Interpretivism

Interpretivism

1. Interpretivists, or anti-positivists argue that individuals are not just puppets who react to external social forces as Positivists believe.

2. An Interpretivist approach to social research would be much more qualitative, using methods such as unstructured interviews or participant observation

3. They prefer research methods such as unstructured interviews, participant observation, group interviews and overt observation

4. According to Interpretivists individuals are intricate and complex and different people experience and understand the same ‘objective reality’ in very different ways and have their own, often very different, reasons for acting in the world, thus scientific methods are not appropriate.

5. Learning to Labour by Paul Willis (1977) is a study of twelve working class ‘lads’ from a school in Birmingham conducted between 1972 and 1975. He spent a total of 18 months observing the lads in school and then a further 6 months following them into work.

6. Interpretivists argue that in order to understand human action we need to achieve ‘Verstehen‘, or empathetic understanding – we need to see the world through the eyes of the actors doing the acting.

7. •Intereptivists actually criticise ‘scientific sociology’ (Positivism) because many of the statistics it relies on are themselves socially constructed.

8. created by callum Lewis