Nitin Sangwan

Non-Positivist Methodologies
When it was realized by scholars that sociological issues cannot be addressed using fixed laws only, they
turned from positivism to non-positivism. While positivist methodologies saw society as given and man
as mere part of it governed by its rules. Non positivists on the other hand considered man as
independent thinking being who can influence society also. They rejected the over-socialized conception
of man. Non-positivist methodologies, thus, tried to gauge what goes inside mind of man and how it
affects society.
Even before establishment of sociology as a formal discipline, such ideas were prevalent during late 18th
century when German idealist school attempted to define social realty differently. Scholars like Dilthey
and Rickert highlighted the difference between natural and social world. According to them social world
is based upon uniqueness of human society in terms of meaning, symbols and motives. The leader of
German idealist school George Hegel argued, Social phenomena are results of the ideas which are
generated in the minds of individuals and these ideas are responsible for history. This tradition was
carried on and by the end of 19th century an alternate view to positivism has strongly emerged which
contained variety of thoughts and was collectively known as non-positivist methodology.
Weber was one of the pioneers of non-positivist approach. Other early doyens were like Mead, Herbert
Blumer, Schutz etc. Weber laid foundation of interpretativist methodology and Mead pioneered
symbolic Interactionism. Various non-positivist methods which emerged include Symbolic
Interactionism, Ideal Types and Verstehen of Weber, Phenomenology by Alfred Schutz in 1930s,
Ethnomethodology by Harold Garfinkel in1940s and so on.
Various elements that run common to these methodologies are
I.

Non-positivists study the internal processes represented through emotions, motives, aspirations
and the individuals interpretation of social reality. For example Ethnomethodology relies
upon the everyday methods used by actors and their narratives.
II.
Non-positivists emphasized upon using qualitative methods and not scientific methods. Earlier
non-positivists like Weber and Mead emphasized upon using of scientific methods, but later
non-positivists like Alfred Schutz and Garfinkel out-rightly rejected their use.
III.
Non-positivists also suggested understanding of social reality and not prediction of events. They
refrained from formulation of generalized universal theories. Weber and Mead though stressed
upon cause and effect relations, but Schutz eliminated such possibility.
IV.
Non-positivists also highlighted impossibility of total objectivity and hence were accommodative
of subjectivity in research.
Some of the prominent non-positivist methodologies are mentioned below.
INTERPRETATIVIST SOCIOLOGY
It is an umbrella term for various streams like Phenomenology, Ethnomethodology, symbolic
interactionism and so on.
This approach was used for the first time by Max Weber in his book Methods of Social Science.
Weber was highly influenced by idealists like Rickert and Dilthey. According to this approach, the

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task of sociology is to interpret the meanings attached by individuals to their actions in order
thereby an explanation of its cause and effect.
The basis of this approach is that individual is having a voluntary will and his thoughts cannot be
understood simply in terms of external influence. Human beings have a consciousness which
cannot be predicted. This approach also came to be known as voluntarist approach. Weber also
proposed scientific methods for interpretative sociology. Methods used by Weber included
Verstehen, ideal type and comparative methods.
Approach of Weber later influenced the emergence of purely non-positivist approaches like
Phenomenology and Ethnomethodology. Georg Simmel a German sociologist was another early
doyen of this approach. In America, Chicago School led by Louis Firth, Robert Park, Mead etc
took this tradition forward.
PHENOMENOLOGY
It refers to a group of perspectives and it is a distinctive European branch of sociology which
emerged as an alternative to positivism. It simply means study of phenomenon in society.
Phenomenology was the most radical departure from positivist approach and perhaps the first
pure non-positivist perspective in sociology. It argued that subject matter of natural sciences
and social sciences are fundamentally different man has consciousness, material things dont
have and hence, methods of natural sciences cannot be applied on social sciences. Meanings
dont have their own independent existence. Instead, they are constructed and reconstructed
by the actors in the course of their social interaction. From a phenomenological perspective, the
social world is a world of meanings and there is no objective reality which lies beyond the
meanings of individual. Max Weber was a big influence on the development on this stream of
sociology.
Effort to develop it can be traced to the publication of Alfred Schutzs The Phenomenology of
the Social World in 1932, though its philosophical base was initially developed by Edmund
Husserl. Schutz was focally concerned with the way in which people grasp the consciousness of
others while they live within their own stream of consciousness.
It describes how from a stream of undifferentiated experiences individuals develop their own
subjective reality and meanings. Since meanings are constantly negotiated in ongoing
interaction process, it is not possible to establish simple cause and effect relationship.
Much of Schutzs work focuses on an aspect of the social world called the life-world, or the
world of everyday life. Phenomenology studies the everyday phenomena that happen in our
social lives. Our life world or everyday world is an intersubjective world in which people both
create social reality and are constrained by the preexisting social and cultural structures created
by their predecessors. Schutz focused upon the dialectical relationship between the way people
construct social reality and the stubborn external social and cultural reality that they inherit
from those who preceded them in the social world. He was particularly interested in
typifications i.e. way the phenomenon which is being experienced is classified according to
previous experience. It helps in a quick understanding of reality and makes it more predictable.

