Themes in the Field: The Art of Prestudy

Oliver Ding

Published in

TALE500

11 min readMay 20, 2023

A knowledge element for the “Strategic Thematic Exploration” framework

In the previous article, I introduced the “Strategic Thematic Exploration” framework (v1.1).

The “Themes in the Field” stage refers to two states: 5) A knowledge concept with a working definition, and 6) A knowledge framework with a set of concepts. In this stage, our goal is to develop the primary knowledge concept and a network of related concepts.

We can compare your primary concept with others’ concepts by running the literature review and using the Concept Dynamic Framework as a tool. See this example: Developing a working definition of Innovation Ecosystems.

We can also find similar ideas from various domains. Today I am going to share an idea called “PreStudy v.s. Main Study” which comes from the field of sociological theory.

Early Discovery

The “Strategic Thematic Exploration” framework (V1.1) is about Early Discovery.

I use “Strategic Thematic Exploration” to frame a creative space for exploring the strategic intent using thematic analysis methods, especially for knowledge engagement.

In each stage, we capture inspired ideas from our everyday life experiences (Lifeflow), select some ideas, and put them into a Thematic Space. See the diagram below.

The above diagram represents an Ecological Practice approach to knowledge engagement. Strategic Thematic Exploration is a specific type of Developing Tacit Knowledge.

Potential: the potential possible opportunities that a person could act with a particular thing.
Actual: what does a person actually act with the thing? Act 1 and Act 2 refer to two types of acts: Create and Curate.
Create: Making concrete things to represent abstract ideas/knowledge
Curate: Organize pieces of knowledge-related experience into a meaningful mental element
Focus: it refers to the thing the person is acting with.

I also made a distinction between “Knowledge Discovery” and “Knowledge Production”. While the former refers to Developing Tacit Knowledge, the latter means Turning Tacit Knowledge into Knowledge Products.

We can also use the Anticipatory Activity System (AAS) framework to understand “Knowledge Discovery” and “Knowledge Production”.

The Anticipatory Activity System (AAS) framework is inspired by Activity Theory and Anticipatory System theory. It aims to offer an abstract model for understanding “Self, Other, Present, Future”.

While the traditional Activity Theory focuses on “Exploitative Activity”, the AAS framework is more about “Exploratory Activity”.

The basic model of AAS highlights five movements of the AAS framework: Unfolding, Discovering, Producing, Modeling, and Storytelling. See the diagram below.

The Strategic Thematic Exploration framework can be used to understand the Discovering movement and the Knowledge Discovery activity which belongs to Second-order Activity.

The above discussion waves a web of ideas about my mental elements around the theme of “Early Discovery”. Now, we can move more ideas from the outside space into the inside space of the “Early Discovery” thematic space.

Richard Swedberg: Theorizing in Sociology (2011)

Richard Swedberg is a leading thinker in the field of “Theorizing in Sociology”. He uses “theorizing” to refer to the activity of building a sociological theory and teaches students actually make sociological theories through practical exercises. His thoughts on Theorizing in Sociology are represented in a 2014 book The Art of Social Theory.

Today I will highlight some ideas from his 2011 paper Theorizing in sociology and social science: turning to the context of discovery. You can find his other articles about Theorizing on his website.

The title of the paper represents an important theme: Context of Discovery. According to Richard Swedberg, this theme is a significant idea of the early philosophy of science.

The distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification received its most influential formulation in the 1930s through the work of Hans Reichenbach and Karl Popper…
Both Reichenbach and Popper were working on ways to improve empiricism as a philosophy of science. Reichenbach coined the two terms “Context of discovery” and “Context of justification,” while Popper helped to diffuse them by giving them a central place in his seminal work The Logic of Scientific Discovery.
Reichenbach defined the context of discovery as “the form in which [thinking processes] are subjectively performed,” and the context of justification as “the form in which thinking processes are communicated to other persons ” (Reichenbach 1938, p.6). While science can address issues in the context of justification, this is not the case in the context of discovery. “The act of discovery escapes logical analysis” (Reichenbach 1951, p.231).

Richard Swedberg’s journey starts with a significant insight:

Since the context of discovery was seen as impossible to study with scientific rigor, it fell to the side. If we for the moment view the scientific enterprise as consisting of three elements — you go from (1) theorizing, to (2) theory, to (3) the testing of theory — only the second and the third elements were properly attended to. The first element was largely ignored. Since there exist good reasons for believing that you draw on different ways of thinking when you theorize, and when you test and present your ideas to an audience, this neglect has had serious consequences for social scientists’ capacity to theorize.

He strongly suggests that we should pay attention to Theorizing and its context of discovery. In fact, it’s all about sociological creativity!

It deserves to be repeated that to succeed in this enterprise, we also need to get rid of some of the epistemological obstacles that currently exist when it comes to theorizing. One of these is the idea that to theorize one has to proceed in a scientific or logical manner. This is not the case.
To theorize well, one needs inspiration, and to get inspiration one can proceed in whatever way that lead to something interesting — and that means any way.
The reason why this is permissible is that the goal, at this stage of the process, it simply to produce something interesting and novel, and to theorize it. It is first at the stage when the theory is being tested, or otherwise confronted with data in a deliberate manner, that scientific and rigorous rules must be followed.
To use a metaphor from the area of law: the context of discovery is where you have to figure out who the murderer is, while the context of justification is where you have to prove your case in court.

He also criticizes the phenomenon of overemphasizing the problem-driven approach.

