Duran, Mary Diane A. Corazon B.

Lamug: A Sociologists Journey beyond Positivism Towards The Road Less Traveled By

Soc 160- B

I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. Robert Frost (The Road Not Taken excerpt)

I do not know Dr. Corazon Lamug; I may have heard of her, but I have no knowledge of who she was and what she did. However, because of the effort to commemorate her, I thought she must have done something really good that is worth remembering. [S]he journeyed beyond positivism, said Dr. Daylinda Cabanilla, one of the few people in the auditorium who had the chance to know Dr. Lamug. She summarized Dr. Lamugs life in the academe as a paradigmatic journey. With such a profound statement, it was necessary for Dr. Cabanilla to provide us of a definition of paradigm. She compared a paradigm with a powerful lens through which we are able to see things. She added that in our process of seeing, we assess which among the things we see is real, valid and important to study. It is needless to say that different paradigms would have different criteria for things to be acknowledged as important. While defining paradigm to us, she made an assessment about how paradigms are viewed in the field of research. Paradigms are often difficult to recognize as such because they are so implicit, assumed, taken-for granted. Why this was so, she also provided us the answer; it was because Positivism was the only paradigm recognized to contribute to scientific research. And that because of this, [n]ot many positivists journey beyond its shores.

Before I go any further, I think it would be proper to provide ourselves with a brief description of Positivism. Who can better provide us a description of this one than the man who coined the term Sociology, Auguste Comte? For Comte, Positivism is the search for invariant laws governing the social and natural worlds. He wanted to be at par with the most positivistic of sciences, physiscs and thus encouraged sociologists to create a realist science that would accurately copy or represent the way things actually are in the world (McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2004). Positivism, however, is not the only paradigm that can be used in Sociology. There are three major paradigms through which Sociological researches are conducted and analyzed; aside from Positivism, there are also the Interpretive and Critical approaches. Dr. Lamug, as was stated earlier, was one of those who recognized this fact and ventured early into other approaches besides Positivism. The story of how the journey beyond positivism went was not told. But it can be assumed that it was not an easy one; just as it was not easy for the proponents of other paradigms to defend them. I can also say with confidence that it was not abrupt. It was a gradual evolution. Recognition from the larger scientific community, I think, was the hardest to achieve. Until now, when there is a wider recognition of other paradigms as more effective lenses in the study of Sociology, Positivism still has a large following. In the country, or at least in the university, the problem of acceptance of paradigms other than Positivism was overcome by Dr. Lamug; as Sir Mark Oliver Llangco remarked, She is an example of what we can achieve in our career. Inilatag na ni Maam Lamug sa atin ang ating performance target. The goal is not to overthrow Positivism and replace it with either Interpretive or Critical approach. Borrowing the words of Sir Llangco, [i]t should not be read as a transfer from one camp to the other. The goal is rather to develop an appreciation of all paradigms, a widening of perspective, as Dr. Lamug has done. To add, I think it was not about the paradigms that really concerned Dr. Lamug when she began her journey, but rather, the quality of researches that she, and the next generation of

researchers, can produce. True enough, with the appreciation of other paradigms, a researcher will be able to provide a better analysis of common social problems, because he/she is not restricted by the rigid methods employed in Positivism. It seems it was not just something she did that gained her respect of everyone whom she had worked with. Her whole life was an exemplary journey; a journey worth telling.

Reference: McGraw-Hill Higher Education. (2004). Auguste Comte In Classical sociological theory (4th ed.). Retrieved November 30,2013, from http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites

/0072824301/student_view0/chapter3/chapter_summary.html.