SOCIO 101  Rise of Socialism

EXAM #1 REVIEWER  Feminism: Liberationist movements of modern

INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY: PETER BERGER
“Sociology is more like a passion. The sociological
perspective is more like a demon that possesses one, that
drives one compellingly, again and again, to the questions that
are its own. An introduction to sociology, is therefore, an
invitation to a very special kind of passion.”
Western history; 1780s and 1790s
 Urbanization: Massive migration from rural areas to
urban areas; rise of the Chicago School
 Religious Change
 Growth of Science: Sociologists from the beginning
were preoccupied with science, and many wanted to
model sociology after the successful physical and
biological sciences

Sociology: scientific study of human life, social groups, whole INTELLECTUAL FORCES
societies, and the human world as such (Giddens 2009:6)  The Enlightenment: period of remarkable
 Distinguished through viewing human actions as intellectual development and change in philosophical
elements of wider figurations: that is, of a non- thought
random assembly of actors locked together in a web  The Conservative Reaction to the Enlightenment
of mutual dependency (Bauman and May 2001:5)  Development of French Sociology
 The function of sociology, as of every science, is to o Claude Henri Saint-Simon: mix of
reveal that which is hidden (Bourdieu 1998:17) conservativism and radicalism
o Auguste Comte: Coined the term sociology
FOUR MOTIFS OF SOCIOLOGICAL from social physics and positivism, which
CONSCIOUSNESS became the methodological framework for
 Debunking: Sociologist is driven time and again, by research patterned after the natural sciences
the very logic of his discipline, to debunk the social  Law of Three Stages: historical
systems he is studying. moments of how we analyze
 Unrespectability: It has a fascination with the society
unrespectable view of society  Theological: Church acts
 Relativizing: It represents the consciousness of a as the main authority,
world in which values have been so radically everything is rooted in the
relativized Church’s doctrine or God
 Cosmopolitan  Metaphysical: Abstract
ideas/forces not
necessarily dictated by
THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION: CHARLES religion, i.e. universe, fate,
WRIGHT MILLS destiny, karma
 Scientific/Positive:
Sociological Imagination: the quality of the mind to grasp the scientific explanation
interplay of man and society, of biography and history, of self o Emile Durkheim: sociology is religious –
and world. church of humanity
 Major common denominator of our cultural life and  Development of German Sociology
its signal feature. o Karl Marx
 Hegel
THREE MAIN QUESTIONS  Ludwig Feuerbach
 What is the structure of this particular society as a o Max Weber
whole? o George Simmel: micro-level sociology
 Where does this society stand in history?
 British Sociology
 What varieties of men and women now prevail in this
 Italian Sociology
society and in this period?
EARLY AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY
Events are minute points of the intersections of biography and
 Politics: liberalism
history within society.
 Social Change and Intellectual Currents
o Industrialization, both its possibilities and
Personal troubles of the milieu, public issues of social
dangers
structure.
o Influence of Protestantism on American
 To formulate issues and troubles, we must ask what
values are cherished yet threatened, and what values sociology
are cherished and supported, by the characterizing o Rise of scientism or positivism
trends of our period.  The Chicago School
o The department of sociology was founded in
DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY 1892 by Albion Small
o Center of the discipline in the US, strong
Pre-discipline: IBN KHALDUN connection with religion
 Ideas are similar with contemporary sociology o W.I. Thomas, Robert Park, Charles Horton
 Committed to the scientific study of society, Cooley, George Herbert Mead
empirical research, and the search for causes of social o 1905: American Sociological Society
phenomena (changed to American Sociological
 “Blindly following ancient customs and traditions Association in 1959)
doesn’t mean that the dead are live, but that the living o 1920s: peak of the Chicago School
are dead.”
