[사회학]Problem-solving sociology
사회학 논문 리딩
[Problem-solving sociology]
written by Monica Prasad
Sociology needs to go more than trying to understand or theorize about the social issues, but rather, be actually involved into solving the problems.
They are different to Burawoy’s Public Sociology that it means if sociological text informs/reaches enough non-sociologists, it has reached its goal, and different to Skocpol’s Scholars Strategy Network which focus on the communication between audiences outside social-science field, and those within.
Prasad mentions that trying to solve the problem in a sociological-research is important, and suggests three main methodological traps and lessons.
① The first trap she mentions is that we(as a sociological scholar) mostly are “Describing and Complaining rather than solving”, and suggests that we adopt a comparative method.
- Comparative method
: identify a site that has solved the problem, and a site that hasn't and turn to sociological theory for help in identifying how the problem has been solved and how/why the solution was reached
: it is helpful that it lets researchers avoid stigmatization(focusing only the negative parts of the particular problem), nor romaticization(ignoring the negative parts of the problem)
예) Embedded Autonomy(written by Peter Evans)
- Q: How have some very poor countries managed to become rich, while others haven't?
- Instead of explaining/critiquing/ telling about poverty, tries to solve poverty by asking how&why some countries managed to industrialize - by comparing three countries/ South Korea, India, Brazil..
- With the help of Max Weber and the approach was related with governance questions.
Q. 그 문제를 해결한 곳이 없을 경우에는 어떤 비교를 통해서 접근할 수 있는가?
예) "Toward a Dynamic Theory of Action at the Micro Level of Genocide: Killing, Desistance, and Saving in 1994 Rwanda." - Aliza Luft(2015)
- Instead of comparing across locations, comparison within people in the situation can be performed to see the situational factor that let/influenced the different people to act/function
② The second trap she mentions is that we are studying the victims rather than villains who actually caused the problem and have more influence(power) on controlling the problem, and suggests that we should study the cause of the problem, not just the consequence.
- The cause of the problem, and “who”, “why”, “how” the problem is caused
: the final goal shouldn't end in just telling the stories of the victims(who suffer from the consequence that has occurred/ even though research like these has critical importance)
- it is a crucial first step, but descriptive research of the victims can't give a full picture of the process causing the problem.
예) Evicted written by Matthew Desmond(2016)
Q: "Where were the rich people who wielded enormous influence over the lives of low-income families and their communities - who were rich precisely because they did so?
- Poverty studies, why do we tend to study only those who are the victims of the problem, rather than those who are actually causing the problem?
- Desmond studies the process of eviction that brought rich/ poor people into relation with each other - evictees+ those who do the evicting, shadowing a landlord, ...
- when we study the victims, we don't really understand the process that renders them victims
* study the cause, not only the consequence, in order to identify points for intervention
- relation with policy-making(피해자에만 초점을 맞춘 것이 되지 않도록/ 순환적 낙인효과에 대한 우려/ 결국 그 '문제'가 발생할 때까지 기다린 후의 한정적 조치)
③ The third/last trap she mentions is that we are critiquing other solutions rather than providing new solutions, which mostly happen in so many papers/researches. She suggests that we find/extract the theoretical Q inside the practical question.
- Theoretical Q inside the practical Q
예) The Politics of Bureaucratic Corruption - Marina Zaloznaya
- Corruption has been dealt mostly within economy and political social science field, not sociology/ and the view of sociology towards corruption is either over-socialized(norm) or under-socialized(deviation of the norm) (Mark Granovetter)
- Q. How do people actually decide whether to participate in corruption, if not following country-level scripts(over-socialized) or through individual-level cost-benefit calculation(under-socialization)?
- Ethnography/ interviews in multiple cities, ppl learn about whether/how to give bribes through gossip, informal relationships inside organizations(follows neither the script of over-/under- socialization)
- Karl Weick(1995) observation of organizational routines rest on untested assumptions, -> Zaloznaya has moved from the realm of a very practical Q about solving corruption -> theoretical Q about what makes organizations tick - and back to the practical Q, drawing on what organizational theorists know about how organizations can change.
*I figured out that if I don't write/share anything and just read, nothing gets to me deeply.
Abstract&Impressions & how/what could be implemented to my future research for the second half of 2021
