DISS REVIEWER

DOMINANT APPROACHES AND IDEAS IN SOCIAL SCIENCE

POSITIVISM – French word meaning “imposed on the mind by experience”

“Empirical evidence is the only source of trust worthy knowledge”

- Observe using senses

IMPLICATION
1. Society like the physical world, operates accordingly to absolute laws in order to
understand the nature of society.
2. Positivist research prefer exact qualitative data object research to discover the truth that is
out there.
3. Positivist emerge deductive logic with empirical observation to verify laws that can be used
to foresee general patterns or human actions

- Discover laws

INTERPRETIVE SOCIAL SCIENCES – claims that people create and associate subjective
meaning as they interact with the world.

“Our knowledge of reality is socially constructed”

“Context dependent”

IMPLICATIONS
1. There is no objective reality
2. The duty of interpretative research is to search for the meaning that people design to
certain phenomena in order to understand them.
INTERPRETIVE SOCIAL SCIENCE

TERMECUTIC PHENOMENOLOGY – historical phenomena are interpreted differently in

proper context through one’s consciousness

SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM – symbols help us understand how we view society and

communicate with each other

CRITICAL SOCIAL SCIENCE

CRITICAL THEORY – critical process of inquiry that attempts to uncover surface illusion to
reveal real structures in the material world for social transformation
“Social inequalities exist and we can do something to address them.”

- Scratch beyond the surface

IMPLICATIONS
1. People shape their own destiny but not voluntarily because their material environment is
influenced by social political and economic conditions.
2. People must understand social reality (go beyond surface illusions) in order to change the
world.
3. Critical social science puts theory into practice. It goes beyond describing.

THEORETICAL APPROACH UNDER CRITICAL PARADIGM

FEMINIST THEORY – aims to eliminate gender inequality by analyzing the status of men
and women in society
MARXISM – aims to eliminate class conflict through class struggle
PSYCHOANALYSIS – aims to understand human behavior by making
 THE UNCONSCOUS CONSCIOUS

HUMAN ENVIRONMENT SYSTEM – aims to promote sustainability by understanding how

human and environmental system interacts.

STURUCTURAL FUNCTIONALISM – sees society as a complex system whose parts work

together to promote solidarity and stability.
- Societies have structures (social institutions) that function together similar to the body
systems of organisms
- Everything has a function

THINKERS AND CONTRIBUTORS

EMIL DURKHEIM
- One of the major proponents of structural functionalism and remained dominant force in
French Intellectual life until his death in 1971
- Most important foundation of structural functionalism
- According to him, everyone has a function

A. 12 RADCLIFFE BROWN