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• Sociology


  Coined by Comte, a positivist who believed we can apply the logic/methods of natural sciences to society
• Positivism


  • Gives us objective knowledge to help solve social problems
  • Favours macro/structural explanations of society, like functionalism and Marxism, as they see society/its structures as social facts that shape our behaviour patterns
• Patterns


  Reality is patterned, and we can observe these patterns
• Inductive reasoning


  Discovering laws that determine how society works by observing, identifying and measuring patterns in society
• Verificationism


  Developing a theory from observations and then confirming/verifying the theory through further observations to claim to have discovered the truth or 'law'
• Objective quantitative research


  Sociologists should adopt the research process of natural scientists, where a hypothesis is tested in a systematic and controlled way using quantitative data to find and measure patterns of behaviour
• Positivists believe sociologists should be detached and objective in their process, not allowing their own subjective values influence how they do their research/analyse their findings
• Positivists prefer very detached methods like questionnaires, structured interviews and official statistics
• Durkheim's study of suicide

  Used quantitative data from official stats to find patterns in the suicide rate, and concluded that the levels of integration and regulation were the social facts responsible for this pattern
• Interpretivism


  Doesn't believe sociology is a science, nor should it try to be, as it criticises positivism as being inadequate for the study of human beings
• Meaningful social action


  The subject matter of sociology, which can only be understood by successfully interpreting the meanings/motives of actors involved
• Verstehen


  Putting ourselves in the other's shoes to understand the meanings they give their actions
• Qualitative research


  Unstructured interviews, personal documents and participant observations are best to see the world from the subject's viewpoint
• Types of interpretivism


  • Interactionalists
  • Phenomenologists
  • Ethnomethologists
• Postmodernists do not believe that sociology is a science, as they see science as a metanarrative (big story) and no more valid than other accounts of the world
• Poststructuralists feminists argue that a dominant, scientific feminism excludes many groups of women, and some argue quantitative methods are oppress and don't actually portray women's experiences
• Douglas' study of suicide

  Rejects the positivist view that external social facts determine our behaviour, and instead argues that individuals have free will and actions are based on meanings, so we have to uncover the meanings of those involved to understand suicide
• Fallacy of induction


  Verification ignores that new evidence can come in at any time and prove a theory wrong
• Paradigm


  The norms and values of a scientific group, which defines what the science is, as well as a framework of assumptions, principles and methods that researchers use/work around
• Falsification


  A scientific statement is capable of being proved wrong via evidence, rather than just verifying it
• Scientific revolutions


  Overtime, science has undergone paradigm shifts, where old central ideas are replaced by new ones
• Popper argues sociology isn't a science because its theories can't undergo falsification
• Sociology is pre-paradigmatic, therefore pre-scientific, as it has no shared paradigm/dominant perspective, and cannot be a science until there is one
• Postmodernists argue that a paradigm isn't desirable anyway because it's essentially a metanarrative that silences minority views
• Realists argue science studies both observable phenomena and underlying unobservable structures, which would technically make Marxism and interpretivism scientific
• Durkheim and Comte's view on values

  Sociology is the science of society that discovers the truth about how society works/laws about its functioning, which should be used to fix social problems, not subjective values/personal opinions
• Marx's view on values

  Saw himself as a scientist who could reveal the line of development of human society via historical analysis and materialism, in order to scientifically reveal the truth to the proletariat so they could overthrow capitalism
• Weber's view on values

  Distinguishes between facts revealed by science and values we should hold, arguing we can't derive one from the other, and that no value judgements are 'proven' by an established facts
• Weber's view on the role of values in sociology

  • Values as a guide to research
  • Values in data collection & hypothesis testing
  • Values in the interpretation of data
  • Values & the sociologist as a citizen
• Modern positivists' view on values

  Their own values are irrelevant to their research, as they want to appear scientific and objective, and because sociology has become a 'problem taker' discipline that serves the interests of its paymasters
• Committed sociology


  Sociologists should openly take sides by espousing the values/interest of particular groups, as value-free sociology is impossible and undesirable
• Whose side should sociologists take?

  • The underdog's side (Becker)
  • The side of those who fight back, like political radicals (Gouldner)
• Most sociological research is funded by someone else, so the funding body often controls the direction the research takes and the kind of questions it asks, meaning the work is likely to embody the values/interests of their paymasters
• Different sociological perspectives have different assumptions/values about how society is or should be, which influence the topic sociologists choose to research, the concepts they develop, and the conclusions they reach
• Relativism


  Different groups/cultures/individuals have different views on what's true, and there's no independent way of judging if one view is truer than another
• Postmodernism takes a relativist view, arguing that no one account of the social world is superior to another, and that ones claiming to have the truth are just metanarratives
• Marxists conclude that capitalism produces exploitation
• Sociologists' value-stance


  Interpretivists like qualitative methods that fit with their underdog emphasising, while positivists will use quantitative methods that establish social 'facts'
• If all perspectives involve values, are their findings just a reflection of their values and not a true picture of society? This means there would be no way of deciding which version of reality is true
• Postmodernism


  No one account of the social world is superior to another, and ones claiming to have the truth are just metanarratives