We shall discuss the main debates between the different schools of thought, and consider the assumptions that each makes about how we can know the social world.

Often, science is thought as being a coherent body of though about a topic, and is established through observations conducted in a careful, unprejudiced way. However, there are several perspectives (such as realism, idealism and feminism) that are critical of such claims.

Social science researchers make privileged claims about their work. Science becomes more than a reflection of our opinions and prejudices: it substantiates, refutes, organises and/or generates theories, which challenge the orthodoxy. Objectivity is defined as the basic conviction that there is some permanent, ahistorical framework that determines the nature of rationality, knowledge, truth and reality. However this conception of science and objectivity is contested.

Positivism argues that social actors, like molecules, react to their environment. Indeed, humans are products of the environment. Behaviourist researchers are able to predict how social individuals will behave by reference to environmental factors: we can alter or see changes in the environment, and then observe how people react.

For positivists, objectivity in the social sciences is similar to the natural sciences: social life can be explained and predicted, and researchers ought to be detached from the topic under investigation. This enables the production of laws of human behaviour. Such laws explain human behaviour in terms of cause and effect of discrete events. Positivist researchers collect data of discrete events (e.g., income and health), and observe any relationship between them. They can only identify, measure and explain observable events. Importantly, they first speculate on the theoretical relationships between the events, and then gather the data, to help verify (or falsify) their theories.

However, positivism and behaviourism have been heavily criticised, especially for underestimating the significance of free will and reflection in social action.

Like positivism, empiricism argues that the social world is independent of social actors’ interpretations. As researchers, we only need to make observations of their actions using techniques for collecting data: we can ignore actors’ intentions, motivations and preferences – what matters are their actions. Whereas in positivism data is theory-driven, and is designed to test the accuracy of the theory, empiricist researchers gather the data, and let the facts speak for themselves – the theory will emerge from the data. Empiricist researchers collect the data in a neutral manner, untainted by theory.

Positivism relies on the methods of empiricism. They both assert the independent nature of the social world, and maintain the need for researchers to be detached, personally and socially uncommitted to their topic of investigation. Yet, both have the same weakness: concepts and values are inevitable in the social construction of the world - i.e., meanings and interpretations are a necessary part of the social world.

Realism shares with positivism and empiricism the aim of science to explain social phenomena. However, realist researchers aim to discover and identify the existence of underlying, structural, causal mechanisms (such as patriarchy, competition, ideology) that inform how people think and act, and also enable or inhabit the realisation of their intentions. For example, Marx argued that capitalism had structural contradictions underneath its economic exchange that would result in unfulfilled expectations and crises.

Realism argues that the knowledge people have will affect their intentions and actions, and in this sense the social world is not independent of their knowledge. Yet, people possess partial, incomplete knowledge, and the task of the realist social scientists is to explain the events through underlying mechanisms, some of which are unknown to the social actors. While the social world is necessarily interpreted and constructed, it still remains independent of particular interpretations. For example, gender relations are constructed in such a way that patriarchal relations prevails in society. Patriarchy requires social interpretations and shared meanings. However, social actors may falsely conceive their social relations as being non-patriarchal, and may not even think about them!

Contrary to empiricism and positivism, there is no social world beyond social actors’ perceptions and interpretations. To focus on subjectivity, we focus on the understandings and meanings that social actors give to their environment.

Idealist researchers argue that the social world is created through the realm of ideas, rather than our being conditioned or created by it. They argue that our actions are not governed by discrete events in the manner of cause and effect framework, but by rules that enable us interpret the world. For example, there are rules to shopping (e.g., when to pay, what to expect, how to bargain, etc) that we come to understand, and we interpret them when buying products. Indeed, unlike molecules, social actors contemplate, interpret and act within their environments.

Rules help to produce society and economy, and enable us to understand and recognise each other. Of course, rules (e.g., bureaucratic rules) can be broken, and also be subject to different interpretations. For that reason, we cannot predict human behaviour, though people act as if they were following rules, and this makes their actions intelligible. Consequently, researchers should concentrate upon how people produce social life through the examination of actors’ selection and interpretation of events and actions, and the constitutive rules: the process of intersubjectivity. Here, the aim of the researchers is to understand and interpret social practices, not to explain or predict them in relation to structural mechanisms (realism), or environmental factors (positivism).

Idealists argue that the researchers’ attachment, engagement and commitment to the topic under investigation become an important process and techniques of understanding social life. They cannot remain aloof, detached.

By the way, postmodernists argue that objectivity is relative to time and place, and that there are no rational standards by which to judge one theory better or worse than another. To be sure, power and interests are important in assessing the legitimacy of the theories.

Feminist researchers suggest that social research ideas and practices are male biased. The scientific claim (the ‘scientific cloak’) is no more than disguised power to control, oppress and dominate women. They make several points:

• women and their contributions have been marginalised;
• the norms of science perpetuate and disguise the myth of male superiority;
• gender is a significant social category, which has been neglected in preference for class.

Feminists argue that the social sciences possess unexamined assumptions about women that are reproduced in their scientific theories. For example, women are passive and emotional, lack the ability to reason and evaluate, and better in performing certain chores (family care and comfort) than men. However, women’s position is not natural, but an outcome of social, economic and political forces.

In addition, in dividing the social world into the public and private realms, men have come to possess the prestigious public realm of politics, finance and culture, subordinating women to the care and family work of the private realm. Feminists have argued that scientific perspectives have either reflected this political phenomenon, or have attempted to justify it. Social research often focuses on the public realm, further silencing women’s voices. Usually, men, furthering their interests and structures in the phenomenon, conduct such research.

Contrary to positivism and empiricism, some feminist researchers argue that reason and emotion cannot be separated. As researchers, we cannot remain detached. Furthermore, our identity and biography are relevant for the research process. They come to shape our interests, values and expectations that we bring into the research programme.

In developing a critique to traditional conceptions of social science, feminists have offered three alternative frameworks of social research:

• Standpoint feminism: Because women are excluded from the public realm, they have effectively become strangers. This, however, provides them with a unique opportunity for undertaking research, as it facilitates the combination of nearness and remoteness, concern and indifference that are central to maximising objectivity. Here, the idea of science is maintained, but its norms have changed. Science becomes a feminist stance, and one that does not marginalise but promotes the cause of women in general.
• Feminist relativism: Reality is multidimensional, though is constructed as if it is one, so distorting and suppressing women’s experiences and differences. The relativists argue that women’s experiences are valid in themselves, and cannot be limited or serve the purpose of science in pursuit of knowledge or truth.
• Feminist empiricism: Empiricists argue that objective science is feasible and desirable, though researchers need to avoid some traps in research: androcentric practices; over-generalisation of research findings that are based on solely on men’s experience; and absence of explanations for the influences of gender relations. Here, the criticism is not at the foundation of science, but upon its practice.

Black feminists have criticised feminism for neglecting the issue of racism and ethnicity. They document how white and early feminists assumed that blacks were inferior. They suggest that any research analysis require a consideration of not only class and gender, but also racism and ethnicity. As consequence, researchers should avoid racist stereotypes and ethnocentric approaches to research (e.g., Western style development to developing countries); increase research studies in how opportunity structures (e.g., employment and education) are affected by racism; and incorporate black experiences into the research so that the former informs the latter.