So I'll start by saying: this is as good a recuperation of "grounded theory" as we are likely to get, or at least the version of it that would be closest to what we are after. There is much to agree with, work with, side with. E.g.: "We argue...that the world is always conceived (both prototheoretically and theoretically) in multiple ways." (p.173)
But it is a work of sociology and can't help but be marked by that epistemic culture -- and here that can be read doubly: not only as about a culture's way of knowing, but as a naming of the sociologist's culture: it is an epistemic culture, a culture in which the epistemic is the organizing telos. In this (my) reading, sociology is organized around and for knowing, which is equivalent to theory. Sociology is an epistemic culture, like Southern California is a car culture. (May not be the best example but I'm in a hurry...)
Here's what I think is a key passage:
The theories developed in abductive analysis denote an attempt to generalize causal links and descriptions of the world out of particular empirical instances (see also Abend 2008:177–79; Gross 2009a). Such theories depend on the fit with observations and their plausibility in light of alternative theoretical accounts. Pragmatically speaking, better theories allow for understanding of more and a broader variety of phenomena. As a form of generalization, theory allows us to move between instances within the same study and between studies as well as to expect certain things to happen and explain how and why certain events have happened. Abductive analysis specifically aims at generating novel theoretical insights that reframe empirical findings in contrast to existing theories. (p.174)
It's all about the theory. And theory, "as a form of generalization," is about moving from the particular to the general. This is where I would start a similar reading of anthropology's "epistemic culture," which is not a culture in which theory (generalization) holds the place of honor or occupies the organizing center. I asked Kim about what the similar organizing center for anthropology is, and she said: particularity. And we use concepts to get at particularity. Which can sometimes be generalized, but that's not the primary goal.
So if abduction is how you generate theory (for sociologists), how you generalize away from the multiple of the empirical or the comparative, then ab-use is how you particularize, staying with the multiple in both the empirical and the semiotic, the fractal multiple of dissemination that inheres in every thing, concept, system...
???