WOMEN IN EARLY SOCIOLOGY
SOCIAL FORCES  Jane Addams, Charlotte Gilman, Anna Julia
 Political Revolutions: French Revolution of 1789 Cooper, Ida Wells-Barnett, Marianne Weber,
and carrying through the 19th Century Beatrice Potter Webb
 Industrial Revolution and the rise of Capitalism  Chief hallmark of theories:
 o Emphasis on women’s experience and
women’s lives and works as equally
important as men’s
o Awareness that they spoke from their own
standpoint
o The idea that the purpose of sociology and
sociological theory is social reform
o The claim that the chief problem for
development in their time was inequality
CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY:
STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONALISM
 Talcott Parsons
 Robert Merton: latent and manifest functions
MARXIAN SOCIOLOGY
 Frankfurt School
SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM
 Sociology of everyday life
 Exchange Theory (Blau, Homans, Skinner)
 Dramaturgy (Goffman)
 Phenomenological Sociology (Schutz, Berger, &
Luckmann)
 Ethnomethodology (Garfinkel)
FEMINIST SOCIOLOGY
 Marxian Theory
 Contemporary Feminist Theory
 Growing new literature on women that makes visible
all aspects of women’s hitherto unconsidered lives
and experiences
STRUCTURALISM AND POSTRUCTURALISM
 Linguistic Turn: relationship between philosophy
and language
 Freud: deep structures of the mind
 Marx: invisible larger structures of society and see
them as determinants of the actions of people as well
as of society in general
 Structures as the models they construct of the social
world
 Dialectical relationship between individuals and
social structures
 Postructuralists: Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard
POSTMODERNISM
 Jean Francois-Lyotard, Zygmunt Bauman (liquid
modernity), Jacques Derrida
SYNTHESIZERS
 Macro-Micro integration
 Structure-Agency integration
 Theoretical Synthesis
 Do structures shape our actions or vice-versa?
 Pierre Bourdieu, Anthony Giddens
KARL MARX
Capitalism is the historically specific way of organizing
commodity production
EXPANSION OF CAPITALISM
 Bourgeoisie: own and monopolize the means of
production, accumulate profit based on the labor of
employees
 Proletariat: wage-workers who work hard to meet
production demands
THEORY OF HISTORY
 Historical Materialism: history as the progressive
expansion in the economic-material-productive forces
in society
 Materialist concept: All societies that have ever
begun and ended the distribution of wealth
determines the order of classes in society.
o Primitive community  slavery 
feudalism  capitalism  socialism 
communism
o Change is something that is historical.
 Dialectical Materialism: historical change is the
result of conscious human activity emerging from
and acting on the socially experienced inequalities
and contradiction in historically conditioned
economic forces and relations; tensions and
contradictions
o Change is something that happens through
social revolution.
 Communism: characterized by abolition of private
property, profit, division of labor, and social classes;
requires everyone to contribute their labor to supply
everyone’s needs; universal human emancipation
HUMAN NATURE
 The ability to produce and economic and social
existence is what distinguishes humans from other
species
 Marx is not opposed to work and instead believes that
it is integral to being human
 He is against the division of labor
CAPITALISM AS A DISTINCTIVE SOCIAL FORM
 Capitalism has outlived its usefulness.
 Capitalists only employ and make use of wage
workers up to the extent that the wage workers are
useful to the production of their profit. Once wage
workers have nothing to contribute anymore,
capitalists can easily dismiss them.
 Capitalists only care about workers as long as they
have use-value (extent to which they can be put to
use to produce something useful that would result in
capital and profit)
WAGE LABOR
 Labor power: commodity bought and sold for profit
 Wage: necessary costs that capitalists encounter in
reproducing current and future workers
 Surplus Value = Use Value – Exchange Value
(Wages)
 Exchange-value is inversely proportional to use-
value. The more productive the workers are, the more
capitalists earn profit.
