Place as Method, Theory, and Responsibility: Rethinking Scientific Inquiry for Complex Social Issues

The challenge: New data and approaches to study complexity in the social world has often been without a concurrent focus on the foundations of scientific inquiry, including complex thinking, broad causal thinking, attention to epistemic lens, and integrating multiple disciplinary approaches. Further, the academic research model, with its resource-segregated networks, discipline-specific training, and short-term productivity metrics, contributes to a fragmented and potentially misleading understanding of the social world. In the second annual ISR Symposium on Complexity in the Social World, we will use ‘place’ as the case study to facilitate discussions on rigorous social science in the public interest.


Using research on place as the case study, discussion topics will include:

  • Complex thinking about the social world
  • The contribution of the humanities the study of the social world
  • Epistemic lens and research transparency
  • Theories, frameworks, and the limits of traditional causal inference
  • The draw and danger of cool new data
  • Addressing the challenges of the academic model of science


Presentations on the science of place will include:

  • The relational nature of place in population social inequalities
  • The role of history in shaping place
  • The racialization of place; the spatialization of race
  • Place as a neutral and rational driver of social inequalities
  • Approaches to testing (causal) ideas around place



Strong scientific inquiry and critical theory as complements

Available Seats 150
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Room 1430, Institute for Social Research
Moderator: Hedy Lee (w/ Reed DeAngelis)

Understanding, not proving: Critical theory and rigorous scientific inquiry

Strong scientific inquiry matters; researchers should ask questions to understand our social world, not to confirm a belief; Good research requires logic, evidence, openness to being wrong, careful inference, conceptual clarity, and willingness to revise claims. Critical theory can make scientific inquiry stronger, as it can reveal hidden assumptions, broaden what counts as relevant evidence, identify omitted causal fields, challenge narrow concepts, and expose how power shapes research questions. The session should reject two unhelpful extremes: (a) scientism without critique, or the idea that conventional scientific methods are neutral, complete, and untouched by power; and (b) critique without inquiry, or the idea that -- because much of our science on place has been shaped by colonialism, racism, sexism, ableism, and hierarchy -- rigorous standards of evidence, logic, and inference are merely oppressive tools. Strong critical theory and strong scientific inquiry should discipline each other. Critical theory helps us ask better questions and see more of the world. Scientific inquiry helps us avoid mistaking conviction, moral urgency, or political commitment for evidence.


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