Andrew Sayer, Method in Social Science, introduction

Introduction 

One of the main difficulties of the existing literature on social theory and the philosophy of the social sciences is that few constructive contributions have been made on the subject of method in empirical research. For example, much has been written on theories of knowledge, but little about their implications for empirical research. To get beyond this impasse we must decide whether the critiques imply that we can continue to use the usual empirical methods of hypothesis formation and testing, the search for generalizations and so on, or whether these must be displaced or supplemented by quite different ones. One of the chief aims of this book is to answer these questions.

So much depends in social research on the initial definition of our field of study and on how we conceptualize key objects. All such starting points are fraught with problems which, whether noticed or not, shape the course of research long before ‘methods’ in the narrow sense of techniques for getting and interpreting information are chosen. In view of this it is quite extraordinary to compare the attention given in social science courses to ‘methods’ in the narrow sense of statistical techniques with the blithe disregard of questions of how we conceptualize, theorize and abstract. A second major impediment to the development of effective method in social science concerns causation. So much that has been written on methods of explanation assumes that causation is a matter of regularities in relationships between events, but social science has been singularly unsuccessful in discovering law-like regularities. Recent realist philosophy replaces the regularity model with one in which objects and social relations have causal powers which may or may not produce regularities, and which can be explained independently of them and this in turn, brings us back to the vital task of conceptualization.

Social scientists are invariably confronted with situations in which many things are going on at once and they lack the possibility, open to many natural scientists, of isolating out particular processes in experiments. The terrain of the discussion is therefore the overlap between method, social theory and philosophy of social science. Methods also must be appropriate to the nature of the object we study and the purpose and expectations of our inquiry. Although methodology needs to be critical and not merely descriptive I intend to counter various forms of methodological imperialism: both "scienticism" and "constructivism". 

Realism is a philosophy, but what is the content of realism? Some of the following characteristic claims of realism may seem too obvious to be worth mentioning, but are included because they are in opposition to important rival philosophies.

1 The world exists independently of our knowledge of it.

2 Our knowledge of that world is fallible and theory-laden. Nevertheless knowledge is not immune to empirical check, and its effectiveness in informing and explaining successful material practice is not mere accident.

3. Knowledge develops neither wholly continuously, as the steady accumulation of facts within a stable conceptual framework, nor wholly discontinuously, through simultaneous and universal changes in concepts.

4. There is necessity in the world; objects—whether natural or social—necessarily have particular causal powers or ways of acting and particular susceptibilities. 

5. The world is differentiated and stratified, consisting not only of events, but objects, including structures, which have powers and liabilities capable of generating events. These structures may be present even where, as in the social world and much of the natural world, they do not generate regular patterns of events.

6. Social phenomena such as actions, texts and institutions are concept-dependent. We therefore have not only to explain their production and material effects but to understand, read or interpret what they mean. Although they have to be interpreted by starting from the researcher’s own frames of meaning, by and large they exist regardless of researchers’ interpretations of them.

7. For better or worse (not just worse) the conditions and social relations of the production of knowledge influence its content. Knowledge is also largely—though not exclusively—linguistic, and the nature of language and the way we communicate are not incidental to what is known and communicated. Awareness of these relationships is vital in evaluating knowledge.

8. Social science must be critical of its object. In order to be able to explain and understand social phenomena we have to evaluate them critically.