Soc 110 Midterm- Speer

Historical Methods

Techniques for researching what people did and thought in the past. Includes techniques for finding and evaluating sources. Documentary research, etc. Also includes techniques for analyzing and synthesizing information. Narratives, etc

Who uses historical methods?

Historians, some sociologists

Goals of historical research

Accurate description of what happened, Accurate descriptions of people's views and experiences, Explanation of specific historical outcomes, Explanation of general patterns, Testing or refining existing theories, Developing new theories

Differences in goals of historians and sociologists

Historians focus somewhat more on descriptive goals

Documentary research:

the collection, assessment, and utilization of written materials

Includes books, newspapers, official documents

Primary Source

a source that was created around the time of the events/experiences described in it. Primary used more within history than in sociology

Secondary Source

a source that was compiled on the basis of primary sources

Authenticity

the source is what it appears to be

Authorship

Authenticity of text - complete and author's own words

Trustworthiness & Credibility

the source is a sincere attempt to present an accurate account, and is an accurate account

Motives of author

Accuracy of information

Firsthand vs secondhand accounts

Analysis (historical)

breaking a thing into its constituent parts and viewing them in relation to the whole

In historical research, possible to go back and forth between data collection and analysis

Causal Order

cause comes before outcome in time

Representativeness

the source is typical of some set of people, or some set of documents

Representativeness for primary sources

Social variation in production of written materials

Variation in survival of sources

Variation in availability of sources

Representativeness for secondary sources

think about extent to which it's 'representative' of secondary sources on topic

McAdams's political process and the development of Black insurgency

Insurgency is used to define a social movement that is challenging the government

Goals: explain the origins of the civil rights movement

Assess the fit between different theories and the origins of the civil rights movement

Black insurgency

civil rights movement and other black activism in the 1960s

Social movement theories

Classical Model, Resource Mobilization Theory, McAdams Political Process Model

3 sets of factors that explain when social movements emerge- McAdams Political Process Model

The structure of political opportunities- openness

Conditions make it either easier or harder for excluded groups to make political changes.

Is the window of opportunity big or small?

Organizational strength of the population

The people who are upset must organize and mobilize people to make change. This is a nod to resource mobilization theory.

Collective perceptions/ cognitive liberation

People come to believe that change is possible

People will not fight for change if they think there is zero chance of success

Causal process/mechanism

You must have some description of the mechanism and process that leads from the cause to the effect

Causal Necessity

It had to be present in order for the outcome to occur

If not x, then not y

Causal Sufficiency

Sufficiency- it inevitably led to an outcome

If X, then Y

Necessary and sufficient cause

the factor had to be present for the outcome, and by itself led to the outcome. Real life is more complex than this.

Necessary but not sufficient cause

the factor had to be present for the outcome to occur, but only led to the outcome in combination with other factors.

You need bananas for a strawberry banana smoothie, but that's not the only thing you need

Relative importance

not everything that is necessary is important to talk about.

Sufficient but not necessary cause

a factor that by itself led to an outcome, but the outcome could have been produced by other factors

If you fail the final worth 50% of your grade, you will fail the class. Failing the final is sufficient to fail the class, but it isn't necessary to fail the class because you could fail the class through other routes.

Narrative

A roughly chronological account of what happened

Narrative as a tool for analysis

Helps us assess possible causes

Helps us identify causal mechanisms

Couterfactual reasoning

an imagined world in which some fact of history was different than it really was

Comes party from Max Weber's thought experiments

Calendrical Contrast

Where schedules and calendars are linked to a "group formation.

Case

a fundamental unit that is the object of our research, thought of as belonging to a set of comparable phenomena

Cases can be countries, organizations, events, etc

Comparative Methods

Nonexperimental, non statistical methods for selecting and comparing cases

Unlike experiments, do not get data under controlled conditions

Unlike statistical methods, analyze cases as wholes, rather than focusing on relationships between variables

Counterfactual

An imagined world in which some fact of history was different than it really was. Counterfactuals should be plausible

What are Comparative Methods?

Case selection

Methods of analysis - Mill's methods, Boolean method, etc.

Mill's method

Boolean method

Must be paired with some method for collecting data (like documentary research)

Social Theory

a clearly formulated description or explanation of some part of social life

How are theories related to research?

Theory provides claims/hypotheses that are 'tested'

Theory provides a conceptual framework

Research is used to generate theory

Key issues with case selection

Selecting based on key features of cases

e.g., choosing cases that all have the same outcome

# of cases

Tradeoff between # of cases and detailed analysis of each case

Availability of information

Significance of cases