Social Theories
Sociology has been defined s the scientific study of human interactionand, as such, is accepted as a scientific activity (Leming 1997). Socialscience aims at discovering and explaining observed events of and in natureby means of a framework that can be tested. The goal of sociology is,therefore, to produce a body of knowledge that will provide a body ofknowledge that will provide not only an understanding of the causalprocesses influencing human behavior but also enable sociologists topredict social behaviors (Leming). As a science, it pursues observable andprovable regularities and explains these regularities by means of a set ofobservable and provable propositions or statements of relationship(Leming). The very effectiveness or success of sociology lies precisely inthe explanatory and predictive power of this body of knowledge derived from The basic components or elements of a theory are a conceptual scheme, aset of propositions that states the relationships between variables, and acontext for verification (Leming). The conceptual scheme consists of ideasthat possess abstract properties not yet immediately verifiable by directsensory observation. It also has a system of interrel
The structuralfunctional theory and the conflict theory, for example, focus on groupactions and societal structures, as in the work of Dunheim (Leming). It observed strict guidelines (Durkheim 1964 asqtd in Leming), which eliminated all preconceptions, considered onlydirectly observed social facts, viewed these social facts as the product ofgroup experience rather than individual actions, and the cause of any givensocial fact was sought in its preceding social facts. For example, capitalists are assumedto be inclined to maintain and expand their capital and this would be theirbasic motivation. Micro theory, on the otherhand, considers social interaction of different individuals in small groupsettings and investigates these interactions in great detail. Theory muststate worthwhile "social facts" for research and there are no facts withouttheories. ated statements ofrelationships between variables, which seam the parts of the concepttogether. Sociology, like most other scientific disciplines, is a multi-paradigmscience. Wallace and Wolf observe that all sciences "are concerned withincreasing our comprehension of things (1999). Structural functionalist and conflict theoriesare examples of macros (Wallace and Wolf 1999). On the other hand, empirical research both tests theoretically derivedhypotheses and develops new ones through new observations (Leming 1997). Sociology is a multi-paradigm sciencein that there are many paradigms within the field, not a single one ofwhich dominates that field. Itconcerned itself only with social facts and studied these as though theywere things in themselves. " As such, the study needs tobe systematic, reasonably objective and capable of being repeated orreproduced by others. Wallace and Wolf, for their part, focus on whether human behavior ispredictable or merely creative (1999).
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