If sociology is the study of society, what does a sociologist actually do?

Do they sit around thinking about capitalism?

Do they spend their time reading statistics?

Do they interview people?

Do they watch how people behave?

Do they advise governments?

Do they expose inequality?

Or do they simply spend their careers arguing with other sociologists?

The answer is:

potentially all of these things.

Sociologists investigate the social world.

They ask questions about how society works, collect evidence, identify patterns, interpret people’s experiences and develop explanations for what they find.

But there is another question hiding underneath this.

What should sociologists do with the knowledge they produce?

Should they simply report their findings?

Should they advise governments?

Should they expose injustice?

Should they campaign for change?

And can a researcher ever completely separate their own values from the research they conduct?

These questions have been part of sociology almost from the beginning.

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Sociology means asking questions

A sociologist begins with a question.

Sometimes that question might appear relatively simple:

Why do some students achieve higher grades than others?

But the sociologist quickly begins pulling that question apart.

Does achievement differ according to social class?

Gender?

Ethnicity?

School attended?

Family income?

Teacher expectations?

Access to private tutoring?

Parental education?

Neighbourhood?

The sociological question is rarely:

Why did this particular person do this?

It is more often:

Is there a social pattern here — and what might explain it?

That means sociologists need something more than opinions.

They need research.

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Harriet Martineau: learning how to observe society

One of the earliest pioneers of systematic sociological research was Harriet Martineau (1802–1876).

She deserves far more attention in introductions to sociology than she has traditionally received.

During the 1830s, Martineau travelled extensively through the United States.

She wasn’t simply sightseeing.

She was observing society.

She examined areas including:

• religion;
• education;
• politics;
• prisons;
• family life;
• marriage;
• inequality;
• slavery;
• women’s position in society.

Her experiences contributed to Society in America and, importantly for sociological research, How to Observe Morals and Manners in 1838.

The latter has been described as an early systematic treatment of sociological methodology. Martineau discussed problems that still appear in research-methods courses today: bias, sampling, interviewing, observation, generalisation and the need to check evidence rather than simply trusting first impressions.

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Don’t just look — learn how to observe

Martineau recognised something extremely important.

Seeing something happen is not the same as researching it.

Imagine visiting another school for one afternoon.

You see three students behaving badly and conclude:

“Students at this school have terrible behaviour.”

What’s wrong with that conclusion?

Quite a lot.

Perhaps you happened to observe an unusual lesson.

Perhaps those three students were unrepresentative.

Perhaps your expectations influenced what you noticed.

Perhaps you ignored examples of positive behaviour.

Perhaps students behaved differently because they knew they were being observed.

Martineau recognised versions of these methodological problems remarkably early.

Sociological observation therefore needs to be:

systematic rather than casual.

Researchers need to think carefully about:

• what they observe;
• whom they observe;
• whether their evidence is representative;
• whether their own assumptions affect their conclusions;
• whether other evidence supports what they have seen.

That is one of the differences between sociological research and everyday observation.

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Émile Durkheim: finding social patterns

By the end of the nineteenth century, sociologists were attempting to establish sociology as a distinctive social science.

One of the most important figures was Émile Durkheim (1858–1917).

Durkheim believed that sociologists should investigate social facts — social forces, institutions, norms and patterns that exist beyond individual people.

His famous study Suicide (1897) provides an excellent example.

At first sight, suicide appears to be an intensely individual act.

We might naturally look for explanations within an individual’s:

• personality;
• mental state;
• relationships;
• personal experiences.

Durkheim did something different.

He examined patterns in suicide rates.

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From individual cases to social patterns

Durkheim compared rates between different populations and asked whether those differences could be connected to people’s relationships with wider society.

His broader explanation focused on ideas including social integration and social regulation.

The important point for someone beginning sociology is not that Durkheim believed every individual suicide had exactly the same explanation.

It is what he did methodologically.

He took something that appeared personal and asked:

Can we identify a social pattern?

That is one of the things sociologists do.

