The Method of Explanation in Sociology

Abstract

The problem of application of the method of explanation in sociological research is one of the most important problems in the field that might be tentatively termed "the methodology of sociology" (a) or "the logic of sociology." However, from the very outset it is necessary to make precisely clear that the formulation of the task of developing a "logic of sociology" in Marxism, on the one hand, and in contemporary capitalist-oriented sociology, on the other, is not only fundamentally different, but basically contradictory. In the first place, contemporary capitalist-oriented sociology is characterized by a dichotomy between sociological theory and methodology. Capitalist-oriented sociologists emphasize especially that theory and methodology are two different things. This idea is presented in detail in an article by J. MacKinney, in the volume Contemporary Sociological Theory [Sovremennaia sotsiologicheskaia teoriia], and many other writers often repeat it. "Whereas sociologists study man in society, methodologists study the sociologist at work," (1) writes Lazersfeld. Underlying this concept is, in the first place, an unjustified identification of the "division of labor" among researchers concerning themselves with identical subject matter, with a division of the subject matter itself. In the second place, this conception is conditioned by a fundamentally erroneous view of the nature and functions of sociological theory, and of all theory in general.