Methodologies

Question 1

What does Goldthorpe say about historical methodology?

Answer 1

• Historians rely on a ‘finite and incomplete’ pool of ‘relics’ to draw inferences about the past. We can only know the past on the basis of what has physically survived. Alternatively, sociologists can generate evidence through fieldwork - they are not limited by ‘finding’ what already exists
• Idiographic-nomothetic
  distinction is still pertinent if taken as one not of principle but of
  emphasis (see card 4)

Question 2

What did Anthony Giddens say about the relationship between sociology and history?

Answer 2

“There simply are no logical or even methodological distinctions
between the social sciences and history - appropriately conceived”

Question 3

Who says, “history and sociology are and always have been the
same thing” and in what book?

Answer 3

Phillip Abrams in ‘Historical Sociology’ (1983)

Question 4

How might historians and sociologists of the early-1960s differentiated between the two fields and what was this ideology called?

Answer 4

Distinction between ‘idiographic’ and ‘nomothetic’ disciplines.
History was idiographic: historians sought to particularise through the description of singular, unique phenomena.
Sociology was nomothetic: sociologists sought to generalise by formulating theories that applied to categories of phenomena.

Positivism (Positivist Sociology)

Question 5

What happened to sociological academia in the late-1960s and 1970s and what was it called?

Answer 5

The ‘reaction against positivism’ where sociologists challenged the existence of ‘social facts’ and questioned whether quantitative scientific method produces objective truths

Question 6

What is interpretivist sociology? (sometimes called antipositivism)

Answer 6

The belief that sociology must go beyond empirical evidence to include subjective views, opinions, emotions, values.
Interpretivists might suggest that research cannot establish objective social facts

Question 7

Example of Historical Sociology
What methods were used? How did sociology and history interrelate?

Answer 7

Tony Ashworth, ‘Trench Warfare: The Live and Let Live System’ (1980)
- Ashworth sought to prove that soldiers on the western front 1915-1918 were in some fashion exercising restraint
- Used survey material from interviews with US combat veterans to prove inhibitions exist in modern soldiers
- Adds game theory analysis of tacit collusion to establish that communication between sides was not necessary
- Combines this with Norbert Elias’ sociological theory of the ‘civilising process’ to establish a theoretical foundation
- Then (links to history) uses this foundational structure to inform his reading and interpretation of contemporary historical sources (Goldthorpe’s ‘relics’)