Fundamentals of Sociological Research
Fundamentals
of Sociological Research
...Sociological imagination and thinking are primary part of sociological research and researcher should practice theory in their research. Theory is not just a chapter to read or a section in thesis. Formulation of abstract ideas in relation to concrete realities is essential.
By: Mahmudul Hasan Laskar
In the essay “What is sociological Research”, it is stated
that sociological research is the
combination of effective thinking guided by philosophical approaches like
hermeneutics, phenomenology, positivism among others; keen observation over
society and phenomena that occurs in social as well as natural world; empirical
experience not merely based on superficial statistical data collected from the
respondents but also based on scientific observation; and most importantly
researchers argumentative capacity with proper justification (Laskar, 2020). One
thing should be clear here is that ‘thinking’ may not be a deliberate action
rather a free state of imagination, perception, anticipation and assumption of
a person about society and phenomena. In today’s time, researchers of sociology
are just running after data collection without even understanding the actual
essence of it. Data is not something what your respondents say in replying to
your question but the actual condition behind the reply and the context in
which the reply is given.
For example, we often find the topic_ ‘educational
condition of a village or a society’, which involves a common question for
respondents, ‘whether you are interested in study?’ and the respondents do
reply by choosing the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ option. The answer is not the data but actual
condition or context behind the response, which a sociological researcher can
understand only if reason being applied.
You may say that another question_ ‘why are you not
interested in study?’ is also included in the interview schedule; respondents can
choose from the given options like poverty, lack of schools and so on. But for
sociological research, these are not data too why because it is essential to
understand the problem in question, in relation to other social systems of this
particular group or society. Respondent may reply poverty as the reason but researcher
need to understand the actual state of mind of the respondents towards future;
whether they have ambition, whether they have any planning to get rid of
poverty, how other social systems like marriage (early marriage in this case),
religion etc. affect them and what is their perception towards education in
general.
I have observed in the villages that many people
particularly youths blame poverty as the reason behind their lack of interest in
education but spend time unnecessarily by loitering, doing gossip and they even
mock the education by saying “what will happen with so much education, we can
earn money even without education”. Now if poverty is an obstacle why they are not
working or trying to get rid of poverty and aspire for education.
My point is that how mere reply “poverty is the reason
behind lack of interest in education” will justify the research on the problem?
So mere reply is not data rather analysis of condition and contexts may provide data. But often researchers are just engrossed in statistical technique to
compile data and present an attractive table.
Another fundamental aspect we need to focus on is the research problem or topic of our study. We just cannot randomly take a problem and make it a topic of research by attaching the word ‘sociological’ either as a suffix or as a prefix. Foremost task is to visualize the research problem and the scope of developing new outcome. It has been observed that topic like ‘child marriage’ chooses by academic sociological researcher. Point is that it is already proved universally that child marriage do exists in society because of certain reasons like religious orthodoxy, cultural superstition, illiteracy, poverty etc. So what our researchers are doing is that they pick a new society or a community or a group or a geographical place as their area of study and conduct the research and eventually reach the same conclusion that was already deduced. Purpose of sociological research is not to reproduce the same conclusions or findings from studies on new places or societies.
Most essential element of sociological research is the theory building and its universality. Here there is misconception attached in this issue that theories has to mention and to show which theory you are following in the study. But theory building is different; your study should have strong reasoning based interpretation and argument to initiate a process of theory or to exhibit either the influence of existing theory or contradiction of existing theory. This process may lead towards a new episteme or addition to an existing episteme. In the procedural academic practice, often rejection is faced by the study if it has the author’s own argument contradictory to existing intellectual trend. It regarded that presenting first hand information (no matter whether it has credibility to be called sociological) is the only way of doing research. If any author presents own interpretation, arguments and new concepts based on the existing literature, they often faces academic procedural backlash.
In order to develop sociological imagination, researchers need to study rigorously the works of the sociological thinkers. It is a harsh reality
that many researchers have never shed light on works of
thinkers of sociology and allied fields. In present day we have a bundle of
thesis but we lack thought because writing is preferred over thinking and
writing of thought gets no place in dominant intellectual current of the time.
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Author of the essay is
Mahmudul Hasan Laskar, Assistant Prof. Dept. of Sociology, University of
Science and Technology, Meghalaya. He is the editor of this blog ‘Sociological
Study’. For any communication write to Mahmudul Hasan Laskar
<hasanlaskaramu@gmail.com
Very thoughtful article.
ReplyDeleteYou shed light on the exact point what some sociologists are doing, Great analysis Sir!
ReplyDelete