 Nitin Sangwan
Basic premise of Alfred Schutz was later more systematized by Peter Berger and Thomas
Luckmann in their famous book The Social Construction of Reality, 1967. Phenomenologists
reject a causal explanation, generalization of theory and use of any specific methods. The social
meanings of the phenomena keep on changing with time with changing individuals subjectivity.
According to Phenomenologists, there is no reality beyond the subjectivity of individual. They
say that in order to decipher the phenomena, the sociologists must immerse themselves into
the areas of life they seek to investigate, rather than attempting to fit the data into predefined
categories.
SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM
Herbert Blumer, who was a student of Mead, coined the term symbolic interactionism in 1937
which originally flows from works of G H Mead who wrote several essays that were instrumental
in its development. John Dewey, Cooley and William Thomas were other influences. Chicago
School played significant role in its development for around 30 years till 1950s. Its basic tenets
were similar to phenomenology, but it was distinctively American unlike Phenomenology which
originated in Europe. It rejects both social and biological determinism and argues that man
himself creates social reality by meanings created through interaction. It places a strong
emphasis on symbols and language as core element of all human interactions.
Symbolic interactionists have been affected by Webers ideas on Verstehen, as well as by others
of Webers ideas. Symbolic interactionism was developed, in large part, out of Simmels interest
in action and interaction and Meads interest in consciousness.
Mead understood the human behavior as governed by the internal processes by which people
interpret the whole world around them and give meanings to their lives. These meanings are
reinforced and modified during the process of interaction. Symbolic interaction, thus, stresses
upon that social phenomenon must be understood in terms of the interaction between the
participating individuals. According to Mead, interactions are possible only through some
symbols called significant symbols like language, gestures etc. Thus, symbolic interactionism
springs from a concern for language and meanings. It directs our attention to the details of
interpersonal interaction. Irving Goffman is also one of the most successful symbolic
interactionists and his studies of mental asylums and ways in which people present their selves
in social encounters.
To Blumer, behaviorism and structural functionalism both tended to focus on factors (for
example, external stimuli and norms) that cause human behavior. As far as Blumer was
concerned, both theories ignored the crucial process by which actors endow the forces acting
on them and their own behaviors with meaning. Individuals in human society are not seen as
units that are motivated by external or internal forces beyond their control, or within the
confines of a more or less fixed structure. Rather, they are viewed as reflective or interacting
units which comprise the societal entity.
The crucial assumption that human beings possess the ability to think differentiates symbolic
interactionism from its behaviorist roots. The ability to think enables people to act reflectively

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rather than just behave unreflectively. The ability to think is embedded in the mind and mind is
different from physiological brain. Mind is a result of socialization process and it is not a thing,
but is a process.
People possess only a general capacity for thought. This capacity must be shaped and refined in
the process of social interaction. Such a view leads the symbolic interactionist to focus on a
specific form of social interaction socialization. The human ability to think is developed early
in childhood socialization and is refined during adult socialization. Symbolic interactionists have
a view of the socialization process that is different from that of most other sociologists. To
symbolic interactionists, conventional sociologists are likely to see socialization as simply a
process by which people learn the things that they need to survive in society. To the symbolic
interactionists, socialization is a more dynamic process that allows people to develop the ability
to think, to develop in distinctively human ways. Furthermore, socialization is not simply a oneway process in which the actor receives information, but is a dynamic process in which the actor
shapes and adapts the information to his or her own needs.
Interaction is the process in which the ability to think is both developed and expressed. All types
of interaction, not just interaction during socialization, refine our ability to think. In most
interaction, actors must take account of others and decide if and how to fit their activities to
others. However, not all interaction involves thinking. According to Blumer, non-symbolic
interactions dont require thinking, but symbolic interactions require thinking.
Symbolic interactionists conceive of language as a vast system of symbols. Words are symbols
because they are used to stand for things. Words make all other symbols possible. Acts, objects,
and other words exist and have meaning only because they have been and can be described
through the use of words. Symbols are crucial in allowing people to act in distinctively human
ways. Because of the symbol, the human being does not respond passively to a reality that
imposes itself but actively creates and re-creates the world acted in. In addition to this general
utility, symbols in general and language in particular have a number of specific functions for the
actor
I.

