Diss - Lesson 5 - Dominant Approaches And Ideas In Social Sciences

DOMINANT APPROACHES AND IDEAS IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

Prepared by: Ms. Mary Joy Adelfa P. Dailo, LPT

DOMINANT APPROACHES AND IDEAS IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES Empirical-Analytical Approaches

• Microlevel Approaches - Rational Choice Theory - Symbolic Interactionism • Macrolevel Approaches - Structural Functionalism - Institutionalism • Interdisciplinary Approaches - Human-environment System Approach

Historical-Hermeneutic Approaches

Psychoanalysis Hermeneutic Phenomology

Empirical-critical Approaches

Marxism Feminism

MICROLEVEL APPROACHES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES Rational Choice Theory (RCT)

• Would you rather lose the ability to read or the ability to speak? • Would you rather live without water or live without electricity? • Would you rather lose your best friend or all of your friends except for your best friend? • Would you rather never run out of battery power for your phone or always have free Wi-Fi wherever you go? • Would you rather eat rice with every meal and never be able to eat bread or eat bread with every meal and never be able to eat rice?

• Would you rather lose all your money and valuables or lose all pictures you have ever taken? • Would you rather find your true love or a suitcase with five million dollars inside? • Would you rather know when you are going to die or how you are going to die? • Would you rather be feared by all or loved by all? • Would you rather know an uncomfortable truth or believe a comforting lie?

• When faced with several courses of action, people usually do what they believe is likely to have the best overall outcome. • Individuals actions are based on their preferences, beliefs, and feasible strategies. • It needs other perspectives to help explain why individuals have the interests they do, how they perceive those interests, and the distribution of rules, powers, and social roles that determines the constraints on their actions.

• Started during the behavioral movement influenced by Auguste Comte’s view of positivism in the nineteenth century and of the ‘Vienna Circle’ a. Observable behavior, whether it is at the level of the individual or the social aggregate, should be the focus of analysis; and b. Any explanation of that behavior should be susceptible to empirical testing

• Game Theory - strategic interdependence, a situation where others’ choice of strategy affects an individual’s best choice and vice versa.

• The individual is the actor making decisions • Individuals have all the rational capacity, time, and emotional detachment necessary to choose the best course of action, no matter how complex the choice. • Rationality is silent about whether preferences of an individual are benevolent or evil.

Herbert Simon - bounded rationality - Given limited information, time and cognitive capacity to process information, individuals use standard operating procedures as a heuristic device and as a shorthand guide to rational action. - Action is procedurally rational if it is based on beliefs that are reasonable given the context the actor is in.

• What is a rational choice theory? • How does it explain social behavior?

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MICROLEVEL APPROACHES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES Symbolic Interactionism

Seeing a man and a woman holding hands Someone sneeze in front of you Jollibee Belt Beach Ulan Lola

• A sociological framework that focuses on the different meanings individuals attach to objects, peoples, and interactions as well as the corresponding behaviors that reflect those meanings and/or interpretations.

George Herbert Mead - gestures are significant because they can either accentuate or contradict that which we are verbally stating

• “self” – the part of an individual’s personality composed of self awareness and self-image • The process of self discovery and self-development is enacted by the threefold through the: play stage – children’s identification of key figures in their environments; game stage – children extrapolate from the vantage point of the roles they have simulated by assuming the roles of their counterparts; and generalized other stage – the widespread cultural norms and values we use as a reference in evaluating ourselves

1. Meaning is an important element of human existence. 2. People identify and mold their unique symbolic references through the process of socialization. 3. There is a cultural dimension that intertwines the symbolic “educational” development.

Premises that constitute Symbolic Interactionism

• How does one make sense of his or her actions, interactions, and experience? • How does social experience develop one’s self? • What is the importance of communication of communication in human actions and interactions?

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MACROLEVEL APPROACHES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES Structural Functionalism

Lawyer Mother Father Police Doctor Priest Teacher Banker Producer

• A framework for building a theory that sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability. • Developed by Talcott Parsons under the influence of Max Weber and Emile Durkheim Social structure – any relatively stable pattern of social behavior. Ex. Family, government, religion, education, economy Social functions – the consequences of any social pattern for the operation of society as a whole

Robert K. Merton - any social structure may have many functions Manifest functions – the recognized and intended consequences of any social pattern Latent functions – the unrecognized and unintended consequences of any social pattern Social dysfunction – any social pattern that may disrupt the operation of society - caused by lack of consensus among peoples in a given polity or society about what is helpful or harmful to society

1. Within every social structure or system – politics, family, organizations – each member of the system has a specific function. 2. Those functions can be small or substantial, are dynamic in nature, and work toward the same purpose: to keep the system operational within its environment. 3. Change is evident within any society or system; however, for the system to survive, it must adapt to that change in order to maintain its equilibrium.

Premises that constitute Structural Functionalism

Adaptation : acquiring and mobilizing sufficient resources so that the system can survive

Goal Attainment : setting and implementing goals Integration : maintaining solidarity or coordination among the subunits of the system

Latency : creating, preserving, and transmitting the system’s distinctive culture and values

Imperatives for Societies to Survive:

• What keeps societies together? • What causes social dysfunction? • How important are the social functions of the social structure to the maintenance and stability of societies?

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MACROLEVEL APPROACHES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES Institutionalism

motivation

• Political institutions • The institutional approach can be understood as a subject matter, as a method, and as a theory. Subject matter – Public administration, a subdiscipline within social science is the study of the institutional arrangements for the provision of public services.

Method – the traditional or classic institutional approach is descriptive-inductive, formal-legal, historical-comparative. Descriptive – it employs the techniques of the historian and explores specific events, eras, people, and institutions Inductive – inferences are drawn from repeated observations • Classic institutional approach systematically describes and analyzes phenomena that have occurred in the past and explain contemporary political phenomena with reference to past events.

Formal – it involves the study of formal governmental organizations Legal – it includes the study of public law Comparative – “institutions can be understood and appreciated only by those who know other systems of government… by the use of thorough comparative and historical method… a general clarification of views may be obtained” - Woodrow Wilson

Theory – the classical institutional approach does not only make statements about the causes and consequences of political institutions but also espouses the political value of democracy.

• New Institutionalism – embody values and power relationships, and to obstacles as well as the opportunities that confront institutional design • Normative Institutionalism – political institutions influence actors’ behavior by shaping their values, norms, interests, identities and beliefs. • Rational Choice Institutionalism – denies that institutional factors produce behavior or shape individuals’ preferences, which they see as endogenously determined and relatively stable. Political institutions influence behavior by affecting the structure of a situation in which individuals select strategies for the pursuit of their preferences.

• What is the difference between old and new institutionalism? • Do institutions and institutional contexts matter in explaining human behavior?

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