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Lecture: ‘Operationalizing and Measuring Normative Notions in the Study of Extremism’ by Boudewijn de Bruin and Juliette de Wit

Datum evenement: 25 May 2023
Locatie: Hybrid

Description

“Operationalizing and Measuring Normative Notions in the Study of Extremism”
Boudewijn de Bruin en Juliette de Wit

Practical details and registration:
Time: 15:30 PM CET
Location: Hybrid, VU and Zoom
Registration: To register (and receive the zoom link) send an email to extremebeliefs.fgw@vu.nl

Abstract:
Empirical researchers generally experience some degree of unease when they have to deal with concepts and phenomena that are inherently normative. Concepts such as rationality, morality, and beauty are often thought to be mere social constructs, without definite boundaries or properties, ‘value-laden’, ‘subjective’, and very much influenced by the personal values of researchers, participants in experiments, and respondents in surveys. These properties have led empirical researchers to stay away from investigating normative concepts. This has hampered, we believe, progress in the theoretical and empirical work on extreme beliefs, disagreement, radicalism and extremism, and moral exemplars, among others. In this Chapter, we show that one can admit normative concepts to have these properties, and still conceptualize, operationalize, and measure them. We discuss the received view among empirical researchers, and present a number of examples from different lines of research of (what we consider) successful empirical work on normative concepts. We highlight potential challenges and objections, and provide concrete and practicable recommendations that may guide future empirical work.

Information speakers:
Dr Juliette de Wit is an Assistant professor in Economics at the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Groningen.

Prof. dr. Boudewijn de Bruin is a Professor of Financial Ethics at the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Groningen.

Boudewijn de Bruin Juliette de Wit

This project is funded by:

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
European Research Council
European Union