Conclusion
Texte intégral
1In 2000, in the conclusion of his response to critiques of optimal matching (OM), Andrew Abbott provocatively challenged skeptics to return to the issue 25 years later and observe how “pattern search techniques” such as OM had become “basic to the social sciences” (Abbott, 2000, p. 75). As we approach that horizon, it is tempting to say that time has proven him right. OM, and descriptive sequence analysis in general, have established themselves as legitimate tools for quantitative analysis in the social sciences.1 The existence of sequence analysis has “hardened”—embodied in a considerable literature, with software tools that will not disappear; however, the actual use of the method (or lack thereof) evolves as time goes on.
2But this optimistic observation can nonetheless be qualified. In the same article, Abbott observed that there had been no real “blockbuster application” (p. 75) of these techniques that transformed our understanding of a given topic. In this respect, the situation has changed little since then. Many of the sequence analyses conducted in the last decades are of high quality but few will ultimately be seen as a decisive advance in our knowledge and understanding of their objects of study. Then again, that is doubtless too much to ask of a method whose chief ambition is to identify regularities. Sequence analysis does not represent a revolution, a profound paradigm shift (Kuhn, 1962).
3In addition to the rarity of blockbuster applications, it is worth noting the narrow spectrum of objects that these methods have been used to study. Among the many articles using sequence analysis with empirical data, only a handful analyze anything other than individual trajectories (e.g., careers, life courses). Among this handful, four were authored (or coauthored) by Abbott himself. These look at such questions as folk-dance figures, states’ adoption of social security programs, and the rhetorical structure of research articles. Others analyze the trajectories of businesses, contacts with survey respondents during a questionnaire-based survey, the historical evolution of lynching in the US South, or the structure of physics and sociology textbooks. But in the end, sequence analysis has spread little beyond the study of careers and life courses. The agenda that Abbott sets out for their broader use (2001, p. 61)—the study of the unfolding of a process, with few cases and making use of broad and heterogeneous information (e.g., on organizations, professions, revolutions, or policies)—has not been met with much enthusiasm or application. Perhaps the dominant “instrumental positivism” (Bryant, 1989; Ollion, 2011) has inhibited the “sociological imagination” (Mills, 1959), preventing scholars from recognizing the full range of potential applications of sequence analysis (Abbott, 2001, p. 63). More generally, while Abbott framed OM as a methodological component of a broader theoretical project, this overall research framework has not been taken up anywhere near as widely as the method itself (and indeed Abbott’s programmatic publications are far less widely cited than his empirical applications). Here, as in the case of the “variables paradigm” that preceded it, the method has detached itself from the theory. This “secularization” once again illustrates the hegemonic power of “general linear reality” (Abbott, 2001).
4In conclusion, a few facts are worth noting. The approaches presented in this book are part of a more general movement to rehabilitate description as a legitimate and central analytical tool in the social sciences (see, for example, Savage, 2009). Imaginative and reflexive uses of these flexible and powerful methods can only be encouraged. If we do not ask too much of them, the results that they produce are robust, contrary to the suggestions of some proponents of causal and inferential statistical analyses. And to close on a note of demystification of the “inferential paradigm:” “Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than an exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise” (Tukey, 1962, p. 13).
Notes de bas de page
1 For an analysis of the spread of OM in the social sciences, see Robette (2016).
Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence Licence OpenEdition Books. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.
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