Social Research Methods
Week One (30 Sept. 2008)
Disciplines and Disciplinary Approaches to Social Research
Introduction and Overview – Purpose of this course
Learning Outcomes:
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Be able to distinguish between different social science disciplines
Understand multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary approaches
Understand how this fits in with your education at the Irish School of
Ecumenics!
Key Readings:
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Somekh, Bridget et. al, ‘Research communities in the social sciences,’ in
Somekh and Lewin, eds., Research Methods in the Social Sciences, Sage,
2005 [in folder]
Giddens, Anthony, In Defence of Sociology, Polity, 1996 [in folder]
Giddens, Anthony, Sociology 2nd ed., chapter 1, Polity, 1993 [in folder]
Carlson and Hyde, Doing Empirical Political Research, chapters 1-2,
Houghton Mifflin, 2003 [in folder]
Clifford, James, ed. Writing Culture: Poetics and Politics of Ethnography,
University of California Press, 1986
Class Discussion:
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What were your undergraduate majors?
Did you undertake any ‘social research’ as an undergraduate?
What ‘majors’ or ‘disciplines’ do you consider part of social research or ‘social
science’?
What’s the difference between a major and a discipline?
Majors and disciplines can overlap, but this is not always the case. For instance, you
can have a major in a discipline – i.e. political science; or you can have a major in an
interdisciplinary area – i.e. Irish Studies, Latin American Studies, or Reconciliation
Studies!
Major Disciplines in the Social Sciences
Anthropology – ‘the study of humanity’
What do you think of when you think of an anthropologist?
Historical legacy of the discipline – colonialism
‘ethnographic’, participant observation, interviews, field notes, ‘thick description’
Definition of subfields from the Collins Dictionary of Sociology (pp. 23-24)
Physical anthropology concerns itself with the genesis and variation of hominoid
species and draws on evolutionary biology, demography and archaeology. Social
and cultural anthropology investigates the structures and cultures that are produced
by homo sapiens.
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… The distinction between sociology and social or cultural anthropology is primarily
one of convention – sociologists have tended to study complex societies whilst
anthropologists have concentrated on numerically small, non-industrialised cultures
outside Western Europe and modern North America. In addition, methodological
differences between the two subjects are critical; anthropologists having usually
involved themselves in detailed ethnography, accounts produced after long periods
of participant observation.
This methodological difference grew out of two considerations:
a. many of the societies studied were pre-literate societies, and thus with no
written records anthropologists had no alternative but to observe societies
directly and to record the oral memory of the members of the societies.
b. a reaction against speculative accounts of pre-literate societies, e.g. in early
forms of social evolutionary theory. …
Other subdivisions (UMaine Dept. of Anthropology webpage):
 archaeology – the study of historic and prehistoric cultures and civilisations
 socio-cultural anthropology – concerned with current cultures of all degrees of
complexity
 physical anthropology – concerned with the biological aspects of the human
species
 anthropological linguistics – the scientific study of language and its
relationship to thought and society
Sociology – ‘the study of society’
What do you think of when you think of a sociologist?
Historical legacy of the discipline – Comte, Weber, Marx, Durkheim; ‘scientific’ study
of society, applying methods similar to biological sciences?; link to industrializing
societies; blend of qualitative and quantitative methods
Definition from the Collins Dictionary of Sociology (page 630)
‘Since no aspect of society is excluded from consideration by sociology, no simple
distinction can be drawn between sociology and social science; in some usages the
two terms are simply synonymous. More usually, however, whereas sociology
necessarily overlaps with the subject matter of more specialist social sciences (e.g.
economics, political science), the discipline is conceived of by its practitioners as
distinguished from the more focused social science disciplines by an avowedly
‘holistic’ perspective in social analysis, a commitment to analysis which studies the
interrelation of social parts. This said, however, it has to be noted that sociology does
not exist as a tightly integrated discipline; not only does the subject encompass many
competing paradigms and approaches, it has also remained uniquely open to ideas
imported from other disciplines, from philosophy, from history, and so on, as well as
from other social sciences, and from more general social and political discourse.’
Giddens – ‘Sociology is a generalizing discipline that concerns itself above all with
modernity – with the character and dynamics of modern or industrialized societies.’
(1996: p.3)
Giddens (1993) What is sociology about?
 Love and marriage
 Health and illness
 Crime and Punishment
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Collins Dictionary of Sociology lists 20 subfields, such as sociology of arts, sociology
of education, sociology of housing, sociology of leisure, sociology of religion, and
sociology of the family …
Politics or Political Science – ‘the study of politics’
What do you think of when you think of a political scientist?
Historical legacy of the discipline – Aristotle, Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke;
‘scientific’ study of society, applying methods similar to biological sciences?; blend of
qualitative and quantitative methods; North American vs. European emphases
Definition from the Collins Dictionary of Sociology (page 500)
… political studies has manifested great ambivalence on how, and whether, to
present itself as a ‘science’. Generally political scientists have divided into two (albeit
often overlapping) schools of thought:
a. those who describe (and compare) patterns of government and politics,
drawing on the work of philosophers, historians, constitutional theorists, public
administrators, etc., as well as collecting their own material, without any
pretensions that political studies can ever be a ‘science’ in any natural
science, or even social science, sense of the term;
b. those who have wanted to bring political studies into far closer relation with
more avowedly ‘scientific’ social sciences, such as sociology, economics, and
social psychology …
What is politics/political science about?
 constitutions
 electoral systems
 voting patterns
 political parties
 grassroots/civil society activities
 normative questions – philosophy
Carlson and Hyde’s (2003) ‘empirical political analysis’
Page 2: ‘Empirical’ refers to information received through the senses – observed
evidence – so empirical political research consists of using the scientific method to
test one’s ideas about politics by collecting and analyzing information. This process
involves understanding the nature of scientific inquiry, mastering how to apply the
scientific method to the study of human behaviour, and grasping how to analyze and
interpret data about politics.’
Carlson and Hyde argue that knowledge is achieved by five different methods,
distinguishing ‘science’ from four others (p. 10):
 Investment – knowledge based on personal stake in an idea
 Authority – knowledge provided by a trustworthy or convincing source
 Logic – knowledge derived from an internally coherent, rational argument
 Faith – knowledge accepted without expectation of outside verification
 Science – knowledge arising from a self-correcting method of inquiry and
empirical evidence
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Multi-disciplinary or inter-disciplinary approaches
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In what areas do anthropology, sociology and politics overlap?
Must you ‘choose’ a discipline?
What are the benefits/drawbacks of multi-disciplinary or inter-disciplinary
approaches to social research?
Is it important to be able to distinguish between disciplines?
The Place of Social Research in Reconciliation Studies at the Irish School of
Ecumenics
‘Ecumenics is the study of conflict and its solutions.’
‘Ecumenics’ as the ‘one inhabited earth.’
The Irish School of Ecumenics is ‘Committed to applied research at the intersection
of politics, theology and religion.’
Our approach to social science is to equip you with academic skills and theoretical
and practical frameworks that you can apply in a number of contexts. This involves
learning a systematic approach to social research that will stand up to rigorous
standards of peer review. You will gain research skills that are used in the main
social science disciplines such as anthropology, sociology and politics; and
understand where those skills fit in an interdisciplinary environment. You will also be
encouraged to make links between your research and social policy.
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