Imagine researchers discover that one social group consistently experiences:

• lower educational attainment;
• higher unemployment;
• poorer health;
• shorter life expectancy.

A sociologist does not stop at individual cases.

They ask:

Why is this pattern occurring?

That move from individuals towards patterns is fundamental to sociological research.

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Max Weber: understanding what behaviour means

Not every sociologist believed that research should simply imitate the natural sciences.

Max Weber (1864–1920) emphasised another part of sociological research:

understanding meaning.

Human beings are not rocks, chemicals or planets.

They interpret the world around them.

They have:

• beliefs;
• motives;
• values;
• intentions;
• identities.

If sociologists want to explain human action, Weber argued, they need to understand what that action means to the people involved.

This approach is commonly associated with the German term:

Verstehen — interpretive understanding.

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The Protestant Ethic: investigating ideas as well as economics

Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism provides a famous example.

Weber was interested in the development of modern capitalism.

A purely economic explanation might concentrate upon:

• markets;
• technology;
• ownership;
• investment;
• industrialisation.

Weber asked whether culture and religious ideas might also matter.

He investigated whether particular forms of ascetic Protestantism encouraged a disciplined approach towards:

• work;
• saving;
• reinvestment;
• personal conduct;
• the idea of work as a calling.

Weber was not simply arguing that “Protestantism caused capitalism”.

His argument was more sophisticated.

He was investigating whether particular cultural ideas helped create a social environment compatible with the developing spirit of modern capitalism. His Protestant Ethic thesis remains one of his most influential contributions to modern social science.

This tells us something important about sociological research.

Sociologists do not only count behaviour.

Sometimes they try to understand the meanings behind it.

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Durkheim versus Weber?

This gives us two slightly different images of the sociologist.

A Durkheimian researcher might ask:

What patterns can we identify?

A Weberian researcher might add:

What does this behaviour mean to the people involved?

Neither question has disappeared.

Modern sociologists regularly combine them.

Suppose we are researching religious participation.

Statistics might reveal:

how many people attend religious services.

Interviews might reveal:

what religious participation means to them.

Those are different questions requiring different kinds of evidence.

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Weber and values: should sociologists tell us what is right?

Weber also became central to one of sociology’s most difficult debates:

Can sociology be value-free?

This is sometimes oversimplified.

Weber did not claim that researchers somehow become people without values.

The topics we consider interesting are themselves influenced by what we regard as socially significant.

A researcher might choose to investigate:

• poverty;
• gender inequality;
• racism;
• educational achievement;
• family change.

That selection does not emerge from nowhere.

Values help influence what we decide is worth investigating.

However, Weber argued that sociologists should distinguish between empirical investigation and simply using academic authority to tell people which values they ought to hold.

Researchers should try to establish:

What does the evidence show?

rather than disguising:

What do I personally want to be true?

Weber therefore connected good social science with intellectual discipline: values can influence the selection of research problems, but researchers should distinguish empirical findings from their own value judgements.

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W.E.B. Du Bois: research can challenge assumptions

Research can also challenge ideas that powerful groups simply assume to be true.

This is particularly clear in the work of W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963).

In The Philadelphia Negro (1899), Du Bois conducted a systematic investigation of the lives and social conditions of Black residents in Philadelphia’s Seventh Ward.

Rather than treating African Americans as one homogeneous group or accepting racist explanations of poverty and crime, Du Bois gathered detailed empirical evidence about areas including:

• employment;
• family;
• housing;
• income;
• education;
• health;
• crime;
• neighbourhood conditions.

The research involved extensive household investigation and became an important early example of empirical American sociology.

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Research can expose bad explanations

This gives us another reason sociologists conduct research.

Sometimes evidence allows them to challenge assumptions.

Imagine someone claims:

“This group experiences poverty because its members simply don’t work hard enough.”

A sociologist could ask:

What are their employment rates?

Which occupations are available?

What wages do they receive?

Do they experience discrimination?

