What is sociological research?

What is Sociological Research?

By: Mahmudul Hasan Laskar

 

There are common misconceptions__ use of the term ‘sociological study’ in the title of any research work and conducting ‘study in a society’ makes a research sociological research. Sociology is not a discipline that just confined in the physical structure of a university department. One’s study cannot be considered as sociological merely because of the fact that the author is associated with a sociology department of an institution. Sociology is not discipline that depends merely on superficial and ritualistic seminars and conferences. Again another serious mistake often our leading sociology scholars commits by considering statistical data as the essential or sometimes the sole means of pursuing sociological research. Most researches are mere bundle of data and the presentation of these through tables and graphs.

I really ponder about the works of Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Parsons, Frankfurt thinkers, Giddens, Gramsci, Habermas, Schutz, Husserl, Foucault, Derrida, Ulrich Beck, Garfinkel, Goffman, Levi-Strauss, Ferdinand de Saussure and many more architect of sociology as discipline that their multi-dimensional research is what we are studying as sociology. Questions arise, whether these thinkers used ‘sociology’ as term essentially in their paper or book? Whether all these thinkers were associated with sociology departments? Whether these thinkers were only presented tables and graphs full of statistical data? Are not these thinkers produced new thought in their own time? Are not these thinkers faced opposition from existing social science intellectual current of their period? For example, Antonio Gramsci was an Italian Marxist philosopher, whose writing over the analysis of history during his imprisonment eventually produced as a masterpiece “Prison Notebooks”. Alfred Schutz, an Austrian philosopher made a revolutionary contribution through bridging philosophical phenomenology and social phenomenology. He was instrumental in developing social phenomenology as a school of thought and perspective in sociology. Ferdinand de Saussure, a Swiss linguist and philosopher developed and redefined linguistic structuralism in societal context. His structuralism was a great challenge to structural functionalism of Durkheim and Parsons. Jacques Derrida, a French philosopher has made significant contributions through his post-structuralism and postmodern philosophy, particularly through discourse analysis with the help of phenomenology. These are certain examples through which we can understand the wide dimensions of sociological research.

These thinkers produced various concepts, perspectives and theories by means of thinking and observation with the help of empirical experience. Their thought at first instance appeared as uncommon, unacceptable and contradictory but eventually these thoughts shaped the sociology what it is today. For example, functionalism, Marxism, Symbolic Interactionism, Neo-functionalism, Phenomenology, Ethnomethodology, Structuralism, Post-structuralism, Post-modernism, critical theory or Frankfurt school among many are developed due to the thinking of scholars and keen observation over social structure, social action, social interaction, individual action and individual’s production of society. These perspectives were perceived as contradictory to existing knowledge base but eventually got  accepted by scholars.

Sociological research is multi-dimensional because of the diverse thoughts that produced by sociological thinkers. Some perspectives like functionalism, structuralism and Marxism focus on social structure, while others like phenomenology focus on individual action and interaction; again on the other hand structuration perspective focus on the integration between structure and agency. Perspectives like Marxism, Neo-Marxism among others focus on the economic institution that is how economy determines every aspects of society. On the other hand, Foucault, Derrida and other postmodern thinkers focus on the discourse, power and domination of science, ideology and rationality. There is a perspective called Hegemony by Gramsci that added a dimension in sociological thinking; it focused on political and ideological domination in the power structure of modern society. Again Saussure made a remarkable contribution in sociological research by turning the attention of linguistic structuralism towards social structure. It further enhanced by anthropologist Levi-Strauss in his anthropological structuralism. Ulrich Beck is the most contemporary thinker who created a new dimension of looking into the development of science and defined new version of risk in his ‘Risk Society’ thesis.

These are few examples I have discussed and can be elaborated further in other essay. On the basis of above discussion, it can be stated that sociological research is the combination of effective thinking guided by philosophical approaches like hermeneutic, 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.

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Author of the easy is Mahmudul Hasan Laskar, Assistant Prof. Dept. of Sociology, University and Science and Technology, Meghalaya. He is the editor of this blog ‘Sociological Study’. For any communication write to Mahmudul Hasan Laskar <hasanlaskaramu@gmail.com