Non-Positivist Methodologies

Non-positivist methodologies favour qualitative methods above scientific procedures. Non-positivists advocated understanding social reality rather than predicting events. However, Positivists favour quantitative methods like structured questionnaires, social surveys, and official statistics for their reliability and representativeness. They believe ‘social facts’ shape an individual’s actions.

The positivist tradition emphasises quantitative research like large-scale surveys to get a wide social perspective and reveal social trends like the relationship between educational achievement and social class. Trends and patterns are more important than individuals in this type of sociology.

Non-positivist methodologies are approaches in the social sciences that oppose the positivist view. These are:

Interpretive sociology

According to interpretive sociologists, sociology is about interpreting social action through interpreting its reasons and meanings. Many interpretive sociologists argue that quantitative data cannot disclose these meanings and motives.

Max Weber developed this idea. Related to hermeneutics (The practice and study of interpretation in law), it examines human social behaviour and its impact on the social context. In Weber’s view, sociology is a study of social action. When an action takes into consideration the other members of society, it is social action. Weber believed that explaining social action requires understanding the meanings and reasons that motivate human behaviour.

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Symbolic interactionist

Symbolic interactionists do not deny attempts to establish causal links (A connection between a person’s actions and their consequences). But they believe the statistics don’t tell us anything about human behaviour. Interactionists believe that people’s actions are governed mainly by interpreting the world and providing meaning to their lives. People have a “self-concept” or “image of themselves” built up, reinforced or modified through social interaction.

The responses of others may cause a person to lose a certain self-concept, causing a behaviour change.

This view comes from G. H. Mead’s “Mind, self, and society”. 

The American interactionist Herbert Blumer has developed the sociological implications of these views. Blumer opposes positivist attempts to establish a causal relation. Blumer believes that sociologists must immerse themselves in the areas they investigate. Understanding the actor’s view of social reality is more important than categorising facts. ‘The ability to feel one’s way inside the actor’s experience’. The sociologist must ‘capture the process of interpretation’ since actors’ meanings are direct action. That is, the researcher must take on the role of the acting units he is studying.

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Phenomenology

Phenomenology is the most radical departure from ‘scientific’ quantitative methodology. Phenomenologists go further than interactionists in rejecting causal explanations for human behaviour. They reject the idea of measuring and classifying the world objectively. According to phenomenologists, we make sense of the world by giving meanings and classifications to things that we come into contact with, and there is no such thing as an objective reality beyond subjective meaning.

Classification is a universal problem, according to phenomenologists. People constantly categorise things, and these decisions are the result of social processes. For example, one individual says ‘a chair’, and another says ‘a wooden object’. According to phenomenologists, sociologists should focus on the meanings and categories that people use to organise and make sense of the world. Phenomenologists study the subjective aspects of social life that exist within an individual’s consciousness.

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Ethnomethodology

Non-Positivists in Sociologists seem to have the following elements:

• Sociology should focus on the actors’ internal intended meanings
• Sociology cannot use scientific methods like natural sciences. Non-positivists favour qualitative methods such as verstehen, deduction, and comparative analysis. They argue that science lacks methodological unity, claiming that we cannot study natural and social sciences with the same tools
• When it comes to establishing causal links (A connection between a person’s actions and their consequences
• The non-positivist methodology varies. Weber advocates developing causal pluralism, while phenomenologists are against it, emphasising understanding these methodologies
• While positivists believe that universal human society laws are possible, non-positivists do not
• Scientific knowledge is rarely testable
• Non-Positivists consider understanding a person’s subjectivity a social task, admitting that absolute objectivity is impossible. However, sociologists like Max Weber argued that we must do social study as objectively as possible

Is positivist methodology scientific?

Aspirations, Emotions, motives, and social reality interpretation are all part of the Non-positivist methodologies. Non-positivists emphasised qualitative methods over scientific methods used in natural sciences. Earlier, Weber and Mead emphasised scientific methods, but Alfred Schultz and Garfinkel later rejected them.

They also suggested understanding social reality rather than predicting events. They rejected universal theories, and while Weber and Mead emphasised cause and effect, Schultz eliminated such a possibility and highlighted the impossibility of total objectivity and, as a result, were accommodative to subjectivity in research.

Conclusion

Many researchers shifted to non-positivism when they realised that fixed laws couldn’t solve sociological issues. Positivists saw society as a given and man as a part of it according to its rules. Non-positivists considered man as a free-thinking individual with the ability to influence society. They rejected the over-socialised conception of man. Methodologies like non-positivists tried to assess a man’s inner thoughts and their impact on society.

Such views were widespread throughout the late 18th century when the German idealist school attempted to define social reality differently. Dilthey and Rickert discussed the natural and social realms. These researchers believe that social reality builds human society’s meaning, symbols, and motives. George Hegel argued that social phenomena are the product of individual ideas responsible for history.By the end of the 19th century, a non-positivist technique had formed, including a range of thoughts. Max Weber was a Non-Positivist methodology pioneer. Mead, Herbert Blumer, Schutz, etc., were important scholars. Mead pioneered symbolic interactionism, whereas Weber established interpretive methodology. Other non-positivist methods include symbolic interactionism, Weber’s ideal types and verstehen, Alfred Schutz’s phenomenology and Harold Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology.