Philosophies of Social Science Research
Professor Nicholas Gane
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‘The Coming Crisis of Empirical Sociology’ is
one of the most cited social science journal
articles of the past 10 years
The main argument of this piece is that the
social sciences are losing their territorial
claim over the ‘social’ and the methodological
tools that are used to study it
A key question: is research that was
previously done by social science now being
performed (with greater resources) outside
the academy?
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Savage and Burrows: ‘Our concern is that in
the years between about 1950 and 1990
sociologists could claim a series of distinctive
methodological tools that allowed them to
claim clear points of access to social
relations, but in the early 21st century social
data is now so routinely gathered and
disseminated, and in such myriad ways, that
the role of sociologists in generating data is
now unclear’ (p.886).
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In 2006, Roger Burrows and I published an
article in Sociology entitled
‘Geodemographics, Software and Class’.
We were interested in new classifications of
consumer populations that were being
produced by big commercial organizations
such as Experian (a FTSE listed company with
a market cap of nearly £12 billion)
We were interested, in particular, in a
classification they produced called Mosaic
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Mosaic produces a classification of global
populations by working with an unrivalled
data set (at least within the academy)
Their marketing blurb: ‘Experian’s Mosaic UK
consumer classification provides an accurate
understanding of the demographics, lifestyles
and behaviour of all individuals and
households in the UK’.
They gather data from the following
sources…
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ONS’ annual Expenditure and Family Survey
University of Essex’s British Household Panel Survey (BHPS)
Research Now’s online panel of 350,000 consumers and their
demographic and media consumption
YouGov’s specialist survey of 66,000 consumers and their
financial behaviour
GfK NOP’s Financial Research Survey of 60,000 consumers
and their personal finance
Characteristics
BMRB’s Target Group Index survey of 25,000 adults
consumption of products, brands and media
Experian Hitwise’s online competitor intelligence of
8 million internet users
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This is effectively a form of commercial social
science (with huge datasets and processing power)
It produces a spatial mapping of social class by
‘classifying all individuals, households or
postcodes in the United Kingdom’
It divides this population into ‘141 Mosaic person
types aggregated into 67 household types and 15
groups’
For more information, see
www.experian.co.uk/assets/business.../Mosaic_UK
_2009_brochure.pdf
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What does this mean for social science
research within the academy?
‘Fifty years ago, academic social scientists
might be seen as occupying the apex of the –
generally limited – social science research
‘apparatus’. Now they occupy an increasingly
marginal position in the huge research
infrastructure that forms an integral feature
of what Thrift (2005) characterizes as
knowing capitalism’ (p.886).
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This is the title of a book by our Vice
Chancellor: Nigel Thrift
It is about a new world in which capitalism
becomes increasingly lively: it is mediated by
advanced computational machines and often
involves ‘play’ of various sort
This form of capitalism often knows a lot
about us
It also harvests concepts and ideas from the
social sciences and puts them to work within
business settings
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Give the following example of their sense of a
coming crisis
Savage: part of an ESRC project that
proceeded through 320 postal questionnaires
and 30 life histories
Dwarfed by commercial research: someone at
the same conference from a
telecommunications company ‘he had the
entire records of every phone call made on
his system over several years, amounting to
several billion ties’ (pp.886-7).
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‘This is data which dwarves anything that an
academic social scientist could garner.
Crucially, it was data that did not require a
special effort to collect, but was the digital
by-product of the routine operations of a
large capitalist institution. It is also private
data to which most academics have no
access’ (p.887).
Data is big business…
How can academic research compete?
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The sample survey: ‘allows us to generalize and
predict through revealing enduring regularities
by the use of inferential statistics’ (p.889)
National sample surveying began (in the UK) in
the 1930s and are central to longitudinal studies
such as the British Household Panel Study
Savage and Burrows: ‘its glory years…are in the
past’ (p.889) – response rates dropping, a low
level of spatial granularity, less purchase outside
the academy…
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‘key agents in the research apparatus of
contemporary capitalist organizations now
simply don’t need the empirical expertise of
quantitative social scientists as they go about
their business’ (pp.890-1).
They add: ‘in the current situation, where
data on whole populations are routinely
gathered as a by-product of institutional
transactions, the sample survey seems a very
poor instrument’ (p.891)
They give the example of Amazon
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‘Our polemic thus far may strike a ready
chord amongst the majority of UK
sociologists who are critical of quantitative
approaches and prefer qualitative methods.
However, any complacency here is very
misplaced’ (p.893).
The crisis may vary in different national
settings, but in the UK it centres upon the ‘in
depth interview’
It has become part of popular culture…
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‘although it was sociologists who pioneered
the use of these methods in allowing popular
narratives to be made ‘public’, the routine
use of such methods in all forms of
contemporary journalism, from the colour
magazine to the Oprah Winfrey show, marks
a clear shift of expertise away from the
academy’ (p.893).
Again, a loss of methodological jurisdiction:
is social science losing its authority?
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A new set of epistemological and methodological
challenges
Savage and Burrows state: ‘We have argued that the
repertoires of empirical sociology need to be
rethought in an age of knowing capitalism. This
call goes far beyond the now familiar demand for
more methods training but asks for greater
reflection on how sociologists can best relate to the
proliferation of social data gathered by others,
which we currently largely ignore’ (p.895).
What is the answer? ‘Live methods’…?
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Some took issue with Savage and Burrows’
argument
For example, Rosemary Crompton: ‘if there is
a “crisis” in empirical sociology it is one
relating to an absence of quantitative
expertise, rather than the presence of the
“wrong” variety’ (2008:1218).
But this doesn’t really counter their
argument, in some ways it reinforces it: why
is there a lack of quantitative expertise…?
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Richard Webber (designer of the original
Mosaic classification) also responds – largely
supporting Savage and Burrows’ argument by
looking at other possible datasets (see 2009)
His aim: to look at how ‘how administrative
and transactional data are being creatively
harnessed to address issues of sociological
importance in greater detail than is possible
using conventional survey methods’ (p.176).
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In 2009, Savage and Burrows published a response
The declare: ‘Welcome to the world of ‘knowing
capitalism’ (Thrift, 2005): a world inundated with
complex processes of social and cultural
digitization; a world in which commercial forces
predominate; a world in which we, as sociologists,
are losing whatever jurisdiction we once had over
the study of the ‘social’ as the generation,
mobilization and analysis of social data become
ubiquitous’ (p.763).
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The conclusion they draw is that ‘What we
need to recognize is that social research
circuits now proliferate so extensively, using
such a variety and range of methods, that we
need to place our own internal sociological
squabbles on one side and collectively
consider how we deal with the fundamental
challenge of dealing with the proliferation of
social data’ (p.765).
Again, the question is: how should we
confront this challenge?