interpretivism

• the subject matter of sociology

  interpretivists argue that the subject matter of sociology is menaingful social action so has to be interpreted to understand the meanings and motives of people involved

  • reject the natural sciences method because of the fundamental difference that people construct their world through consciousness
  • mead - human beings choose how they respond to stimuli rather that automatically responding in the same way each time
  • individuals are autonomous beings that construct their own social world, not puppets without any control
• interactionists

  type of interpretivism - believe we can have causal explanations, but not that we should begin research with definite hypotheses

  • glaser + strauss - hypotheses risk imposing our own view of what is important on research
  • favour a bottom-up view in which ideas emerge from observations made throughout the research
• phenomenologists/ethnomethodologists

  type of interpretivism - completely reject the possibility of causal explanations and argue that society isn't a real thing

  • social reality is just the shared meanings or knowldge of its members so exists only in people's consciousness
  • people's actions aren't governed by external forces so no causal relationship can be established
• interpretivism and suicide

  douglas - suicide can only be understood by uncovering its meanings rather than imposing our own on the situation

  • proposes the use of qualiatative data from case studies that reveal individual actors' true meanings
  • atkinson - rejects the idea that external facts determine behaviour but believes we can only study the way the living make sense of the deaths
• postmodernism and scientific sociology

  postmodernists view natural sciences as meta-narratives that are purely accounts of the world rather than a single truth, so there is no reason to accept its theory

  • there are as many truths as there are points of view so a scientific approach is dangerous as it claims a monopoly of the truth and disregards other views
  • eg. in the soviet union marxism was used to justify coersion and oppression
• feminism and scientific sociology

  poststructuralist feminists argue that the idea of a single feminist theory is a form of domination that covertly excludes groups of women

  • other feminists argue that quantitative methods are oppressive and can't capture the reality of women's experiences
• what is a science?

  interpretivists do tend to agree with the positivist description of a natural science

  • however some sociologists, philosophers and historians offer alternative views of science