Sociology as a Science

Question 1

List as many sociologist involved as possible

16

Answer 1

Durkheim, Comte, Popper, Kuhn, Weber, Cicourel, Blumer, Charlesworth, Titchen and Hobson, Douglas, Kaplan, Gomm, Sayer, Keat and Urry,

Question 2

Positivists, main gist

Answer 2

Sociology CAN and NEEDS TO be objective, JUST LIKE NATURAL SCIENCES.
thus, sociology must use objective observaiton & collection of statistics to create a “Law of Human Behaviour” which can occur when enough data exists to support a given correlation

Question 3

Interpretativists main gist

Answer 3

Sociology IS NOT objective, but CASUAL RELATIONSHIPS CAN BE FORMED.

it CANNOT be like the natural sciences because “in science, substances are acted upon by external forces and react to stimuli. in the case of humans, human consciousness exists and causes actions to be different.”

BUT as long as YOU UNDERSTAND THE HUMAN MOTIVATION, u can be technically SCIENTIFIC

Question 4

Social Interactionists main gist

Answer 4

(UNDER INTERPRETVISM)

need to study social interactions to discover the “self concept” of individuals

Question 5

Phenomenologists main gist

Answer 5

you CAN NOT MAKE ANY SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS because all humans do is CLASSIFY THINGS and all phenomena mean different things to different people.
you can, however, REVEAL the biases and learn about humans by exposing their classification systems

Question 6

Realists main gist

Answer 6

also called “Post-Positivists”
SCIENCE ITSELF “assumes” the existence of things— atoms have subparticles and viruses have organelles, and magnetic fields are real which can’t really be proven, thus SOCIOLOGY is SCIENTIFIC bc EVEN REAL SCIENCE ISNT, thus interpretivist objections to positivism are irrelevant bc positive is based on the assumption that science is a thing.

also, we should focus on understanding STRUCTURES. all science does is discover a STUCTURE wherein differences in variables can still leadto different outcomes (think: Darwin– things evolve, but their environments and others lead to completely diff outcomes) Sociology, too, SHOULD REVEAL STRUCTURES

Question 7

Comte

Answer 7

Augsutus Comte, father of sociology, was inspired duriing the renaissance and insurgence of natural sciences and wanted to make sociology scientific, believes you can only count on observation and statistics

Question 8

Durkhiem

Answer 8

Positivists, believed in “social facts” —beliefs or systems or structures that could be quantified.

Researched suicide through official statistics following an inductive methodology (collect data to support a claim), discovered “Suicide rates always increase during economic slump or boom”

Question 9

Popper

Answer 9

Hypothetico-deductive:
create hypothesis,
attempt to disporove it with data.
marxism as a “pseudo science” which cannot be falsified.

> is technically a positivist

Question 10

Weber

Answer 10

“Verstehen” - imagining urself in someone else’s shoes

in protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism, Weber focuses on how the protestant’s interpretations & beliefs regarding tehir value system (not JUST its existence) caused the rise of capitalism, thus the individual consciousness is super important.

Question 11

Blumer

Answer 11

any positivist looking at data “does not significantly interact with the life they are trying to analyze”

u must immerse urself in social reality to interpret it.

eg. “industrialization leads to nuclear families” completely disregards the individual’s interpretations as to why family structures changed.

Question 12

Titchen and Hobson

Answer 12

“Phenomenology is the study of phenomena (any event or experience) AS it is lived and interpreted by those that experience them”

Question 13

Cicourel

Answer 13

studied the justice system with regards to juvenile deliquents.
found that justice was largely negoatiable and based on the official’s existing stereotypes of what “the typical delinquent” looked like– the actual action was secondary to the arbitrary classification of the crime based on personal bias.

thus, “to assume there is a true crime rate is to oversimply and misunderstand the variety of meanings of crime present in the social world”

Question 14

Douglas, in critique of Durkheim

Answer 14

“bias in identifying suicide” as coroners and family may be less incline to admit to a suicide.

also, suicides are NOT of the same type and do not all mean the same thing. suicides, for example, bc of economic failure vs as a ritual vs to obtain sympathy, suicides in different societal contexts, etc.

Question 15

Kaplan

Answer 15

Reconstructed logics = what scientists claim to be their methodologies
Logics in use = what actually happens.

eg. an “objective study” may “omit a finding” because it doesn’t go along with their research. – scientists are INFLUENCED by the theory they are seeking to prove.

Question 16

Gomm

Answer 16

On Darwin’s theory of evolution:

while equally correct to state “the fittest survive” and also the more “cooperative survive”, it was Darwin’s theory (and not Kropotkin’s Mutual aid) that became instantly glamorized in society. WHY? bc it could be turned into capitalist propaganda in victorian UK.

Question 17

Kuhn

Answer 17

preparadigmatic,
paradigmatic,
scientific revolution
paradigm shift

Question 18

Sayer (on systems)

Answer 18

Sociology exists in an OPEN SYSTEM (where too many variables = inability to forecast events), unlike some sciences (physics) where it’s easier to limit variables and draw conclusions.

Question 19

Sayer (on structures)

Answer 19

The relationship between a landlord an tenant i s a strcutre and it it is INCLUSIVE of what it PRESUPPOSES: rent, economic hierarchy, power, etc.

structures cannot be SEEN but are uncovered and understood to be real through their EFFECTS. the evidence of the misery and alienation of the working class reveals the existence of a class structure. it is SCIENTIFIC to understand a structure then discover cause and effect WITHIN the structure.

Question 20

Keat and Urry (science + structures)

Answer 20

science, too, presupposes the existence of things, and sociology happens to presuppose the existence of human consciousness.

structures are “the connection of a multitude of social relationships”