ABSTRACT
This chapter argues for a methodology that respects creativity and contingency aspects of the double hermeneutic as a way of preserving agency at the most fundamental level of a research project. Methodological reflection is about designing prosthetics appropriate to the commitments that ground the researcher and her or his research community. The neopositivist explanatory approach aims at showing that the event in question was not a matter of chance but was to be expected in view of certain antecedent or simultaneous conditions, and it seeks to identify systematic connections between factors that hold true across cases. Instead of this neopositivist search for generalizable regularities, the analysis of commonplaces lends itself to singular causal analysis of the sort advocated by Max Weber. Genealogical analysis enjoys a broad and varied history. By demonstrating some of the implications of taking the preservation of agency seriously, the empirical work thus produced may contribute to a debate about the importance of this philosophical commitment.
