CONCEPT
Phronetic Social Science
Flyvbjerg's proposed research paradigm — organized around the production of practical wisdom rather than universal laws — and the methodology best suited to phenomena that are constitutively context-dependent, including the AI transition.
Phronetic social science is the operational program Flyvbjerg developed as an alternative to the epistemic paradigm that has dominated social research since the nineteenth century. Where epistemic social science aspires to produce context-independent regularities about human behavior, phronetic social science produces context-dependent practical wisdom — knowledge of how to act well in particular situations, with particular stakes, for particular people. The methodology is case-based, longitudinal, context-sensitive, and value-laden. It treats particular situations as the proper objects of inquiry, follows them over time horizons adequate to the processes being studied, treats context as constitutive rather than noise, and engages explicitly with questions of power, value, and judgment. The framework is the methodological backbone of Flyvbjerg's entire research program and the only available paradigm adequate to the AI transition's central phenomena.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The paradigm rests on four questions Flyvbjerg argues every serious social inquiry must ask: Where are we going? Who gains and who loses,