Blackwell Reference Online

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It is useful to think of social theories as “languages” or “vocabularies” – i.e. ways of thinking or speaking about social phenomena – that are cobbled together by theorists to serve their own, quite concrete interests and purposes. Sociologists whose interest is in the explanation, prediction, and control of human behavior, for example, typically prefer vocabularies containing “thin,” abstract, statistical, and mathematical terms. By contrast, those who want to praise or condemn certain behaviors or institutions, establish relations with other cultures or subcultures, understand different languages, or grasp the nature of others’ suffering will quite naturally prefer “thicker” descriptions, and more interpretive or hermeneutic vocabularies. Sociologists of the first kind tend to view themselves as “discovering facts” about the nature of societies, thus carrying on the tradition of Plato, Kant, Enlightenment rationalism, and modern science. Sociologists of the second type see their allies in Hegel, the Romantics, Nietzsche, Heidegger, James, and Dewey, and are more likely to describe themselves as “constructing narratives” like those of a writer or poet. Durkheim was clearly a theorist of the first type, i.e. he saw himself as a scientist, “discovering” causal and functional explanations for social facts, which he viewed as a part of nature. But Durkheim's preference for this “scientific” ... log in or subscribe to read full text