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Antipositivism
In social science, antipositivism (also interpretivism, negativism or antinaturalism) is a theoretical stance which proposes that the social realm cannot be studied with the methods of investigation utilized within the natural sciences, and that investigation of the social realm requires a different epistemology. Fundamental to that antipositivist epistemology is the belief that the concepts and language researchers use in their research shape their perceptions of the social world they are investigating and seeking to define. Interpretivism (anti-positivism) developed among researchers dissatisfied with post-positivism, the theories of which they considered too general and ill-suited to reflect the nuance and variability found in human interaction. Because the values and beliefs of researchers cannot fully be removed from their inquiry, interpretivists believe research ''on'' human beings ''by'' human beings cannot yield objective results. Thus, rather than seeking an objecti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sociological Positivism
Positivism is a philosophical school that holds that all genuine knowledge is either Tautology (logic), true by definition or Positive statement, positivemeaning ''a posteriori'' facts derived by reason and logic from perception, sensory experience.John J. Macionis, Linda M. Gerber, ''Sociology'', Seventh Canadian Edition, Pearson Canada. Other epistemology, ways of knowing, such as intuition, introspection, or Religious epistemology, religious faith, are rejected or Verificationism, considered meaningless. Although the positivist approach has been a recurrent theme in the history of Western thought, modern positivism was first articulated in the early 19th century by Auguste Comte. His school of sociology, sociological positivism holds that society, like the physical world, operates according to scientific laws. After Comte, positivist schools arose in logic, psychology, economics, historiography, and other fields of thought. Generally, positivists attempted to introduce scienti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sociology
Sociology is the scientific study of human society that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. The term sociology was coined in the late 18th century to describe the scientific study of society. Regarded as a part of both the social sciences and humanities, sociology uses various methods of Empirical research, empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about social order and social change. Sociological subject matter ranges from Microsociology, micro-level analyses of individual interaction and agency (sociology), agency to Macrosociology, macro-level analyses of social systems and social structure. Applied sociological research may be applied directly to social policy and welfare, whereas Theory, theoretical approaches may focus on the understanding of social processes and phenomenology (sociology), phenomenologic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Science
Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among members within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of society", established in the 18th century. It now encompasses a wide array of additional academic disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology, economics, geography, history, linguistics, management, communication studies, psychology, culturology, and political science. The majority of positivist social scientists use methods resembling those used in the natural sciences as tools for understanding societies, and so define science in its stricter modern sense. Speculative social scientists, otherwise known as interpretivist scientists, by contrast, may use social critique or symbolic interpretation rather than constructing empirically falsifiable theories, and thus treat science in its ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Post-positivism
Postpositivism or postempiricism is a metatheoretical stance that critiques and amends positivism and has impacted theories and practices across philosophy, social sciences, and various models of scientific inquiry. While positivists emphasize independence between the researcher and the researched person (or object), postpositivists argue that theories, hypotheses, background knowledge and values of the researcher can influence what is observed. Postpositivists pursue objectivity by recognizing the possible effects of biases. While positivists emphasize quantitative methods, postpositivists consider both quantitative and qualitative methods to be valid approaches. Philosophy Epistemology Postpositivists believe that human knowledge is based not on a priori assessments from an objective individual, but rather upon human ''conjectures''. As human knowledge is thus unavoidably conjectural, the assertion of these conjectures are ''warranted'', or more specifically, justified by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Historical Materialist
Historical materialism is Karl Marx's theory of history. Marx located historical change in the rise of class societies and the way humans labor together to make their livelihoods. Karl Marx stated that technological development plays an important role in influencing social transformation and therefore the mode of production over time. This change in the mode of production encourages changes to a society's economic system. Marx's lifetime collaborator, Friedrich Engels, coined the term "historical materialism" and described it as "that view of the course of history which seeks the ultimate cause and the great moving power of all important historic events in the economic development of society, in the changes in the modes of production and exchange, in the consequent division of society into distinct classes, and in the struggles of these classes against one another." Although Marx never brought together a formal or comprehensive description of historical materialism in one p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Émile Durkheim
