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Social Research and Social Practice in Post-Positivist Society

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Social Research and Social Practice in Post-Positivist Society 6 Social Research and Social Practice in Post-positivist Society Pekka Sulkunen Scientific methods are not tool kits that How should we classify such styles of researchers can select to suit their tastes and reasoning in sociology, and how could we preferences to compete with other techniques explain or understand the reasons for such contending to reach the truth. Research differences? In this article I argue that a major instruments in sociology are no more than in change in sociological styles of reasoning took other sciences independent of concepts and place in the late 1970s and early 1980s both problematics from which they emerge, and in the way sociology began to conceptualise they in turn structure the kinds of questions the social world and in the way sociological and theoretical concepts that they can be used research was related to social practices or to deal with. Instead of a choice of methods policy-making. One apparent indication of it is more appropriate to talk about ‘styles of the new style of reasoning was the boost in reasoning’, like Ian Hacking, who has argued qualitative research and the accompanying that although the social world is constructed ‘cultural’ or ‘linguistic’ turn in sociology (see differently by different styles of reasoning, Chapter 1). These changes reflect the role that this is not to say that the constructions social sciences first had in the three post-war are arbitrary (1990: 6). It simply means decades and then lost when the welfare state that, for example, an explanation/prediction construction period had attained maturity. formulated in probabilistic quantitative terms already implies a great deal about the world in its concepts which, in turn, are integrated REPRESENTATIONAL, EPISTEMIC with a statistical methodology. The same AND POSITIONAL DIMENSIONS reality represented in another vocabulary OF KNOWLEDGE and through a biographical or ethnographic methodology would look different but no Sociological studies tell about social reality less true. in three different ways. First, they report [15:09 10/9/2007 4997-Alasuutari-Ch06.tex] Paper: a4 Job No: 4997 Alasuutari: Social Research Methods (SAGE Handbook) Page: 68 68–81 SOCIAL RESEARCH AND SOCIAL PRACTICE IN POST-POSITIVIST SOCIETY 69 knowledge about social realities. This represent the same reality, but within very knowledge depends on their conceptual different styles of reasoning and methods. framework and on their instruments of Secondly, the style of reasoning itself tells observation such as ethnography, media us about society. The three studies of social analysis or the survey technology, but exclusion, with their different methods and within the constraints of the concepts and concepts, involve very different problematics instruments, knowledge it is. This is the although their subject matter is at least representational dimension of knowledge. partly the same. The first probably would be For example, a study on the relationship built on communitarian hypotheses on how between social capital and social exclusion social relationships support people in their might be made with statistical methods, self-control, autonomy and integration into which require that the abstract categories educational and work life. The second would ‘social capital’ and ‘social exclusion’ are raise different kinds of questions concerning operationalised as measurable indicators the authority of the state, the basis of selecting that describe individuals or collectivities. some pharmaceuticals as legal and others Most likely, a fair amount of drug users as illegal, and the intended and unintended would be found among the most excluded. consequences of prevention efforts. The third Another study might compare Western would pay attention to the fact that social countries and come to the conclusion that capital may be of very different kinds, and that most of them apply strict prohibitions on it is not entirely an independent variable in a selection of pharmaceuticals – not all, the processes of social exclusion but depends, like alcohol, but many such as opiates, instead, on power relationships in society. cocaine, amphetamine or MDMA (‘ecstasy’). All three studies involve moral investments Possession, distribution, production and in the way they categorise their observations, import of the prohibited drugs are legal they represent not only the reality as facts offences with penal consequences. The role but also wider frameworks in which they of the criminal justice system as the interface see society, the state, the individual and the between the state and the drug user in many interface between citizens and the public ways operates as a mechanism of exclusion. powers. In other words, they are motivated The term ‘prohibition’ is also an abstract by different interests of knowledge. category and describes at least part of the The interests of knowledge which define same reality as the quantitative study, but from the needs and dispositions to explain and a completely different angle. Finally, a third understand what happens in society determine study, made with ethnographic methods, the types of questions that can be asked could analyse the social relationships in the about social reality: the epistème, to use different types of public social and health Michel Foucault’s term. Let us call this the services offered to illicit drug users, and find epistemic dimension of sociological knowl- that at the low-threshold needle exchange edge. Epistèmes themselves are social facts clinic the (often voluntary) social workers that represent the relations of domination are allies of their clients, trying to help them in the given society. The master example to get medication and other help, whereas the is Foucault’s own account of the history of workers at the substitution treatment clinic Western science and its ways of relating require a great deal of ‘motivation’ and effort human culture and nature. It evolved from from their clients, often with the consequence classifying and representing the natural world, that they are felt to be part of the penalising including humans, in the natural history of the control system rather than a help. Again, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to the we are observing mechanisms of exclusion, study of exchange and utility in Mercantilist including social capital and the lack of it, but and Physiocratic economics, to the focus from a completely different angle than the on work in classical economic theory, and other two studies. All of them report facts that finally to the complete separation between [15:09 10/9/2007 4997-Alasuutari-Ch06.tex] Paper: a4 Job No: 4997 Alasuutari: Social Research Methods (SAGE Handbook) Page: 69 68–81 70 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF SOCIAL RESEARCH METHODS human and natural sciences towards the end understand to see precisely what practical role of the nineteenth century. A similar example they potentially serve today. is Ian Hacking’s analysis of the discovery of probability and stochastic processes in the early nineteenth century. This opened PLANNED ECONOMY AND MODE 1 up whole new areas of scientific research SOCIAL SCIENCE concerning populations and mass phenomena. Such grand transformations of the epistème When the architect of the British welfare state, reflect society’s interests in itself and its Sir William Beveridge, envisioned the state’s natural environment in wide philosophical role in the post-war society he considered that terms, but as the three examples above point the ‘spectacular achievements of the war-time out, the kinds of questions society asks of planned economy’ (Beveridge 1944: 120) itself are also reflected in research designs in measured by the GNPand employment should a smaller scale, and the designs and questions be applied in the economy in peace, which themselves tell us something important about also could benefit from state regulation, and society. not only by means of income redistribution. Third, sociological studies report through The state’s aim was no longer to minimise their form and scientific practice quite special public spending but to optimise all spending facts about society, namely facts about the in society, in regard to available labour power relationship between sociologists themselves by means of ‘manpower budgeting’. The state and the object of their study. This we budget should be measured to maintain full can call the positional, or the sociology of employment but not to exceed the national knowledge dimension of sociological facts. manpower capacity. The Keynesian principle The division of sciences into disciplines in of full employment was translated into income itself is an important fact about the society equalisation in social policy and growth was that engenders it. The fact that social sciences its primary objective. Thus planning was not are today separated from natural sciences, uniquely a Socialist idea; a plan designed and and split into sub-disciplines each with their supervised by the centralised national state own dominant styles of reasoning, is not was a generally accepted European model of simply a consequence of the accumulation of industrial development. knowledge but it is also a real factor which The planning did not only cover infras- has an impact on what new knowledge it can tructure, regional policy, monetary and fiscal produce. Another division, especially impor- policy, but also the ways in which people tant in sociology, is the way that scientific should lead their lives. The Swedish Alva and knowledge is entangled with but sometimes Gunnar Myrdal (1934) had in their famous also opposed to practical knowledge about population policy programme proposed that society, held by ordinary people, by policy- the state should root out bad habits among makers, by the media and other significant its citizens and teach them good manners. institutions. People had to be trained to take care of All these three dimensions must be their households and bring up their children, accounted for when we discuss the rela- although the important and complicated task tionship between social science and social of education should primarily be yielded practice.
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