II.

III.
IV.

First, symbols enable people to deal with the material and social world by allowing them
to name, categorize, and remember the objects they encounter there. In this way,
people are able to order a world that otherwise would be confusing. Language allows
people to name, categorize, and especially remember much more efficiently than they
could with other kinds of symbols, such as pictorial images.
Second, symbols improve peoples ability to perceive the environment. Instead of being
flooded by a mass of indistinguishable stimuli, the actor can be alerted to some parts of
the environment rather than others.
Third, symbols improve the ability to think. Although a set of pictorial symbols would
allow a limited ability to think, language greatly expands this ability.
Fourth, symbols greatly increase the ability to solve various problems. Lower animals
must use trial-and-error, but human beings can think through symbolically a variety of

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alternative actions before actually taking one. This ability reduces the chance of making
costly mistakes.
V.
Fifth, the use of symbols allows actors to transcend time, space, and even their own
persons. Through the use of symbols, actors can imagine what it was like to live in the
past or what it might be like to live in the future.
VI.
Sixth, symbols allow us to imagine a metaphysical reality, such as heaven or hell.
Symbolic interactionists primary concern is with the impact of meanings and symbols on human
action and interaction. Meanings and symbols give human social action (which involves a single
actor) and social interaction (which involves two or more actors engaged in mutual social action)
distinctive characteristics.
Basic principles of symbolic interaction are
I.
II.

Human beings, unlike lower animals, are endowed with the capacity for thought.
The capacity for thought is shaped by social interaction and not by virtue of external
force.
III.
While Functionalists and Marxists focus on society as a whole, interactionists focus on
small scale interaction. They dont think that human action is in response to system.
IV.
In social interaction people learn the meanings and the symbols that allow them to
exercise their distinctively human capacity for thought.
V.
Meanings and symbols allow people to carry on distinctively human action and
interaction.
VI.
People are able to modify or alter the meanings and symbols that they use in action and
interaction on the basis of their interpretation of the situation.
Most recently and famously, the perspective was used by Arlie Hochschild in her The Managed
Heart, 1983 which is based on her study of Delta Airlines. She studied how the air hostesses
manage their emotions to serve the passengers better. She terms this as emotional labor. She
used symbolic interaction to understand an aspect of life, which looked so basic and which most
think as being understood, and concludes that a very personal thing like emotions is also
commoditized.
Symbolic interactionism has also been criticized on various counts
I.
II.
III.

IV.

Firstly, it ignores certain common social facts like power, structure and their
constraining influence on human actions and interactions.
Interactionists are accused of examining human interaction in a vacuum. They focus
only on small face-to-face interaction and ignore the larger historical or social settings.
Some researchers have also argued that modern service industry requires manipulation
of emotional labor as well and very personal symbols like smile are no longer
voluntarily owned by individuals.
According to Skidmore, interactionists largely fail to explain why people consistently
choose to act in given ways in certain ways instead of all other possible ways. In this
way, they conveniently ignore the social constraints that are there.

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V.

Leon Shaskolsky also argue that Symbolic Interactionism embodies American values of
liberty, freedom and individuality and is biased by it and deliberately ignore the harsher
reality of life.
VI.
Marxists argue that meanings that are generated are not a result of interaction, but
external force due to presence of class relationships.
ETHNOMETHODOLOGY
The term has Greek roots and Ethnomethodology literally means the lay methods that people
use on a daily basis to accomplish their everyday lives. People are viewed as rational, but they
use practical reasoning, not formal logic, in accomplishing their everyday lives.
Ethnomethodology was proposed by American sociologist Harold Garfinkel beginning in the late
1940s, but it was first systematized with the publication of his Studies in Ethnomethodology in
1967.
It has various elements in common with
European phenomenology because Harold
Garfinkel was a student of Alfred Schutz at the
New School who has a great influence on it.
Garfinkel had previously studied under Talcott
Parsons, and it was the fusion of Parsonian and
Schutzian
ideas
that
helped
give
Ethnomethodology its distinctive orientation.
Aaron Cicourel was another big influence.

