tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4058766287077382431.post6476482524648424999..comments2024-03-23T04:01:39.348-04:00Comments on Understanding Society: Sociological knowledgeDan Littlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15953897221283103880noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4058766287077382431.post-65167389853943883002009-09-07T15:42:17.788-04:002009-09-07T15:42:17.788-04:00For all its attractions, I find this view to be un...For all its attractions, I find this view to be unsatisfying. For if we can show the linkages and commonalities between different programs, then we are in a strong position to explore even more new vantage points. Analogously, if Sherlock Holmes discovers that only 85% of the outside surface area of a house can be assigned to known space within the house, then he will have good reason to believe that there is a secret room in there somewhere taking up the extra 15%.<br /><br />It is clear enough that there are two forms of sociology, the critical and the descriptive. <br /><br />Descriptive forms of sociology investigate demography, organizational theory, network theory, and social psychology. Their purpose is to make sense of the clean facts: behaviors, beliefs, attitudes, places. While they make use of "social constructs" and meaningful interpretations in the most trivial senses of the phrases, they attribute social functions to these things sparingly, and can never pretend to take things like ideology and society for granted. Meanwhile, the critical theorist is interested in attributing social functions to behaviors, attitudes, and so on, and in doing this in such a way that their own investigations can be open to critique.<br /><br />Among critical theorists, the facts are rather quite dirty. In a very general sense, I would include Marx, Parsons, Weber, Marcuse, and Foucault in the same camp. For Marx, the means of production were the essential feature of social explanation. For Parsons, the primary focus was social action. For Weber and the American Pragmatists, it was interaction. For the saner members of the Frankfurt School, it was true and false needs. For Foucault, it was power and sanity.<br /><br />A first step would be to show the commonalities between the kinds of disparate projects in the critical realm. The second step would be to connect that common element to the work being done by the stewards of clean facts that do descriptive sociology.BLS Nelsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09221793753245953967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4058766287077382431.post-88781177549569987162009-09-06T09:34:20.681-04:002009-09-06T09:34:20.681-04:00And then there's the question of advocacy, whi...And then there's the question of advocacy, which may be overt and political, or deeply embedded in the choice and design of a research program. One may argued that nothing uniquely credentials social scientists to establish rather than report on normative construct.TStockmannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14429662359024503711noreply@blogger.com