Theory and Methods Sociology AQA

What is committed sociology?

Research that incorporates values to improve society.

Positivism

Only recognises information that is scientifically verified or can be logically proven.

What is committed sociology?

Research that incorporates values to improve society.

Positivism

Only recognises information that is scientifically verified or can be logically proven.

Early Positivism - Comte and Durkheim

Sociology's job is to discover objective truth and reveal the correct society.

Marxism

Capitalism will be overthrown by the proletariat when they gain false class consciousness.

Weber

We should incorporate values into choosing and interpreting data, but not when collecting facts.

Modern Positivists

They have a desire to be scientific in order to raise the subjects status and earn respectability.

Gouldner (1950) Modern Positivist

Sociologists went from being problem makers to problem takers.

Committed Sociology - Myrdal

Impossible not to include values, likely the sociologist or paymasters values will be reflected in the work.

Undesirable without values, sociologists are merely selling their services to the highest bidder.

Interpretivism

If sociology is influenced by values, this would be taking sides.

Becker - Interpretivism

Rather than focusing on the side of the powerful, we should take the other side because less is known about them and we can redress the balance.

Goffman (1968) - Interpretivism

If we are to describe the situation of a mental patient, we must take their side and go against the psychiatrist.

Gouldner - Interpretivism

Criticised Beck for the sentimental approach towards disadvantaged groups, Gouldner believes we should take the side of those fighting back.

Funding and Career

Sociological research is funded by outside groups and so the paymaster controls the direction of the research. Research can be blocked for publication if the findings are unsuitable. Also career prospects may mean not being outspoken.

Perspectives and Methods

Assumptions and values influence what is chosen to be researched and methods may be chosen to aid these values.

Objective Relativism

If values have an influence, then it is impossible to say if the findings are just a reflection of these values and what version of reality is actually true.

Relativism

What you believe is true, is true and all versions of the truth are equally valid.

Relativism and Postmodernism

Self-defeating to tell us something that is true but that nothing is actually true.

Social Constructionism

Individuals in society use their values and ideas to construct the world around us, which is subjective due to regarding their own biases.

Parsons (1970) Similarities between society and a biological organism

System: Both relating systems with interdependent parts.

Needs: Both have need to survive.

Functions: Function of any part is its contribution to survival.

Value Consensus and Social Order

Parsons dictates social order as being achieved through a shared culture which is a set of norms, values, beliefs and goals.

Allows individuals to cooperate as long as members agree, which is called a value consensus.

Integration of Individuals - Parsons

Socialisation and social control

The social system model

Individual actions governed by rules or norms.

Norms come in cultures known as status-roles.

Clusters of status-roles form institutions.

Related institutions make up a sub-system.

Subsystems together make up a social system.

The Systems Needs

Adaptation: Meeting members material needs through the economic subsystem.

Goal Attainment: The political subsystem sets goals and resources to achieve them.

Integration: Subsystems are integrated together to pursue shared goals e.g. The media, education and religion.

Latency: The processes that maintain society overtime.

Two types of society

Modern and traditional

Structural Differentiation

A gradual process in which separate, functionally specialised institutions develop, each meeting a different need.

Mertons internal critique of functionalism

Indispensability: Parsons ignores the fact that there may be functional alternatives e.g. One parent families and socialisation.

Functional Unity: ignores the fact that some institutions have functional autonomy.

Universal Functionalism: ignores the idea that some things may be functional for so,e but dysfunctional for others.

Manifest Function

The recognised and intended consequences

Latent Function

The unintended results

Logical criticisms of functionalism

Unscientific because it cannot be falsified.

Teleological, assumes things exist because of the function.

Conflict criticisms of functionalism

Doesn't explain conflict and change.

Legitimises the status quo by emphasise harmony and justifying social order.

Action Perspectives Criticisms

Wrong(1961) Functionalists describe individuals as mere puppets in society whereas action theorists describe individuals as constructing society.

