Wednesday, November 9, 2016

On Trump, the Populist Wave, and the Forgotten Virtues of Qualitative Approaches

What really bothers me about Trump’s win is not just the clear disconnect it has revealed between the political and economic elites and the ‘man on the street’; it is also the way it has revealed a dangerous blind spot in the social sciences, which have, in general, either moved towards greater quantification (and therefore an increased distance between themselves and their subject-matter), or have systematically prioritised societal discourses and practices as top-down, unidirectional, elite-led phenomena.