Another epistemological obstacle to theorizing is the view in sociology and many other social sciences that empirical data should enter the research process first in the context of justification. According to this view, the social scientist should start the study with a distinct problem or a distinct theoretical point in mind, then construct hypotheses, and finally confront these with data.
…
The problem with looking at things in this way is that it feeds into the current tendency to focus primarily on the role of methods in social science research rather than on creativity and originality. The result, especially when it comes to qualitative methods, is a failure to realize that theorizing represents an independent element in the research process and can best be developed if it is realized that theory is not the same as methods.
The types of research that so far have been discussed leave very little room for creative theorizing, except for those rare individuals who happen to have a natural talent for this.

Can we solve this problem?

What’s Swedberg’s solution?

Prestudy and Main Study

Richard Swedberg uses two different stages to develop a creative method for going from facts to theory. The first stage is named Prestudy, and it is “characterized by theorizing based on empirical material, with the aim of making a discovery”.

The second stage is about the context of justification. Swedberg uses Main Study to name this stage, “This is where the research design is drawn up and executed. From this point on, rigor and logic are crucial since the data to be used have to be collected in reliable ways and also presented in this way to the scholarly community”.

You can find more details of the difference between Prestudy and Main Study in the table below.

It is clear that we can see Prestudy as Second-order Activity and Knowledge Discovery. We can also claim that Main Study is a type of First-order Activity and Knowledge Production.

How does Prestudy work?

Swedberg develops some rules for the Prestudy phase. See the picture below.

Swedberg emphasizes that theorizing in social science means an attempt to understand and explain something that happens in society and it includes everything that precedes the final formulation that is set down on paper or fixed in some other way (“theory”).

Theorizing includes what I have called observation as well as the activities to be discussed in this section, such as naming, conceptualizing, constructing typologies, providing an explanation, and so on. When these activities are carried out at the stage of discovery or in the prestudy, it should be emphasized, this is done first and foremost for heuristic reasons. This means that they are to be used primarily for purposes of discovery and not to summarize the result of precisely this dimension, I argue, that it becomes possible to produce successful theorizing. Intuition, imagination, and abduction are also all indispensable to successful theorizing; and they belong primarily to the stage of discovery.

Swedberg claims that theorizing is not a simple linear process, “I have roughly listed them in the order in which they are usually carried out, even if the actual process, to repeat, is typically iterative and more complex at a large stage”.

I use the Knowledge Discovery Canvas to represent the process of Theorizing. See the diagram below.

It seems that Swedberg’s method rejects “Approaches” which refers to established theories. He discusses this issue in his paper:

The fact that theory is typically someone else’s theory also means that it is exterior and alien to one’s own thinking or, to phrase it differently, that it lacks a certain organic quality. Incorporating someone else’s theory into one’s own set of thought is also a difficult process that can easily go wrong (“organ rejection”).

He believes that theorizing is a process of developing tacit knowledge.

C. Wright Mills speaks inspiringly in The Sociological Imagination about the craft of sociology consisting of two parts: method and theory (Mills 1959, p.228). A sociologist, he says, should be his or her own theorist as well as methodologies. I am very sympathetic to Mills’s idea of speaking about theorizing as a craft (or as a part of a craft), rather than, say, as a job or a profession. One reason for this has to do with the important role that tacit knowledge plays in a craft. It is well understood that the hand of the craftsman knows more than his or her mind; and being aware of this, helps the craftsman do a better job.
While the expression “the craft of theorizing” is appealing, one should warn against the idea that theorizing can be reduced to a set of explicit rules, especially cognitive rules that should always be followed. Rules are typically helpful for the beginner, but they can also prevent a person’s development once a certain stage of competence has been reached. The reason for this is that they exclude all that differentiates the mechanical and early following of a rule from what it means to have a skill or the capacity to handle nearly automatically a series of concrete situations in an independent and creative manner (e.g., Dreyfus and Dreyfus 1986).

Swedberg also adopts Charles S. Peirce’s ideas for observation. He claims that he would like to use “a Peircean and personal perspective” as the subtitle of the paper.

Prestudy v.s. Strategic Thematic Exploration

The “Strategic Thematic Exploration” theme refers to a technique of capturing inspired ideas and building a framework for the journey of knowledge engagement. Moreover, it emphasizes the “Early Responses” action, the “Chance-configuration” process, and the formulation of “theme network”.

I also introduced Configurational Theory for exploring possible disciplines. You can find more details in A Possible Theme called “Possible Discipline” and A Possible Discipline called “Platform Ecology”.

I consider “From Theme to Framework” as a significant early phase for the journey of knowledge engagement. There are six states in the phase.

A Possible Theme without a Clue
A Possible Theme with a Clue
A Primary Theme without related themes
A Primary Theme with its network
A Knowledge Concept with a working definition
A Knowledge Framework with a set of concepts

The diagram below represents the whole loop of the journey of knowledge engagement. I consider the Strategic Thematic Exploration framework for Early Discovery.

If we use “Theory” to replace “Framework” and use “Name” to replace “Theme”, then the focus of “from theme to framework” echoes “from name to theory”.

In this way, we can find the similarity between the Prestudy phase and the Strategic Thematic Exploration. Both of them belong to Early Discovery, Developing Tacit knowledge, Craft, Embodied Experience, Imagination, and Creativity.

The Strategic Thematic Exploration framework is based on the Thematic Engagement approach which considers the “person — theme” as the primary object of study. If we consider the Prestudy phase’s “Name” as “Theme”, then they can share more ideas with each other.