Durkheim’s work also illustrates the importance of theory: without theories to explain the relationship between concepts, we would not be able to understand cause and effect relationships in social life. While Durkheim’s findings have since been criticized, his study is a classic example of the use of theory to explain the relationship between two concepts. The higher suicide rates were the result of weakening social bonds among Protestants. Durkheim argued that the looser social ties found in Protestant religions lead to weaker social cohesion and reduced social solidarity. When Durkheim introduced the ideas of anomie and social solidarity, he began to explain the difference in suicide rates. At this point, Durkheim’s analysis was still in the data stage he had not proposed an explanation for the different suicide rates of the two groups. Durkheim found that Protestants were more likely than Catholics to commit suicide. By aggregating data for large groups of people in Europe, Durkheim was able to discern patterns in suicide rates and connect those patterns with another concept (or variable), religious affiliation. In his now classic work, Suicide, Emile Durkheim was interested in explaining a social phenomenon, suicide, and employed both data and theory to offer an explanation. In order to understand the social world around us, it is necessary to employ theory to draw the connections between seemingly disparate concepts.Īnother example of sociological theorizing illustrates this point. If Putnam had not proposed a relationship between the two elements of social life, we may not have realized that television viewing does, in fact, reduce people’s desire to, and time for participating in civic life. Data alone are not particularly informative. In the theory above, the data showed that that civic engagement has declined and TV watching has increased. Theory is the connective tissue that bridges the connection between raw data and critical thought. Because such theories are dependent on context and specific to certain situations, it is beyond the scope of this text to explore each of those theories. There are many middle-range and micro-range theories in sociology. Sociological theory is developed at multiple levels, ranging from grand theory to highly contextualized and specific micro-range theories. In other words, a theory is an explanation for why a phenomenon occurs. A theory is a proposed relationship between two or more concepts. Sociologists develop theories to explain social phenomena. In sociology, sociological perspectives, theories, or paradigms are complex theoretical and methodological frameworks, used to analyze and explain objects of social study, and facilitate organizing sociological knowledge. ![]() ![]() sociological theory: A theory is a statement as to how and why particular facts are related.anomie: Alienation or social instability caused by erosion of standards and values.cause and effect: Cause and effect (also written as cause-effect or cause/effect) refers to the philosophical concept of causality, in which an action or event will produce a certain response to the action in the form of another event.
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