Argue society has its own needs whereas action theorists argued society only exists through the construction of individuals.

Postmodernism Criticisms

Functionalists assume that society is stable and ignores the diversity.

It's also a meta-narrative.

What is social policy?

Plans and actions of the government to tackle social problems.

Social Problems and Worsley

A piece of social behaviour causing public friction and/or private misery and calls for collective action to solve it.

Sociological problems

A pattern of relationships calling for an explanation, does not need to be considered as a problem.

What influenced social policy?

Cost

Funding sources

Electoral popularity

Ideological and policy preferences of governments

Interest groups

Globalisation

Critical sociology

How does sociology contribute to social policy according to Giddens (2006)?

Providing an awareness of cultural differences

Providing a theoretical framework

Identifying social problems and providing the evidence

Functionalism and Social Policy

They argue that social policy benefits everyone.

View sociology as a science and that it can discover scientifically based solutions to social problems.

Educational policies help to promote equal opportunities and social integration.

Social Democratic (Townsend 1979)

Favours a distribution of wealth from the rich to the poor

Townsend researched poverty and made policy recommendations e.g. Higher benefits and more public spending on health, education and welfare

Black-Report (1980)

37 far-reaching policy recommendations to reduce inequalities.

Includes free school meals for all children, improved working conditions and more spending on improving housing.

Marxism and Social Policy

Policies represent the ruling class and benefit capitalism.

Provide a legitimate way to mask capitalist exploitation e.g. Welfare state makes it appear like that system cares about the poor, sick and old.

Maintain the labour force.

A means of preventing revolution.

Feminism and Social Policy

Policies benefit men and keep women subordinate e.g. Assume normal family type is nuclear, harder to live in other family types and creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Influences on policies have been to create more positive images of females and have teachers avoid gender bias.

Radical feminist policies include refugees for women escaping domestic violence e.g

Women's Aid Federation.

New Right and Social Policy

Encourages policies that give individuals responsibility back e.g. Parenting classes and marriage preparation.

Wilson and Kelling Zero Tolerance policy.

Popper "hypo-deductive method"

Observe what you want to study, then form a hypothesis than is falsifiable. Then make predictions and conclusions from there.

Impact of Empirical Evidence

Data collection from the real world, our senses

Objectivity and Sciences

Data being independent of any subjective elements

Values Freedom and Science

Keeping values out of research to allow for it to be scientific.

Comte - Positivism

Social statistics: forces holding society together

Social dynamics: forces causing social change

Society acts according to its own set of laws, similar to the physical world and so it should be studied as a social science, using empirical data.

Knowledge can be gained to improve the human condition.

Key features of science

Objective

Empirical

Structured questionnaire

Validity

Reliability

Operationalisation

Observable

Sample

Large-scale

Macro

Inductive Reasoning

Bottom-up approach

Identity patterns and trends amongst data, then formulate a hypothesis and then develop conclusions and theories.

Verificationism

Developing a theory that explains all our observations to data, confirms the theory is true.

Methods used in positivism

Quantitative data demonstrating cause and effect

Structured questionnaire and interview, official statistics

Reliable data

Detached and objective

Example - Suicide (positivism)

Durkheim (1987) used official statistics to show Sociology is a science. He identified patterns and trends e.g. Rates for Protestants higher than Catholics. Concluded that social facts responsible are levels of integration and regulation.

Subject Matter

The difference between sociology and natural sciences is that they study things without consciousness.

Humans have consciousness and the way they react to things is a result of their interpretation.

A sociologists job is to uncover the meaning of this interpretation.

G.H. Mead

Humans interpret the meaning of a stimulus and then choose how to respond. The job of a sociologist is to uncover these meanings.

Verstehen and Qualifications

Seeing the world from the point of view of the person who is being studied

Empathetic understanding

Interpretivism types:

Interactionists: we have causal explanations and rejects the view of developing a hypothesis before starting research.

