ABSTRACT
In his chapter in this volume titled “After Quantitative Cultural Sociology: Interpretive Science as a Calling” (AQCS), 1 Richard Biernacki purports to offer a critique of quantitative cultural sociology and offers a methodological and epistemological framework consistent with the hermeneutic tradition as an alternative. Unfortunately, his critique is based upon mischaracterizations of the texts to which he refers, so ultimately he provides no evidence for the inferiority of quantitative cultural analysis nor the superiority of a hermeneutic approach. He also then offers no legitimate critique for me to reply to. To try to further a debate, despite not having actually been critiqued by the normal intellectual standards in academia, in the conclusion I take Biernacki’s stated methodological preferences and use them to clarify what the issues actually are between his perspective and other traditions in cultural sociology.