What housing is available?

What educational opportunities exist?

How does the group compare with others?

The researcher turns an assumption into something that can be investigated.

This does not guarantee that all sociologists will reach the same conclusion.

But it means claims should be tested against evidence.

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C. Wright Mills: connecting biography and history

C. Wright Mills (1916–1962) gives us another way to understand the sociologist’s job.

In The Sociological Imagination (1959), Mills argued that people need to understand the connection between individual biography and wider history.

He famously distinguished between:

personal troubles

and

public issues.

Consider unemployment.

If one person loses their job, we might investigate their particular situation.

But if unemployment suddenly increases across an entire country, explaining millions of cases in terms of individual laziness would be inadequate.

Something larger is happening.

The sociologist investigates:

• economic conditions;
• government policy;
• technological change;
• industrial restructuring;
• regional inequalities;
• changes within the labour market.

The sociological imagination therefore connects people’s personal experiences to wider social structures and historical circumstances.

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Sociology zooms out

You can think of Mills as encouraging sociologists to use a camera.

Sometimes we zoom in.

We investigate individual experiences.

Then we zoom out.

We look at the wider society.

For example:

One student fails an examination

Zoom in:

Did they revise?

Were they absent?

Did they understand the course?

Zoom out:

Are there class differences in educational attainment?

Do schools have equal resources?

Does poverty affect achievement?

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One family cannot afford its rent

Zoom in:

What is their income?

What are their spending decisions?

Zoom out:

What has happened to housing costs?

What are local wages?

How much social housing exists?

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One young person experiences anxiety

Zoom in:

What has happened within their life?

Zoom out:

Have levels of anxiety changed among young people?

Might education, employment insecurity, social media or economic conditions contribute?

That movement between individual experience and wider society is something sociologists do continually.

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Howard Becker: whose side are we on?

But conducting research creates another problem.

Whose account of society should the sociologist believe?

American sociologist Howard Becker (1928–2023) famously raised this issue in his essay Whose Side Are We On?

Imagine studying a school.

A senior teacher tells you:

“The school’s behaviour system treats everyone fairly.”

A student who has repeatedly been excluded tells you:

“Teachers pick on students like me.”

Whose explanation should the researcher accept?

Neither should automatically be treated as correct.

But Becker drew attention to what became known as a hierarchy of credibility.

In many institutions, the accounts offered by people in positions of authority are more readily treated as legitimate than those of less powerful groups.

Researchers therefore need to think carefully about whose voices are being heard and whose explanations are being treated as naturally credible.

Becker’s argument has sometimes been interpreted as saying that researchers should simply take the side of the underdog. The debate is actually more complicated: his work raises questions about researcher sympathy, credibility and objectivity rather than providing an excuse to abandon rigorous evidence.

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Alvin Gouldner: the myth of the completely neutral sociologist

This debate leads us to Alvin Gouldner (1920–1980).

Gouldner strongly challenged the idea that sociology could simply present itself as completely value-free.

His 1962 essay Anti-Minotaur: The Myth of a Value-Free Sociology attacked what he saw as a professional mythology surrounding value freedom.

For Gouldner, sociologists themselves exist within society.

They:

• have careers;
• work for universities;
• depend upon funding;
• have professional interests;
• make choices about what to research;
• have values of their own.

So why should we imagine researchers are somehow standing completely outside society?

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Are sociologists simply ‘hired guns’?

This becomes particularly important when somebody pays for research.

Imagine a large corporation commissions research into workplace conditions.

Or a government department funds research into welfare.

Or a technology company commissions research into children’s use of social media.

Immediately, sociological questions appear.

Who chose the research question?

Who paid?

Who controls publication?

What happens if the findings are embarrassing?

Does the researcher feel pressure to satisfy the client?

Could research become simply a service purchased by powerful organisations?

A useful classroom shorthand for Gouldner’s concern is the danger of the sociologist becoming a “hired gun” — supplying research expertise to whoever is prepared to pay.

