Theory and Practice in Sociology

Ian Marsh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781138836082
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317904847
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Research & Methodology
• Index: Social Sciences

Theory and Practise in Sociology provide's students with a comprehensive, clear and accessible introduction to the main methods of research and the main theoretical approaches in sociology, and help's them examine the relationship between methods and theory.

Part 1

Sociological Practice

Chapter 1

The nature of social research and social knowledge

Julie F. Scott

Chapter outline

■ Early social research

■ Sociology the empirical ‘science’

■ The sociological perspective

■ The method-theory relationship

■ Ways of knowing

■ Epistemology

■ Hermeneutics

■ Methodology

■ Epistemological revolutions or crises?

■ Exercises

The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions from where only one grew before.

(T. Veblen, The Place of Science in Modern Civilization, 1919)

Imagine you run a business which is about to launch a new product, and before you spend millions on marketing it you want to know if it will sell. What do you do? Or picture yourself in charge of the budget for the National Health Service and you need to decide what to spend it on. How do you make such decisions when everything seems to be a priority? Or what if you were managing a big football club, which keeps losing and needs an injection of ‘new blood’. How do you decide whom to sign? The answer to all these questions is ‘research’. Of course it might not be called that, rather in business terms it becomes ‘market research’, in health policy it is known as ‘policy review’ and in the football world ‘scouting’. Whatever the name, it involves the principles of research, that is individuals or groups of people systematically and in a variety of ways trying to find answers to specific questions. All areas of life involve research, and the research skills gained in one area can often be applied in others.

Research is particularly associated with academia and is at the heart of all academic disciplines. Sociology is no exception. Different academic subjects often use very different types of research, while many share the same research techniques. Sociology, for example, shares many of its types of research with psychology and social anthropology. Social research involves the investigation of all types of social phenomena. Sociologists are trying to understand how society works and why people do the things that they do, in the way that they do them. Social research provides the evidence with which sociologists can formulate theories of society and hopefully provide a better understanding of how we live. Sociology is a diverse subject and this is reflected in the almost endless list of potential research topics, including religion, crime, racism, gender, media and family life. Our image of the researcher might involve someone wearing a white coat in a laboratory or standing in the centre of town with a clipboard asking questions. However, research can take many forms and is just as likely to involve the researcher joining a religious cult or standing in the audience at a pop concert watching crowd behaviour, or interviewing people in an online chatroom. Whatever type of research they do, all sociologists take research for granted as part of their professional role and are actively engaged to some degree in research at all times. It can be surprising to reflect upon just how much research one does, whether gathering sources for an essay or a report, analysing data for a book or preparing a presentation or a lecture.

Research is often described as an adventure, an encounter or a journey, which reflects the fact that research is an active process in which the researcher will experience a range of emotions from excitement to boredom, enthusiasm to lethargy. Whatever emotions may be experienced during research, the experience is rarely dull and often at the end of research the researcher will feel changed, intellectually or even personally. Much of sociology involves writing about, theorising and discussing the social world around us. While this can at first sight appear lifeless and dull, separated off from the ‘real world’, research allows us to get up close to the social world to which we belong and can bring colour and life to social theory, making it relevant and lively.

Discussion questions

1 Consider the subjects you studied at school or college. What were the most common types of research associated with each subject?

2 Account for the different approaches to research within different academic subjects.

3 Reflect upon the types of research experiences (at school/college or in a non-academic sphere) you have had. What research skills did you develop and what did you learn about conducting research?

4 List other areas of life (aside from academic studies) where research is important and suggest the most appropriate or usual form of research in these areas.

This chapter starts by looking at the history of social research, a history that pre-dates the establishment of sociology as an academic discipline in its own right. When sociology was founded as an academic discipline particular research techniques were used, but since the mid-nineteenth century the nature and role of social research has changed. Additionally the relationship between data gathering and theory formulation has also shifted in more recent times. After consideration of the development of social research, the chapter discusses the philosophy behind research. How we view and understand the world around us affects how research is conducted, and it is important that researchers reflect upon this in their work. Different philosophical perspectives have given rise to a variety of approaches to research, most of which are intrinsically linked to the different theories explored in Part 2 of this book.

