An End to the Crisis of Empirical Sociology? by Linda McKie Louise Ryan

Author:Linda McKie, Louise Ryan [Linda McKie, Louise Ryan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138596313
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2018-04-25T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

Explanation and empirical social research

Getting beyond description while still making it interesting!

David Byrne

Introduction

This chapter will demonstrate how research can be done within a ‘complex realist’ methodological framing that pays enough attention to both context and detail to inform public debate and deploys techniques that enable us to make sensible and useful causal statements so that we can understand how things come to be as they are and how they might be made different. It rejects the notion that the availability of ‘big data’ will transform the ways in which useful social research with a causal focus can be done. Instead, it argues that we need to deploy the whole repertoire of traditional social research methods, with the methods embedded in an explicit methodological programme. The chapter will present an account of how we might attempt to explore and possibly even establish complex and multiple causality in relation to social change. We could, of course, do this at any of the macro, meso or micro levels. Indeed, following the suggestion of Uprichard and Byrne (2006), we might even attempt to cross levels. The example chosen to illustrate the argument here will be that of the different trajectories of post-industrial/industrial city regions.

The emphasis on cause is deliberate. Danermark et al. contend:

first, that science should have generalizing claims. Second, that the explanation of social phenomena by revealing the causal mechanisms which produce them is the fundamental task of research.

(2002: 1)

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.