Sociology as a Science Flashcards
Positivists
Karl Popper wanted to distinguish the difference between the common sense and religious knowledge with that of scientific knowledge. As a nice met narrative suggests should occur.
He does this by defining scientific knowledge as that which can be “falsified.” This means what knowledge or scientific facts are created today, may be disproved tomorrow.
Therefore, all scientific knowledge is only temporary and those that can withstand vigorous falsification will be a lot closer to the truth. Scientific knowledge can therefore only occur when precise predictions are made. Such as those by Durkheim in his suicide study
Kuhn
Kuhn defines scientific methods by paradigms and scientific revolutions. He argues a paradigm is created which forms the framework in which all future scientific research is conducted, a blueprint in which to hold methods and research against.
Usually any information or data from outside the paradigm will be dismissed, such as from paranormal science, until there is too much of it to ignore. It is in this situation where a scientific revolution will occur.
This argument assumes that sociology is pre-scientific as there are many paradigms which shape the interest of the research, e.g. Marxism, Functionalism, Feminism. On the other hand, it may not be desirable for sociology to reach this goal as it is the debate between such perspectives which forms the foundations of what is sociology.
Kuhn criticism
Kuhn is criticised by Anderson, Hughes and Sharrock for underestimating the disagreement which occurs between scientists and question Kuhn’s relevance to sociology
Le Suicide by Emile Durkheim
Published in 1897, the book was the first to present a sociological study of suicide, and its conclusion that suicide can have origins in social causes rather than just being due to individual temperament was ground breaking at the time (and showed that individuals are not 100% free as we can predict patterns of behaviour and therefore they can be studied as a science).
The typologies of suicide
> Anomic suicide
Altruistic suicide
Egoistic suicide
Fatalistic suicide
Anomic suicide
Anomic suicide - is an extreme response by a person who experiences anomie, a sense of disconnection from society and a feeling of not belonging resulting from weakened social cohesion. Anomie occurs during periods of serious social, economic, or political upheaval, which result in quick and extreme changes to society and everyday life. In such circumstances, a person might feel so confused and disconnected that they choose to commit suicide.
Altruistic suicide
Altruistic suicide - is often a result of excessive integration of individuals by social forces such that a person may be moved to kill themselves for the benefit of a cause or for society at large. An example is someone who commits suicide for the sake of a religious or political cause, such as the infamous Japanese Kamikaze pilots of World War II, or the hijackers that crashed the aeroplanes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania in 2001. In such social circumstances, people are so strongly integrated into social expectations and society itself that they will kill themselves in an effort to achieve collective goals.
Egoistic suicide
Egoistic suicide is a profound response executed by people who feel totally detached from society. Ordinarily, people are integrated into society by work roles, ties to family and community, and other social bonds. When these bonds are weakened through retirement or loss of family and friends, the likelihood of egoistic suicide increases. Elderly people, who suffer these losses most profoundly, are highly susceptible to egoistic suicide.
Fatalistic suicice
Fatalistic suicide occurs under conditions of extreme social regulation resulting in oppressive conditions and a denial of the self and of agency. In such a situation a person may elect to die rather than continue enduring the oppressive conditions, such as the case of suicide among prisoners.
Logics
Kaplan distinguished between reconstructed logics and logics in use. Reconstructed logics are the methods in which scientists claim to be using and logics in use are the actual methods which are used.
This is supported by Michael Lynch who observed the scientists studying rat’s brains ignored slides that contradicted their theories, dismissing them as procedure errors. Therefore, science cannot obtain any objectivity and in practice is manifested by careful selection of which data confirms their theories.
Even scientists can’t be objective.
Interpretivists
Sociology is not a science! Its very different from the natural sciences.
Whilst some scientists will study inanimate objects such as rocks and plants, sociologists will study human beings which move and think freely.
This leads interpretivists to use more qualitative methods which can provide greater, in-depth information about the meanings such actors create on their behaviour.
Weber
Weber sees sociology as the study of social action and therefore requires verstehen (empathy/understanding) to understand why people behave in particular ways. This can be seen in his study of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, here he attempts to understand why Calvinists reinvested their money and became early capitalists.
Its key to develop an empathetic understanding to uncover the personal meanings and motives individuals give to their own actions, and that this was crucial to understanding how social structures changed over time.
However, he also believed that we could make generalisations about types of motive people had and that these general motivations were influenced by the wider society – thus he is half way between structure and action theory, rather than a pure ‘social action’ theorist.
Phenomenology
Phenomenology: Stems from the idea that someone’s perception of reality is constructed: it requires a conscious mind. They study the structures of conscious experience from a first-person point of view.
Edmund Husserl (founder) argues that to answer the question of how we can appreciate phenomena in the world, we need to understand the experience of consciousness.
Jack Douglas studied concepts of suicide and found that there were different motivations for committing suicide, suggesting that the purpose of committing suicide is determined via the conscious mind.
Ethnomethodology
Society is considered a social construct on an individual basis: it cannot be studied objectively. It is the sociologist job to uncover the ‘rules’ in everyday interactions that people unknowingly use to construct their reality.
Harold Garfinkle (founder states that verbal interaction is a means of constructing your world (primary method). He discusses the “etcetera principle” (process by which information can be skipped over in conversations), the benefits a ‘shared identity’ brings to conversation and the relative value of indexicality. Turner (1974) describes indexicality as “… the hearer’s ability to make out what is meant from what is said …”
Atkinson’s study of coroners reports (suicide) supports the idea of indexicality as suicides were identified using the coroners own construction of reality.
Indexicality – the ability to draw meaning from the context in which people are placed.
Middle ground
Giddens developed an approach which combines both those of a structural (positivist) and social action (interpretivist) one.
This is called Structuration theory, and recognises the influences that structures have on individuals, whilst understanding the meanings in which they attach to them and their choice of accepting or rejecting such an institution.
An example of this is the family structure, it is up to the individual to choose whether they wish to belong to an environment which defines itself as a family. Sociological research, according to Giddens, must therefore understand the motivations and actions of individuals before it can understand how the structures ‘exist.’
