Zur Integration von kritisch rationalistischer Methodologie und interpretativen Theorien in der Soziologie / On the integration of the critical rationalism and interpretative paradigms in sociology

Abstract

Abstract The problem of this paper is formulated in relation to an extreme representative of the interpretative paradigm (1). The possibility of a distinction between a theoretical and a methodological paradigm is examined; also examined are the conditions for a combination of the interpretative paradigm as a theoretical orientation with the methodological paradigm of critical rationalism (2). The most important attributes of the latter are first given (2.1.); a short characterisation of the theoretical position of symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology follows (2.2.); the methodological position of the interpretative paradigm is reconstructed and discussed from papers of BLUMER and GARFINKEL (2.3.); the thesis is advanced that this methodological position is a trivial one and that the few valuable methodological statements in fact must be evaluated as theoretical hypotheses or even as orientating statements. From this thesis are the conditions for a combination deduced in 2.4. The thesis and the deduced conditions are illustrated with a modification of some ethnomethodological statements; conditions for these modifications are formulated as a reconstruction of BERNSTEIN’s sociolinguistic theory.