Durkheim and social realism

The term positivism has a long and varied history and is often used loosely. The imbalance of egoism, altruism, anomie, and fatalism could not be perceived by sensory perception, but had to be penetrated by special methods. Medical sociologists do not avoid theorizing simply by claiming to reject it on the grounds that they are researchers concerned only with the real, or empirical, world. The theoretical assumptions that are made structure the scope and nature of research, including what are considered as appropriate data and how those data are interpreted. Durkheim shares with the interpretative subjectivists a concern with a meaningful social order, but differs from most of them in not assuming that this means making a rigid distinction between the natural and social sciences. A Durkheimian analysis of the study of the ‘interior’, and the interpretation of experiences, approaches the problem in a rather different way

Aesthetics · Epistemology · Health care · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Realism · Social realism · Sociology · Sociology of health and illness · Emile Durkheim and Sociology · Law · Philosophy · Psychology

• Is anybody there? Critical realism, chronic illness and the disability debate

  Open Access•Simon J Williams•Sociology of Health & Illness•1999

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