DIVISION OF LABOR AND ALIENATION
 Specialization reduces the individual to that
specialized activity and traps the person into that
activity
 Four kinds of alienation:
o Workers from products they produce
o Workers in the production process
o Workers from their species-being
o Individuals from one another
IDEOLOGY OF POWER
 Ideology: ideas in everyday circulation; determined
by the ruling economic class such that they make our
current social existence seem normal and desirable
 Ideology of consumption: consumption pervades our
existence – that is why so many people work as hard
as they do; they endure the burdens of work so that
they can buy the things they covet
 Fetishism of commodities: the mystification of
capitalist production whereby we inject commodities
with special properties beyond what they really are
CAPITALIST SUPERSTRUCTURE
  Base-Superstructure Model: economic base and  Form of relationship with authority:
superstructure impersonal duties
 Economic Base: economic structure or the mode of  Obedience: to the enacted rules
production of material life in capitalist society  Training required: yes
 Superstructure: non-economic social institutions  Hierarchy: yes
(legal, political, educational, cultural, religious,  Institutionalized through
family) whose routine institutional practices and bureaucracy, technical superiority
activities promote the beliefs, ideas, and practices over other administration
that are necessary for maintaining and reproducing  Iron cage of bureaucracy
capitalism o Traditional
 Person in authority: personal
master
MAX WEBER  Members of the authority: personal
comrades/slaves
UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL ACTION  Form of relationship with authority:
 Domain of sociology is subjective meaningful action personal loyalties
 Sociology: science concerning itself with the  Obedience: to the person who
interpretive understanding of social action and occupies a position of authority by
thereby with a casual explanation of its course and tradition
consequence  Training required: yes/no
 Verstehen: German for understanding; process by  Hierarchy: yes
which sociologists seek interpretive understanding of o Charismatic
the subjective meanings that individuals and  Person in authority: charismatic
collectives give to their behavior/social action leader
 Members of authority: charismatic
PROTESTANT ETHIC AND THE SPIRIT OF community
CAPITALISM  Form of relationship with authority:
 Religion and Economics, relation between This- emotional form of communal
worldly and Other-worldly relationship
 “…the earning of money within modern economic  Obedience: to the charismatic
order is…the result and the expression of virtue and leader
proficiency in a calling…duty in a calling, is what is  Training required: no
most characteristic of the social ethic of capitalist  Hierarchy: no
culture. It is an obligation which the individual is  Charisma: certain quality of an
supposed to feel and does feel towards the content of individual personality by virtue of
his professional activity.” which he is considered
 Economic success is the objective, in which work extraordinary and treated as
acted as a duty/calling endowed with supernatural,
 Calvinism  predestination superhuman, or at least specifically
 Success from hard work was believed to be one of the exceptional powers or qualities
signs of those who would be granted  Routinization of charisma:
 Disenchantment of the world charisma can be passed down from
one figure to the next
IDEAL TYPES
 An exhaustive description of the characteristics
distinctive to, and expected of, a given phenomenon EMILE DURKHEIM
 Ideal types are a useful way of orienting sociological
research, helping us to anchor our inquiry as we go METHODOLOGICAL RULES
about understanding and explaining the diverse forms  Social facts: external and collective ways in which
of social action and social relationships that comprise society shapes behavior
society  Society is comprised of a collection of forces which
 Social Action determine group and individual behavior
o Rational Social Action  Society is more than the sum of the individuals that
 Value Rational Action: occurs comprise it.
when an individual or a group  Sociological objectivity: social facts exist in society
values some ideal or belief such and can be studied
that they decide to rationally act on o Studied through the analysis of statistical
that value, to demonstrate their facts
commitment to that value, o Social fact is defined by an occurrence of a
regardless of the expected or statistic
unexpected costs of that action to  Data-centered sociology: analysis of social
them phenomena is based on statistics
 Instrumental Rational Action:  Social problems (i.e. crime) are normal
strategic, cost-benefit action
o Non-Rational Action NATURE OF SOCIETY
 Emotion: determined by the actor’s  The key task of sociology: studying morality (formal
specific feeling states and informal social rules that structure a society)
 Tradition: motivated by customs  Cooperation as key to social life
and habit  The constraint of societal expectation
 Authority  Army of one: individuals are socially interdependent
o Legal/Rational  Change and resistance: resistance is caused by
 Person in authority: supervisor longstanding beliefs anchored on social constructs
 Members of authority: admin staff
ORGANIC SOLIDARITY
  Density of social interaction:
o Physical: actual physical number of people
o Moral: interaction with more people means
more constraint to social and moral norms
 Society becomes more efficient and individuals are
more dependent on society
 Highly specialized division of labor (one organism
with different parts working together)
SUICIDE
 Suicide is a social fact and not just a psychological
phenomenon
 Four kinds of suicide, depending on the regulation of
society and the integration of an individual to society
o Anomic: individuals are not regulated by
social norms and values of the group, or
social order. Too little regulation.
o Egoistic: bonds which unite groups weaken,
and individuality increases. Too little
integration.
o Altruistic: bonds between groups too strong,
so individuals sacrifice themselves. Too
much integration into norms and values.
o Fatalistic: norms of society oppress too
much and stifle individuals. Too much
regulation by rules of society.
RELIGION
 Sacred vs. Profane
 Sacred
o Beliefs: states of opinion, ways of thinking
o Rites: fixed models of action in practice of
beliefs
 Assembling community: shared interaction
strengthens bonds
SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM
GEORGE HERBERT MEAD
 The self is something that is not already-made, it is
active
 I: subjective acting self, is only able to act because
the “I” internalizes the attitudes toward him or her
 Me: as an object, receives others’ behavior toward
him or her
CHARLES HORTON COOLEY
 Looking Glass Self: illustrates the self’s dynamic
interpretive processes. In imagination, we perceive in
another’s mind some thought of our appearance,
manners, aims, deeds, character, friends, and so on,
and are variously affected by it.
 Socialization: the means of teaching us to internalize
and adopt the perspective of others, and at the same
time the means of our individualization, our
development of particular individual selves
o Family: primary group, first source of
children’s socialization
o Generalized other: the community and
society in which we live
o Definition of the situation (W.I. Thomas):
socialization of individuals into a society’s
generalized expectations of behavior across
an array of social settings
 Conversation of Gestures: humans give significance,
give meaning, to what they are communicating or
intending to communicate, and these meanings derive
from our consciousness of and ability to manipulate,
interpret, and use shared symbols, language, gestures,
etc.
o What we say (or signal) calls out a certain
response in another and that in turn changes
our own action, so that we shift from what
we started to do because of the reply the
other makes.
HERBERT BLUMER
 Society: human group life, an ongoing process of
symbolic interaction wherein we continuously
interpret and respond to the cues in our social
environment
 Three Premises of Symbolic Interactionism:
o Human beings act toward things on the basis
of the meanings that the things have for
them
o The meaning of such things is derived from,
or arises out of, the social interaction that
one has with one’s fellows
o These meanings are handled in, and
modified through, an interpretive process
used by the person in dealing with the things
he encounters
ERVING GOFFMAN
 Society as a ritualized social interaction
o Metaphor of the theater: Dramaturgical
Approach
o The presentation of the self in everyday life
is the performance of different roles, parts,
and routines on various stages with different
settings and props
 Social Roles
o Pre-established by society, socially scripted
 socialization
o All social behavior is necessarily role-
playing behavior.
o Three things that are happening:
 It would be hard to imagine having
a self that is independent of several
roles you play
 You are always acting in
reciprocal relation to someone else
 We are always playing some role;
we are never not performing a role
 Performance Pressure
o The presentation of self in everyday life (the
individual’s execution of multiple social
roles) = an ongoing task of symbolic
exchange, inference, and interaction.
o In face-to-face interaction, it is in everyone’s
interest to control the conduct of others
through their own performance and the
response it elicits.
 Definition of the Situation
o Front: part of the individual’s performance
which regularly functions in a general and
fixed fashion to define the situation for those
who observe the performance
o Appearance: signals indicating the
individual’s social status and “temporary
ritual state”
 Interaction Rituals: routinized ways of self-
presenting/behaving in the presence of others;
maintain social order; institutionalized ways of
behaving in society
o Rituals of subordination: behavioral
displays in which we indicate and recognize
the difference in rank or hierarchy between
individuals of different social statuses
 Impression Management: symbolic and strategic
communicative work toward orchestrating a
particular definition of the situation and a successful
role performance
 o Back-stage: staging area for front-region
behavior, where actors do the preparatory
work to ensure a successful performance
o Front-stage: area where role performances
are given
o Region: any role-performance setting
bounded to some extent by barriers to
perception
 Total Institutions: highly regimented settings in
which the barriers that customarily divide
individuals’ everyday functions (sleeping, eating, and
working) are removed
 Stigma: society’s categorization or differentiation of
its members as inferior based on the social evaluation
and labeling of various attributes of undesired
difference
o Three sources:
 Abominations of the body
(physical deformities)
 Blemishes of character (perceived
as weak-willed, domineering, or
unnatural passions, etc.)
 Tribal stigma (of race, nation, and
religion)
o Passing: impression management and self-
presentation symbolic work an individual
must do in order to cover up or secretly
maintain a stigmatized identity
PHENOMENOLOGY AND ETHNOMETHODOLOGY
PHENOMENOLOGY
ALFRED SCHUTZ
 Experience, Meaning, and Social Action
o There is a link between phenomenological
sociology and 20th Century philosophy
(Husserl)
 Husserl: the consciousness of
human beings is intentional
 Schutz: the world of everyday life
is the scene and also the object of
our actions and interactions
o Natural attitude: the individual’s orientation
toward his or her social environment, a
reality which seems natural because it is the
everyday reality which he or she knows
o Difference between Symbolic Interactionism
and Phenomenology: SI focuses on the
socially structured nature of interaction,
meaning, and role performance, and not the
individual’s experiences of his or her role
behavior
 Here-And-Now, Everyday Reality
o Wide-awakeness: practical consciousness
and attentiveness required in attending to the
“here-and-now” tasks and realities of
everyday life
o Here-And-Now: reality to which individuals
are most wide awake; everyday reality (a
reality that is highly pragmatic)
 Shared, Intersubjective Reality
o Despite the uniqueness of subjective
experiences, it is the intersubjectivity of
human life that demarcates human
consciousness and human society
o Our reality is always social, always shared
with others
o Lifeworld: a world shared with other selves
 Everyday Reality as the Social Reality
o We experience and know everyday social
reality as a natural reality whose common-
sense knowledge is taken for granted 
taken-for-granted reality
PETER BERGER & THOMAS LUCKMANN
 Ordered reality: social reality into which individuals
are socialized
o Social order is a human product, or more
precisely, an ongoing human production
o Social Construction of Reality: individuals
collectively create an objective social reality
whose objects they designate and arrange in
order in ways that make sense to them as
they subjectively experience that reality
o Externalization: individuals maintain a
social reality, whereby they act on and in
regard to the already existing objective
reality
o Internalization: individuals create social
reality such that, in experiencing an external,
objective reality, they translate (internalize)
it into their own particular, subjectively
experienced reality
o Subjective Reality: individual’s subjective
experience and interpretation of the external,
objective reality
 Berger and Luckmann’s Schema
o (1) Externalization: man creates his social
world by ordering the mass of sense
impressions and experiences into a
meaningful whole
o (2) Objectification: the social world is
objectified and reified through language and
discourse. Man forgets that the social world
is his creation
o (3) Internalization: objectified world acts
back on the human consciousness through
the process of socialization
ETHNOMETHODOLOGY
HAROLD GARFINKEL
 Ethnomethodology: methods people use to create an
ordered reality (Greek word, ethos = people)
o Concerned with sociological theory’s
general tendency to take social order and
social processes for granted
o Ethnomethodologists are concerned with
documenting in detail how individuals in
society work at creating an ordered or
organized social reality
o Individuals accomplish order as they go
about their everyday business, recognizing
and making sense of their experiences in
ways that fit with the shared norms of order
and reasonableness in society
o Usual organized practices
o Accounts: how individuals categorize
events, experiences, and everyday reality
such that their accounts produced an
ordered, sequential reality that makes sense
and is credible in a given societal context
 Breaching experiments: designed to disrupt the
routines that comprise particular social realities so as
to demonstrate the fragility that underlies everyday
social order
