Paradigms, theory, and social research

•Paradigms: the fundamental models or frames of reference we use to organize our observations and reasoning

•Collectivism versus individualism: human rights issues vs. social disarray and high crime

•Recognizing that we are operating within a paradigm brings about two benefits: help us understand strange actions of others operating within a different paradigm, and we can see new ways of seeing and explaining things

Natures of paradigms

• Paradigms in science: Darwin’s theory of evolution, Newton mechanics, Einstein;s relativity

• Unlike science paradigms, social science paradigms are never discarded all together, although they may gain or loss popularity

Macro/micro theory

• Macrotheory studies struggle between economic classes, international relations, the interrelations among major institutions such as government, religion, and family. In general, macrotheory deals with large, aggregate entities of society.

• Microtheory deals with issues of social life at individual level and small group levels.

• Symbolic interaction and ethnomethodology are mostly microlevel paradigms, whereas conflict paradigms are macrolevel theory.

Early Positivism

• Auguste Comte stated that society can be studied scientifically. To challenge religious domination in social studies, he separated social inquiry from religion.

• Three stages: 1) theological stage; 2) metaphysical stage; and 3) science: in which society is observed and explained logically and rationally, just like biology and physics.

Social Darwinism

• Herbert Spencer concluded that industrial capitalism was the evolution of progressively fitter forms of society. Free competition insures continued progress and improvement and considered “the survival of the fittest”

Conflict Paradigm

• Carl Marx sees social behaviors as a process of conflict: the attempt to dominate and avoid being dominated. He focuses on the class conflicts and argued that capitalism produced the oppression of workers by the owners of industry.

• Contrast Marx and Spencer, what are the differences between their paradigms and how those differences produce their observations, their facts, and their conclusions.

Symbolic interaction

• George Simmel is more interested in how individuals interact with each other. He focuses on dyad (two persons), triad (three persons), and web of group affiliations.

• Along this paradigm, Cooley proposed an idea of primary group, defined as those intimate associates with whom we share a sense of belonging, such as our family, friends so on.

Symbolic interaction 2

• Mead proposed to take the role of the other, imagine how others feel and how they might behave in certain circumstances. As we gain an idea of how people in general see things, we developed a sense of generalized other

• Mead contended that most interactions revolve around the process of individuals reaching common understanding through use of language.

Ethnomethodology

• To observe, ethnomethodologists use several strategies such as breaking rules, violating people’s expectations.

• What’s the norm when riding in an elevator in a group where nobody knows each other?

Try to violate that norm and see how others react to this behavior. Do this several time you can start to understand ethnometholgical paradigm.

Structural Functionalism

• Society can be a human body by analogy. Its various components provide different function for a society. Police, for example, is to accomplish social control. Criminals provide job security for police officers.

• Durkheim argued that crimes and their punishments reaffirm social norms and values.

Structural Functionalism 2

Teachers

Students

Admin. Staff Graduate students

Feminists

• Feminists challenges predominant beliefs, values, and norms of a society the represent portion of society (mostly likely feminists target masculinity and rules based on it).

• Women’s way of learning: silence, received knowledge, subjective knowledge, procedural knowledge, constructed knowledge

Rational Objectivity Reconsided

• A given environment can lead a rational actor into irrational behaviors, which is shown in Asch’s experiment.

Elements of Social Theory

• Paradigms are ways of looking at life and grounded in sets of assumptions abut the nature of reality.

• Theories are systematic sets of interrelated statements intended to explain aspects of social life.

Elements of Social Theory 2

• Observation: seeing and hearing• Fact: reality, some phenomenon that has been

observed• Laws: many facts organized together• Theory: a systematic explanation for observations

that relate to a particular aspect of life• Concept: abstract elements representing classes of

phenomenon within the field of study, (juvenile delinquency).

• Variable

Elements of Social Theory 3

• Postulates: fundamental assertions taken to be true, on which a theory is grounded. For example, everyone likes material comforts

• Propositions: specific conclusion about relationships among concepts that are derived from the groundwork “poor youth are more likely to break the law for material comforts than rich youth”

• Hypothesis: a specific testable expectation about empirical reality that follows from a more general proposition “poor youths have a higher delinquency rates than rich youths”

Logic models

• Traditional modelTheory Operationalization Observation• Causes of juvenile delinquency• Delinquency is inversely related to social

class• How to define delinquency? “being arrested

for a crime” or “being convicted for a crime”

Logic models 2

• How to define social class” “family income” or “education level” or “occupation prestige”

• Operationalization: specifying the exact operations involved in measuring a variable.

Example, delinquency is measured by asking a high school respondent “have you ever stolen anything?” Social class is measured with an item asking family income

Logic models 3

• What if the operation of a definition should entail more elements. Just as Humpty said “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less”

Deductive Reasoning

• A general theoretical understanding

• Theoretical expectation

• Testable hypotheses

An Example for Deductive Reasoning

• Marxist assertion: “religion is an opiate for masses”

• Hypothesis: “parishioners whose life situations most deprive them of satisfaction and fulfillment in the secular society turn to the church for comfort and substitute rewards”

• How to measure “who is deprived?”• Women are more deprived than men in a male-

dominated society

An Example for Deductive Reasoning

• Old people are more deprived than young people in a youth-oriented society

• Low social classes (indicated by income and education” are more deprived than high social classes

• Not married without children are more deprived than married people with children

• Combining all the characteristics, who will be more religious?

Inductive Reasoning

• Observation because of curiosity

• Finding patterns

• Drawing conclusions

• Durkheim and his theory of suicide used inductive reasoning method.

Deductive Theory Construction

• Find something that interest you• Specify a topic• Linking to a theory• Identify and specify major concepts and

variables• State proposition• Reasoning how proposition is linked to the

topic

An Example of Deductive Theorizing

• Jasso’s distributive justice• People’s sense/feel of their possession is a

function of (1) how much they actually have (actual holding); and (2) how much others in your comparison groups have (comparison holding)

• A hypothesis: other things being the same, a thief prefers to steal from a fellow group member rather then from an outsider.

• Why?

Inductive Theory Construction

• Qualitative field research is a typical way to produce first hand data based on observation that will eventually produce theory

• A 1960s study wanted to know why some people used marijuana and others do not.

• People opposed marijuana argued that drug users are academic failures that resent college life

• People like marijuana thinks it represents a new way of middle class life.

• This 1960s study disapprove both assertions and generate a new theory, page 63-64