Sociology is the systematic study of society and social interaction. In order to carry out their studies, sociologists identify cultural patterns and social forces and determine how they affect individuals and groups. They also develop ways to apply their findings to the real world.
change and human agency, characterized by contradictions and reconciliations, and
transfigured if they are observed at a micro or macro-level. Social reality is different,
depending on the historical moment, the perspective, and the criteria from which it
is viewed.
Nevertheless, the different sociological paradigms do rest on a form of knowledge
that is scientific, if science is taken in the broad sense to mean the use of reasoned
argument, the ability to see the general in the particular, and the reliance on evidence
from systematic observation of social reality. Within this general scientific
framework, however, sociology is broken into the same divisions that separate the
forms of modern knowledge more generally. By the time of the Enlightenment the
unified perspective of Christendom had broken into three distinct spheres of
knowledge: the natural sciences, hermeneutics (or interpretive sciences), and
critique (Habermas 1972). Sociology is similarly divided into three types of
sociological knowledge, each with its own strengths, limitations, and practical uses:
positivist sociology, interpretive sociology, and critical sociology. Within these
three types of sociological knowledge, four paradigms have come to dominate
sociological thinking: structural functionalism, critical sociology, feminism, and
symbolic interactionism.
Positivism
The positivist perspective in sociology—introduced above with regard to the
pioneers of the discipline August Comte and Émile Durkheim—is most closely
aligned with the forms of knowledge associated with the natural sciences. The
emphasis is on empirical observation and measurement (i.e., observation through the
senses), value neutrality or objectivity, and the search for law-like statements about
the social world (analogous to Newton’s laws of gravity for the natural world). Since
mathematics and statistical operations are the main forms of logical demonstration
in the natural scientific explanation, positivism relies on translating human
phenomena into quantifiable units of measurement. It regards the social world as an
objective or “positive” reality, in no essential respects different from the natural
world. Positivism is oriented to developing a knowledge useful for controlling or
administering social life, which explains its ties to the projects of social engineering
going back to Comte’s original vision for sociology. Two forms of positivism have
been dominant in sociology since the 1940s: quantitative sociology and structural
functionalism.
Quantitative Sociology
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