sociology & science

• what makes a science?

  -empiricism: info is based on experiences & observations.

  -testable: something can be tested/tried to see if it is accurate.

  -theoretical: something is based on a theory.

  -cumulative: slowly & always building something up.

  -objective: factual, no bias.
• positivists

  -sociology should be a science.

  -Comte: thought that scientific methods should be used & society can be explained through this.

  -Can create social facts, verify these facts using inductive logic (proving true), collect data, form a conclusion.
• evidence for sociology being a science (durkheim, suicide)

  Durkheim's suicide study:

  -used official statistics in Europe to look at patterns in suicide & found 4 main reasons why people commit suicide:

  -fatalistic: too much regulation

  -egoistic: too little integration

  -altruistic: too much integration

  -anomic: too little regulation
• interpretivism

  -sociology should not and cannot be a science

  -behaviour changes, people are conscious (ethics)

  -sociology is more so about meanings which cannot be observed (qualitative)

  -cannot determine causality (too many extraneous variables) -Weber

  - verstein: empathetic understanding (to understand need to be in their shoes)
• postmodernists & feminists

  -science is not scientific

  -postmodernists: science is another metanarrative (own truth) that ignores other views. Science is undesirable & has led to more risks in society e.g., nuclear war.

  -feminists: do not think we should have one paradigm (truth) as it excludes women. Quantitative methods do not let the experiences to be seen. Does not benefit everyone.
• falsification

  -Popper: science must be falsifiable - deductive model.

  -Swan analogy: all swans are white gets falsified if you see a black swan. Sociologists should try to disprove a theory.

  -some parts of sociology can be scientific as they can be proven wrong but others can't (marxism - false class consciousness).
• Kuhn - paradigm

  -science needs to have a single paradigm, sociology does not.

  -sociology is pre-scientific, if it has a single paradigm it would become scientific.
• realism - Keat & Urry

  -depends on your definition of science.

  -closed system: soc isn't a science, all variables controlled.

  -open system: soc is a science, accepts that not all variables can be controlled. Example: meterology - giving a best guess on the weather but still seen as scientific.
• arguments and their view on soc as a science

  -soc is a science: positivism

  -soc could be a science: falsification, realism, paradigms

  -soc isn't a science: interpretivism

  -science isn't science: feminism & postmodernism
• Durkheim's suicide study

  -wanted to show that suicide is a result of social forces e.g., values & beliefs.

  -used statistics to find the causes of suicide.

  -looked at the patterns.

  -4 types of suicide, 2 reasons.

  
  

  AO3:

  -replicable - done 30 years later, same findings.

  -Gibbs & Martin: Durkheim was not positivist enough.
• Douglas & Atkinson - opposite of Durkheim

  Douglas: official stats are not social facts. Suicides cannot be categorised without meanings. 4 social meanings to suicide: revenge, punishment, escape, sympathy.

  
  

  Atkinson: suicide is a social construction. Coroners have a common sense theory of suicide (they apply their views based on experiences - recipe knowledge).

  
  

  AO3:

  -ethnomethodology is self-defeating as we cannot interpret without experiencing something.

  -victims are the only ones who know the meaning behind the suicide.
• evidence for soc as a science

  Taylor: realist (some positivist & interpretivist view points)

  -used case studies to find different types of suicides

  -did this in a scientific way to prove sociology can be a science

  
  

  AO3:

  -cannot know if the data is valid as the people who would need to be questioned are dead.