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Model Cases: On Canonical Research Objects and Sites

Online ISBN:
9780226780979
Print ISBN:
9780226780665
Publisher:
University of Chicago Press
Book

Model Cases: On Canonical Research Objects and Sites

Monika Krause
Monika Krause
London School of Economics
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Published online:
19 May 2022
Published in print:
3 September 2021
Online ISBN:
9780226780979
Print ISBN:
9780226780665
Publisher:
University of Chicago Press

Abstract

This book argues that the social sciences and humanities have a canon of privileged research sites and objects in addition to a canon of texts. Based on a comparison to the use of model systems among biologists, it notes that when scholars discuss general categories of phenomena in the social sciences and humanities, they draw on some cases more than others and they privilege some sites with regard to the assumed capacity for generating relevant insights. Whereas biologists explicitly discuss the role of model systems, scholars in the social sciences and humanities have so far not reflected explicitly about their use of “model cases,” leaving them unable to exploit the advantages of this concentration of attention or to mitigate its disadvantages. The book asks about the concrete material research objects behind general conversations about classes of objects, periods, and regions. It discusses factors that sponsor some material research objects over others, such as convenience, historicist ideas about development over time, schemas in the general population, and schemas among communities of scholars. The book revisits debates about textual canons with a focus on underlying material research objects and paradigmatic examples. It discusses the specific, Western cases, which have served as model cases for what circulates as “international social science” and asks about the specific cases, which have informed the critique of eurocentrism more than others.

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