Handbook on Contemporary Austrian Economics

38 <strong>Handbook</strong> on contemporary Austrian economics
not to put "oneself into someone else's skin" but "to grasp concepts that,
for another people, are experience-near, and to do so well enough to place
them in illuminating connection with experience-distant concepts theorists
have fashioned to capture the general features of social life" (ibid., p. 58).
Additionally, representing "experience-near concepts" with the help of
"experience-distant concepts" suggests that (in our empirical work) we
should be developing thick over thin descriptions. Recall Ryle's (1971)
now famous insight that we cannot figure out the meaning of an action
without some knowledge of the context and the actor's motivations. In
fact, we cannot tell the difference between an action and a reflex or a
habitual response without knowing something about the context and specifically
the intentions of the "actor." How, Ryle asks, can we distinguish
between a wink (a conspiratorial gesture between compatriots) and an eye
twitch (an involuntary response to an irritant) without knowing anything
else about the context Of course, we cannot. A thin description (e.g.,
Fred's left eye closed and opened rapidly) will not be adequate to distinguish
between a wink and a twitch. We would need a thicker description
of the scene (e.g., Pete and Fred are friends about to playa practical joke
on the teacher) in order to conclude that it was one or the other. Since any
worthwhile empirical exposition of the situation would be able to distinguish
Fred's wink from a simple twitch, since the goal of empirical work
is necessarily to make sense of .the social world at a given time and place,
then thick descriptions win out over thin ones.
It should be noted that to recognize that the facts of the social sciences
are what people believe and think and so to privilege ethnography and
thick descriptions in empiricaVapplied enterprises in no way suggests that
we should abandon thin descriptions of the social world in our theoretical
endeavors. On the contrary, thick descriptions are only possible if they are
informed by thin descriptions. As Boettke writes (2001, p. 253):
we need, in other words, both 'thin' and 'thick' description for our social theory
to possess both meaning and relevance - coherence and correspondence so to
speak ... . The justification of the 'thin description' of economic theory is that
it affords us more compelling 'thick descriptions' of the social experience of
particular times and places.
Without a thin description of what distinguishes a twitch from a wink (i.e.,
one is an involuntary act and the other a conspiratorial gesture), thick
descriptions of the situation would also fail to distinguish between the two.
Stated another way, without theory/models that explain a phenomenon
while abstracting away much of the social detail, without "experiencedistant
concepts" to use Geertz's formulation, the applied social scientist
could not make sense of social life, he could not offer thick descriptions.