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Sociology methodology

Hey,

I'm strugling to understand what Structalism and Interpretivism is? Could anyone kindly break it down for me and make it easy for me to understand?

Thanks a lot, Noor

Reply 1

The Learn Ranger

Original post by Noorshahzad__

Hey,

I'm strugling to understand what Structalism and Interpretivism is? Could anyone kindly break it down for me and make it easy for me to understand?

Thanks a lot, Noor

To put it briefly, structuralist approaches see societies as big systems. The best way to understand them is to collect quantitative data that you can make generalisations from and uncover the hidden patterns that guide social behaviour.

Interpretive approaches believe that the essence of understanding society lies in coming to terms with human subjectivity - the way they actually interpret the world. The job of the sociologist is to immerse themselves in human's experience.

So structuralist perspectives tend to favour quantitative approaches like official statistics and surveys, interpretive approaches go for participant observation and unstructured interviews.

Does this help you? :smile: