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# Interpretivism
refers to approaches emphasizing the meaningful nature of people's participation in social and cultural life. The methods of natural science are seen as inappropriate for such investigation. Researchers working within this tradition analyse the meanings people confer upon their own and others' actions.
Found on http://people.brunel.ac.uk/~hsstcfs/glos
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Interpretivism
`Interpretivism` may refer to: *Interpretivism - in Cultural Anthropology, the view that cultures can be understood by studying what people think about, their ideas, and the meanings that are important to them. Franz Boas is the founder of this particular school of anthropological thought. *Interpretivism - in epistemology, the view that all knowledge is a matter of interpretation. *Intepretivism - a sociological tradition, also known as interact...
Found on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretiv
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Is interpretivism the same as naturalism?
No, interpretivism and naturalism are not the same. Interpretivism is a research approach that focuses on understanding human behavior through the interpretation of meanings, while naturalism is a philosophical perspective that sees the world as governed by natural laws and phenomena, without supernatural intervention.
Advantages and disadvantages of positivism and interpretivism?
main advantage of a positivist
Compare and contrast functionalism and interpretivism and Marxism and postmondernism?
Functionalism focuses on the interrelationship between different parts of society and how they work together to maintain stability. Interpretivism emphasizes the subjective interpretation of social phenomena through the meanings individuals assign to them. Marxism focuses on the conflict between social classes and the exploitation of the working class by the ruling class. Postmodernism rejects grand narratives and challenges traditional notions of truth, reality, and power structures.
How would you describe the doctrine of Interpretivism?
Interpretivism is conditioned by substansive resources and contingencies of interaction. Holstein (1993) argues that interpretive practices result in the procedures and resources used to apprehend, organize and represent reality. Active interviewing is a result of interpretative practices, showing the respondent and interviewer as they articulate ongoing interpretive structures.
Was Dworkin a natural lawyer or a positivist?
Dworkin claims to be a natural lawyer (even now in his old age) However his texts and views agree far more with Positivism rather than natural law Therefore he is widely regarded by lawyers and philosophers around the world as being an Interpretive Lawyer for the purpose of an exam he is part of interpretivism (he stands on his own being neither a natural lawyer nor a positivist)
What do sociologist mean when they deem homosexuality deviant?
Possibly means the sociologist has their own agenda when it comes to homosexuality. Just as you wouldn't pay attention to a strict vegetarian or vegan when they give their opinion on eating meat, or as you would ignore a person who eats only meat when they advise you not to eat vegetables, so you don't pay attention to an alleged expert who believes they're qualified to decide what forms of generally accepted human behaviour - accepted before human recorded history - are deviant. Deviant defines a person whose behaviour is different from what some people consider socially acceptable. This is strictly a personal opinion and nothing to do with what a sociologist might or might not have learned in college. Deviance is defined in sociology as a behaviour that goes against the norms (being a specific expression of a value, such getting a well paid job, this being an expression of the value of wealth) and values (being what is valued by society, such as wealth) of society. So if the society you live in values the Heterosexual Nuclear Family (1 mum and 1 dad plus kids) then in that society, then yes homosexuality is deviant. But if you look at another society you will find that the values are different, therefore homosexuality may not be deviant. As you can see it really all a matter of norms and values of the society that you live in. For example, in the UK homosexuality would not be considered deviant, but if you go to the Israel you will find that it is. I hope that this is an objective (not biased, as sociologist attempt to separate themselves from the society they wish to study (positivism), although it has been argued that this is impossible (interpretivism)) answer, but I cannot guarantee it. As has been said before it is all very subjective (biased based on opinion, theory or belief) Make up your own mind.
Approaches to the study of politics?
Some general methodologies:Positivism explains politics in terms of observables and verification;Functionalism explains politics in terms of systems with beneficial features that generate their own outcomes;Structuralism explains politics in terms of systems with structures (features) that determine outcomes;Interpretivism explains politics in terms of understanding cultural norms and meanings;Rational choice theory explains politics in terms of aggregations of individually rational agents choosing best outcomes;Materialism (Marxism) explains politics in terms of the basic material needs and organisation of humans to attain them.
