Sociologists don’t just raise issues and talk about them in an abstract way. They research these issues in the real social world. They collect data that forms the evidence used to solve sociological problems. Ideally data collection is rigorous and systematic. A sociologist strives for objectivity and to avoid value judgements.
Interactionism rejects the idea that sociology is a science and discards the idea of a social system. . Interactionism starts with the idea that people interact in terms of symbols, the most important of which is language. To understand human action it is necessary to discover the meanings that people use to guide, interpret and make sense of their own actions and those of others. Interactionism focuses on the process of small-scale interactionism between individuals. Since all action is meaningful it can only be understood by discovering the meanings which actors assign to their activities. Meanings both direct and come from action. They are not fixed but constructed (created, developed & modified) and negotiated in interaction situations. From their interaction with others, actors develop a self-concept. This has important consequences since individuals tend to act in terms of their definition of self. Understanding the construction of meanings and self-concepts involves an appreciation of the way actors interact the process of interaction. Interactionists admit the existence of roles but regard them as unclear, ambiguous and vague.
Sociologists don’t just raise issues and talk about them in an abstract way. They research these issues in the real social world. They collect data that forms the evidence used to solve sociological problems. Ideally data collection is rigorous and systematic. A sociologist strives for objectivity and to avoid value judgements.
Emile Durkheim a famous functionalist felt the best way to prove that sociology was in fact a science was to study the most individual and personal acts. He believed that if he could prove that even this most private act was controlled by society (social facts and social forces) then he would have proved that all human behaviour is controlled by society. And therefore prove that sociology could be studied through the sociological method of the natural sciences. He tried to establish correlations, and by using the comparative method could uncover the patterns that would reveal the causal relationships at work in the production of suicide rates. Durkheim did not deny that particular circumstances would lead to a particular person taking his or her own life, but personal reasons he considered could not account for the suicide rate. Durkheim also chose to study suicide because of the availability of suicide statistics. He regarded these statistics as social facts and so believed that they could be used to find the sociological causes for suicide. Durkheim recognised the possibility that it might be the national culture rather than the main religion of particular countries that accounted for their suicide rate. However, believed that the suicide rate was determined by the relationships between individuals and society. To do this Durkheim first tried to show that suicide rates were relatively stable in a particular society over a period of time. He studied European societies and found consistent variations in the suicide rate between different groups within the same society. He believed it was impossible to explain these patterns if suicide was seen solely as personally and individual act. He then went on to establish correlations between suicides and other sets of social facts. He found that suicides were higher in predominantly protestant countries than catholic ones, and Jew had an even lower rate than Catholics. He believed that the suicide rates were dependant upon the degree to which individuals were integrated into social groups and the degree to which society regulated individual behaviour.
Durkheim’s study of suicide has widely been criticised by Social the interactionists J.D. Douglas and J.M. Atkinson. They both feel that suicide statistics, like any other statistics are socially constructed and questions their reliability. Douglas saw suicide statistics as the result of negotiations between the different parties involved. Whether a sudden death is classified as a suicide it is ultimately the decision of a coroner who will be influenced by other people such as the family and friends of the deceased. A person who is integrated well into a group is much less likely to have their death classified as a suicide than a person who is poorly integrated. Douglas believed family and friends were likely to be reluctant to admit the possibility of suicide and will, if necessary, seek to cover it up. He also felt Durkheim could not treat all suicides as the same type of act as each act has a different motive behind it and a social meaning that it is related to the society and context in which it took place. Equally Atkinson supposed coroners had their own theories about why people commit suicide that influence their judgement. Inasmuch as they consider lack of family ties and lack of friends as a cause of suicide, a person who is well integrated into such groups is less likely to have their sudden death classified as a suicide. Atkinson argues that coroners have a ‘common sense theory’ of suicide. Coroners’ common-sense theories of suicide contain explanations of the causes of suicide if information about the deceased fits the theory they are likely to categorize his or her death as suicide. Thus sociologist looking for the causes of suicide may merely be uncovering the reasons used by coroners for defining deaths as suicide. The job of the sociologist is therefore not to discover the causes of suicide but to interpret how deaths get categorised as suicide. For the reason given by Atkinson and Douglas the link that Durkheim saw between integration and the suicide rate has been rejected. Therefore, they attempt to disprove that sociology is compatible with the natural sciences.
The most commonly used definition of science is an objective enquiry as the collecting of observed data, the examination of it for patterns in behaviour and correlations between observable facts, ending in an attempt to create theoretical explanations of them. From his definition of science, some sociology- that pursued by those who use a quantitative approach – may be judged to be scientific. On the other hand, interpretists approaches do not fit this model of science.
The realist approach believes social science is possible as underlying structures and mechanisms produces the events in both the social and natural worlds. It is not possible to predict human behaviour as it takes place in an open system where there is no way of controlling all the variables, which affect human action. Realists differentiate between ‘open’ and ‘closed’ systems. A closed system is one in which behaviour can be examined in a controlled situation with all the variables being identified and manipulated by the researcher. The best example of this is in a laboratory. An open system is opposite to a closed system. In the natural science there are theories that cannot be controlled but are still accepted such as evolution, and meteorology. Realists believe not being able to control variables does not rule out social science, as it is still possible to explain human behaviour in terms or underlying structures and mechanisms. Structures contain human behaviour, they place limits on human action. In an open system humans have varying degrees of freedom to direct their own actions. Mechanisms operate within structures. It is a part of the scientists’ job to identify these mechanisms and explain how they work. Since events in both the natural and social worlds are produced by structures and mechanisms thus social science is based on the same principles, therefore realists believe sociology can be a science.
Durkheim argued that theories should come from evidence, from gathering data, from describing classifying and analysing social generated. This is known as inductive approach. A deductive approach reverses this process. It begins with a theory and uses data to test that theory. This is the approach advocated by Karl popper a philosopher of science. According to popper rather than looking for evidence to confirm their theories, sciences should try to disprove or falsify them. Popper believed theories that survived falsification test were not necessarily true; they just have not been falsified, this is a distinguishing characteristic of science. Therefore popper agrees that sociology can be a science however only if it uses a deductive approach and try to falsify their experiments. On the other hand, human societies a open systems and therefore it would be very difficult to control variables because of this it is difficult to see how theories can be falsified.
Another philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn believes normal science operates within a paradigm - a shared framework of concepts and theories. The paradigm is shaped by members of the scientific community and shapes the way they see the world. Scientists operate within the paradigms and refuse to accept concepts that falsify the paradigm until they cannot be ignored. When a paradigm is replaced with another (scientific revolution) it is because the theory cannot be explained in terms of the existing paradigm. Kuhn says that because all sociologists do not share the same paradigm and hold very different concepts, theories and methods. Sociology is pre-paradigmatic and pre- scientific. Thus sociology is not a science.
Given the weight of this argument it suggests the relationship between sociology and science is an ambiguous one. There is no agreement as to what is a ‘science’. Depending on the definition sociology is either scientific, unscientific or scientific in parts. It is not likely that there will be any agreement as to what ‘science’ is, nor is it likely that sociology will develop a paradigm. Therefore it is safe to suggest that sociology is not a science.
