Double hermeneutics
The term double hermeneutics is used in epistemology and methodology in the social sciences to identify a particular problem in the social sciences : both the formation of theories and the collection of data are hermeneutic .
Details
The term was coined by the British sociologist Anthony Giddens , who initially recalled the fact - also not unknown before him - that social phenomena are already meaningfully constituted even before they are professionally analyzed by social scientists. For him, this means that the condition for the social scientist who has acquired social phenomena to "enter" the field of sociological research is to acquire what actors already know and need to know in order to be able to `` find their way '' in the daily activities of social life .
The prerequisite for the hermeneutical duplication and its first step is first of all the acquisition of everyday social knowledge. This knowledge then experiences its technical transformation in the sociological research process. This transformation process is also expressed in the form of a special style of thinking with its special technical language.
In the German edition of Giddens' Theory of Structuring , methodological reference is made to the irreversible duplication of the “frames of meaning” of both forms of knowledge, since the mutual penetration of two frames of meaning is a logically necessary element of the social sciences, the meaningful social world as it is seen by acting laypeople and by the Metalanguages introduced to social scientists; In the practice of the social sciences there is a constant 'exchange' between the two frames of meaning. Despite all mutual feedback processes and mutual penetration of lay everyday and professional scientific knowledge, both forms of knowledge could never become identical with one another.
literature
- Ginev, Dimitri. “Double hermeneutics and constitutional theory.” German Journal of Philosophy 55.5 (2007): 679–688.
- Anthony Giddens: The Constitution of Society. Outline of a Theory of Structuration , The University of California Press, Berkeley 1984, ISBN 0-520-05292-7 ; German edition: The constitution of society. Outlines of a theory of structuring . Einf. V. Hans Joas , [“Theory of Society” 1], Campus, Frankfurt am Main / New York 1988, ISBN 3-593-33611-1 .