David Émile Durkheim (; or ; 15 April 1858 – 15 November 1917) was a French Sociology, sociologist. Durkheim formally established the academic discipline of sociology and is commonly cited as one of the principal architects of modern social science, along with both Karl Marx and Max Weber. Much of Durkheim's work was concerned with how societies can maintain their social integration, integrity and coherence in modernity, an era in which traditional social and religious ties are much less universal, and in which new social institutions have come into being. Durkheim's conception of the scientific study of society laid the groundwork for modern sociology, and he used such scientific tools as statistics, Survey (human research), surveys, and historical observation in his analysis of suicides in Roman Catholic and Protestant groups. Durkheim's first major sociological work was (1893; ''The Division of Labour in Society''), followed in 1895 by (''The Rules of Sociological Me ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Research
Social research is research conducted by social scientists following a systematic plan. Social research methodologies can be classified as quantitative and qualitative. * Quantitative designs approach social phenomena through quantifiable evidence, and often rely on statistical analyses 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 analyses of texts, and may stress contextual subjective accuracy over generality. Most methods contain elements of both. For example, qualitative data analysis often involves a fairly structured approach to coding raw data into systematic information and quantifying intercoder reliability. There is often a more complex relationship between "qualitative" and "quantitative" approaches than would be suggested by drawing a simple distinction bet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hermeneutic
Hermeneutics () is the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially the interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts. As necessary, hermeneutics may include the art of understanding and communication. Modern hermeneutics includes both verbal and non-verbal communication,''The Routledge Companion to Philosophy in Organization Studies'', Routledge, 2015p. 113Joann McNamara, ''From Dance to Text and Back to Dance: A Hermeneutics of Dance Interpretive Discourse'', PhD thesis, Texas Woman's University, 1994. as well as semiotics, presuppositions, and pre-understandings. Hermeneutics has been broadly applied in the humanities, especially in law, history and theology. Hermeneutics was initially applied to the interpretation, or exegesis, of scripture, and has been later broadened to questions of general interpretation. p. 2 The terms ''hermeneutics'' and ''exegesis'' are sometimes used interchangeably. Hermeneutics is a wider discipline wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geisteswissenschaft
''Geisteswissenschaft'' (; plural: ''Geisteswissenschaften'' ; "science of mind"; "spirit science") is a set of human sciences such as philosophy, history, philology, musicology, linguistics, theater studies, literary studies, media studies, religious studies and sometimes even jurisprudence, that are traditional in German universities. Most of its subject matter would come under Humanities in the typical English-speaking university. History The concept of '' Geist'' dates back to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German idealism, in particular to Herder's and Hegel's concept of a '' Volksgeist'', the alleged common "spirit", or rather, mind, of a people. To understand the term ''Geisteswissenschaften'', one should bear in mind that the continental ''faculty of philosophy'' inherited the medieval ''faculty of arts''. Besides philosophy itself it encompassed the natural sciences with mathematics as well as the philological and historical disciplines and later on psychology ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wilhelm Dilthey
Wilhelm Dilthey (; ; 19 November 1833 – 1 October 1911) was a German historian, psychologist, sociologist, and hermeneutic philosopher, who held Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's Chair in Philosophy at the University of Berlin. As a polymathic philosopher, working in a modern research university, Dilthey's research interests revolved around questions of scientific methodology, historical evidence and history's status as a science. Dilthey has often been considered an empiricist, in contrast to the idealism prevalent in Germany at the time, but his account of what constitutes the empirical and experiential differs from British empiricism and positivism in its central epistemological and ontological assumptions, which are drawn from German literary and philosophical traditions. Life Dilthey was born in 1833 as the son of a Reformed pastor in the village of Biebrich in the Duchy of Nassau, now in Hesse, Germany. As a young man he followed family traditions by studying th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neo-Kantian
In late modern philosophy, neo-Kantianism () was a revival of the 18th-century philosophy of Immanuel Kant. The neo-Kantians sought to develop and clarify Kant's theories, particularly his concept of the thing-in-itself and his moral philosophy. Origins The "back to Kant" movement began in the 1860s, as a reaction to the German materialist controversy in the 1850s. In addition to the work of Hermann von Helmholtz and Eduard Zeller, early fruits of the movement were Kuno Fischer's works on Kant and Friedrich Albert Lange's ''History of Materialism'' ('' Geschichte des Materialismus'', 1873–75), the latter of which argued that transcendental idealism superseded the historic struggle between material idealism and mechanistic materialism. Fischer was earlier involved in a dispute with the Aristotelian idealist Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg concerning the interpretation of the results of the Transcendental Aesthetic, a dispute that prompted Hermann Cohen's 1871 seminal w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
