Misology as a Methodology

Mehran Mazinani
2015 Politikon (Bucure?ti)  
75 I. Simplest Category: What is the most basic concept in a given case study? II. Lay-hypothesis: What do people (e.g., an individual, a socio-economic class, an ethnoreligious group, etc.) think about this concept? III. Reification: Is there anything wrong with their lay-hypothesis (or lay-knowledge)? What is missing? IV. Emergence: How could this shortcoming be explained in terms of the existing institutions from which reified understandings emerge? How does a context create an ontological
more » ... il (i.e., habitual mechanism that becomes the second nature) that causes reified lay-knowledge? And, what is this ontological veil? The third step-reification-is the key in misology. There is always a context (world) under which a text (mind) is written. There is always a condition from which a thought emerges. Misology argues that contexts create ontological veils in the mind of people, which accordingly make people reify much more complex realities to lay-knowledge. Ontological veils are caused by social institutions and cause cognitive slips. They are similar to habitual mechanisms, which gradually become the second nature, that constrain, intervene, mediate, curtail, distract, and block the process of understanding. The veils are indoctrination, habituation, naiveté, tacit assumptions, and indeed anything that is already projected in the mind of individuals that distracts agencies from fully apprehending complexities behind social phenomena and concepts. The ultimate task of a researcher is not merely to know what was said about a concept (text), or under what conditions (context) it was said but also to recognize the ontological veil (linkage) that connects the two. This article explains why taking this procedure (i.e. moving from simplest category to layhypothesis, reification, and finally emergence) is sound, and how the procedure should be gone through. It explicates the methodological assumptions, and steps that shall be taken a research. These steps need to be fully explained at first because there are fundamental differences between misology and the prevailing methodology in political science (i.e., positivism) 34 , as briefly mentioned in the Table 2 .
doi:10.22151/politikon.28.4 fatcat:mup7yzvm4fhdpnbpuoqjpmsi2y