But it is important to get Gouldner right.

He was not simply arguing that sociologists should be value-free.

Quite the opposite: Gouldner was a major critic of the myth that sociology could completely separate itself from values.

At the same time, he later warned against moving to the opposite extreme and simply assuming that openly partisan sociology automatically produces better sociology. His debate with Becker shows that neither supposedly perfect neutrality nor automatic political commitment provides an easy solution.

The question remains:

How can sociologists be aware of their values and interests while still producing rigorous research?

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Reflexivity: researching the researcher

One answer is reflexivity.

Reflexivity means researchers think critically about their own role in producing knowledge.

A sociologist might ask:

How might my gender affect this interview?

Does my social class influence how participants see me?

Does being a teacher affect how students respond to me?

Do I already have assumptions about the group I am investigating?

Does my funding organisation have particular interests?

Am I only noticing evidence that supports what I already believe?

This means the sociologist does not only investigate participants.

They also examine:

themselves as a researcher.

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Ann Oakley: rethink the relationship between researcher and participant

Feminist sociologists have made particularly important contributions to this debate.

Ann Oakley, for example, challenged the conventional idea that interviewers should always remain distant, detached and unemotional.

Traditional interviewing sometimes imagined the researcher as almost invisible:

Ask questions.

Record answers.

Reveal nothing about yourself.

Do not become involved.

Oakley’s feminist approach questioned whether this was either realistic or desirable, particularly when conducting in-depth research with women about personal experiences.

This raised a broader issue:

Research itself involves social relationships.

An interview is not simply information travelling from one person’s brain into another person’s notebook.

The interviewer’s identity, behaviour and relationship with participants can affect the knowledge produced.

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Anthony Giddens: people read sociology too

Anthony Giddens adds another complication.

Sociologists study a world inhabited by people who already interpret their own behaviour.

This is different from many natural sciences.

A molecule does not read chemistry textbooks.

A planet does not discover what astronomers have said about it and change its orbit.

But human beings can read sociology.

Giddens uses the idea of the double hermeneutic to describe the relationship between:

people interpreting their social world

and

sociologists interpreting those interpretations.

And then something even more interesting can happen.

Sociological ideas can enter everyday society.

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Sociology can change the thing it studies

Think about concepts such as:

• social class;
• patriarchy;
• labelling;
• moral panic;
• cultural capital;
• institutional racism;
• socialisation.

These begin as concepts used by academics.

But they can move into:

• journalism;
• politics;
• schools;
• workplaces;
• social media;
• everyday conversation.

People may then begin understanding themselves through these concepts.

That means sociology doesn’t always simply describe society from outside.

Sociological knowledge can feed back into society and potentially change the behaviour it originally attempted to explain.

This makes social research rather unusual.

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Sociologists don’t all do the same job

By now it should be obvious that asking:

“What do sociologists do?”

doesn’t have one answer.

Some analyse huge datasets.

Some spend years observing a community.

Some conduct interviews.

Some examine historical documents.

Some develop theories.

Some work with governments.

Some investigate corporations.

Some research inequality.

Some communicate sociology to the wider public.

This diversity was captured particularly clearly by sociologist Michael Burawoy.

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Burawoy: four ways of doing sociology

Burawoy suggested that sociology can be divided into four broad types.

Professional sociology

This is the sociology most closely associated with universities and academic research.

Professional sociologists:

• conduct studies;
• develop concepts;
• test theories;
• publish research;
• debate other sociologists.

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Policy sociology

Policy sociology attempts to answer questions for a particular client or practical problem.

For example:

How could school absenteeism be reduced?

What factors influence homelessness?

How effective is a particular crime-reduction programme?

This type of research may be commissioned by:

• governments;
• charities;
• local authorities;
• businesses;
• other organisations.

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Critical sociology

Critical sociology turns sociology back upon itself.

It asks:

What assumptions are sociologists making?

Whose perspectives dominate the discipline?

Which theories are being ignored?

