Substantive theorizing: Another trip to the mountain

This reaction to the Wicker paper on substantive theorizing provides a summary of salient features of the approach. It is suggested that more detail about the implementation of substantive theorizing is needed in the future. Further it is argued that there is a need to amalgamate the substantive, conceptual, and methodological facets of research.     

A preferred route for substantive theorizing

Wicker (1989) urges the ecologyically-oriented psychologist to be more cognizant of the decision points implicit in the scientific enterprise. He describes what he calls substantive theorizing and urges us to give greater precedence, conceptually and methodologically, to context-specific phenomena. In this rejoinder, I: (1) underscore the thrust of the choices Wicker has clarified and the p references he has recommended; (2) suggest an alternative route for the ecologically-oriented research process, one in which the conceptual and substantive "paths" have coequal and interdependent importance in determining the nature and direction of the research process; and (3) discuss in greater depth the search for universal laws. Though universal laws per se may be fictional goals, I argue that our principles will have greater generalizability to the degree to which we are successful in redirecting the research enterprise to focus upon structural, as opposed to content, principles.     

Indigenous theorizing in a complex world

Indigenization in psychology leads to modes of theorizing based within local knowledge communities and defined in terms of culturally relevant criteria. The present study offers a conceptualization of the social psychology of science in terms of complexity theory. The value of alternative choices in advancing psychological knowledge is shown by a knowledge landscape whose shape depends on the diversity of paradigms within the community. Dominance by a single paradigm (such as a Western world view) leads to a single-peaked landscape where advances in knowledge are judged using only the criteria of that paradigm. Here, the most effective form of working is incremental step-by-step research; but this ignores the historical context of the indigenous community and runs the risk of promoting a kind of psychology that is irrelevant to its values and priorities. Indigenization is presented as a complexification of the knowledge community building on a diversity of world views, leading to a rugged, multiple-peaked knowledge landscape. Four features of working on rugged landscapes are examined: path dependence, showing the importance of history for shaping the direction of research; fostering research progress through seeding of multiple starting points; the benefits of locally dense networks within knowledge communities; and the role of policy-makers in tuning knowledge landscapes. Examples are drawn from the development of indigenous psychology within a number of countries.     

Structuralist constraints and mathematical social theorizing

Several case studies and theoretical reports indicate that the structuralist concept of a constraint has a central role in the reconstruction of physical theories. It is surprising that there is, in the literature, only little theoretical discussion on the relevance of constraints for the reconstruction of social scientific theories. Almost all structuralist reconstructions of social theorizing are vacuously constrained. Consequently, constraints are methodologically irrelevant.In this paper I try to show that there really exist constraint-type assumptions in mathematical modelling in the social sciences. Methodologically constraints have exactly the same role in the context of social mathematical modelling as they have in physical theories. In typical cases of mathematical modelling in the social sciences, the related constraints work as empirical hypotheses and should be tested by statistical means.     

Transcending common sense in psychological theorizing: A developmental perspective

The necessity for transcendence of any particular system of common sense in psychologists' theorizing is reiterated in the process of analyzing Smedslund's response to the author's previous (Valsiner, 1985) critical analysis of the role of common sense in psychology. It is emphasized that the ways of how personally unique construction of meaning in individuals' ontogenies proceed are directed by social canalization, which guarantees sufficient (but not absolute) similarity in persons' individual thinking and acting. Such similarity forms the basis for intelligibility of interpersonal communication. A developmental perspective can overcome two opposite traditions in non-developmental psychologies which either disregard common sense, or make it the criterion of adequacy of thinking towards which psychological theories should strive. In contrast, it is suggested that common sense be studied in conjunction with research on psychological phenomena for which it serves as their context, and that generalizations about psychological phenomena retain information about the common-sense frames of the phenomena.