Download Panel Discussion Submission: Title: Integrating Philosophical

Panel Discussion Submission:
Title: Integrating Philosophical Inquiry and Empirical Research: Two Deweyan Perspectives
“There is a special service which the study of philosophy may render. Empirically pursued it
will not be a study of philosophy but a study, by means of philosophy, of life-experience.”
–John Dewey, Experience and Nature
One of the distinguishing features of Dewey’s philosophical inquiry is that it honors, and
takes seriously, ordinary human experience. For Dewey, ordinary experience is a domain of
philosophic inquiry; indeed, the “test for philosophy” is whether it makes our ordinary
experiences “more significant, more luminous, our dealings more fruitful.” To remain focused on
worthy philosophical problems, those that “actually arise in the vicissitudes of life,” Dewey
encourages philosophers to take up the “problems of men [sic].” In other words, philosophy
should not be simply applied to experience but instead grow out of the concerns and dilemmas of
human experience.
This panel takes up this challenge. How might philosophy honor ordinary human
experience? How might it emerge from—and, in turn, help to meaningfully direct—concrete
social practices, institutions and policies? To explore these questions, this panel presents two
projects that integrate Deweyan modes of inquiry with empirical research. The first paper,
“Public Works or Publics Working? A Deweyan Analysis of Participatory Budgeting” examines
a recent democratic experiment with participatory budgeting in Chicago’s 49th Ward. It analyzes
the practice in two ways. First, the authors draw on Deweyan concepts of cooperative inquiry
and mutuality to explore the possibilities and limitations of participatory budgeting (PB). This
normative analysis is then placed into conversation with qualitative research that explores the
experiences of participants in this PB initiative. The authors argue that Dewey offers resources
that critique the limitations of PB, but also highlight dimensions within participants’ experiences
that point towards the possibility of more robust forms of citizen-centered democratic practice.
The second paper, “Interest, not Preference: How Dewey Reshapes the Language of School
Choice,” uses a similar methodological angle to explore the experiences of parents in choosing
schools. The author draws on Dewey’s concept of interest as an alternate conceptual framework
for exploring the moral, ethical, and political nature of parents’ choices. In contrast to the
rational choice frameworks that dominate educational policy, the author argues Dewey’s
conceptualization of interest provides an opening to examine the moral and ethical dimensions
involved in choosing a school, and how policy mechanisms could be shaped to direct choices
towards public ends.
In these two examples, our panel explores how Deweyan inquiry could serve as a
resource for understanding social issues. By integrating our philosophical analysis with empirical
research, these papers present a particular understanding of how philosophy might engage with
public problems. Our presentations—in a consciously Deweyan vein—attempt to directly engage
political and educational questions by exploring concrete practices and everyday experiences.
We contend that a Deweyan perspective on philosophical inquiry offers two distinct resources in
addressing issues of public policy. First, Dewey provides a vantage point to understand and to
criticize particular political and educational practices. Drawing on pragmatist criteria of
mutuality, cooperation, growth, interest and democracy, the panelists raise questions about
existing practices designed to engage citizens in public institutions. In both education and
politics, applying these standards shows that, from a Deweyan normative perspective, the
conceptual assumptions of these programs and practices are limited. We highlight these
limitations in order to show some ways in which these organizations and practices might be
reconstructed to better meet worthwhile aims.
We anticipate that the questions explored in this panel would be of interest to many
different audience members at SAAP, including those with interests in Dewey studies, applied or
public conceptions of philosophy, political philosophy, and educational questions. In addition,
this panel is decidedly trans-disciplinary: the three panelists represent distinct disciplinary
backgrounds (philosophy, political theory, and education). We anticipate a lively conversation
that crosses disciplinary boundaries and takes up the longstanding relationship between
philosophy and public problems.
--Paper 1: “Public Works or Publics Working? A Deweyan Analysis of Participatory Budgeting”
Participatory budgeting (PB) is a method by which citizens directly determine the
allocation of public funds. From initial experiments in Brazil in 1989, over the past three
decades this practice has rapidly grown and is now in place in over 1,500 municipal governments
worldwide. Deliberative democratic theory dominates much of the theorizing about PB. We
deploy an alternative theoretical frame—the pragmatist philosophy of John Dewey—to analyze
this practice recently implemented in Chicago’s 49th Ward.
There are two angles to our analysis. First, we draw on Dewey’s political philosophy to
construct normative criteria to assess participatory budgeting. Second, we conduct interviews
with participants to get a sense of the lived experiences of PB. That is, we put philosophic
considerations of “what is a vibrant democratic practice” into conversation with empirical
research on ordinary actors’ lived experiences of such practices. We contend that a combined
philosophical and empirical approach offers a more nuanced and grounded understanding of the
terrain of civic participation and democratic practice.
