Naturalistic Research Into Subcultures and Deviance
An account of a sociological tendency
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20078415 |
|---|---|
| Authors | B Roberts (0000-0002-4232-9459, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2002 |
| Pages | 243-252 |
| Publication date | 2002-01-31 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | Resistance Through Rituals (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.4324/9780203224946-22 |
| OpenAlex | W2997375155 |
| ISBN | 9780203224946 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
NATURALISTIC RESEARCH INTO SUBCULTURES AND DEVIANCE Brian Roberts Apart from journalistic accounts, the study of sub-cultures has been, mainly, pursued within the framework of sociological inquiry rather than, say, within social history. But, for good and comprehensible reasons, the sociological study of ‘deviant subcultures’ has (like its subject-matter) been itself ‘deviant’ with respect to mainstream sociology. The ‘mainstream’ tradition in sociology is positivistic. It aims for an objective scientific completeness-‘science’ here meaning not, as in the German, the serious, rigorous and systematic study of an area or phenomenon, but, more narrowly, a mode of inquiry as close as possible to what rather ill-informed social scientists believe are the methods of ‘natural science’. The fact that this view of how natural science works is outdated, a nineteenth rather than a twentieth century conception, has not prevented sociology from pursuing what it has taken to be its true, if elusive, ‘ultimate goal’. The reliance on quantification, the use of the analytic method, the adoption of an ahistorical standpoint, the search for ‘objective causality’, are all part of this deeper philosophic quest-not for truth, but for a particular kind of certainty. The idea that societies are structurallyfunctioning ‘wholes’, integrated around a ‘central value system’ with a single social and moral order has also been part of that quest, though it has come to the fore with an overwhelming ideological force especially in the more recent period. Positivistic methods of inquiry, into societies conceived as functionallyintegrated wholes, naturally find conflict and ‘deviance’ from the dominant norms and social order particularly perplexing, though Merton’s attempts to harness the field to structural-functionalist must not be forgotten (Merton, 1968:175-248)
Criminology · Epistemology · Naturalism · Social science · Sociological research · Sociology · Statistics · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Crime, Deviance, and Social Control · Mathematics · Philosophy · Psychology · Sociology and Norbert Elias
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,19 |
| Citation span | 2010 - 2020 (11) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |