Summary
Contents
Subject index
Sociology consists of a myriad of frequently confusing concepts. Key Concepts in Sociology provides a comprehensive, lively and clearly-written guide to the most important concepts in the subject. It includes both what might be regarded as ‘classic’ sociological concepts, such as ‘class’, ‘bureaucracy’ and ‘community’, as well as subjects that have become increasingly prominent in recent times, such as ‘celebrity’, ‘risk’ and ‘the body’.
Each of the thirty-eight substantive entries: Defines the concept; provides a clear and compelling narrative; clarifies the main debates, perspectives and disagreements; gives advice on further reading
Key Concepts in Sociology should be the first choice for sociology students at all levels of learning.
Positivism
Positivism
According to Williams (1976), though the description ‘positivist’ had become a swear-word, the real argument remained: this was about what was ‘scientific’ in social science. To its defenders, positivism permitted authoritative knowledge and research: they considered the dominance and subsequent fall of the positivist tradition to be the most significant feature of social science over the previous two hundred years (Smith, 2003: 75). Others used the term pejoratively, seeing positivism as obstinately delivering an ever more sophisticated quantification of what could be measured, even where this was unimportant or irrelevant.
In Gartrell and Gartrell's (2002) view, logical positivism had reached its zenith in American sociology in the late 1960s, but in 1990, when a number of prominent American sociologists met to offer a ‘eulogy to the ...
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