theory

• Enlightenment project

  Extremely influential philosophical movement in the 18th century that believed in the power of reason and science to explain how the world works and in the possibility of using this knowledge to create a better society
• Belief in the 'Enlightenment project' is shared by modernist sociologists
• Science

  • Central feature of today's society
  • Science and technology have revolutionised practically every aspect of life, from living standards and healthcare to communications and warfare
• Science was central to the 18th century enlightenment project
• Enlightenment thinkers were deeply impressed by the success of science in explaining and controlling nature
• The success of science also made a powerful impression on the 19th century modernist sociologists such as Comte, Durkheim and Marx
• They sought to copy its success by producing a science of society
• Just as the natural sciences enabled us to control nature, sociology would bring true knowledge of society that could be used to eradicate problems such as poverty, injustice and conflict
• It seemed that sociologists simply needed to borrow the methods of the natural sciences and success would be sure to follow
• Since then however others have argued that is not possible or desirable for sociology to model itself on the natural sciences
• Positivism

  Belief that it is possible and desirable to apply the logic and methods of the natural sciences to the study of society and this will provide the basis for solving social problems and achieving progress
• Positivist approach


  • Belief that reality exists outside and independently of the human mind
  • Nature is made-up of objective, observable, physical facts such as rocks, cells, stars etc. These are external to our minds and exist whether we like it or not
  • Society is an objective factual reality- it is a real 'thing' made-up of social facts that exist 'out there', independently of individuals, just like the physical world
• Social fact

  Objective, observable patterns or regularity in society that can be systematically explained
• For positivists, reality is not random or chaotic but patterned, and we can observe this empirical (factual) patterns or regularity systematically to explain them
• For positivists the patterns we observe can be explained by finding the facts that cause them e.g. the social fact of educational failure caused by another social fact, material deprivation
• By establishing patterns in society and facts that cause them Sociologists can use this information to guide social policies
• Positivist sociological approaches

  • Functionalism
  • Marxism
  • Feminism
• Positivist sociologists use Quantitative data to uncover and measure patterns of behaviour in order to establish social facts
• The methods they therefore use include Experiments, Questionnaires, Structured interviews, Non-participant observation and statistics
• Interpretivism

  Belief that sociology is not a science because you can't measure what's inside people's heads
• Interpretivist sociologists DO NOT believe that sociology should model itself on the natural sciences
• Interpretivists

  Believe sociology is about unobservable internal meanings - in other words it is about individual's thoughts and feelings which of course go on inside people's brains and these cannot be observed or measured empirically as scientific methods would demand
• Human beings

  • Individuals who interpret and respond to the world around them in different ways
  • Have free will and can exercise choice and therefore rather than responding automatically to what is going on around them they interpret situations and choose how to respond to them
• For interpretivists, individuals are not puppets on strings, manipulated by 'social facts' (as positivists would argue), but independent beings who construct their world through their own interpretations, meanings and actions
• Verstehen

  Gaining an empathetic understanding of someone's thoughts, feelings and perspective
• Interpretivist (micro) approaches

  • Symbolic interactionism
  • Ethnomethodology
  • Phenomenology
• Interpretivist sociologists use Qualitative date to interpret the meanings and motives of people's actions and interactions
• The methods they therefore use include unstructured interviews, participant observation and personal documents
• Positivism and suicide

  • Emile Durkheim (late 1800s) believed society can and should be studied scientifically by observing patterns of behaviour and establishing cause and effect to explain them
  • Durkheim used QUANTITATIVE data from official statistics, and he looked for patterns in suicide rates over several decades in a number of European countries
  • He was able to use the evidence to argue that suicide is not simply the result of individual actions, but in fact it is caused by social facts – factors external to individuals within the structure of society that shapes their behaviour
• Interpretivism and suicide

  • Interpretivists focus on the meanings of suicide for the individuals involved
  • Jack Douglas (1967) criticises Durkheim's study of suicide on the grounds that the suicide statistics Durkheim used may have been inaccurate, and that Durkheim ignored the meanings of the act for those who kill themselves
• Popper's view of science

  • Rejects the positivist view that Science is based on verificationism (where a theory is proved by collecting evidence)
  • Instead, he says what makes Science unique is the principle of falsificationism - a statement is Scientific if it is capable of being falsified
  • Most Sociology is unscientific because its theories could not under any circumstances be proved false
• Kuhn's view of science

  • A paradigm defines what Science is and provides a set of shared basic assumptions, principles and methods
  • Currently sociology is pre-paradigmatic and therefore prescientific. There is no shared paradigm – no agreement about what to study, how to study it, what we are likely to find etc.
• Paradigm

  Defines what Science is and provides a set of shared basic assumptions, principles and methods
• Science of society


  The application of systematic, empirical, and analytical methods used in natural sciences to the study of human society, with the goal of developing laws and theories that can explain and predict social phenomena.