Essential Concepts in Sociology. Anthony Giddens

qualitative researchers take the view that measurement and statistical testing are not appropriate for the study of meaning-making humans, while some quantitative researchers see many of the methods adopted by qualitative sociologists as too subjective to be reliable and hopelessly individualistic. But an increasing number of projects now adopt ‘mixed-methods’ approaches, which use both quantitative and qualitative methods. Findings that are consistent across quantitative and qualitative methods are likely to be more valid and reliable than those arrived at using just one. In mixed-methods studies, the choice of research method tends to be driven by research questions and practical considerations. A good example of the productive use of mixed methods can be found in the study of cultural capital and social exclusion over a three-year period (2003–6) by Silva and her colleagues (2009). The project made use of a survey, household interviews and focus groups, thus mixing quantitative with qualitative methods. The authors describe their approach as ‘methodological eclecticism’, arguing that this not only allows a way of corroborating facts but also enables the plausibility of interpretations to be checked.

The embedding of social media into the routines of everyday life has led to new debates and discussions about how best these new media forms, such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter, can and should be studied. One way to find out how sociologists have done this in practice is to carry out a review of the existing literature, a task undertaken in relation to qualitative and mixed-methods research by Snelson (2016). This study looked at 229 papers published between 2007 and 2013 which used qualitative methods, 55 of which also adopted a mixed-methods approach, in order to identify emerging trends in studies of social media. Snelson found that over this period there was an overall increase in qualitative and mixed-methods studies, with Facebook being the most studied platform. The central focus of this body of research was trying to understand how people use and experience social media. To explore this, conventional techniques such as interviews, focus groups, content analysis and surveys were employed. Among the mixed-methods studies, there was a trend towards mixing data collected using conventional methods directly from social media users, with other data harvested from social media content such as YouTube videos, Facebook profiles and social media posts and discussion. As Snelson’s paper concludes, since around 2007, social media research has developed rapidly and is now a field of study in its own right. And, as it develops, sociologists are beginning to understand how best to handle and study the enormous amount of material that is available online and what it may tell us about everyday life today.

       References and Further Reading

      Bryman, A. (2015) Social Research Methods (5th edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press), esp. parts 2, 3 and 4.

      Silva, E., Warde, A., and Wright, D. (2009) ‘Using Mixed Methods for Analysing Culture: The Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion Project’, Cultural Sociology, 3(2): 299–316.

      Snelson, C. L. (2016) ‘Qualitative and Mixed Methods Social Media Research: A Review of the Literature’, International Journal of Qualitative Research, March: 1–15. DOI: 10.1177/1609406915624574.

      Williams, M., Payne, G., Hodgkinson, L., and Poade, D. (2008) ‘Does British Sociology Count?’, Sociology, 42(5): 1003–21.

Realism

       Working Definition

      An approach to social research that insists on the existence of an objective external reality, the underlying causes of which are amenable to scientific investigation.

       Origins of the Concept

      Though the term ‘realism’ has been in use since ancient times, it entered social science via the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century philosophical debates between proponents of realism and idealism in the study of knowledge. Philosophical realists argued that there is a real world out there which can be known only through sense experience and observation. The task of science is to represent the real world in its descriptions and explanations so that, as these improve, we get closer and closer to the truth. Philosophical idealists saw knowledge as starting from the human mind rather than from an external world, so that the structures of our thinking effectively determine what can be known about that world. There is, then, no ‘direct’, unmediated access to an external world ‘out there’.

In the 1970s there emerged a reinvigorated ‘critical’ form of realism associated with the ideas of Roy Bhaskar ([1975] 2008), Andrew Sayer (1999) and others. Critical realism has come to be seen as an alternative to social constructionist approaches in sociology, thus mirroring the old philosophical debate between idealism and realism. Critical realism looks to preserve the scientific credentials of sociology but without the drawbacks associated with positivism, and it has developed into a tradition of inquiry that is particularly influential within British sociology. Critical realism provides a method which can be used to study social phenomena of all kinds, though it has been more widely adopted in some fields, such as environmental sociology, than others.

       Meaning and Interpretation

      Critical realism is not just a philosophy of science but also a research method that, its advocates argue, is capable of getting below the surface of observable events to gain access to the underlying causes or ‘generative mechanisms’ of real-world phenomena. It is a serious attempt to maintain the social sciences as ‘sciences’, and those who endorse it claim it is the task of scientists to uncover the underlying social processes that produce the world we experience and observe. The realists’ starting point is that human societies are part of nature and that both should be studied together using the same method. But this does not mean importing natural science methods into sociology. Instead, the realist method is said to be appropriate for both natural and social sciences.

      A fundamental tenet of critical realism is that knowledge is stratified, and realists work with both abstract and concrete levels of knowledge. Abstract knowledge consists of high-level theories, such as natural science ‘laws’ or general theories of society, while concrete knowledge refers to that which is contingent in historically specific circumstances. The study of specific historical situations or ‘conjunctions’ is then required, along with detailed empirical research, in order to sort out how contingent factors interact with necessary relations to produce specific conjunctural outcomes that can be observed. In a simple example, Dickens (2004) says that gunpowder has an unstable chemical structure giving it the causal power to explode. But whether this power is triggered depends on other contingent factors – how it has been stored, whether it is linked to an ignition source and how much of it there is. Similarly, human beings have certain powers and capacities (human nature), but whether they are able to exercise these depends on historically contingent factors too: are they enabled or constrained by existing social relations, and does society provide enough opportunities for their abilities to be used?

      Clearly critical realism approaches knowledge production in a different way than does social constructionism. Constructionist studies very often adopt an ‘agnostic’ stance towards the reality of a social problem such as global warming, leaving such assessments to environmental scientists and others. But realists want to bring together natural and social scientific knowledge, which should produce a better and more comprehensive understanding of global warming and its underlying causes or ‘generative mechanisms’. Some critical realists see Marx’s theory of alienation as an early realist social theory, as it links a theory of human nature to contingent factors such as the emergence of capitalist social relations, which effectively prevent humans from fully realizing their ‘species being’.

       Critical Points

      One problem with critical realism is its willingness to make use of natural science knowledge. Given that they are not routinely trained in the natural sciences and are not in a position to enter debates on, say, the physics and chemistry