Which values underpin sociological research?

Gouldner provides a good example of this critical tradition.

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Public sociology

Public sociology takes sociological knowledge beyond universities.

Sociologists might:

• write for newspapers;
• appear in documentaries;
• work with communities;
• speak at public events;
• produce podcasts;
• advise organisations;
• communicate research online.

Burawoy argued that professional, policy, critical and public sociology represent different but interconnected forms of sociological work.

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So what does a sociologist actually do?

We can now answer our original question.

A sociologist might:

Observe society

Martineau showed the importance of careful, systematic observation.

Identify social patterns

Durkheim demonstrated how apparently individual behaviour can reveal wider social patterns.

Understand meanings

Weber showed why researchers need to understand how people interpret their actions.

Challenge assumptions

Du Bois demonstrated the power of empirical research to challenge racial stereotypes and simplistic explanations.

Connect individuals to society

Mills encouraged us to connect personal troubles with public issues.

Question powerful accounts

Becker asked whose version of reality automatically receives credibility.

Examine their own role

Gouldner and later reflexive sociology remind us that sociologists themselves are part of the social world.

Investigate social interactions

Feminist researchers such as Oakley showed how research relationships themselves shape evidence.

Examine how sociology affects society

Giddens reminds us that people can respond to sociological knowledge.

Communicate beyond universities

Burawoy argues that sociology can have professional, policy, critical and public roles.

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But research still comes back to evidence

These sociologists disagree about many things.

But sociology cannot survive if researchers simply decide what they want the answer to be.

A sociologist should be able to ask:

What is my evidence?

How was it collected?

Who participated?

Who was excluded?

Could another researcher check my conclusions?

Could participants have interpreted my questions differently?

Is my sample representative?

Am I confusing correlation with causation?

Are my own assumptions affecting my interpretation?

Who funded the research?

Are there alternative explanations?

These are not annoying technical details.

They are what separate research from assertion.

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Sociology is organised curiosity

Perhaps the simplest way to describe sociological research is this:

Sociologists are professionally curious about society.

They notice something.

They ask why.

They gather evidence.

They compare.

They interpret.

They question.

They develop explanations.

Then other sociologists come along and question those explanations as well.

That final part matters.

Sociology is not about finding one final answer to society.

Society changes.

Evidence changes.

Methods improve.

New groups become visible.

Old theories are challenged.

New questions emerge.

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Three questions for every sociologist

As you begin studying sociological research, three questions are worth remembering.

1. What is happening?

This requires evidence.

Are there patterns?

How common is something?

Who experiences it?

Has it changed?

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2. Why is it happening?

This requires explanation.

Is social class important?

Gender?

Ethnicity?

Culture?

Institutions?

Power?

Individual meanings?

Historical change?

Usually there will be competing explanations.

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3. How do we know?

This is the research-methods question.

Who collected the evidence?

How?

Why?

Who paid for the research?

Is it valid?

Reliable?

Representative?

Ethical?

Could values have influenced the conclusions?

This may be the most sociological question of all.

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The sociologist’s job

Martineau taught sociologists to observe carefully.

Durkheim encouraged them to find social patterns.

Weber asked them to understand meanings while maintaining intellectual discipline.

Du Bois demonstrated how evidence can challenge established assumptions.

Mills taught them to connect personal lives and public issues.

Becker asked them to consider whose voices receive credibility.

Gouldner forced sociology to examine its own values and interests.

Oakley questioned the supposed neutrality of the research relationship.

Giddens showed that sociological knowledge can return to society and influence it.

Burawoy reminds us that sociology can operate in universities, policymaking and public life.

Put these together and being a sociologist begins to look rather different from simply being someone who knows lots of sociological theories.

A sociologist is someone who learns to look at society and ask:

What is happening?

Why is it happening?

Who says so?

What evidence do we have?

Whose perspective might be missing?

How did we produce this knowledge?

And finally:

What should we do with what we have discovered?

That is where sociological research really begins.

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