Conversation Analysis is the empirical study

of conversations, employing techniques
drawn
from
Ethnomethodology.
Conversation analysis examines details of
naturally occurring conversations to reveal
the organizational principles of talk and its
role in the production and reproduction of
social order. In this, all facets of conversation
for meaning from the smallest words like
Umm, Ooo etc to the timings of pauses,
interruptions etc are also studied.

Whereas phenomenological sociologists tend to

focus on what people think, ethnomethodologists
are more concerned with what people actually do. Thus, ethnomethodologists devote a lot of
attention to the detailed study of conversations.
It is defined as the study of the body of common-sense knowledge and the range of
procedures and considerations by means of which the ordinary members of society make sense
of, find their way about in, and act on the circumstances in which they find themselves. To put it
another way, Ethnomethodology is concerned with the organization of everyday life and it
examines the methods and procedures that people use to construct and account for their social
world. Like Phenomenologists, ethnomethodologists also reject an objective view of reality and
social order which starts from society and not individual.
Like Durkheim, Garfinkel considers social facts to be the fundamental sociological
phenomenon. However, Garfinkels social facts are very different from Durkheims social facts.
For Durkheim, social facts are external to and coercive of individuals. In contrast,
Ethnomethodology treats the objectivity of social facts as the accomplishment of members.
There are two central ideas to Ethnomethodology
I.

Indexicality It means that sense of an object or phenomenon is context specific. For

example, a same question may elicit different responses in different situations like

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informal conversations, interview etc. Members make a sense of a phenomenon in the
context of phenomenon.
II.
Reflexivity It refers to the fact that our sense of order is a result of conversational
process. It is created in talk. It is a reflective action and it is subjective interpretation of
order. It implies that order doesnt exist on its own, but is created by the individuals.
Individuals compare a particular instance to the underlying pattern and vice-versa to
reinforce each other.
Garfinkel argues that mainstream sociology has depicted man as a cultural dope who simply
acts out the standardized directives provided by the culture of his society. Instead members give
meanings to situations, construct their own world rather than being shaped by it. While
ethnomethodologists refuse to treat actors as cultural dopes, they do not believe that people
are almost endlessly reflexive, self-conscious and calculative. Rather, following Alfred Schutz,
they recognize that most often action is routine and relatively unreflective. In sum,
ethnomethodologists are interested in neither micro structures nor macro structures; they are
concerned with the artful practices that produce both types of structures.
Ethnomethodologists argue that social world is nothing more than the constructs,
interpretations and accounts of its members. Accounts are the ways in which actors explain
(describe, criticize, and idealize) specific situations. Ethnomethodologists devote a lot of
attention to analyzing peoples accounts, as well as to the ways in which accounts are offered
and accepted (or rejected) by others. This is one of the reasons that ethnomethodologists are
preoccupied with analyzing conversations and conversation analysis is one of the important
parts of the Ethnomethodology.
Extending the idea of accounts, ethnomethodologists point out that sociologists, like everyone
else, offer accounts. Thus, reports of sociological studies can be seen as accounts and analyzed
in the same way that all other accounts can be studied. A good deal of sociology (indeed all
sciences) involves commonsense interpretations. Ethnomethodologists can study the accounts
of the sociologist in the same way that they can study the accounts of the layperson.
Early ethnomethodological studies carried on by Garfinkel and his associates took place in
casual, non-institutionalized settings such as the home. Later, there was a move toward studying
everyday practices in a wide variety of institutional settingscourtrooms, medical settings. The
second variety of Ethnomethodology is conversation analysis.
Ethnomethodologists are criticized for taking a detached view of members of society. According
to Giddens, they seem to have no goals. Alvin Gouldner says that they ignore the fact that
interactions and the reality are shaped by the differential power relations that exist in society.
According to Goldthorpe, it seems that what members dont recognize, doesnt exist for them
and they remain insulated with that. This is, however, untrue.
However, the non-positivist methodologies cannot resolve the dilemma of objectivity and subjectivity.
Even Weber and Mead favored objectivity. Non-positivists could also not develop a single
methodological principle leading to wide variations in non-positivist research and some even stressed on
using quantitative methods. Non-positivist methods also depend heavily on ability of interrogator and as

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a result, different explanations were given for same phenomenon. Non-positivists ignore independent
existence of social phenomenon and overlook the fact that man is born in a pre-existing society.