Early Social Research

This book is focused on the researching and theorising of society since the advent of a distinct academic discipline for the study of society, i.e. sociology. However, this is not to say that people did not study their own societies before sociology’s arrival in the early nineteenth century. We can locate early attempts at theorising society typically within the field of philosophy. In a similar vein, we can also find examples of social research being conducted throughout history. Pre-sociology, ‘social research’ can be divided into two types: counting and measuring surveys and cultural descriptions.

Counting and measuring surveys

Throughout history and across cultures it is possible to find evidence of social surveys giving historians and archaeologists rich information on the size and constitution of particular societies. It could be viewed as the norm for large, literate ancient cultures, such as the Egyptians, Mayans and the Babylonians, to conduct regular surveys of people, land and resources. Such surveys were essential for the bureaucratic organisation and, often, imperial expansion of these cultures. A civil-servant type class of professional information collectors would conduct them. Such surveys were introduced into European practice by the Romans and were adopted into regular use by the Christian Church in Europe as a way of ensuring church wealth, power and expansion. Expanding European nation states adopted such surveys to keep note of acquisitions within Europe (see, for example, the Domesday Book of William the Conqueror) and abroad. The first thing many colonial powers did on annexing overseas colonies was to conduct a survey to record resources (people, land and raw materials). This pragmatic use of surveys was purely administrative and developed in tandem with the emergence of more bureaucratic practices within Europe, for example with the keeping of detailed parish records of births, marriages and deaths. The data produced from such surveys provides a useful historical record for us today but does not really provide us with much insight, in a sociological sense, into these cultures. For example, knowing the number of slaves kept by the average Roman merchant does not explain the practice of slavery or Roman views of it, let alone the experience of slavehood for the individuals themselves.

Cultural descriptions

Just as societies have always utilised surveys to provide administrative information about their own and other cultures, they have also produced cultural descriptions of societies they encounter or conquer. Such descriptions were produced by a variety of writers, including soldiers, missionaries, civil servants, professional writers and travellers. Most were done in the spirit of expanding information. However, such accounts are highly descriptive and subjective, dwelling less on the social mechanics of the ‘foreign’ culture and more on exotic customs and ethnic difference. Most such descriptions must be viewed in relation to the ideology of imperialism or at least through the visor of ethnic superiority. For example, the Romans typically portrayed the cultures they encountered as cannibalistic barbari (the Latin word describing the primitive speech of non-Roman cultures from which we derive the word ‘barbarian’). One infamous example is found in the work of the Greek historian Strabo (c.63BC–AD23) who produced a detailed account of the ancient Irish whom he portrayed as bloodthirsty cannibals, stating that ‘they count it an honourable thing, when their fathers die, to devour them’. These accounts are strikingly similar to those produced by medieval European writers about Islamic culture, and later European portrayals of their encounters with colonial peoples in Africa, Asia and the Americas. In all of them we find accounts of savagery, barbarity and often lewd sexual detail. ‘Natives’ were either infantile and innocent or barbaric savages.

The people are thus naked, handsome, brown, well shaped in body, their heads, necks, arms, private parts, feet of men and women are little covered with feathers. The men also have many precious stones in their faces and breasts. No one also has anything, but all things are in common. And the men have no wives those who please them be they mothers, sisters, or friends, therein make they no distinction. They also fight with each other. They also eat each other even those who are slain, and hang flesh of them in smoke. They become a hundred and fifty years old.

(From a sixteenth century Portuguese account of contact with South American Indians)

Accounts such as the one above fuelled and justified imperialist ideologies, old and new. We might find such accounts useful today not as accurate records of how societies once lived but rather as interesting insights for exploring colonialism, past and present, and its incumbent ideological tools.

Both of the above types of research can be labelled ‘social’ in that they were studying society, often in ways people of that time felt were scientific, systematic and accurate. However, they are flawed in our eyes because they are not truly empirical and are not backed by a specific theoretical perspective on society.

Sociology the Empirical ‘Science’

The way we view and understand the social and physical world around us is radically different from how people in the past viewed it. Before the eighteenth century, people’s worldview was dominated by the Christian Church and religious ways of understanding and viewing the world. One obvious example of Christ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Sociological Practice
• 2 Sociological Theory
• Bibliography
• Index