In terms of Dewey’s political philosophy, we use the concepts of cooperative inquiry and
mutuality to theorize a central tension in PB. While PB gives ordinary citizens power to make
decisions over the allocation of public monies, it is based on a consumerist model of citizenship.
Empirical research has found that in the United States, PB often focuses on projects that benefit
particular groups or neighborhoods rather than solve wider problems. That is, public projects are
seen as particular goods to be consumed rather than as vehicles for enhancing quality of life of
an entire community. This opens PB to the charge of being interest group politics under another
name. We argue that Dewey offers resources to critique, enhance, and expand the robustness of
citizen participation in PB.
Deweyan cooperative inquiry presents a comprehensive approach to public problemsolving. The usual foregrounding of deliberation in analysis focuses attention too exclusively on
only one phase of the PB process, public debate of competing projects. Indeed, these debates
and subsequent aggregative, majoritarian selection procedures are sometimes understood to
constitute the whole of “participation.” Yet this is but one phase or moment in a much broader
process of decision-making and action, and neglecting the other phases threatens to stunt
participatory possibilities. Most importantly it fails to address those elements of interest group
politics that deliberative democracy has consistently sought to overcome.
Dewey’s normative ideal of mutuality blurs or breaks down some of the borders between
narrowly-defined interest groups, encouraging a richer sense of transactional participation among
individuals. Awareness of how individuals are interconnected through joint problem solving and
shared consequences mitigates what we call the YIMBY (Yes, in my back yard) tendencies of
PB in the United States. Our Deweyan analysis of participatory budgeting reveals limitations
and areas for enhancing democratic practice.
Our Deweyan normative analysis is complicated by our interviews with PB participants.
Many participants reflect the limiting consumerist orientation of PB. They participated in order
to get projects that benefited their neighborhood. They did not have much patience for the
deliberative democracy and did not get an enlarged sense of the problems of other residents and
neighborhoods in the ward. However, select participants reveal a different story. They came
away with a sense of dignity, competence, and mutuality with other residents. Importantly, these
narratives show how robust outcomes are possible. Even though PB in Chicago’s 49th Ward falls
short of Deweyan ideals, participants’ experiences reveal the power and possibilities of such
practices.
PB is a tool with significant possibilities for expressing citizen desires and for
transforming those individuals involved in and affected by its process. Recasting its theorization
through a Deweyan lens enriched by interviews with participants allows us better to understand
these expressions and transformations. This shift also offers a minimal corrective to some of the
background assumptions and concrete implementations of PB thus far attempted.
--Paper 2: “Interest, not Preference: How Dewey Reshapes the Language of School Choice”
School choice is not just about increasing the number of choices available for families,
but the kinds of choices they can access. In this sense, schools of choice—including magnet
schools, charter schools, small schools-within-schools, and private schools—often selfconsciously distinguish their unique features, mission and curriculum from other traditional
public schools. These can include approaches such as single-sex education, particular curricular
models (e.g. Montessori, Core Knowledge), as well as missions designed to appeal to the
different linguistic, ethnic or religious identities of families. These increasing patterns of
differentiation between schools rest on certain understandings about how choice works. In this
account, parents choose schools that best meet their preferences, schools anticipate and adapt to
the interests of families, and families, in turn, become more invested in the schools they choose.1
In effect, the interests and preferences of parents—and how these preferences are revealed in
choices—are an essential part of how school choice works as a policy for school improvement.
This account of choice has largely been shaped by the insights of rational choice theory.
One of the primary assumptions of rational choice theory is that individuals have—and act on the
basis of—preferences. In the basic model of rational choice, these preferences are understood as
stable, consistent and ordered (Riker, 1990; Monroe, 1991; cited in Yee, 1997). In this model,
rational actors choose among available alternatives in ways that will best serve or “maximize”
their self-interests. Preferences are considered rational to the extent they result in rational
outcomes (Simon, 1987; cited in Zey, 1992). The principal way to discover preferences is by
observing how people act; no matter what they say—or think—they prefer, their behavior reveals
their preferences.
As rational choice has grown in scope and influence, however, these original assumptions
have become the objects of study, revision and criticism (Barber, 1984; Ball, 1988; cited in
Hauptmann, 1996, p. 4; Downs, 1991; Elster, 1979; 1983; Etzioni, 1988; Hirschman, 1985; Satz
and Frerejohn, 1994; Sen, 1977; Simon 1976). Some critics have argued that a rational choice
model cannot account for just how or why people have the preferences they do (Sciulli, 1992;
Whitford, 2002). Others have argued that rational choice theory depends on the existence of
factors—values, beliefs and norms—that remain external to, and unexplained by, the model
(Etzioni, 1988).
