Class 7: Methodological Debates (Part III) PDF

CLASS 7 / Part III: Methodological Debates Ø Reminder Part III: Ø Discussion of the central tenets of the three major methodological directions in sociology: positivism, interpretation, and critique. Ø inherent scientific claims Ø concrete examples of scientific research within each of these methodo...

CLASS 7 / Part III: Methodological Debates Ø Reminder Part III: Ø Discussion of the central tenets of the three major methodological directions in sociology: positivism, interpretation, and critique. Ø inherent scientific claims Ø concrete examples of scientific research within each of these methodologies Ø highlight the limitations of their respective scientific discourses CLASS 7 / Part III: Methodological Debates: Positivism, Interpretivism, Critique Ø SUMMARY: Ø Part III: Methodological debates Ø Scientific limitations of Enlightenment thought Ø After the Enlightenment: masters of suspicion; the rise of classical sociology Ø What is methodology? Ø Methodological debates and the making of modernity / the modern social sciences CLASS 7: Scientific limitations of Enlightenment thought Ø 1. Scientism Ø Confiscation of key terms: reason, experience, (objective) knowledge, truth – all redefined in the sense of naturalism and the scientific method: the non-human realm of reality Ø The reduction of knowledge to an understanding of human existence typical of the scientific method (natural sciences) Ø However, a discourse of knowledge on reality and human existence cannot be subsumed to the reductionism typical of the natural sciences CLASS 7: Scientific limitations of Enlightenment thought Ø 1. Scientism Ø Human beings are part of reality, not outside of it as scientism (or the Enlightenment discourse on truth and knowledge) presumes: they are embodied Fact-value distinction cannot ultimately operate; the reduction of experience to “objective knowledge” in the sense of the scientific method is also ultimately untenable Ø Metaphysics, theology, history and religion are part of any encompassing knowledge discourse about reality, truth or knowledge Ø CLASS 7: Scientific limitations of Enlightenment thought Ø 2. Critical rationalism Ø The combination of “critique, rationalism, empiricism, the scientific method and progress” can prove a very toxic social, political and philosophical cocktail Ø the Enlightenment fused the founding concepts of the social sciences with the concept of progress Ø Critical rationalism - mixes the application of reason to social, economic, political issues with a concern for progress, emancipation and improvement, and is thus critical of the status quo CLASS 7: Scientific limitations of Enlightenment thought Ø 2. Critical rationalism Ø This means that the scientific discourse of the emerging social sciences overlapped with a normative (even dogmatic) approach to “democratization” processes Ø Social engineering becomes legitimated or hidden by a flawed scientific discourse – reversely, scientific discourse becomes a form of social engineering Ø The construction of science (in the sense of the natural sciences) as a salvationist project – from a Christian perspective, science becomes a form of Ersatz-religion CLASS 7: Scientific limitations of Enlightenment thought Ø 3. the problem of (human) nature Ø Enlightenment: human being reduced to a “mind” as an empty sheet of paper - this denies an essence to human nature (anti-essentialism) Ø Social engineering reinforced by a nihilistic conception of the world – the reduction of the human to “brain” operations and cognitive processes, to mere social and political “constructs” where (human) nature disappears as a point of concern Ø permanent social and individual transformation? nihilism? CLASS 7: After the Enlightenment Ø The 19th century “masters of suspicion” (P. Ricoeur): Ø Sören Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855) Ø Radical problematization of modernity, specifically also from the perspective of Christian faith Ø Karl Marx (1818 – 1883) Ø Ambiguous relation to modernity (capitalism; progress; science), both criticizing and exalting it Ø Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900) Ø Radical problematization of modernity from the perspective of its (and his) ambiguous relation to nihilism; “prophet” of nihilism CLASS 7: After the Enlightenment Ø The rise of “classical sociology”: Ø Weber, Durkheim, Tarde, Simmel, Mauss, Dilthey, Tönnies, Pareto etc. Ø Fully caught within the ambivalence of the emerging modern societies Ø espousing the various moods and positions towards modernity Ø Aware of the connections existing between “social crisis” and “modern society” Ø Addressing such connections with different understandings and expectations of the future CLASS 7: After the Enlightenment Ø The rise of “classical sociology”: Ø Max Weber (1864 – 1920) Ø Dismissed social evolutionism in general Ø Found little value in “modernising” approaches to social theory / sociology Ø Concerned with “meaning” in the construction of social theory Ø Followed Nietzsche’s genealogical method CLASS 7: After the Enlightenment Ø The rise of “classical sociology”: