advocacy coalitions, if you prefer, are constituted by the conversations that circulate
within them. As Lejano and Leong (2012, p. 808) put it in reference to Los Angeles water
reclamation programs, ‘The coalition of actors might simply be an artifact of the narrative
analysis.’
Lejano, Ingram and Ingram are on to something in their refreshingly creative way of
conceptualizing networks in narrative terms rather than in structural terms that presuppose
utilitarian motivations. Their book also brings into its thesis a Latour-like appreciation of
nonhuman entities as important actors in the narrative.

Though Latour did not cast the actor-network in narrative form, we maintain that the network
is essentially a story being told and retold by actors in a field of structuration (namely, where
actors are both agential and embedded in structures of relationships). (p. 38)

In The Power of Narrative in Environmental Networks, the authors scarcely register

objections to the pretentions of neutrality and objectivity; they simply leave them behind.
They also come close to abandoning the individual node as the unit of network analysis in
favor of the narrative when they write: ‘An overarching story tied people together to a
much greater extent than people-to-people associations’ (p. 46).
Cutting-edge research, lacking established protocols and paradigms, must struggle to
establish typologies and methods that can serve as templates for others. Narrative theorists
have much work ahead of them in legitimizing their approaches. The authors’ proposed
nomenclature in Chapter 3 (e.g., metanarratives, elemental narratives, mythical narratives,
subnarratives, fabula) did not work for me – too many overlapping categories leading to
an incoherent schema. But I’m not disappointed about the overall lack of consensus in
narrative research protocols. There is something vitalizing in exploring the uncharted
boundaries of cutting-edge research.
The authors argue for the power of narrative, but the argument is also a celebration:

Stories, or narratives, create the glue that binds people together in networks, providing them
with a sense of history, common ground, and future, thus enabling them to persist even in the

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