2. Positivism Is a philosophy of science and a theory of methodology which suggests that social behaviour should be researched according to principles of natural science.
5. Positivists believe in empiricism. This refers to the testing of statements using factual inquiry based on experience. Involves use of experiments & statistical techniques to test the relationship between variables. Theories and laws that are tested through replication become accepted as scientific knowledge. Objectivity represents the goal of positivism, where research & knowledge are free of bias and prejudice.
6. Durkheim (1897) tried to establish sociology as a distinct discipline with his famous study Le Suicide . Here he adopted a mainly positivist methodology. Durkheim argued that sociology could be as objective as natural sciences as long as we study social facts as ‘things’.
7. Criticisms Positivist explanations often reductionist and deterministic with simplistic conclusions such as poverty causes crime . Interpretivism – argue that positivism focuses on external causes of behaviour, failing to recognise how people engage in meaningful interaction. Realism – positivism reduces social life to identifiable causes and fails to explain the underlying social processes that may affect behaviour. Feminism – positivism uses universal research methods without tailoring the method to understand the unique experiences of women.
8. Criticisms Critical theory – the emphasis of positivism on facts from survey research fails to explain why correlations exists between variables. Methodological cosmopolitanism – positivism locates research within the nation state and fails to recognise the transnational nature of social life.
