Methods of research (Week 11) Sociology as a science Flashcards
Sociology as a science
Sociology as a science
- Often referrred to as a social science
- By following the rules and logic of the scientific method, sociology could discover the laws underlying the development of human society.
- Similar to natural sciences because it’s seeking to find laws
Auguste Comte (1798-1857) - Positivism
*** The following approach is Positivism: **
* He argued that sociology would be based on the methodolgy of the natural sciences.
* This would result in a ‘positive science of society’ > revealing the ‘invariable laws’ which governed the evolution of human society.
* Only directly observable facts were acceptable as evidence in his science of society.
* Anything that couldn’t be measured (subjective) would be ruled out.
* Facts of society must be objectively measured and quantified
* Possible to identify cause & effect relationships
* Discover the laws underlying social evolution
Emile Durkheim (1895)
The rules of the sociological method
- The first/most fundamental rule is: Consider social facts as things.’
- Social facts are the institutions, beliefs and values of society.
- Social facts can be treated in the same way as the objects, events and processes of the natural world.
- They can be objectively measured, quantified and statistically analysised.
- Correlations can be drawn between social facts
- Cause and effect relationships established
- Theories developed to explain relationships
- In this way ‘real laws are discoverable’ in the social world
Durkheim
External Reality
- Durkheim accepted that social facts form part of our consciousness – they have to for society to exist.
- Without shared norms and values, society could not operate.
- Social facts also exist outside of us.
- In Durkheim’s words - ‘collective ways of acting and thinking have a reality outside the individuals.’
- Members of society don’t act in terms of their particular psychology and personal beliefs.
- They are directed to act by social facts, by values and beliefs which are part of the wider society.
- Social facts ‘have a reality outside the individuals’ and can therefore be studied ‘objectively as external things.’
- Social facts can be studied using the methodology of the natural sciences.
The Social Facts of Suicide
Durkheim
- Durkheim’s Suicide: A Study in Sociology was published in 1897.
- This study exemplified his rules of sociological method.
- Durkheim argued that the causes of suicide rates are found in society, not in the psychology of individuals.
- Suicide rates are social facts.
- They are also a product of social facts
Durkheims Suicide study
Statistical evidence
Durkheim examined official statistics on suicide from European countries.
He found that:
1) suicide rates within each country were fairly constant over a number of years.
2) There were significant differences in the rates both between societies and between social groups within the same society.
Durkheims Suicide Study
Correlation & Analysis
Durkheim found correlations between suicide rates and social facts.
He found statistical relationships between suicide rates and:
* religion (Protestants/Catholics)
* Location (rural/city)
* age (older/younger adult)
* family situation (unmarried/married) (children/no children)
Durkheim Suicide Study
Findings
He found Higher rates of suicide in…
* Protestants over Catholics
* City dwellers over rural dwellers
* Older adults over younger adults
* Unmarried without children over married with children
Durkheim Suicide Study
Causation
- He argued that variations in suicide rates were caused by variations in levels of social integration – that is the extent to which individuals are part of a wider social group.
- Eg. older adults are less socially integrated than younger adults because their children have grown up and left home or many of their friends/relatives have died.
- Durkheim claims the higher an individual’s social integration the less likely they are to take their own life.
Durkheims Suicide Study
Theory & Explanation
- He stated that as members, of society, people are social beings – they have been socialised to play a part in society.
- The greater their social isolation the less they can participate in society.
- Their lives lack meaning and purpose unless they are shared with others.
- Durkheim’s words, ‘The individual alone is not a sufficient end for his activity. He is too little.’
- Durkheim doesn’t claim to explain all aspects of suicide.
- He sees this as the job of psychologists because it concerns individual behaviour rather than social facts.
- Durkheim believed that his research on suicide proved that scientific methodology was appropriate for the study of society, because it had shown that ‘real laws are discoverable.’
Induction Vs Deduction
Inductive approach: Theories are generated from evidence, data, analysing social facts.
Deductive approach: Begins with theory and uses data to testify that theory.
Deductive approach
Popper
- Popper believes that rather than looking for evidence to confirm their theories, scientists should do their best to disprove or falsify them.
- This is the distinguishing characteristic of science – the development of theories which can be tested against evidence and be capable of falsification.
- Popper rejects the search for laws governing the evolution of human society.
- He sees no reason why the methodology of the natural sciences cannot be applied to the social sciences.
- Theories of human behaviour which are open to the possibility of falsification can be developed.
- Not all theories that are falsified are true.
- eg. “All swans are white.” This is a scientific statement because it can be falsified. But, however many times it is confirmed by observation, it cannot be accepted as true because the very next swan might be black, red, blue or yellow.
- There are no absolute truths in science
Failures of Marxism
- Popper argues that Marx’s theory of history fails because it cannot be falsified and is non-scientific.
- It fails to specify precisely what has to happen before the proletarian revolution occurs in capitalist society. And when the revolution does not happen, Marxists simply push its coming further into the future.
- Preventing the possibility of falsification.
Sociology & Falsification
- There are real problems in applying Poppers model of scientific methodology to the study of human society.
- In the closed system of the lab where variables can be controlled, it may be possible to falsify a theory.
- But, human societies are open systems which means it is impossible to control variables and it’s difficult to see how a theory can be falsified.
Thomas Kuhn - Normal science
Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) argues that the way science has developed has a little relationship to conventional views of the scientific method.
