Theory and Methods: Sociology and Science

Sociology and Science

Positivism

Comte: Argues that sociology is a science. He called sociology the 'Queen of the Science'. Therefore all research should be done in a way which collects quantitative data, be objective, reliable and have cause and effect relationships. It also needs to be generalisable.

Methods Include: Questionnaires, Structured Interviews.

Durkheim: All of Durkheim's research was based on secondary data. He collected official statistics on suicide from countries across Europe. Using the comparative method of experiments he tried to find patterns and trends between the statistics in order to find a cause and effect relationship so that he could make a generalised claim about suicide. This process is known as induction. 

Interpretivism

Mead: Argues that sociology is not a science as human beings are not scientific. Therefore research should be done in a qualitative way, be subjective and valid. It should be a small sample, looking at the individual.

Methods Include: Unstructured Interviews, Participant Observation.

Jacobs: Read suicide notes from an Interpretivist perspective. He argues that the victim's point of view and reasoning behind suicide is ignored, there is usually a rational explanation. By doing this research he achieved verstehen. 

Atkinson: Argues that the coroner uses evidence and common sense knowledge to make an assumption on the deceased. Results were therefore inaccurate as the coroner's results can never be 100% certain. He argues that research should only be carried out in a qualitative way. 

Postmodernism

Lyotard: Argues that we are in a period after modernism, therefore every theory attempting to explain society is a meta narrative. He argues that there are two reasons for this:

1. Knowledge is Relative: There is no absolute truth as people are now far more critical than they used to be as facts can be disproved.
2. Identities are Fluid: Identities used to be based on social class but now society is fragmented and social groups no longer exist. People can change who they are any time.

Outside of Sociology

Karl Popper: 'Fallacy of Induction'. Popper is very positive towards science due to 'falsification' (using evidence to disprove a theory). He argues that the point of science is to prove your own theory and other theories wrong. He claims that science is the dominant belief system as it is the largest. As any cause and effect relationship can be proved wrong at any time due to one exception. He argues that sociology is not a science as you cannot test sociology like you can with science.

Robert Merton: Argues that science is all about falsification and that science is the dominant belief system due to having the 'CUDOS' norms:

Communism: No private property within science.

Universalism: Everyone is equal.

Disinterestedness: No fraud within research.

Organised Scepticism: Encourage others to be critical of your work.

Thomas Kuhn: Argues that science is the dominant belief system as it has a 'fixed paradigm' (a way of doing things), the people within science have a set way of doing research. Change within science is very rare. The paradigm is the foundation of the subject area, in order for change to occur it would require a scientific revolution. He argues that sociology isn't a science as there is no fixed paradigm and there is too much conflict. Therefore sociology is pre-scientific.

Keat and Urry: Argue that within the field of science, they study a variety of topics such as closed and open belief systems. Closed beliefs are things that cannot be challenged, open beliefs are things that can be challenged. They argue that science is versatile and that sociology could be a science as they debate ideas that cannot be proven.