Sociological Imagination

 

Sociological Imagination

Fundamental of Sociological Research

.......Sociological imagination can lead to thinking that subsequently produces abstract ideas in relation to concrete realities. Before writing you should think and before thinking you should imagine”

By: Mahmudul Hasan Laskar

It is the continuation of essay__ “Fundamental of Sociological Research”, in that I have pointed out the necessity of understanding philosophy of sociology is essential for epistemological development. Anything under the earth cannot be called sociological by mere use of prefix or suffix sociology. Sociology is distinct from professional market oriented disciplines. Sociology has emerged and developed over the period of time to present scientific understanding of society and human beings. Mere use of research methods of statistical genre doesn’t meet the purpose of scientific study of society. Some people believes that fixing sample size, choosing a geographical area with justification by superficial technical jargon, selecting a type of sample and putting all data in a stipulated table followed by explanation (For example, X percentage of respondents said A and Y percentage of respondents said B) are sufficient to make a study scientific sociological. It is an illusion I would say. I would come to the discussion over methodological orientation of sociology in later essays. Here, I would highlight the immediate requirements of sociological research. The essay also articulates ‘what to do’ and ‘what not to do’ in sociological research.

As I argued that researchers need to do rigorous analysis of the works of the various schools of sociological thought in order to develop sociological imagination. Sociology developed over the period of time due to the epistemological and ontological discussions of thinkers of various disciplines including philosophy, economics, History, Psychology and Sociology. Presently, most academic research of sociology in Indian Universities is far away from understanding and applying ‘interpretive sociology’, ‘positivism’, structuralism, post-structuralism, Structuration, critical theory, discourse analysis and many more such fundamental elements of sociology. Now in present pandemic situation, some would love to run after choosing health related topics and would proudly label these as sociology of health. It is a matter of interdisciplinary affairs to study the world in pandemic by revealing the underlying social structure, discourse and social action. Mere impact assessment over multiple spheres in physical world is not enough.

There is a misconception that empirical study means study of a place or population of a place through quantitative methods. Some people call it objective research, how ignorance it is? I would like to make it clear that objective study and subjective study do not determine at all merely by superficial empirical study, rather your approach of understanding phenomena. I shall refer to Max Weber’s interpretive sociology in this context. Detail analysis will be followed in other essays. Interpretive sociology of Weber advocates for applying ideal type for understanding social action and social phenomena. To frame an ideal type you need to have abstract imagination about a phenomenon in relation to concrete evidence of it. What makes a study subjective? If you as a researcher participate in the interaction process to understand the action and phenomena, you are in process of subjective understanding. While observation of social action and social phenomena as its takes place is objective understanding of it. Question of objective or subjective understanding phenomena is always a matter of intellectual analysis in sociology. We may discuss it in any other essay.

In this context, I shall tell you that phenomenological sociology took a paradigm shift in its diversion from positivism. Now it is a great task for us to understand this dimension of sociological research. We as sociological researcher must develop our imagination from the vision of various schools of thought in sociology and allied fields. These perspectives and theoretical outlines are not to showcase as a section of your thesis or a beginning of your thesis or dissertation. It is essential to understand phenomena from the light of schools of thought or to contradict these by pointing out shortcomings and presenting alternative one. There may be reference to Michel Foucault, who challenged the conventional way of writing and analyzing history and in opposite to that he made his discourse analysis for presenting history that may be free from disciplinary limitations. He also made an attempt to discard the existing thoughts by citing these as suppression over free thinking.

My point is that all thinkers have been engaged in formulating thoughts and counter-thoughts or synthesis of two. But today’s researcher merely presents their thesis full of statistical tables without any remarkable scientific understanding of the fact or phenomenon concerned. For example, topic namely ‘child labour’ is table topic for researchers of sociology in present time; and they are doing study by changing name of place, community or group and re-finding the immediate reasons like, poverty and unemployment. We as sociological researcher should be able to examine this fact from the lens of industrialism ideology, capitalism, modernity, post-capitalist society, ideological domination of capitalism and rationalization mechanism of modern society.

I would say: “Before writing you should think and before thinking you should imagine”

{The discussion will be continued in the blog__ ‘Sociological Study’. Follow the blog for more insightful essays and articles on topics of sociology}.

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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