Sociology and science interpretivism Key words Qualitative Verstehen

Sociology and science: interpretivism

Key words • Qualitative • Verstehen • Rapport • Empathy

The subject matter of sociology • They argue the subject matter of sociology is meaningful social action and so employing scientific methods is totally inadequate for sociology as we can only understand the subject matter through successful interpreting meanings and motives • They reject positivist methodology as a way of gaining an understanding of people and how they make sense of and construct their world by attaching meanings to it • Instead they argue that the research must put themselves in the place of those they are studying

Verstehen and qualitative research • To understand a social actors meanings we need to put ourselves in the places of the actor to grasp their meanings • Weber calls this verstehen – we call it emphathetic understanding

Fundamental rejection of natural scientific methods • Natural sciences are concerned with different subject matter, matter which generally has no conscience • Water doesn’t decide to boil at 100 degrees, the force of heat causes it so. Whereas sociology studies people who have consciousness which attach meaning to the world around them • Eg when motorists stop at a red light it is not because that red light is an external force causing them to stop, it is because motorists attach the meaning of stop to it through learned social rules and so wait for it to change to green which they interpret to mean go • Humans are autonomous creatures and the sociologists have to uncover their meanings

Types of interactionists All interpretivists seek to understand actors meanings. However, they are divided about whether or not we can combine this understanding with positivist style casual explanation of human behaviour (cause and effect)

Interpretivists • Believe that we can have casual explanations (cause and effect) but reject the positivist view that we should have a definite hypothesis before we start our research • Glaser and strauss: argue that it would impose the researchers own view on the research and not the social actors so we end up distorting reality we seek to capture • G and s favour a bottom up approach, or grounded theory. Rather than entering the research with a fixed hypothesis from the start (When we know little about the topic we are researching). Our ideas emerge gradually from the observations we make during the course of the research itself. We can figure out a theory after we have been on the ground testing

Phenomenologists and ethnomethodologists • Reject possibility of cause and effect (casual explanations of human behaviour) • Society is not an external force out there but only exists in the shared knowledge and meanings of people- only exists in consciousness • Cause and effect: because social actors aren’t guided by an external force there is no way to get a cause and effect relationship of the sort positivists want

Interpretivism and suicide Douglas: interested in the meaning of suicide for the deceased and the way coroners label death Interpretivists: suicide is not a result of external forces, it is due to individual reasons and how actors make sense of the world. All internal

Douglas: use of official statistics • Suicide is not a social factor but a social construction • Coroners as well as the influence of other social institutions eg government define death as suicide which may explain durkheims findings as those well integrated people wont want to define death as suicide out of their own guiltmay even destroy suicide notes • Argues classification of suicide is a social process. It is not objective. Social pressures in different countries mean that deaths will get classified differently • Examples: • Catholic country of Ireland: abolished suicide rule/rates as it is seen as a sininaccurate as there are still suicides happening so it doesn't mean there are no suicide rates if there is not rate existing • Britain during war time: prevent too many suicide ruled deaths – affect public morality, a sign of defeatism in the eye of the enemy, people are fighting for the country while others commit suicide was seen as selfish

Douglas: actors meanings • Durkhiem ignores that suicide means something to those who kill themselves and assumes that suicide is a constant thing • Need the use of qualitative data as suicide notes, diaries, interviews with survivors and family • Durkheim assumes that sociologists are better at determining suicide rates

Attkinson: an ethnomethodologist • Ethnomethodology: argues that social reality is a construct by its members • Coroners classify suicide with common sense and understanding of the world • They would analyse and come to a decision using things such as: suidice notes, mode of death, location and circumstance and life history/mental health • No rate exists, it is constructed by coroners • The only thing we can study about suicide is that the living interpret deaths – the interpretive procedure – coroners use to classify deaths • We will never know the real rate of suicide even with qualitative methods, since we can never know for sure what meanings the deceased held