How were the two cultures of scientists and intellectuals in humanities similar and different that British scientist and novelist C P Snow discussed in The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution?
C. P. Snow discussed the two cultures of scientific "versus" humanities. Snow's initially focused on differences between British systems of schooling and social class as compared to competing countries, like the United States. Snow thought that US schools did a better job at bringing sciences and humanities together in scholarly writing and thought, while British schools more often kept these 2 cultures more separate. He was saying British schools set aside the world's Greek and Latin roots and turned away from classical writers when scholars delved into sciences, while humanities' scholars could quote the best classical writings but be unable to think and write scientifically. In the US, scholars put these two cultures together much better."Contrasting scientific and humanistic knowledge is a repetition of the Methodenstreit of 1890 German universities.[13]In the social sciences it is also commonly proposed as the quarrel of positivism versus interpretivism." (Wikipedia) However, considering the intervening period between 1890 and 1959, and considering that Britain has some of the oldest and most renown schools, colleges, and universities, this was again a radical discussion in 1959! The problem was how to bring the two cultures together."In 2008, The Times Literary Supplement included The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution in its list of the 100 books that most influenced Western public discourse since the Second World War.[2]" (Wikipedia) By 1963, Snow seemed to propose there may be a third culture. John Brockman (1995) picked up this idea in The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution. "In his opening address at the Munich Security Conference in January 2014, the Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves said that the current problems related to security and freedom in cyberspace are the culmination of absence of dialogue between "the two cultures"..." (Wikipedia)
"It is very important to have a good judicial system and a good government for the smooth running of the country". Explain giving examples?
It has been defined as a "system of rules", as an "interpretive concept" to achieve justice, as an "authority" to mediate people's interests, and even as "the command of a sovereign, backed by the threat of a sanction". However one likes to think of law, it is a completely central social institution. Legal policy incorporates the practical manifestation of thinking from almost every social science and the humanities. Laws are politics, because politicians create them. Law is philosophy, because moral and ethical persuasions shape their ideas. Law tells many of history's stories, because statutes, case law and codifications build up over time. And law is economics, because any rule about contract, tort, property law, labour law, company law and many more can have long-lasting effects on the distribution of wealth. The noun law derives from the late Old English lagu, meaning something laid down or fixed and the adjective legal comes from the Latin word lex. Linguistics investigates the cognitive and social aspects of human language. The field is divided into areas that focus on aspects of the linguistic signal, such as syntax (the study of the rules that govern the structure of sentences), semantics (the study of meaning), morphology (the study of the structure of words), phonetics (the study of speech sounds) and phonology (the study of the abstract sound system of a particular language); however, work in areas like evolutionary linguistics (the study of the origins and evolution of language) and psycholinguistics (the study of psychological factors in human language) cut across these divisions. The overwhelming majority of modern research in linguistics takes a predominantly synchronic perspective (focusing on language at a particular point in time), and a great deal of it—partly owing to the influence of Noam Chomsky—aims at formulating theories of the cognitive processing of language. However, language does not exist in a vacuum, or only in the brain, and approaches like contact linguistics, creole studies, discourse analysis, social interactional linguistics, and sociolinguistics explore language in its social context. Sociolinguistics often makes use of traditional quantitative analysis and statistics in investigating the frequency of features, while some disciplines, like contact linguistics, focus on qualitative analysis. While certain areas of linguistics can thus be understood as clearly falling within the social sciences, other areas, like acoustic phonetics and neurolinguistics, draw on the natural sciences. Linguistics draws only secondarily on the humanities, which played a rather greater role in linguistic inquiry in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Ferdinand Saussure is considered the father of modern linguistics. Political science is an academic and research discipline that deals with the theory and practice of politics and the description and analysis of political systems and political behaviour. Fields and subfields of political science include political economy, political theory and philosophy, civics and comparative politics, theory of direct democracy, apolitical governance, participatory direct democracy, national systems, cross-national political analysis, political development, international relations, foreign policy, international law, politics, public administration, administrative behaviour, public law, judicial