Glaser and Strauss: favours a bottom-up approach

Ethnomethodologists and Phenomenologists (Garfinkel): society is not a real thing but on,y exists in people's consciousness.

Interpretivist methods

Qualitative e.g. Unstructured questionnaires, participant observations and personal documents.

Validity, richer, personal and subjective understanding.

Example - Suicide (imterpretivist)

Douglas (1967) individuals have free will and choose how to act. To understand suicide we must understand what it means for the individuals, this can be better done through qualitative data rather than official statistics.

What is a Paradigm?

Kuhn argues that a paradigm is a set of norms that tells scientists how to think and behave. Involves principles, methods, assumptions and techniques. Believes science cannot exist without a shared paradigm and therefore sociology cannot be a science because it does not withhold one specific paradigm, but has many.

Keat and Urry (1982)

Sociology uses open systems where processes are too complex to many exact predictions e.g. Crime rate has too many factors involved to be predicted exactly.

Why does Marxism differ from Functionalism?

The social structure is seen to be based on a conflict of economic interests.

Reject the view of a stable society and believe change could occur at any moment.

What is historical materialism?

Materialism refers to the basic needs that humans have which we must work to achieve e.g. Forces of production.

Social relations of production emerge from this when we begin to organise production and use machines to assist.

Two classes emerge with this development: owners of the means of production and wage labourers.

Class society and exploitation

Ancient Society: exploitation of slaves legally tied to their owners.

Feudal Society: exploitation of serfs legally tied to the the land.

Capitalist Society: exploitation of free wage labourers.

Capitalists exploitatiob

Proletariat are legally free and separate from the means of production, but they have no choice but to work in order to survive.

Class Consciousness

Capitalism creates conditions for the proletarian to realism their exploitation, through driving the together and lowering their wages.

Marx Ideology

The class that owns the means of production also controls mental production.

Institutions in society such as the education system reproduce and legitimise the capitalist format.

Produce a false class consciousness.

What is alienation?

Alienation reaches its peak within capitalism because they have no control over the means of production, completely isolated.

The state, revolution and communism

The ruling class consists of the army, police, courts etc. Which serves to protect it.

If the working class overthrow capitalism, they will be the first majority to overthrow the minority.

Society will become call less with the production for profit being changes to production to satisfy human needs.

Alienation, and exploitation will end.

Criticisms of Marx: View of Class

One-dimensional view of inequality, whereas Weber argues inequality is down to status and power differences and feminists believes it's down to gender.

The two-class model is very simplistic. Weber divides the proletariat into skilled and unskilled, and includes a white-collar middle class, and a petty bourgeoise.

Class polarisation has not yet occurred, in western countries the middle class is increasing and the working class decreasing. But in Asian counties the proletariat is growing as a result of globalisation.

Criticisms of Marx: Economic Determinism

Ignores the free will that humans have

Ignores concept of new ideas e.g. Weber's Calvinistic Protestant which helped to emerge modern capitalism.

Predicted revolution would occur in the modern modern capitalist societies, but actually it is more economically backward societies that have seen revolution e.g. Russia in 1917.

The 'Two Marxisms' Gouldner (1973)

Humanistic/critical marxism

Scientific/structural Marxism

Hegemony

The ruling class withholding power and maintaining its position

Gramasci and Hegemony

The proletariat must develop counter-hegemony to overthrow the bourgeoisie.

Ruling class maintain dominance through coercion which is institutions such as the police and army which force classes to accept its rule.

Hegemony and Revolution

The ruling class is a minority which means they have to make some compromises within the middle class to maintain dominance.

The only way to overthrow capitalism is for the working class to develop organic intellectuals and create a counter-hegemony.

Evaluation of Gramasci

Ignore the idea that the working class may have consciousness but fear state repression and so feel that they cannot do anything about their position.

