SLGY 3323 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Ethnic Group, Social Fact, Symbolic Interactionism
17 Sep 2017
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A causes b: a quantity = an amount or mass of something. Ie; security cameras installed at mall (a), and then the courts have more shoplifting cases to process (b) We can measure the amount of cases before and after the installation of the cameras via quantative methods o : a quality an aspect, attribute or essence of something. Some things, like human experiences and sensations are difficult to quantify. And the meanings we give to things come from their qualities. As qualities are hard to measure with mathematical precision we thus need qualitative methods: ontology investigates the nature of being, what is real? (reality) Ie; is society an objective reality of its own kind (durkheim) or does it exist only subjectively in one"s mind: epistemology refers to ways of knowing and to problems in ascertaining what is true (knowledge) Critical sociologists argue there are many ways of knowing.