 Conversational Analysis: detailed analysis of the
specific, pragmatic steps in how language and speech
are used in everyday conversation to create order
FEMINIST THEORIES
Why study feminist theories in Sociology?  Lack of
feminism in sociological theories OR “missing feminist
revolution in sociology”
WAVES OF FEMINISM
 1st Wave: West’s first sustained political movement
dedicating to achieving political equality for women
 2nd Wave: The Personal is the Political (Friedman’s
Feminist Mystique and Beauvoirs’s Second Sex)
 3rd Wave: the micropoltiics of gender equality;
intersectionality
 4th Wave: queer, sex positive, trans-inclusive, body-
positive, and digitally driven; use of internet and
social media
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN
 Women’s Inequality
o Women and men live in an andro-centric
culture  man as accepted race, women as
sub-species
o True progress can only be achieved when
society transcended its abnormal
androcentric division and allowed women to
be both workers and mothers
DOROTHY SMITH
 Ruling Texts: core man-made texts which define
gender and other power relations in society
o Authoritative knowledge in sociology and in
society is determined by standards that
privilege men and exclude women
 Rules of sociology
o Ruling text for sociology: conceptual and
methodological rules and procedures, texts
that organize sociological practices  these
marginalize women
o Research or knowledge excludes the direct
experiences of women but it is presented as
the universally true, objective account of the
world
o Missing from sociological and other texts
that comprise our society’s objectified
knowledge are the everyday experiences of
particular situated contexts
 Knowing from within: sociological inquiry is
necessarily a social relation
o Sociologists inhabit particular social worlds
and the people we study also inhabit
particular social worlds; cannot assume that
we know and understand what is going on in
those worlds
 Standpoint of the researcher and
standpoint of individuals and
groups
 Women’s realities
o Women’s phenomenological reality, their
everyday “here-and-now” relevances, also
matter
o The opening up of women’s experience
gives sociologists access to social realities
previously unavailable, indeed repressed
o Domestic world: world of household,
children and neighborhood (women’s
reality) ; public world: men’s reality
 Negotiating two world simultaneously
o Bifurcation of consciousness: knowledge
that emerges from the contradictory realities
women experience due to the split between
objectified knowledge and the public world
of work and women’s everyday, localized
experiences
o Women who move between the domestic
and the public worlds
 Standpoint Theory: alternative sociology, from the
standpoint of women, makes the everyday world (real
world outside the text) its problematic (domain of
inquiry)
o Marx’s standpoint of the proletariat 
Smith’s women’s standpoint
 Gender contradictions in society
can be apprehended and
transformed
PATRICIA HILL COLLINS
 Black Women’s standpoint
o Absence of black women’s voices from the
structures of power has both defined black
women and exacerbated their oppression
o Different black women have different
localized experiences
 Commonality of black women’s
shared history
 shared history of struggle including
formative experience of slavery
o Gender x Race, Mothering + Work
o Controlling images: demeaning images and
representations of black women by the
largely white-controlled mass media and
other social institutions
 Black feminist thought
o Knowledge voiced by black women from
within their lived experiences and across the
different sites of their everyday reality
o Produced to vocalize their experiences of
and responses to the cultural contradictions
they encounter as black women
o Intersectionality: multiple crisscrossing
ways in which different histories and diverse
structural locations (race, gender, class,
sexuality, etc.) situate individuals’
experiences and life-chances
 Whatever the source of oppression,
it is their intersectionality that
matters
 This produces activist knowledge
(knowledge generated from within
oppressed groups’ lived
experiences) and empowers them to
resist and take action
QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH
HISTORY OF QUANTIFICATION IN SOCIOLOGY
 Quantification methods help the sociologist in:
o Quantitative modeling
o Measurement
o Sampling
o Computerization
o Data analysis
o Hypothesis testing
o Data storage
 Durkheim advocated quantification (using a
measurement as a way of defining concepts), Weber
was not enthusiastic about it
 Quantitative concepts do not only mean numbers but
can also be portrayed with words such as “many,
“few”, “several”
HYPOTHESIS FORMULATION
 Hypothesis: proposition designed to be tested in the
research project; can be univariate, bivariate, or
multivariate
o Bivariate: two variables = most
hypothesizes of quantitative sociologists are
bivariate
 o Inductively derived (during prior research)
or deductively arrived
 Increasing trend of quantitative sociologists turning
to secondary analysis of existing data, thus
formulating a hypothesis that includes the existing
available variables  deductively
 Some studies do not present a hypothesis at all and
some even have up to 5 hypotheses
QUESTIONNAIRE CONSTRUCTION
 Middle component of the research process and has a
number of constraints
o Necessity for questionnaire to faithfully
measure the concepts in the hypotheses 
are the variables in the hypotheses explored
and tested in the questionnaire?
o Sampling/data collection constraints
o Quantitative data analysis constraints
 Questionnaire must be designed to collect data that
meet the statistical assumptions of the quantitative
techniques to be used
PROBABILITY SAMPLING
 Clear trend in sociological literature towards larger
sample sizes, often gotten through secondary analysis
of already existing data
DATA COLLECTION
 1950-1980: data collection was often used using the
Likert scale from small sample of people
 Since economics is becoming a dominant model, 2
most notable changes have been noted:
o Sociologists do not usually possess the
resources to collect data from a large enough
group and thus rely on secondary analysis
o Researchers who want to use enormous
economic data sets must use different kind
of data and different quantitative techniques
 Technique of choice for large
economic data sets is logistic
regression  statistical method for
analyzing data with 2+ independent
a
 variables where there can only be 2
possible outcomes
MATHEMATICAL SOCIOLOGY
 Inferential Statistics
 Mathematical Models
o Very difficult to apply and test empirically
 Difference between method and methodology
(Rudner):
o Methods are techniques for gathering data
o Methodologies are criteria for acceptance
and rejection of hypothesis
STATISTICAL SOCIOLOGY: FOUR TYPES/LEVELS
OF DATA
 Nominal: non-hierarchical categories; i.e. sex, course
in college, brand of cellphone
 Ordinal: ranked nominal variables, cannot be added,
subtracted, multiplied, or divided; i.e. attitude and
opinion scales, social class
 Interval: characteristics of both nominal and ordinal,
distances between scores in terms of equal units; i.e.
temperature, age
 Ratio: interval variables with absolute zero; i.e.
income
METHOD AND THEORY
 Have been divided within the past 40 years
 Kemeny and Snell (1962) state that theory is derived
through observation and empirical research and then
uses quantitative models to deduce the hypotheses
from the theory
 Quantitative should at least provide these 3 methods:
o Diachronic (dynamic/longitudinal) and
synchronic (cross-sectional) methods
dealing with structure
o Talk in terms of actors rather than in terms
of equations or variables
o Must do a better job of raising R2s
HISTORICAL COMPARISONS
 Shift from OLS regression to logistic/logit regression
 OLS Regression: uses predominantly continuous
independent variables, perhaps with a few dummy
variables
o uses R2 to evaluate explanatory adequacy in
terms of the amount of variance explained
o Uses about 5-10 independent variables
 Logistic Regression: uses categorical rather than
continuous dependent variables
o Uses more categorical or dummy variables
as independent variables, on average, than
does OLS regression
o Uses larger samples
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
7 MOMENTS OF QUALITIATIVE RESEARCH
 Traditional: positivism
 Modernist: postpositivist
 Blurred Genres/Interpretivist: structuralism,
poststructuralism, semiotics, phenomenology,
cultural studies, feminism, Grounded Theory
Methodology (GTM)
o Researcher as bricoleur  learning how to
borrow from many different disciplines
 Crisis of Representation: methodological diaspora
 Postmodern: experimental and new ethnographies
moment
 Post-experimental inquiry
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
 Different epistemologies across different moments in
qualitative research – the challenge to incorporate
new developments in theory (postcolonialism,
postmodernism, feminism, narrative/linguistic turn,
cultural turn)
 Cultural turn: interest in the experience of being in
society, in culture, as opposed to studying structural,
aggregate forms of sociality. That is, the introduction
of the term cultural suggests an appreciation of the
lived-ness of lives, drawing attention to the material,
representational and relational practices through
which subjects chart their paths
 Has faces resistance, wherein qualitative researchers
are merely “journalists” or “soft scientists”, their
work often being called unscientific and fiction
QUEERING THE INQUIRY: the sensibilities of
interviewing are altered with the changing social phenomena
that constitute the interviewee
READING HISTORY
 First, each of the earlier historical moments is still
operating in the present, either as a legacy or as a set
of practices that researchers continue to follow.
 Second, an embarrassment of choices now
characterizes the field of qualitative research. There
have never been so many paradigms, strategies of
inquiry, or methods of analysis to draw upon and
utilize.
  Third, we are in a moment of discovery and o Local, relative, co-constructed realities,
rediscovery, as new ways of looking, interpreting, subjective objectivity, relativism
arguing and writing are debated and discussed. o Co-created multiple realities and truths
 Fourth, the qualitative research act can no longer be o Often Qualitative and/or Quantitative
viewed from within a neutral or objective positivist  Critical Theory
perspective. o Emancipate
o Historical/virtual realism shaped by outside
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH AS A PROCESS forces, material subjectivity
Three interconnected activities: o Findings are based on values, local examples
 Theory/Ontology = framework of truth
 Method/Epistemology = specific set of questions o Usually qualitative, but also quantitative
 Analysis/Methodology = how to answer the set of
 Pragmatism
questions
o Dialectic
 Operationalized:
o Constructed based on world we live in and
o Ontology-Interpretivist Constructivist
explanations that produce the best desire
Paradigm: Researcher and social world
outcomes
impact each other. Multiple interpretations
o Objective and subjective points of view
of reality.
o Epistemologic Approach: Subjectivity – I o Qualitative and Quantitative
influence my data collection and analysis;
the nature of learning is part of my FOUR ISSUES
epistemology  Crisis of representation: Who is the Other?
o Reflexivity: How do I influence my research  Crisis of legitimization
o These two speak about the authority we
data analysis?
o Positionality: Who am I in relation to the claim for our texts
 Emergence of Cacophony of Voices: speaking with
research?
varying agendas from specific gender, race, class,
ethnic group, and Third World perspectives
MIXED METHODS: qualitative and quantitative methods
 Shifting scientific, moral, sacred, and religious
are used in combination
discourses: Pluralism, the picture is never complete
 In methodological hierarchy, quantitative methods
are on top. Qualitative methods are taken out from
their natural boundaries and is only relegated to
observation and exploration.
RESEARCH STYLES
 Positivist and Postpositivist (use of quasistatistics)
 Acceptance of Postmodern Sensibilities (acceptance
of alternative interpretations besides positivism)
 Capturing the Individual’s Point of View (detailed
interviewing and observation)
 Examining the Constraints of Everyday Life (directs
attention to specifics of particular cases)
 Securing Rich Descriptions (belief that rich
descriptions of the social world are valuable)

4 INTERPRETIVE PARADIGMS
 Positivist and Postpositivist (realist and critical
ontology)
 Constructivist-interpretative (relativist ontology)
 Critical (Marxist and emancipatory)
 Feminist-postructuralist (materialist-realist
ontology)

THE MAJOR PARADIGMS

 Positivism
o Synonym: verify
o Ontology (What is real?): objectivist;
findings = truth, realism
o Epistemology (What is true?): The only
knowledge is scientific knowledge – which
is truth, reality is apprehensible
o Methodology (How do I examine what is
real?): quantitative – primarily experimental
 Post-Positivism
o Predict
o Modified objectivist; findings probably true,
transcendental realism
o Findings approximate truth, reality is never
fully apprehended
o Usually quantitative – with threats to
validity, Qualitative
 Interpretivism
o Understand/interpret