These norms and values are not unimportant or non-existent in rational choice
frameworks; they are merely external to measurable aspects of human behavior. In this sense,
current models of parental choice understand values as outside—or exogenous—to the kinds of
behaviors that can be predicted and measured, in this case, what parents actually do. This kind of
conceptual framework—with and because of its necessary omissions—has become indispensable
to policy and research on school choice. It does, however, limit our attention to the visible
behavior of parents and the aggregate outcomes of their decisions.
In this paper, I draw on John Dewey’s concept of interest as an alternate conceptual
framework for exploring the moral, ethical and political nature of parents’ choices. I contend that
Dewey’s concept of interest provides an opening to examine and reconstruct often hidden
assumptions about the self, interests and preferences that shape our understanding of parents’
choices. In particular, I argue that Dewey’s conceptualization of interest provides an opening to
examine the moral and ethical dimensions involved in choosing a school, and how policy
mechanisms could be shaped to direct choices towards public ends.
As such, Dewey offers resources for questioning the “paradigmatic privilege” of rational
choice models without dismissing their claims outright.1 While not discounting the role rational
choice frameworks can play in answering certain kinds of research questions,2 he also offers a
vantage point for unifying and sharpening some internal criticisms of rational choice. It is
important to state that I do not argue that Dewey offers an alternative theory (a parsimonious
predictive model for human behavior) to rational choice. In contrast, he provides a new vantage
point on an existing conceptual field. By helping reshape some of the theoretical assumptions
that guide research on school choice, Dewey offers resources for diversifying research into
parental choice and also raises questions about the assumptions embedded in existing models.
This paper is organized in the following way. First, I briefly examine the ways that a
rational choice framework has shaped our understanding of how preferences work in school
choice. I then argue for returning to a concept of interest. To do so, I describe how the term
‘preference’ gradually came to stand in for concepts of ‘interest’ and ‘self-interest.’ I then turn to
Dewey’s understanding of interest. Here, I read Dewey’s concept of interest narrowly: to
reconstruct an alternative conceptual vocabulary for understanding parents’ choices. I develop
this account of interest in three main parts. In the first, I draw on Dewey’s explicit discussions of
interest in terms of a developing situation. However, it is difficult, if not impossible, to separate a
“stand-alone” idea of interest in Dewey’s thought. As such, in the second section, I connect his
explicit account of interest to a related series of concepts in Democracy and Education. I develop
four dimensions of interest that illuminate choice processes: as transactional, synonymous with
the self, connected to growth, and formed in relationship with social environments. I argue that
these four dimensions allow us to see the role of interest in the ethical process of self-formation.
In the third part, I focus on Dewey’s normative understanding of how interests should be
developed, drawing out the distinctly democratic and public character of interest.
To illustrate the salience of this new conceptual vocabulary, I draw on an example from
my ongoing research into parents’ school choices. Drawing on qualitative interview data, I
develop a portrait of one parent’s school decision-making process. I then offer two ‘readings’ of
this experience. I first describe how a rational choice framework would make sense of this
parent’s choice. I then read this same decision in conversation with a Deweyan framework of
interest. I demonstrate how Dewey offers conceptual resources that attend to the temporal,
shifting and morally laden dimensions of this parent’s experience. I conclude by sketching out
some of the ways that an expanded, democratic conception of interest might help direct choice
policy towards more public ends.
Notes
The phrase “paradigmatic privilege” was coined by Josh Whitford to describe the dominance enjoyed by
rational choice theory in sociology. I employ it here in a similar sense to describe the dominance of the
framework in structuring the majority of research on school choice, and parental choice in particular. Josh
Whitford, “Pragmatism and the Untenable Dualism of Means and Ends: Why Rational Choice Theory Does Not
Deserve Paradigmatic Privilege.” Theory and Society 31, No. 3 (June, 2002): 325-363.
1
Indeed, a few theorists have asserted that rational choice theory is compatible with Dewey’s political
thought. For example, Jack Knight and James Johnson argue that rational choice theories can assist a
pragmatist model of social inquiry to help identify the interests of a public. See their: “Inquiry into
Democracy: What Might a Pragmatist Make of Rational Choice Theories?” American Journal of Political
Science, Vol. 43, No 2, April 1999, p 566-589; and “Political Consequences of Pragmatism,” Political Theory 24
(1996) 68-96.
2