Ø Max Weber (1864 – 1920) Ø Interested in the concrete and contingent historical processes leading to the emergence of the modern world through a series of successive, cumulative breaks or crises Ø Formulated a cornerstone theory of modern capitalism: the relation between Reformation and the rise of capitalism Ø Radically pessimistic about the prospects of modern life: ‘Not summer’s bloom lies ahead of us, but rather a polar night of icy darkness and hardness... [w]here there is nothing’ (Politics as Vocation, 1919) CLASS 7: After the Enlightenment Ø The rise of “classical sociology”: Ø Emile Durkheim (1858 – 1917) Ø Heir of the Enlightenment roots and views of the social sciences Ø Concerned with “social anomie” and the question of “suicide”, but looking at them as purely transitional problems towards a fully functioning modern industrial world Ø Idea of “society” and “social facts” Ø Concerned with the division of labour as the central social structure CLASS 7: After the Enlightenment Ø The rise of “classical sociology”: Ø Emile Durkheim (1858 – 1917) Ø Formulated a confusing and rather ideologically driven distinction between “organic solidarity” (fully industrialized modern societies) vs. “mechanic solidarity” (pre-modern traditional societies”) Ø Lack of social solidarity to disappear with full modernity CLASS 7: After the Enlightenment Ø The rise of “classical sociology”: Ø Important developments of sociology also in other European countries (i.e. Italy, Denmark etc.) Ø The French and German developments would prove decisive for the history of the institutionalization of sociology as an academic discipline Ø Full development / blossoming of the discipline after 1950 CLASS 7: Methodological debates Ø Methodology: Ø What is scientific research? How can one gain scientific knowledge? What is a scientific truth claim? Ø A concern with how to bring together epistemology and ontology: Ø Epistemology: theory of knowledge Ø Ontology: reality; everything that exists; theory about reality Ø methodological debates were recurrent throughout the history of the social sciences CLASS 7: Methodological debates Ø Methodological debates: Ø Addressing the difficulties of studying the human world (as opposed to the natural world) Ø Not only an abstract question, as sociology is par excellence the science of modern societies Ø Methodological debates in sociology were situated historically, thus in conversation with their own time Ø Methodological discussions about studying modern societies fundamentally conditioned by philosophical – normative dispositions / moods towards modernity CLASS 7: Methodological debates Ø Methodological debates: Ø The problem can be observed in the empiricist, rationalist and modernising Enlightenment foundations of the social sciences /sociology ultimately leading to a methodological cul-de-sac: Ø The contradiction of combining a normative, modernising approach to the underlying scientific truth claims in the study of society, while also claiming a strict fact-value distinction of the same CLASS 7: Methodological debates Ø Methodological debates: Ø the pretence of providing scientific knowledge based on a strict fact-value distinction was covering up the “modernising” agenda under the protection of a presumably bullet-proof scientific discourse Ø Sociology and with it modern societies were in this way supposedly freed of theological / metaphysical foundations of knowledge Ø Two connected and mutually re-enforcing narratives emerged in the self-understanding of modernity: CLASS 7: Methodological debates Ø Methodological debates: Ø 1. evolution: sociology and modern societies as products of an evolutionary, linear, developmental progress in history, with modernity as final “stage” of an enlightened state of humankind Ø 2. revolution: sociology and modern societies in the aftermath of the French revolution are absolute new beginnings, a radical break in the flow of time, followed by steady linear development Ø Evolution and revolution are brought together through the idea of “progress”: permanent progress; permanent revolution etc. CLASS 7: Methodological debates Ø Methodological debates: Ø The sequence “evolution-revolution-progress” is a secularized version of the Christian world view of the nature of human history Ø It replaces St. Augustine’s account - the perennial and irreconcilable tension between Civitas Dei and Civitas terrena - with the idea of historic progress in which the birth of modernity substitutes the birth of Christ as a promise of salvation Ø St. Augustine: De Civitas Dei (The City of God) CLASS 7: Methodological debates Ø Methodological debates: Ø The (r)evolutionary, linear developmental view of the emergence and nature of modern societies – the idea of evolutionary or / and revolutionary progress – constitutes the quintessential modern vision about the nature of human history Ø See also discussion of “tradition vs modernity” Ø In as much as sociology took over the self-understanding of modernity, even imposing it, this canonical reading of modernity became central for the way methodological debates in the social sciences were framed.