Craibs Structural Determinism Model

Favoured by Althusser

Economic level: activities that produce something to satisfy a need.

Political level: all forms of organisation

Ideological level: involves the way people see themselves and the world.

What is a repressive state apparatus?

The use of force to get the working class to comply to the will of the bourgeoisie e.g. army and police

What is the ideological state apparatuses?

The use of ideologies to manipulate the working class into accepting capitalism as legitimate e.g. Media, education system and religion.

Althussers criticisms of capitalism

Socialism will only occur if there is a crises in capitalism, because humans do not have free will.

Underlying structures control us and take away the choice, free will and creativity that we should have.

Evaluation ofAlthusser

In reality, he creates a more complex determinism.

Thompson (1978) criticised for ignoring the fact that working class can change society and elitist for believing the communist party knows best.

His work gave major influence to theories such as postmodernism.

What is reformism?

The idea that equal rights can be achieved through gradual reformation rather than a revolution

Sex and Gender (Oakley 1972)

Sex: biological differences between males and females e.g. Hormones

Gender: socially constructed differences between masculine and feminine roles and identities assigned to males and females.

Evaluation of Liberal Feminists

Produced evidence for extent of gender discrimination and inequality.

Demonstrated gender differences are not biological.

Over-optimistic e.g. Ignore wider power structures.

Marxist and Radical feminists argue that revolutionary changes are needed.

Radical Feminism: The Personal is Political

Believes patriarchy lies within the public and private spheres.

Focuses on issues such as sexual and physical violence.

Argues that sexuality is socially constructed e.g. Women portrayed in pornography as passive sex objects and a source of pleasure.

What is separatism?

Living apart from men.

Greer(2000) all female households should be an alternative to the heterosexual family.

What is consciousness raising?

Sharing experiences of patriarchy with other women to form collective action e.g. Slutwalk

What is lesbianism?

Heterosexual relationship are oppressive because they involve sleeping with the enemy and therefore lesbianism is the only form of non-oppressive sexuality.

Evaluation of radical feminists

Draw attention to issues such as domestic violence, rape, pornography, domestic labour and marriage.

Marxists believe class in the main cause of oppression.

Liberal feminists argue that patriarchy is already in decline.

What do Marxist feminists argue?

Oppression is rooted in capitalism rather than patriarchy.

Why do women benefit capitalism?

Source of cheap and exploitative labour, paid less because it is assumed they rely on their husbands.

Reserve army of labour.

They reproduce the labour force e.g. Socialisation.

Absorb anger that would otherwise be taken out on the capitalist system.

Barrett: The ideology of familism

Familism: the nuclear family and it's sexual division of labour being natural and normal.

Women contribute to own oppression through living in this family type.

To ensure domestic labour is shared equally and free the sexes from stereotypes, we must overthrow this ideology.

Evaluation of Marxist Feminists

Doesn't explain women's subordination in non-capitalist societies.

Doesn't explain why it must be women to fulfil the domestic labour role.

What is dual systems feminism?

Capitalism and patriarchy argued to be intertwined

Hartmann (1979)

Dual systems feminism is called patriarchal capitalism.

Looks at the position in the domestic division of labour and in paid work.

Walby (1988)

Capitalism and patriarchy are interconnected but not always for the same reason.

Capitalism wants to use women for cheap labour but patriarchy wants to restrict women to the home.

Pollert (1996)

Patriarchy is run by its own internal dynamic of profit making just like capitalism.

It's merely a descriptive word for practices such as male violence and women's labour.

What is difference feminism?

All women have personal experiences of capitalism, patriarchy, racism and homophobia etc.

The problem of essentialism

This is the view that all experiences for all women are the same.

Ignores certain problems e.g. Healthcare and clean water in poorer countries.

What are discourses? (Butler 1992)

A way of seeing, thinking or speaking about something.

Gives power to those it defines e.g. Defining child birth as a medical conditions gives power to the doctors and disempowers women.