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sociology as a science - Coggle Diagram
sociology as a science
sociology as a science Arguments
Positivism
aim to use experimental methods - testing hypothesis with experiment + use quantitative data - allows precise statements about relationships between facts to be discovered.
Use of statistics - allows detachment + objective - nor rapport is built
Follows some methods as science
Popper - Falsification
Falsification - look for answers that challenge your view
Should go through falsification if want to be scientific - link to Hypo-deductive model
hypo deductive model - developing a theory, then identifying hypothesis, collecting evidence to test them and where evidence doesn't fit, refining the theory, create new hypothesis and further falsify
Rejects Marxism as a science - concepts like false class consciousness is to abstract to be seen and measured
Durkheim - Social Facts
social facts - laws and behaviors - predicted patterns of behavior
studied suicide notes - discovered a real life - that different levels of integration and regulation provide different levels of suicide
Can be explained scientifically because he used official statistics
Found that rates for protestants were higher than Catholics - these are social facts as they are caused by other social facts forced upon members of society to determine behavior
Against sociology as a science
Interpretivism
sociology is not appropriate for studying humans - have internal meanings- can only understand sociology my interpreting meanings + motives of the actors involved
Science only deals with with laws of cause and effect not human beings
Weber
Argue we need to abandon detachment an objectivity favored by positivists must pt ourselves in the place of the actor - calls this Vestehen or empathetic understanding to grasp meaning
Favor participant observations, unstructured interviews, or personal documents - gives subjective and more valid data
Jack Douglas
Individuals have free will - choose how to act on the basis of meaning should use suicide to uncover meaning instead of our own meanings - reject official Statistics - propose we use qualitative data
Post Modernism
Regard natural science as a meta narrative
Science is a subjective like sociology as its opinion Doesn't allow a range of views - only claims a monopoly of the truth and therefore excludes other points of view