3 Social science theories, methods, and values
Learning Objectives for this Chapter
After reading this Chapter, you should be able to:
- understand, apply, and evaluate core social science values, concepts, and theories, which can help inform and guide our understanding of how the world works, how power is defined and exercised, and how we can critically understand and engage with these concepts when examining the world around us.
Social science theory: theories to explain the world around us
As we have discussed in previous chapters, social science research is concerned with discovering things about the social world: for instance, how people act in different situations, why people act the way they do, how their actions relate to broader social structures, and how societies function at both the micro and macro levels. However, without theory, the ‘social facts’ that we discover cannot be woven together into broader understandings about the world around us.
Theory is the ‘glue’ that holds social facts together. Theory helps us to conceptualise and explain why things are the way they are, rather than only focusing on how things are. In this sense, different theoretical perspectives, such as those discussed in this Chapter, act as different lenses through which we can see and interpret the world around us.
Theory testing and generation is also an important part of social scientific research. As shown in the image below, different theories are rooted in different philosophical foundations. That is, various theories arise in accordance with different ways of seeing and living in the world, as well as different understandings about how knowledge is understood and constructed. As we learned earlier in the book, these concern both ontological and epistemological considerations, but also axiological considerations; that is, questions about the nature of value, and what things in the world hold value (including in relation to one another). While theory is rooted in these philosophical foundations, however, it also gives way to different ways of doing research, both in terms of the methodology and methods employed. Overall, using different theoretical perspectives to consider social questions is a bit like putting on different pairs of glasses to see the world afresh.
Below we consider some foundational social science theories. While these are certainly not the only theoretical perspectives that exist, they are often considered to be amongst the most influential. They also provide helpful building blocks for understanding other theoretical perspectives, as well as how theory can be applied to guide and build social scientific knowledge.
Structural functionalism
Structural functionalism is a theory about social institutions, ‘social norms’ (i.e., the often unspoken rules that govern social behaviours), and social stability. We talk more about social institutions in the next Chapter of this book, but essentially they are the ‘big building blocks’ of society t