behaviour, and public policy. Political science also studies power in international relations and the theory of great powers and superpowers. Political science is methodologically diverse, although recent years have witnessed an upsurge in the use of the scientific method, that is, the proliferation of formal-deductive model building and quantitative hypothesis testing. Approaches to the discipline include rational choice, classical political philosophy, interpretivism, structuralism, and behaviouralism, realism, pluralism, and institutionalism. Political science, as one of the social sciences, uses methods and techniques that relate to the kinds of inquiries sought: primary sources such as historical documents, interviews, and official records, as well as secondary sources such as scholarly articles are used in building and testing theories. Empirical methods include survey research, statistical analysis or econometrics, case studies, experiments, and model building. Herbert Baxter Adams is credited with coining the phrase "political science" while teaching history at Johns Hopkins University. Psychology is an academic and applied field involving the study of behaviour and mental processes. Psychology also refers to the application of such knowledge to various spheres of human activity, including problems of individuals' daily lives and the treatment of mental illness. The word psychology comes from the Ancient Greek ψυχή psyche ("soul", "mind") and logy ("study"). Psychology differs from anthropology, economics, political science, and sociology in seeking to capture explanatory generalizations about the mental function and overt behaviour of individuals, while the other disciplines focus on creating descriptive generalizations about the functioning of social groups or situation-specific human behaviour. In practice, however, there is quite a lot of cross-fertilization that takes place among the various fields. Psychology differs from biology and neuroscience in that it is primarily concerned with the interaction of mental processes and behaviour, and of the overall processes of a system, and not simply the biological or neural processes themselves, though the subfield of neuropsychology combines the study of the actual neural processes with the study of the mental effects they have subjectively produced. Many people associate psychology with clinical psychology, which focuses on assessment and treatment of problems in living and psychopathology. In reality, psychology has myriad specialties including social psychology, developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, educational psychology, industrial-organizational psychology, mathematical psychology, neuropsychology, and quantitative analysis of behaviour. Psychology is a very broad science that is rarely tackled as a whole, major block. Although some subfields encompass a natural science base and a social science application, others can be clearly distinguished as having little to do with the social sciences or having a lot to do with the social sciences. For example, biological psychology is considered a natural science with a social scientific application (as is clinical medicine), social and occupational psychology are, generally speaking, purely social sciences, whereas neuropsychology is a natural science that lacks application out of the scientific tradition entirely. In British universities, emphasis on what tenet of psychology a student has studied and/or concentrated is communicated through the degree conferred: B.Psy. indicates a balance between natural and social sciences, B.Sc. indicates a strong (or entire) scientific concentration, whereas a B.A. underlines a majority of social science credits. This is not always necessarily the case however, and in many UK institutions students studying the B.Psy, B.Sc, and B.A. follow the same curriculum as outlined by The British Psychological Society and have the same options of specialism open to them regardless of whether they choose a balance, a heavy science basis, or heavy social science basis to their degree. If they applied to read the B.A. for example, but specialized in heavily science-based modules, then they will still generally be awarded the B.A. Sociology is the systematic study of society, individuals' relationship to their societies, the consequences of difference, and other aspects of human social action. The meaning of the word comes from the suffix "-logy", which means "study of", derived from Ancient Greek, and the stem "soci-", which is from the Latin word socius, meaning "companion", or society in general. Auguste Comte (1798–1857) coined the term, Sociology, as a way to apply natural science principles and techniques to the social world in 1838. Comte endeavoured to unify history, psychology and economics through the descriptive understanding of the social realm. He proposed that social ills could be remedied through sociological positivism, an epistemological approach outlined in The Course in Positive Philosophy [1830–1842] and A General View of Positivism (1844). Though Comte is generally regarded as the "Father of Sociology", the discipline was formally established by another French thinker, Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), who developed positivism as a foundation to practical social research. Durkheim set up the first European department of sociology at the University of Bordeaux in 1895, publishing his Rules of the Sociological Method. In 1896, he established the journal L'Année Sociologique. Durkheim's seminal monograph, Suicide (1897), a case study of suicide rates among Catholic and Protestant populations, distinguished sociological