3 - The hermeneutics of otherness

Summary

Discussion of research methods in sociology has tended to become separated from other substantial themes, including theoretical ones, although there is still an approach that sees both as necessarily combined. In this older, and possibly more continental, tradition “methods” involve a theoretical struggle to clarify the proper objects of study. In British sociology, discussions of methods tend to be divorced from this wider context, but the broader approaches appear here too, in Adorno, and as we progress through feminism and get to theology.

In many cases of funded sociological research, particular methods are specified by the funder; they require quantitative data quite often, and sometimes even specify that there must be a survey, perhaps combined with some focus groups. Demands placed on sociology courses for vocational relevance quite often result in acquiring knowledge of methods that will suit commercial interests: opinion polls, surveys of customer responses, fairly simple feedback questionnaires, and, again, perhaps some focus groups. Methods tend to be taught in a separate module, and to be given a separate section in dissertations or theses, making the positivist assumption that adequate methods are the route to valid knowledge.