Revision summary
Positivism measures external facts; these perspectives study meaning and members’ methods. Schutz described the everyday life-world of typifications. Garfinkel showed order as accomplished, indexical work. Berger and Luckmann treated institutions as objectivated meanings. The critique qualifies rates; it does not delete official files.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
Positivism treats social life as measurable external facts. Phenomenology and ethnomethodology answer that order is accomplished in meaning and in everyday methods. The critique is of a science that skips the actor’s world.
Body
Phenomenology against a thing-like society
- Alfred Schutz asked how the everyday life-world is constituted in typifications, not only in variables.
- Edmund Husserl’s bracketing, used sociologically, suspends the taken-for-granted so that meaning can be described.
- Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann showed that institutions are objectivated meanings, not natural objects waiting for a census cell.
Ethnomethodology
- Harold Garfinkel studied the methods members use to produce a sense of fact. Breaching experiments showed how fragile “obvious” order is.
- Indexicality and reflexivity mean that talk and rule are completed in the situation. A positivist codebook cannot fully freeze that work.
- Conversation analysis later showed turn-taking as organised practice, not residual noise.
What the critique does not do
- It does not abolish rates. Durkheim’s suicide files still exist. It refuses to treat those files as innocent of office meaning.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD POS[Positivism external facts] --> SKIP[Skips meaning] PH[Schutz phenomenology] --> LW[Life-world] EM[Garfinkel ethnomethodology] --> MET[Members methods] LW --> CR[Critique] MET[MET] --> CR[CR]
Conclusion
Phenomenology relocates the object in the life-world. Ethnomethodology studies how members make that world accountable. Together they criticise positivism’s skip from behaviour to variable without the actor’s methods.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Illustrate with example the significance of variable in sociology research
Next question on this syllabus topic (2017 · Q1(c)). View answer →
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Do these schools deny science?
They deny a thin copy of physics. They still describe, compare, and show how accounts are made.
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Can Census tables survive this critique?
Yes, if treated as office constructions, not as nature. Coding is itself a member’s method.
Same topic · past papers
UPSC has asked this before
These previous-year questions sit on the same topic. Open one to practise the earlier ask.
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2020 · Q7(b) · Sociology GS 1 · 15 marks
Phenomenological perspectives in sociology reject many of the assumptions of positivism. Comment.
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