Peirce’s Abduction as a mode of inference, method and research strategy in sociology: the experience of social negociation in Belgium
This text is intended as an epistemo-methodological proposal of the pragmatist Peircian as a mode of research in sociology and especially for social negotiation. Its contribution is twofold. First of all, abduction, as a mode of inference and as a method that combines the three types of reasoning, abductive, deductive and inductive, makes it possible to bring out a hypothesis, a habit of action that appeases doubt and reaches the belief. Then, on an epistemological level, he invites the researcher to explore in reality, the articulation between meanings and situations, thoughts and actions. It is a posture that renders the quarrel between methods of deduction and induction obsolete, in order to propose an alternative method based on a process of production of knowledge centered on human activity and experimentation. Explanatory hypotheses are confronted with situational “objectivities”, as much by the actors involved in the social negotiation as the researchers who experience it in order to decode and report it. Finally, social negotiation is an object that lends itself perfectly to pragmatism considering that it is an experience that refers to another experience, which is constantly renewed, and which generates continuous redefinitions of the conditions, strategies and stakes. In addition, social negotiation is an exercise that allows a projection into the future, a conception derived from the pragmatist’s maxim.