analysis from psychology or philosophy.Karl Marx rejected Comte's positivism but nevertheless aimed to establish a science of society based on historical materialism, becoming recognized as a founding figure of sociology posthumously as the term gained broader meaning. Around the start of the 20th century, the first wave of German sociologists, including Max Weber and Georg Simmel, developed sociological antipositivism. The field may be broadly recognized as an amalgam of three modes of social thought in particular: Durkheimian positivism and structural functionalism; Marxist historical materialism and conflict theory; and Weberian antipositivism and verstehen analysis. American sociology broadly arose on a separate trajectory, with little Marxist influence, an emphasis on rigorous experimental methodology, and a closer association with pragmatism and social psychology. In the 1920s, the Chicago school developed symbolic interactionism. Meanwhile, in the 1930s, the Frankfurt School pioneered the idea of critical theory, an interdisciplinary form of Marxist sociology drawing upon thinkers as diverse as Sigmund Freud and Friedrich Nietzsche. Critical theory would take on something of a life of its own after World War II, influencing literary criticism and the Birmingham School establishment of cultural studies. Sociology evolved as an academic response to the challenges of modernity, such as industrialization, urbanization, secularization, and a perceived process of enveloping rationalization. The field generally concerns the social rules and processes that bind and separate people not only as individuals, but as members of associations, groups, communities and institutions, and includes the examination of the organization and development of human social life. The sociological field of interest ranges from the analysis of short contacts between anonymous individuals on the street to the study of global social processes. In the terms of sociologists Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, social scientists seek an understanding of the Social Construction of Reality. Most sociologists work in one or more subfields. One useful way to describe the discipline is as a cluster of sub-fields that examine different dimensions of society. For example, social stratification studies inequality and class structure; demography studies changes in a population size or type; criminology examines criminal behaviour and deviance; and political sociology studies the interaction between society and state. Since its inception, sociological epistemologies, methods, and frames of enquiry, have significantly expanded and diverged. Sociologists use a diversity of research methods, collect both quantitative and qualitative data, draw upon empirical techniques, and engage critical theory. Common modern methods include case studies, historical research, interviewing, participant observation, social network analysis, survey research, statistical analysis, and model building, among other approaches. Since the late 1970s, many sociologists have tried to make the discipline useful for purposes beyond the academy. The results of sociological research aid educators, lawmakers, administrators, developers, and others interested in resolving social problems and formulating public policy, through subdisciplinary areas such as evaluation research, methodological assessment, and public sociology. In the early 1970s, women sociologists began to question sociological paradigms and the invisibility of women in sociological studies, analysis, and courses. In 1969, feminist sociologists challenged the discipline's androcentrism at the American Sociological Association's annual conference. This led to the founding of the organization Sociologists for Women in Society, and, eventually, a new sociology journal, Gender & Society. Today, the sociology of gender is considered to be one of the most prominent sub-fields in the discipline. New sociological sub-fields continue to appear — such as community studies, computational sociology, environmental sociology, network analysis, actor-network theory, gender studies, and a growing list, many of which are cross-disciplinary in nature. Additional applied or interdisciplinary fields related to the social sciences include: Archaeology is the science that studies human cultures through the recovery, documentation, analysis, and interpretation of material remains and environmental data, including architecture, artifacts, features, biofacts, and landscapes. Area studies are interdisciplinary fields of research and scholarship pertaining to particular geographical, national/federal, or cultural regions. Behavioural science is a term that encompasses all the disciplines that explore the activities of and interactions among organisms in the natural world. Computational social science is an umbrella field encompassing computational approaches within the social sciences. Demography is the statistical study of all human populations. Development studies a multidisciplinary branch of social science that addresses issues of concern to developing countries. Environmental social science is the broad, transdisciplinary study of interrelations between humans and the natural environment. Environmental studies integrate social, humanistic, and natural science perspectives on the relation between humans and the natural environment. Gender studies integrates several social and natural sciences to study gender identity, masculinity, femininity, transgender issues, and sexuality. Information science is an interdisciplinary science primarily concerned with the collection, classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information. International