Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology

The Logic of Social InquiryFall 2017

Prem Kumar Rajaram

Two credit MA course

General scope of the course

This is a course on the ‘logic’ and politics of social inquiry. The aim of the course is to provide an introduction to the logic and methods of inquiry in the social sciences. The course is divided into three parts. We begin by considering the politics of social inquiry: what constitutes knowledge? How are specific modes of inquiry authorised? The aim here is for students to consider the politics and intent that are sometimes left unsaid in the construction of research projects. Students will be encouraged to think through and critique their own intentions as well as the specific academic and cultural politics that authorise certain forms of knowledge practice.

The second part of the course will focus on methods of social research. The aim here is for students to familiarise themselves with methods of inquiry used in the making of what constitutes knowledge in the social sciences. The third part of the course considers the impact of what we will have studied thus far for conceiving and writing that strange and often contradictory creature known as a ‘research proposal’.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course, students should have a clear idea of the gap between a research idea - based on empirical evidence, a political or social intent, or a perception of social and historical reality - and the translation of that ‘idea’ into ‘knowledge’. Students should be familiar with important methods of inquiry deployed to close that gap as well as the ‘political’ choices made in doing so. Students should then be able to formulate their own research project, in the form of a nascent research proposal.

Course requirements and assessment

Basis of Evaluation:

Research proposal: 50%

Mid term paper: 30%

Class participation: 20%

The main form of assessment in this class is the development of a research proposal, which is effectively a way of introducing your research to a wider audience and asserting how it connects to, and perhaps goes beyond, traditions of inquiry in the social sciences. ‘Connects to’ does not mean repeat or agree: it means being able to articulate where your perspective on research comes from. The research proposal will be worked on together and in small teams, an through in-class workshops.

Students will also be asked to write a mid term paper, more details on that will follow, but the aim is for students to think through the meaning and intentionality of research projects.

Class participation - meaning participation in online discussions, in-class workshops, and general class discussion - is important :)

Course structure

Lecture 1 - Introduction

This lecture will introduce the course as a whole and focus on framing the gap between an idea, evidence or social reality and what constitutes a research project..

Robert K Merton (1987). “Three Fragments from a Sociologist’s Notebooks”. Annual Review of Sociology 13: 1-28.

C. Wright Mills (1959) The Sociological Imagination Chapter 1

Lorraine Daston (2000). “The Coming Into Being of Scientific Objects”. In Daston (ed). Biographies of Scientific Objects. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Edward Said (1976/1985). Beginnings: Intention and Method. New York: Columbia University Press. [excerpts].

James Baldwin (2017) I am not your Negro. Film, excerpts.

Peter Berger (1972). Ways of Seeing. TV Series. Excerpts.

Part 1 - the Politics of Social Inquiry

Lecture 2 - Eurocentrism and the social sciences

Immanuel Wallerstein (1997). “Eurocentrism and its Avatars: the dilemmas of social science”. New Left Review. 226: 93-107.

Gurminder Bhambra (2007). Rethinking Modernity: Postcolonialism and the Sociological Imagination. New York: Palgrave. [excerpts].

Syed Farid Alatas (2003). “Academic Dependency and the Global Division of Labour in the Social Sciences”. Current Sociology. 51(6): 599–613.

Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999) Decolonizing Methodologies: research and indigenous peoples. London: Verso, excerpts.

Lecture 3 - Politics of Knowing

Anne Oakley (2000). Experiments in knowing: gender and method in the social sciences. Cambridge: Polity Press, excerpts.

Michel Foucault (1991). “Questions of Method”. In Burchell et al (eds). The Foucault Effect.

Part 2 Methods of social research

Lecture 4 - The methodologies of the social sciences

Georg Simmel (1950) Fundamental Problems of Sociology (Wolff, Kurt H. (editor), 1950. The Sociology of Georg Simmel. New York: Free Press. excerpts.

Flyvbjerg, Bent. 2001. Making Social Science Matter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.)

Tilly, Charles. 1984. Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Lecture 5 - The Research Proposal

Gal, Susan, and Nadia Abu El-Haj. 2000. Checklist for Proposals. Unpublished manuscript, University of Chicago.

Booth, Wayne C. 1995. The Craft of Research. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Becker, Howard S. 1998. Tricks of the trade: How to think about your research while you are doing it. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Lecture 6 Causality and Determination

Bernert, Christopher. 1983. "The Career of Causal Analysis in American Sociology".
British Journal of Sociology. 34: 230-254.

Berk, Richard. 1988. “Causal Inference for Sociological Data.” Pp. 155-172 in The
Handbook of Sociology, edited by Neil Smelser. Beverly Hills: Sage.

Lecture 7 Evidence, Semantics and Interpretation

Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.

Burawoy, Michael et al. 1991. Ethnography Unbound. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Lecture 7 Agency and Structure

Sewell, William Jr. 1992. "A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency and
Transformation". American Journal of Sociology. 98: 1-29.

Mustafa Emirbayer and Anne Misch (1998). “What is Agency”. American Journal of Sociology 103(4):

Lecture 8 Cases and Casing

Andrew Abbot (2001). “What Do Cases Do?” In Abbot Time Matters. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Andrew Abbot (2001). “Things of Boundaries”. In Abbot Time Matters. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Ragin, Charles C. 1992. “Casing and the process of social inquiry” Pp. 217-226 in What is a Case: Exploring foundations of social inquiry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lecture 9 Relational Sociologies

Mustafa Emirbayer (1997). “Manifesto for a Relational Sociology”. American Journal of Sociology 103(2):

Lecture 10 Historical Materialism

David Harvey (1984). “On the History and Present Condition of Geography: A historical materialist manifesto”. Professional Geographer 36(1): 1-11.

Elster, Jon. 1982. "Marxism, Functionalism, and Game Theory". Theory and Society.
11: 453-482.

Etienne Balibar (1997). “On the Basic concepts of historical materialism”. In Althusser et al (eds.) Reading Capital. London: Verso.

Week 12 History and Narrative

Skocpol, Theda and Margaret Somers. 1980. “The Uses of Comparative History in Macrosocial Inquiry”. Comparative Studies in Society and History. 22: 174-197.

Griffin, Larry J. 1993. “Narrative, Event-Structure Analysis, and Causal Interpretation in Historical Sociology”. American Journal of Sociology. 98: 1094-1133.

Isaac, Larry W. 1997. “Transforming Localities: Reflections on Time, Causality and Narrative in Contemporary Historical Sociology”. Historical Methods. 30: 4-12.

Week 13 Sequencing and path dependence

Mahoney, James. 2000. “Path Dependence in Historical Sociology.” Theory and Society 29: 507-548.

Abbott, Andrew. 1983. “Sequences of Social Events: Concepts and Methods for the Analysis of Order in Social Processes.” Historical Methods 16(4):129-149.

Sewell, William H. Jr. 1996. “Three Temporalities: Toward An Eventful Sociology.” Pp. 245-280 in The Historic Turn in the Human Sciences, edited by Terrence J.
McDonald. Ann Arbor: University Of Michigan Press.