233023 SE Social Science Methods for STS Research (2023W)

In common understanding, research methods are the tools social scientists employ to study, represent and understand the social world. Picking the right method to study a research question is crucial for doing successful research, and requires in depth knowledge of the different tools available, and of their possibilities and limits. However, particularly for STS scholars, using and developing methods needs to involve more than just finding the right tool for the job. One of the most central goals of STS is to study how sciences and their methods construct the way we understand and act upon the world, and the political consequences this has. Representing ‘social realities’ thus always also means to perform them and to intervene in them. Hence, a central challenge for STSers is to reflect on the performativity of method, that is on how our use of methods impinges on how we account for our objects of inquiry - and which versions of reality are foregrounded and which are rendered invisible by particular ways of describing the social. As such, learning how to do methods in STS always also entails working on one’s own reflexive capacities and epistemological positions. Focussing on methods of qualitative research, this course will give students the opportunity to gain an overview of some of the main tools available to social scientists, to discuss how STS scholars have applied these tools, to critically evaluate the possibilities and limits of these approaches, and also to gather some very first experiences in applying them.

Learning aims

a) to acquire basic knowledge of the most common (qualitative) social science research methods;
b) to be able to read and summarize methods texts;
c) to read and discuss how STS researchers have employed these methods;
d) to be able to ask first simple research questions and to pick methods suitable to answer them;
e) to gather first practical experiences in applying social science research methods;
f) to understand why reflexivity in using and developing methods is of key importance particularly to STS researchers;