SA 150 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Reality Television, Participant Observation, Eurocentrism

• School: Simon Fraser University
• Department: Sociology and Anthropology
• Course: SA 150
• Professor: Lindsey Freeman

Document Summary

Research methodology: the system of methods a researcher uses to gather data on a particular question. Sociology is a big discipline with researchers taking a variety of approaches. There is no single best way to do sociological research, in fact researchers will often combine several research methods in their work. Be a swiss army knife, not a hammer. If you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail. French philosopher august comte (1798 1857) believed that the objective scientific methods used to study the natural sciences could be applied to the social sciences. He said sociology was a kind of social physics. In essence, comte implied that researchers didn"t have biases on the basis of gender, age, or ethnicity. Was believed that favouring the objective outsider perspective would produce the best research: critical sociology stresses the unique role of the insider perspective. In the insider perspective, the subject being studied provides information that comes from his or her subjective experience.