Engaged theory - Wikipedia

[Dante Monson]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engaged_theory 

" At its most general, the term engaged theory is used to describe theories that provide a tool box for engaging with the world while seeking to change it. "

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 Engaged theory is thus reflexive in a number of ways:

• Firstly, it recognises that doing something as basic as collecting data already entails making theoretical presuppositions.
• Secondly, it names the levels of analysis from which theoretical claims are made. Engaged theory works across four levels of theoretical abstraction.^[9] (See below: Modes of Analysis.)

• Thirdly, it makes a clear distinction between theory and method, suggesting that a social theory is an argument about a social phenomenon, while an analytical method or set of methods is defined a means of substantiating that theory.  Engaged theory in these terms works as a 'Grand method', but not a 'Grand theory'. It provides an integrated set of methodological tools for developing different theories of things and processes in the world.
• Fourthly, it seeks to understand both its own epistemological basis, while treating knowledge formation as one of the basic ontological categories of human practice.
• Fifthly, it treats history as a modern way of understanding temporal change; and therefore different ontologically from a tribal saga or cosmological narrative. In other words, it provides meta-standpoint on its own capacity to historicize.