People
periodically try to convince me that I should pay attention to the work of
French philosopher Michel Foucault, because it will enrich archaeological interpretations
of the past. Maybe. But here is why I remain dubious, after reading various
books and articles by and about Foucault.
Highly
abstract theories and concepts—such as Foucault’s governmentality, power and
discipline (things archaeologists have mentioned)—describe the operation of the
world on a very general level. This kind of approach, termed “grand theory” by
C. Wright Mills, is “so general that its practitioners cannot logically get
down to observation. They never, as grand theorists, get down from the higher
generalities to problems in their historical and structural contexts” (Mills 1959:33). This is pretty basic stuff in social
science epistemology: grand theory is so abstract that it cannot explain
individual cases or variation among cases (Abbott
2004:218; Ellen 2010; Mjøset 2001; Smith 2011). My post. "What is wrong with abstract social theory" has links to other posts and resources. Foucaultian power and
governmentality simply exist—presumably for all societies—so how can they
explain change and variation?
In Abend’s (2008)
classification of types of theory in sociology, Foucault’s concepts are examples
of theory type 3 (a statement about the meaning of social phenomena, an
interpretation, a reading, or a way of making sense) or type 5 (a weltanschauung, an overall perspective
from which one sees and interprets the world). What this means is that
Foucault’s concepts are of limited utility in explaining specific social
phenomena, and their empirical adequacy cannot be tested. In the words of Kevin
Fisher (2009:440), for archaeoloigsts,
abstract theory like this “does not offer the tools needed to analyze the
material remains on the ground.” I discuss this notion further in Smith (2015, n.d.). See my previous post on Abend's scheme of theory.
Pierre Bourdieu recognized this problem
with Foucault’s work. As reported by Callewaert (2006:92),
Bourdieu complained that “the philosophical method was used [by Foucault] for
answering questions that are basically empirical sociological questions.” Foucault’s
methods were faulty from the perspectives of both historiography and social
science methodology (Garland 1987). In
fact, his method of social analysis has been called “politically engaged
journalism” (Vallois 2015). If one is
interested in abstract, philosophical notions about the human condition, then
the work of Foucault may be full of insights. But if one is interested in a
social-scientific explanation of the dynamics of past cities and human
societies, one has to look elsewhere for concepts and models.
In the social sciences, theory that is more
grounded and testable is termed “middle-range theory” (Hedström and Udéhn 2009; Merton 1968:39-72; Sampson 2010). In
Abend’s (2008) scheme, this corresponds
to theory type 1 (a general proposition about the relationship between two
variables) and type 2 (an explanation of a particular social phenomenon). In
this approach explanation consists of identifying the causal mechanisms
responsible for observed changes: “to explain a fact is to exhibit the
mechanism that makes the system tick” (Bunge
2004:182). This is part of a basic scientific approach to archaeological knowledge. See my post, "Why is it important to strive for a more scientific archaeology?"
So, if you don’t care about explanation and
causality, or about being able to tell when your interpretation is wrong, then
the work of Michel Foucault may be fine for you. But for me, I cannot find
anything interesting or useful in his work.
(And, of course, I am really bugged by Foucault using the term "archaeology" to refer to the past history of any old thing. It is insulting that Google searches for archaeology plus something else turn up Foucault instead of turning up archaeology!)
Abbott, Andrew
2004 Methods of Discovery: Heuristics for the
Social Sciences. Norton, New York.
Abend, Gabriel
2008 The Meaning of
"Theory". Sociological Theory
26: 173-199.
Bunge, Mario
2004 How Does It Work?:
The Search for Explanatory Mechanisms. Philosophy
of the Social Sciences 34 (2): 182-210.
Callewaert, Staf
2006 Bourdieu, Critic of
Foucault: The Case of Empirical Social Science Against Double-Game-Philosophy. Theory, Culture and Society 23 (6):
73-98.
Ellen, Roy
2010 Theories in
Anthropology and "Anthropological Theory". Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 16: 387-404.
Fisher, Kevin D.
2009 Placing Social
Interaction: An Integrative Approach to Analyzing Past Built Environments. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology
28: 439-457.
Garland, David
1987 Foucault's Discipline and Punish: An Explosition
and Critique. Law and Social Inquiry
11 (4): 847-880.
Hedström, Peter and Lars Udéhn
2009 Analytical
Sociology and Theories of the Middle Range.
In The Oxford Handbook of Analytical
Sociology, edited by Peter Hedström and Peter Bearman, pp. 25-49. Oxford
University Press, New York.
Merton, Robert K.
1968 Social Theory and Social Structure. 3rd
ed. Free Press, New York.
Mills, C. Wright
1959 The Sociological Imagination. Oxford
University Press, New York.
Mjøset, Lars
2001 Theory: Conceptions
in the Social Sciences. In International Encyclopedia of the Social and
Behavioral Sciences, edited by Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes, pp.
15641-15647. Elsevier, New York.
Sampson, Robert J.
2010 Eliding the
Theory/Research and Basic/Applied Divides: Implications of Merton's 'Middle
Range'. In Robert K. Merton: Sociology of Science and Sociology as Science,
edited by Craig Calhoun, pp. 63-78. Columbia University Press, New York.
Smith, Michael E.
2011 Empirical Urban
Theory for Archaeologists. Journal of
Archaeological Method and Theory 18: 167-192.
2015 How
can Archaeologists Make Better Arguments? The
SAA Archaeological Record 15 (4): 18-23.
n.d. Archaeology and
Social Science Inquiry. Antiquity (accepted for publication).
Vallois, Nicolas
2015 Michel Foucault and
the History of Economic Thought. Œconomia:
History, Methodology, Philosophy 5 (4): 461-490.
5 comments:
Foucalt wrote in French. He and his fellow travellers do have a reputation for redefining common words (or inventing new ones) and feeling clever about themselves for it. But couldn't it be that Fr. archéologie included both the narrow English sense, and the older Greek one "the study of old things"? In my experience reading and translating academic German, that kind of mismatch in scope between terms in two languages is very common.
Hmmmm, that sounds possible. My French is good enough to read a dissertation now and then, but not good enough to evaluate how philosophers use words! I have a French postdoc starting up in January - I can ask her about this.
I have now published a more formal description of how my social science epistemology contrasts with that of Foucault, the post-processualists, and other examples of non-scientific approaches that philosopher of science Mario Bunge calls "academic charlatans":
Smith, Michael E.
2017 Social Science and Archaeological Inquiry. Antiquity 91(356): 520-528.
Link to the article
A proposition that does not account for or explain empirical phenomena (e.g., a causal account of how or why) and is not testable is not a theory in the scientific sense. It could be an interpretation or opinion, perhaps an interesting or insightful opinion, but not a theory.
@Michael B - I agree, but this kind of narrow scientific concept of theory will not convince anyone not already in the scientific camp. There are lots of archaeologists, and archaeology students, caught in the murky territory between science and the humanities-realm of Foucault. The term theory actually has many accepted meanings in the social sciences (not to mention the humanities), and I prefer to exploit these to try to convince the fence-sitters to come down on the rigorous, scientific side of things. Abend's paper on theory in sociology explains these different meanings in a useful way.
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