Class 8 Methodological Debates PDF

CLASS 8 / Part III: Methodological Debates: Positivism, Interpretivism and Critique Ø SUMMARY: Ø Methodological debates Ø Positivism and critique – preliminary clarifications Ø Positivism – methodological premises Ø Positivist research methods Ø Positivism: quantitative research methods CLASS 8: Met...

CLASS 8 / Part III: Methodological Debates: Positivism, Interpretivism and Critique Ø SUMMARY: Ø Methodological debates Ø Positivism and critique – preliminary clarifications Ø Positivism – methodological premises Ø Positivist research methods Ø Positivism: quantitative research methods CLASS 8: Methodological debates Ø Methodological debates: Ø Three very broad methodological options and positions emerged in regard to all of these problems: positivism, critique, interpretivism CLASS 8: Methodological debates Ø Positivism and critique Ø main heirs of the Enlightenment foundations of the social sciences - they provide a sociology that reflects the “canonical” reading of modernity and sociology Ø From the start, academic sociology was also the ideology of modernity, not simply its analysis Ø The distinction between political ideology and social science is blurred Ø This has become the official modality of sociology, propagating modernity’s selfunderstanding CLASS 8: Methodological debates Ø Positivism and critique Ø Modernity’s self-understanding: Ø 1. Modernity as absolute break / revolution in human history ushering in progress, evolution, development – whether “actual” or “potential” Ø 2. Human history per se is an evolutionary, linear development towards progress (embodied by modernity) CLASS 8: Methodological debates Ø Positivism and critique Ø Techniques and methods of the natural sciences to shore up the modern selfunderstanding (especially positivism) Ø There are various degrees of overlap between positivism and critique: Ø structural-functionalist evolutionism (especially positivism) vs. radical socialism (especially critique), and their “paradoxical” combination CLASS 8: Methodological debates Ø Positivism and critique Ø structural-functionalist evolutionism: Ø structure/ structuralism: Ø every system has a structure Ø human society can be best understood if one uncovers the underlying structure Ø structures are underneath the surfaces of things or meanings, they are invisible but they are no less real Ø structure determines the position of each element in the whole CLASS 8: Methodological debates Ø Positivism and critique Ø structural-functionalist evolutionism: Ø Function / functionalism: Ø all human societies are made up of social functions: i.e. social roles and norms, traditions, institutions, division of labour etc. Ø Social functions keep societies together – solidarity, stability - things exist in society because they fulfil a specific function Ø Societies evolve like organisms (analogy from biology) CLASS 8: Methodological debates Ø Positivism and critique Ø The precursors and the classics: Ø Saint-Simon, Auguste Comte, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim Ø First generations: Ø Positivism: Talcott Parsons (1902 - 1979), Karl Popper (1902 – 1994); critique: Theodor Adorno (1903 – 1969) and Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 – 1980) CLASS 8: Methodological debates Ø Positivism and critique Ø Second generations: Ø Jean Baudrillard (1929 – 2007), Jürgen Habermas (1929 - ), Pierre Bourdieu (1930 – 2002) and Jacques Derrida (1930 – 2004), Anthony Giddens (1938) Ø Third generations: Ø Jeffrey Alexander (1947), Craig Calhoun (1952), Luc Boltanski (1940) CLASS 8: Methodological debates Ø Positivism and critique Ø 1. “Classical sociology” in the tradition of Durkheim Ø 2. the “classical synthesis” in sociology achieved by Talcott Parsons – structural functionalism – based on the identification of the positions of Weber and Durkheim – methodologically no real significance Ø 3. The “neoclassical synthesis” between structuralfunctionalist evolutionism and radical socialism achieved in the works of Bourdieu, Giddens, Alexander, or Habermas CLASS 8: Methodological debates Ø Positivism and critique Ø The latest contemporary developments (third generation) go along some form of synthesis between Durkheim, Weber and Marx CLASS 8: Positivism Ø Methodologically, positivism refers to: Ø The social world is “objective” in the same way that the natural world is objective Ø the application of natural science methods and their understandings of what is scientific truth to the study of human societies CLASS 8: Positivism Ø Methodologically, positivism refers to: Ø the purpose of scientific research in sociology is to discover objective laws of social behaviour based on the scientific method (natural science) Ø The imposition of a non-participatory form of knowledge in the study of human societies Ø Defining and categorizing - the absence of experience as a problem CLASS 8: Positivist research methods Ø Positivist research methods: Ø 1. Quantitative research methods: Ø research that relies on numerical and statistical data for calculating findings. Ø Quantitative research is typically used in cases when one is trying to apply a natural science model of explanation, i.e. laws / patters / regularities of social behaviour, of social processes etc. CLASS 8: Positivist research methods Ø Positivist research methods: Ø 2. Qualitative research methods: Ø Research that relies on qualitative & interpretative aspects of social relations; Ø the data is often textual and contextual, examples including interviews transcripts and ethnographic field notes through participatory observation; data takes the form of words CLASS 8: Positivist research methods Ø Positivist research methods: Ø 2. Qualitative research methods: Ø a) Qualitative research often follows on a methodological level the model of the natural sciences: Ø the scientific method with the human as “object” of study provides the criteria for what is a valid truth claim; Ø in this sense it falls within the selfunderstandings of the natural sciences CLASS 8: Positivist research methods Ø Positivist research methods: Ø 2. Qualitative research methods: Ø b) Qualitative research can also lie outside the confines of positivism strictly speaking: Ø studies which use the “ethnographic research” or “participatory observation” and follow a nonpositivist understanding of what is a scientific truth claim (see notes and classes on “Interpretivism”) CLASS 8: Positivist research methods Ø Social theory (understanding) / qualitative research methods: Ø Theoretical framework based on empirical evidence that is used to organize concepts and explains why society or some aspects of it functions as it does. Ø Explanatory theory (explaining) / quantitative research methods: Ø Theoretical framework that has one or more causal hypotheses suggesting that a particular independent variable causes a particular effect on the dependent variable. CLASS 8: Positivist research methods Ø Positivist research methods: Ø Positivist sociological research sometimes combines the use of quantitative and qualitative research methods Ø Example: Ø statistical quantitative research using questionnaires often employ ‘pilot-interviews’ (qualitative research methods) in the preliminary phase of the research Ø Pilot-interviews on small samples can provide better understandings of what to ask and how to frame the questions in the questionnaires CLASS 8: Positivism / Quantitative research methods Ø Concept: Ø mental construct that represents some part of the world in a simplified form; it might also be a category or a classification, such as sex, race, social class Ø Variable: Ø A concept whose value changes from case to case; the changing value is noted by an indicator; for example: “income” as indicator of the variable class CLASS 8: Positivism / Quantitative research methods Ø Correlation: Ø The relationship between two variables whose values change together Ø Correlation does not equal causation; the correlation between two variables can be caused by a third variable Ø Independent variable: Ø The cause: variable that causes change in another variable Ø Dependent variable: Ø The effect: variable that changes its value as a result of an independent variable CLASS 8 – Positivism Ø Bibliography: Ø “Chapter 2” Ø “A Contemporary Introduction to Sociology. Culture and Society in Transition.; 3rd Edition; Routledge (2018), by Jeffrey C. Alexander, Kenneth Thompson, Laura Desfor Edles, Moshoula Capous-Desyllas (eds.)