Sociology & science

• Positivists - should sociology be a science?

  Yes
• Interpretivists - should sociology be a science?


  No
• Key research principles from the natural sciences should be applied to the study of society:

  Observations & inductive reasoning

  Theories of verification

  Patterns & causes

  Universal laws
• Positivist research methods 


  Quantitative data

  Detached & objective
• Durkheim


  Study of suicide

  Used quantitative data from official statistics

  Studied it objectively
• Interpretivists - subject matter of sociology


  We can only understand it by successfully interpreting the meanings and motives of the actors involved.
• There is a fundamental difference between the subject matter of sociology compared to the natural sciences

  Natural sciences - studies matter that had no consciousness. It’s behaviour can be explained as a straightforward reaction to external stimuli.

  Sociology - studies people who have consciousness.
• Mead


  Free will.

  Rather than responding automatically to external stimuli, human beings interpret the meaning of a stimulus and then choose how to respond to it.
• Not puppets on a string


  People are not manipulated by ‘social facts’.
• Verstehen

  Qualitative research methods needed to uncover meanings.
• Douglas

  Study of suicide

  Opposes Durkheim
• Atkinson


  Can never truly measure suicide, using qualitative or quantitative research methods.
• Postmodernism

  In society today we have no metanarrative. Therefore, it is nonsensical to use the metanarrative of science to explain a society with no metanarrative.
• Feminism


  Science has been dominated by man and doesn’t provide insight into women’s experiences.
• Risk society


  In practice, science has not always led to the progress that positivists believe it would.
• Popper


  The fallacy of induction and falsification
• Kuhn


  Scientific paradigms
• Keat & Urry

  Closed and open systems and underlying structures