Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
William Molnar
1. After reading Sayer (esp. pp. 29-35), give and explain an example from your own area of interest
of a concept-dependent social phenomenon.
from my own area of interest. According to Sayer “Social phenomena, such as actions, texts and
institutions “(p 6) are concept-dependent. Later on, Sayer, in discussing social knowledge, states
that
A large part of our social knowledge, including much of social science takes for granted and
reinforces this understandable reification of human action, critical theory challenges it as real
but nevertheless false. These features of our society go some way towards explaining the
ignorance among many social scientists of the concept-dependent and socially produced
character of their objects of study. (p 42)
Sayer also states previously that “In practice, there is usually a partial identity of subject and
object, so that we are often already familiar with the meaning of the social phenomena in our
‘object’” (p 27). Sayer feels that by understanding social phenomena “is by no means just a
question of understanding concepts in society and the meanings of practices” (p. 28). Again
he states “concept-dependent nature of social phenomena. What does this mean? It obviously
denies the (tempting) assumption that meanings are merely descriptions which are only
externally applied to social phenomena, as they are to non-social objects” (p 29). He is also
quoted as saying “the most obvious candidates for intrinsically meaningful social phenomena
are the ideas, beliefs, concepts, and knowledge held by people in society” (p 30). In his
discussion on Critical theory and the relationship between subject and object, he states “In
order to understand and explain social phenomena, we cannot avoid evaluating and
criticizing societies’ own self-understanding” (p 39). In the question about Verstehen, Sayer
states that the science concerned with the interpretation of meaning is called “hermeneutics”
and states that “Using this term we can say that the study of natural objects only involves a
single hermeneutic while the study of ideas and concept-dependent social phenomena
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William Molnar
phenomenon would be the knowledge the student learns. Like Sayer’s example of money and
the condition that the users need to have an understanding of what exchanging money means
and need to understand what the coins and paper stands for, so the student also must have
some concept of knowledge and what the knowledge stands for along with what it means to
exchange their knowledge and ideas. They also have the rights of ownership of that
knowledge just like the rights and ownership of the money ownership and exchange.
phenomenon would be the practice of taking a state standardized test. A necessary condition
for taking these tests is that the students must have an understanding of what state
standardized means. If we don’t prepare the students for the test and just let them take the test
allowing them to choose any multiple choice answer the want, it wouldn’t count as a
standardized test but a test of circling in dots. The thing to remember is that “social
can distinguish between the physical behavior (the taking of the test) and the meaning of the
and Sayer feels that “Sometimes material objects which do not depend at all for their
2. What is verstehen, and how is it connected to Sayer’s view that social science must be critical of
its object (toward the end of chapter 1)?
Sayer explains verstehen as if “someone ‘read’ a social situation well or badly. This is a
He claims that at first we do not understand a book just by observing the shape of the
words, but by interpreting their meaning. “To this reading, we always bring interpretive
skills and some kind of pre-understanding of what the text might be about. In other
reader and the text” (p 36). Verstehen was used as “an example to show the use of
empathy to understand the motives of actors and the source of hypotheses explaining
their action” (p 37). Verstehen is also universal and is not a special technique or
Verstehen is connected to Sayer’s view that social science must be critical of it object
“derives from an assumption that its subject-object relations are no different from those of
natural science” (p 41). Sayer also points out that even those who believe social science should
be value-free recognize that this critical element can’t be avoided. His example of the economist
view. Sayer states that “I am not saying that social scientists should criticize things simply
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William Molnar
because they may happen to disapprove of them. Rather, the point is that the explanation of