Читать книгу SCM Core Text Sociology of Religion - Andrew Dawson - Страница 21

A second focal point of disagreement among sociologists concerns its status as a science. Regarding itself as the ‘science of society’, sociology traditionally modelled itself after the natural sciences (biology, chemistry, physics). As a result, sociology adopted a range of assumptions in respect of the status of its analytical object (society), the manner in which this object can be known (epistemology) and the best ways of studying it (methodology). Most popularly known as ‘positivism’, sociology’s traditional approach regarded itself as being based, like the natural sciences, on the accumulation of objective facts about the world which could be gathered in a value-neutral manner and tested by replicable methods to the end of formulating general laws which applied to society as a whole. Over time, however, the domin­ance of positivism has been challenged by an understanding of the sociological endeavour which rejects the need for sociology to model itself on the natural sciences. While accepting the need of scientific rigour, growing numbers of sociologists argue that the particular nature of society – as both human construct and socially determinative – renders the analytical, epistemological and methodological presuppositions of the positivist paradigm both infeasible and undesirable (Craib and Benton, 2001).

The problematization of established positivistic assumptions has led to an increasing diversity of sociological perspectives in respect of, for ex­ample, how society should be analytically conceived, what methods are best suited to studying the social world and why sociologists do what they do. Although rather abstruse at points, theoretical issues such as these have dir­ect consequences for the everyday practices of sociologists on the ground. For example, over recent decades – and no doubt also influenced by the resurgence of conflict theory – growing numbers of sociologists are rejecting traditional assumptions regarding disciplinary neutrality and researcher objectivity. While committed to established disciplinary norms of analyt­ical rigour and critical reflection, certain sociologists hold their task to be not only understanding society as best they can but also helping to make society a better place. Known by a variety of terms and adopting a range of approaches (such as liberation sociology and action research), the socio­logic­al endeavour assumes a committed, if not emancipatory, tenor which dismisses value neutrality as both a theoretical myth and avoidance of moral responsibility. As Feagin and Vera remark, ‘the point of liberation sociology is not just to research the social world but to change it in the direction of democracy and social justice’ (2008, p. 1).