DISS 12 Name___________________________________ Score ____________ Midterm

MODULE
Dominant Approaches and Ideas in the Social Science:
2
Interpretative Social Science

INTERPRETATIVE SOCIAL SCIENCE

This approach claims that people create and associate their own subjective meaning as they interact with the world around
them. Hence, it is the duty of interpretative researchers to search for the meanings people assign to certain phenomena in order to
understand them. Interpretative paradigm also claims that our knowledge of reality is only socially constructed, thus there is no
objective reality, as opposed to the claims of positivist social science that there exists objective reality.
Origins of interpretative social science can be traced to the German Sociologist Max Weber, who asserted that social
science needed to study significant social action, and the German philosopher Wilhem Dilthey, who argued the importance of an
emphatic discernment of the everyday lived experience of people in a particular historical setting.
INTERPRETATIVE SOCIAL SCIENCE

People create and associate their own subjective meanings as they interact with the word around them

HERMENEUTIC PHENOMENOLOGY SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM

Historical phenomena are interpreted Symbols help us understand how we view society
differently in proper context through one’s and communicate with each other
consciousness

HERMENEUTIC PHENOMENOLOGY
Hermeneutics refer to the art of understanding and the theory of interpretation while phenomenology means the science of
phenomena. Hermeneutics means “to interpret” and the term came from the name Hermes, the wing-footed messenger of gods in
Greek mythology. Hermeneutic phenomenology came up out of German philosophy and aims to reveal the life world or human
experience as it is lived. It wishes to regain what had been supposedly lost by the positivist approach. Hermeneutics, therefore,
means
the process of making the incomprehensible understandable.
This approach emphasizes the importance of language, the type of questioning, the phenomenology of human
conversation, the value of prejudice, historically, and tradition in human understanding. Myth, religion, art and language serve as
repository of human meanings. Hermeneutics phenomenology, because of its emphasis on the understanding and interpretation
of individual experiences in order to explain human actions and behavior, promotes a micro-level analysis of society.

Author
Context\/text
Third person/ audience/reader/receiver

Historical Context
Hermeneutics refers to the theory of text interpretation, especially the interpretation of biblical and philosophical texts,
as well as wisdom literature. It is a broad discipline that includes communication, both verbal and nonverbal.
 It came out as a theory of human understanding beginning in the late 18 th and early 19th centuries through the works of
German theologian, biblical scholar, and philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher and German historian, psychologist,
sociologist, and hermeneutic philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey.

- According to Schleiermacher, hermeneutics is the art of understanding the meaning of another person’s words
correctly. that means building a bond between the person one understands and the third person to whom the thing that
one understood was transmitted to

- Schleiermacher approached hermeneutics as the “art of understanding” and recognized both the importance of
language, and the thoughts of an author, to interpreting a text. Dilthey saw understanding as the key for the human
sciences in contrast with the natural sciences.

 The father of phenomenology is the German philosopher Edmund Husserl, who criticized psychology for applying methods
of the natural sciences to human issues, thus paving the way for the beginnings of phenomenology or the study of lived
experience or the real world.
- Husserl defined phenomenology as “the science of the essence of consciousness”, centered on the defining trait
of intentionality, approached explicitly “in the first person”.
 A discipline of Husserl, Martin Heidegger, is credited for having started hermeneutical phenomenology.

- “Human reality” (Dasein) is often lost in inauthentic and everyday life. But human being can also find his
authenticity and open the mystery of the Being, source of all things.
 It was Hans-Georg Gadamer, a student of Philosophy at Marburg and Freiburg, who extended Heidegger’s work into
practical application. He agreed with Heidegger that language and understanding always go together as structural aspects of
human “being-in-the-world.”

Key Concepts
 Historicality- which is a person’s history or background that includes what one receives from culture since birth and passed
on from generation to generation, offering ways of understanding the world.
 Preunderstanding- which refers to a meaning or organization of a culture that are already there before we understand. It is
something that a person can set aside, for it is understood as already part of us in the world.
Hermeneutic Phenomenology: Strengths and Criticisms
 Hermeneutic phenomenology as a social science approach helps researchers to clarify lived experience and expose
meaning through a process of understanding and interpretation. It allows the experiences of people to be presented in a
straightforward and suggestive manner, giving the reader an opportunity to imaginatively take part into the experiences
described.
 Its micro-level analysis is its weakness since it focuses in individual experiences and not on the effects if structures on
individuals’ understanding and interpretation of their experience.

DISS Page 2 Midterm

SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM
It is also known as symbolic interaction perspective, refers to a key framework of sociological theory which depends on the
symbolic meaning developed by people in the process of interaction. Through the lens of symbolic interactionism, society is
examined by concentrating on the subjective meanings that people impose on things, incidents, and actions. Subjective meanings
are prioritized because of the belief that people behave based on what they perceived to be true and not on what are objectively true.

Historical Context
 Symbolic interactionism was a reaction to behaviorism (or the perspective that all behavior is caused by external stimuli) of
psychological theories dominant at the time it was first formulated in the 1920s and 1930s.
 Its origins can be traced back to American sociologists George Mead and Herbert Blumer. It stood out against structural-
functionalism, which explains why society functions the way it does by focusing on the relationships between the different
social institutions that make up society.
 George Mead- development of individual is a social process, as for the meanings individual assigned to think
 Herbert Blumer- action depends on meaning
- different meaning for different people
- meanings can change (thru different factors)

Key Concepts in Symbolic Interactionism

 Symbols- which refer to the means by which people extensively and creatively communicate.
 Self- it is the being or nature of a person one imagines when he or she thinks about who he or she is. The development of
self is made possible through role taking: in order to see yourself, you have to be able to take the role of another, which in
turn allows you to contemplate upon your own self. The development of the self has three stages:
1. Preparatory Stage- meaningless imitation by infant
2. Play Stage- actual playing or roles
3. Game Stage- culminating stage of self-development where the child finds who he or she really is
 Mind- the mental aspect of individuals which materializes from human communication.

Symbolic Interactionism: Strengths and Criticisms

 Among the strengths of symbolic interactionism as a social science approach is the recognition that people are symbol
users, that one can examine society by concentrating on the subjective meanings that people respond to others based on
their understanding of the situation, that people behave based on what they perceived to be true and not on what are
objectively true.
 Recognition that society is a process by which people have constructed meanings and have negotiated social interaction.
 One of the criticisms against symbolic interactionism is its focus on small-scale aspects of social life and its over-emphasis
on the individual.
 Another is that it downplays the role of social forces and institutions on individual interactions.
FT1. Identify the concepts described in each item.
HERMENEUTICS 1. A theory of meaning which emphasizes a detailed reading of text to discover meaning embedded within a text
INTERPRETIVE 2. One of the three dominant paradigms in the social science which is sensitive to context
SYMBOLS 3. Culturally derived social objects having shared meanings that are created and maintained in social interaction
DASEIN 4. The mode of being a human
HISTORICALITY 5. Refers to a person history or background
HERMENEUTIC PHENOMENOLOGY 6. Setting aside the outer world as well as individual biases to achieve contact with senses
SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM 7. The generalized other which supplies an organized set of attitudes and definitions,
understandings, and expectations
IMPULSITIVITY 8. Refers to impulsive tendency of the individual which is spontaneous and unorganized
FT2. Determine the theoretical approach for each objective below.
HM 1. Aims to explain the difference of humans from animals in the sense that humans have the ability to interrupt
the process of stimulus elicits cognition, and cognition elicits response
SIM 2. Aims to emphasize the world as lived by a person, not the world or reality as something separate from the
person
HM, IM 3. Aims to show how people interact and get along with each other
SI 4. Aims to emphasize that human cooperation can only be brought about by each acting individual ascertaining
the intention of the acts of others
SI 5. Aims to show society as the product of the everyday actions of individuals
HM 6. Aims to analyze historical phenomena as interpreted differently in proper context through one’s consciousness
HM 7. Aims to emphasize that every encounter involves an interpretation influenced by an individual’s background
or historicality
HM 8. Aims to reveal human experience as it is lived
FT3. Complete the table by showing the strengths and criticisms of the theoretical approaches discussed in this lesson.
Theories Strengths Criticisms

END