Thursday, October 23, 2008
theories and theorising
Positivism and positivists.Positivist, created by August Comte(father of sociology), argued that the natural world and the scientific world have distinct similarities. Hence, it is due to the framework of positivism that the early sociological studies is based scientifically. Positivist aims to be objective and value free in their research. Their main research design is based on empiricism. In other words, empiricism is a systematic collection of evidence which promotes transparency and reliability. Durkheim's famous study on suicide is widely regarded as the best example to show the study of empiricism. He used official statistics and compared the suicide rates of different country before formulating a theoretical approach on his study. His study is important becauseBesides that, positivist do embark to explain the patterns of society through social causation and from a deterministic point of view. "Social causation" refers to the idea that a change in one aspect of a society could affect other parts of the society. Positivism sees the social word as--like the NATURAL WORLD, as compromising phenomenon that are causally related. For example, during an economic recession, the inevitable outcome is increasing unemployment and economic deprivation which leads to crimes and social disorder. In the case of determinism, positivists believes that the individual has no free will or choice and that society actually shapes the mindset and the way we think.Like all theories, positivism have had its fair share of criticisms and limitations. As sociology develops into a major discipline, many sociologist feels that the study of society could be theorised in other intellectual ways. For example, Max Weber, a German sociologists, argued that the principle and methods of natural sciences have little or no application the study of society. His other view is that people are reflexive in nature and try to make sense of the situation they are in. Most importantly, nature and society are completely different from each other and sociologist in fact studies people/individuals, unlike the matter studied by scientists.Such views brought about a new school of thought-----interpretivism. Interpretivism essentially determines to find the subjective views of each social action theory. Recall that the ontological position of Max Weber. Unlike other classical sociologists, Weber preaches on the concept of social action. This will be discussed later in this essay. Studying human beings, however, is different from observing events in the physical world and sociology should not be seen as directly as natural science. Unlike objects in nature, humans are self aware beings who confer sense and purpose on what they do. We can't even describe social life accurately unless we first grasp the concepts that people apply in their behaviour. For instance, to describe a death as a suicide means knowing what the person in question was intending when he died. Suicide can only occur when an individual actively has self destruction in mind. If he accidentally steps in front of a car and is killed, he cannot be said to have committed suicide.
The fact that we cannot study human beings in the exactly same way as objects in nature is in some ways an advantage to sociology. Sociological researchers profit from being able to pose questions directly to those who study--other human beings.----(Giddens 2005)
The yardstick used by intrepretivists is the fundamental difference between the natural world and social world. Their description of the the social world is that it is a meaningful one, and that human societies are essentially subjective realities. Weber further reiterated the point that "natural science' and "social science" are two very different enterprises requiring a different logic and different methods.
Interpretivisits sociologists argue that different meanings require different explanations. A tool used, created by Weber himself, by interpretivists sociologist is VERSTEHEN which refers to the empathetic understanding and as quantitive measure to the social phenomena. Researchers, as far as possible, placed themselves in the position of those they are studying and asked how they see the world and what ends they believe are served by their actions. Weber noted that behaviour that seems the same "from the outside" can have very different meanings when examined from the inside.
For instance, when it comes to the study of crimes, sociologists approach
would begin by understanding criminal from the criminal point of view.
Next topic: Realism, Emile Durkheim and Karl Marx
