On the construction of plausible futures in interpretive agent-based modelling
Martin Neumann, Vanessa Dirksen, Sascha Dickel · 2023
This chapter reflects on how the different methodologies applied throughout the research procedure described in this book work together to generate the larger, novel, knowledge claim of interpretive agent-based modelling (ABM). First, we describe the different stages of the research procedure in order to reveal how it establishes knowledge. Next, we delve deeper into the processes of meaning-making in both ethnography and objective hermeneutics and how the counterfactual reasoning of ABM allows for theorizing the social. This, together with reflections on the input validation and output validation of interpretive ABM, paves the way for the characterization of the larger knowledge claim of interpretive ABM in terms of the generation of plausible futures.