studies covers both International relations (the study of foreign affairs and global issues among states within the international system) and International education (the comprehensive approach that intentionally prepares people to be active and engaged participants in an interconnected world). Legal management is a social sciences discipline that is designed for students interested in the study of state and legal elements. Library science is an interdisciplinary field that applies the practices, perspectives, and tools of management, information technology, education, and other areas to libraries; the collection, organization, preservation and dissemination of information resources; and the political economy of information. Management consists of various levels of leadership and administration of an organization in all business and human organizations. It is the effective execution of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives through adequate planning, executing and controlling activities. Marketing the identification of human needs and wants, defines and measures their magnitude for demand and understanding the process of consumer buying behaviour to formulate products and services, pricing, promotion and distribution to satisfy these needs and wants through exchange processes and building long-term relationships. Political economy is the study of production, buying and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government. Public administration is one of the main branches of political science, and can be broadly described as the development, implementation and study of branches of government policy. The pursuit of the public good by enhancing civil society and social justice is the ultimate goal of the field. Though public administration has been historically referred to as government management, it increasingly encompasses non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that also operate with a similar, primary dedication to the betterment of humanity. Religious studies and Western esoteric studies incorporate and inform social-scientific research on phenomena broadly deemed religious. Religious studies, Western esoteric studies, and the social sciences developed in dialogue with one another. The origin of the survey can be traced back at least early as the Domesday Book in 1086, while some scholars pinpoint the origin of demography to 1663 with the publication of John Graunt's Natural and Political Observations upon the Bills of Mortality. Social research began most intentionally, however, with the positivist philosophy of science in the 19th century. In contemporary usage, "social research" is a relatively autonomous term, encompassing the work of practitioners from various disciplines that share in its aims and methods. Social scientists employ a range of methods in order to analyse a vast breadth of social phenomena; from census survey data derived from millions of individuals, to the in-depth analysis of a single agent's social experiences; from monitoring what is happening on contemporary streets, to the investigation of ancient historical documents. The methods originally rooted in classical sociology and statistical mathematics have formed the basis for research in other disciplines, such as political science, media studies, and marketing and market research. Social research methods may be divided into two broad schools: Quantitative designs approach social phenomena through quantifiable evidence, and often rely on statistical analysis of many cases (or across intentionally designed treatments in an experiment) to create valid and reliable general claims. Qualitative designs emphasize understanding of social phenomena through direct observation, communication with participants, or analysis of texts, and may stress contextual and subjective accuracy over generality.Social scientists will commonly combine quantitative and qualitative approaches as part of a multi-strategy design. Questionnaires, field-based data collection, archival database information and laboratory-based data collections are some of the measurement techniques used. It is noted the importance of measurement and analysis, focusing on the (difficult to achieve) goal of objective research or statistical hypothesis testing. A mathematical model uses mathematical language to describe a system. The process of developing a mathematical model is termed 'mathematical modelling' (also modeling). Eykhoff (1974) defined a mathematical model as 'a representation of the essential aspects of an existing system (or a system to be constructed) that presents knowledge of that system in usable form'. Mathematical models can take many forms, including but not limited to dynamical systems, statistical models, differential equations, or game theoretic models. These and other types of models can overlap, with a given model involving a variety of abstract structures. The system is a set of interacting or interdependent entities, real or abstract, forming an integrated whole. The concept of an integrated whole can also be stated in terms of a system embodying a set of relationships that are differentiated from relationships of the set to other elements, and from relationships between an element of the set and elements not a part of the relational regime. A dynamical system modeled as a mathematical formalization has a fixed "rule" that describes the time dependence of a point's position in its ambient space. Small changes in the state of the system correspond to small changes in the numbers. The evolution rule of the dynamical system is a fixed rule that describes what future states follow from the current state
