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CAN SOCIOLOGY BE VALUE FREE? (Weber: (There is a 'meaningless…
CAN SOCIOLOGY BE VALUE FREE?
POSITIVISM
Comte and Durkheim argue that scientific sociology can discover the truth about how society works
Believes that soc can be value free
They believe that soc should be scientific and objective; it is therefore free from values and bias research
Even Marx believed that research could be objective and scientific - however critics argue that the politically conservative views of functionalists, who believe in slow evolutionary change will inevitably influence their work
Weber
:
There is a 'meaningless infinity' of facts, and in his view, we can only select them in terms of what we regard as important based on our own values - their value relevance to us
Values are essential in enabling us to select which aspects of society to study
Interpretivists like Weber argue that sociology can be value free, as sociologists are simply human beings studying other human beings, they understand the social world through exploring the meanings and motivations of others, using their own experience and verstehen
Believe that
sociology should be totally value free
and should study observable stuff: social facts, that can be recorded as quantitative data so correlations can be identified between variables
INTERPRETIVISM
Interpretivists argue sociology can't be value-free because sociologists are human beings studying other human beings, They understand the social world through exploring the meanings and motivations of others, using their own experience & verstehen
Howard Becker
Post modernism
Believes that sociology can't be value free because all theoretical positions, including the natural sciences, are ideological
Becker (1970) argued it is not possible to conduct research that is not contaminated by personal and political sympathies and
Beckers sympathies lie with the underdog, those who have been labelled as ‘deviant’
Becker argues that not only the research process but also the theories that lie behind it [functionalism, interactionism] are infused left [politically] and functionalism looks right [conservative]
POMO claims that the portrayal of knowledge is no different to story telling
Interactionist studies of suicide
Howard Becker says it's impossible to study anything without using your personal and political beliefs to understand and judge it
Douglas-
Suicide rates are not ‘social facts’ as Durkheim presumes
They are socially constructed during the process by which they are collected
Douglas believes suicide rates are constructed through negotiations between different agencies involved - Coroner,Police,Health workers, Family - don’t want death to be categorised as suicide [stigma]
Study of suicide should be based on qualitative analysis of evidence such as : suicide notes, interviewing all those who knew the deceased, reading diaries, investigating physical and mental health, examining the events leading up to the death.
Atkinson - Phenomenologist
The real suicide rate does not exist and
Atkinson argues that coroner has a stereotypical view of what a typical suicide victim is like
He is more likely to classify the death of a person with this biography as a suicide
Coroners decide which sudden deaths are suicides based on stereotypes. These decisions/stereotypes become official statistics which are seen as ‘social facts’
Lyotard argues that there is no way of producing any objective knowledge as there is no way of distinguishing between true and untrue knowledge
POMO suggests that the essence of value free sociology is not whether the researcher has values , since all human beings are influenced by values of some sort
There is no single viewpoint that is superior to any other as they reflect the viewpoint of particular groups
The research process
Research idea
Literature reviews
Theoretical formulation of the research problem
Empirical research questions (operationalization)
Research design (planning)
Data collection
Data analysis
Answering the empirical research questions
Theoretical interpretation of the results
Comparison with earlier research
Conclusions
Values in the research process
Choosing which topic to research
Getting funded
Choosing a research method
Operationalizing key concepts
Interpreting findings
Recording responses
Selecting appropriate questions
Deciding what the report will be used for