Attilia Ruzzene
Contextualization is often invoked in the social sciences as a strategy to deal with any "excess of generality" by bringing to light the idiosyncrasy of the specific. It is achieved by research designs that express two features: context-specificity, that is, permeability to the idiosyncratic features of the studied setting; and context-sensitivity, that is, the capacity to mobilize context-specific knowledge and establish a link between the general and the particular. Despite claims to the contrary, contextualization bottoms up not in lesser generality, but in generality of a new form. This paper illustrates how by using case-study research as a paradigmatic example.
