SOCI 1010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Participant Observation, Artificiality, Grounded Theory
5 Jan 2017
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Document Summary
Five ways of knowing the world answers ourselves) observations. Personal experience, tradition, authority and religion are all valid sources of understanding. First, science is empirical, based on the assumption that knowledge is best gained by direct, systematic observation. Second, scientific knowledge is systematic and public. Procedures are organized, public and recognized by other scientists. Third, built in mechanism of self- correction, they do not claim represent eternal truths but rather present hypotheses. Fourth, science is objective, scientists try to ensure that their biases do not affect their research. Weber pointed out that 1. researches values influence their selection of research problems. Believed that sociology was fundamentally concerned with the subjective meaning of social action. Primary tasks of the sociologist is to understand the meaning an act has for the actor himself, not for the observer. How we go about constructing meaning is a matter of interpretation.
