Sociology and Science: The Making of a Social Scientific Method

Abstract

Criticism against quantitative methods has grown in the context of Bbigdata^, charging an empirical, quantitative agenda with expanding to displace qualitative and theoretical approaches indispensable to the future of sociological research. Underscoring the strong convergences between the historical development of empiricism in the scientific method and the apparent turn to quantitative empiricism in sociology, this article uses content and hierarchical clustering analyses on the textual representations of journal articles from 1950 to 2010 to open dialogue on the epistemological issues of contemporary sociological research. In doing so, I push towards the conceptualization of a social scientific method, inspired by the scientific method from the philosophy of science and borne out of growing constructions of a systematically empirical representation among sociology articles. I articulate how this social scientific method is defined by three dimensions -empiricism, and theoretical and discursive compartmentalization -, and how, contrary to popular expectations, knowledge production consequently becomes independent of choice of research method, bound up instead in social constructions that divide its epistemological occurrence into two levels: (i) the way in which social reality is broken down into data, collected and analyzed, and (ii) the way in which this data is framed and made to recursively influence future sociological knowledge production. In this way, empiricism both mediates and is mediated by knowledge production not through the direct manipulation of method or theory use, but by redefining the ways in which methods are being labeled and knowledge framed, remembered, and interpreted.

The Methodological Divide of Sociology: Evidence from Two Decades of Journal Publications

“…Despite the landscape of sociological research being in constant flux (Moody and Light, 2006; Oromaner, 2008), long-lasting epistemological demarcations between schools of thought exist and raise the question of how to conduct research properly (Au, 2018; Burawoy, 2005; Byrne, 2012; Münch, 2018; Payne et al, 2004). One of the deepest entrenchments between rival camps is the methodological field (Münch, 2018; Payne et al, 2004; Smelser, 2015).…”

Sociological Problem and Social Problem: Contributions to a Discussion

“…This scientific knowledge results from a process of abstraction and construction (Silva, 1986;Au, 2017) of a look upon reality. This procedure entails a rupture with common sense and everyday language (Santos, 1999), that is, all types of knowledge neither verified nor verifiable, with little empirical reasoning and normative in nature, and that cannot be proved, contrary to scientific knowledge (Silva, 1986).…”

The Love of Neuroscience: A Sociological Account

“…Their empirical settings are diverse: medicine, sexuality, and psychiatry (Epstein 2007; Waidzunas and Epstein 2015; Whooley 2010, 2013, 2014), the German Stasi (Glaeser 2011), technological accidents (Downer 2011; Vaughan 1996), poverty knowledge (Rodríguez-Muñiz 2015), policymaking and evaluation (Breslau 1997), and the uses of measurement, quantification, and statistics (Espeland and Sauder 2007, 2016; Igo 2007; Schweber 2006). The most frequent empirical setting, though, is the epistemologies of social and natural science communities (Abbott 1990, 2001a, 2001b, 2016; Abend 2006; Au 2017; Keim 2016; Knorr Cetina 1999, 2011; Lamont 2009; Mallard, Lamont, and Guetzkow 2009; Steinmetz 2005a, 2005b, 2013), including their causal claims (Abend, Petre, and Sauder 2013; Vaidyanathan et al 2016). 3…”