Foundations of Sociology: Schools of Thought, Concepts and Methods
Schools of thought
Know the founders: Comte (positivism, coined 'sociology'), Durkheim (social facts, anomie, integration, suicide study), Weber (verstehen, rationalisation, bureaucracy, Protestant ethic), Marx (class conflict, mode of production, alienation), and later functionalism (Parsons, Merton - manifest/latent functions), conflict theory, symbolic interactionism (Mead, Goffman - dramaturgy), and structuralism.
Key concepts
Socialisation (primary/secondary), norms, values, roles, status (ascribed/achieved), institutions, social control (formal/informal), culture and subculture, anomie, bureaucracy.
Methods
Quantitative (surveys, questionnaires, statistics) vs qualitative (interviews, observation, case studies). Key criteria: validity, reliability, representativeness. Sampling: random, stratified, quota. Ethics: consent, anonymity, confidentiality. Durkheim's study of suicide is the classic example of using social facts and official statistics.
Traps
- Attributing 'verstehen' to Durkheim or 'social facts' to Weber.
- Confusing manifest (intended) with latent (unintended) functions.
- Treating correlation as causation.
- Confusing reliability (repeatability) with validity (measuring what it claims).
Worked example
A researcher studies why students drop out. A survey of 1,000 randomly chosen students gives representativeness and reliability; in-depth interviews give validity and meaning. Combining both is triangulation.