Durkheim vs. Weber: Sociological Methods Compared

Introduction: Two Visions of Sociological Method

The sociological method was viewed very differently by Émile Durkheim and Max Weber. One focused on objectivity, the other on subjectivity. The consequences of their different methodological principles — in terms of each author's understanding of society — can be found in how people today view, discuss, think about, and manage the development of society. Durkheim's methodology helped lead to the establishment of statistics in social analysis and to the management of what the Frankfurt School would go on to call the culture industry, as the prime dictator of social facts. Adorno and Horkheimer were more influenced by Weber's antipositivism, however, and Weber's methodology helped lead to the formation not only of the Frankfurt School but also of the Austrian School of economics, which acknowledged the problem of accurately determining the relative value of goods — and for this reason argued that no centralized planned economy could ever work efficiently in an organized society.

In other words, Durkheim's methodology led to a focus in the social sciences on ways to control society by studying objective facts, while Weber's methodology led to a focus on why society could only be understood in terms of people's perceptions and could only be regulated by a pure bureaucracy — one that was, however, unlikely ever to be truly realized.

Durkheim's Positivism and Social Facts

For Durkheim, sociology was the science of society and the study of social facts. He viewed society as consisting of people who were one part will and one part collective conscience. The will tends toward self-interest, while the collective conscience tends to create constraints that limit the destructive propensity of the will. By looking for social facts, Durkheim did not take into consideration the subjective experience of people or how that experience altered a thing once it was perceived by another. Instead, he looked at society in the same way an ornithologist might look at birds. Durkheim believed society could be understood objectively — that human beings could be considered predictable cogs in a machine which, if programmed correctly, would yield predictable results.

Durkheim (1895) stated: "A social fact is any way of acting, whether fixed or not, capable of exerting over the individual an external constraint; or: which is general over the whole of a given society whilst having an existence of its own, independent of its individual manifestations." Durkheim thus understood society to be a system that could be studied using the scientific method: theories and hypotheses could be developed based on observations, tested much as one tests a new drug before it reaches the market, and evaluated for their effectiveness. One could address the ills of society by observing social facts, developing theories of human behavior, testing those theories, and evaluating the results. Durkheim's methodology can be said to have influenced the behavioralists insofar as they sought ways to determine and manipulate human behavior.

Weber's Interpretivism and Subjective Meaning

For Weber, sociology was the interpretation of the subjective understanding of social action. Weber aimed to identify the causes of social perspectives — how points of view were formed. Weber (1904) stated that "all knowledge of cultural reality… is always knowledge from particular points of view." By this he meant that one cannot understand "social facts" because they are entirely predicated on subjective experiences that must be understood as personal and subjective — not as objective realities like fossils in the earth. He argued that "an 'objective' analysis of cultural events, which proceeds according to the thesis that the ideal of science is the reduction of empirical reality to 'laws', is meaningless," primarily because "the knowledge of social laws is not knowledge of social reality but is rather one of the various aids used by our minds for attaining this end."

Weber, on the other hand, viewed society as only perceptible via one's subjective experience. His methodology was predicated on the idea that human society could not be studied using the scientific method but only by attending to the phenomenology of experience. As an interpretivist, Weber sought to look for meaning in the ways individuals interact in society — to distill from their individual experiences a sense of the context in which those subjects were situated. This was essentially what the Frankfurt School did by studying the culture industry and asking why the working class never rose up to overthrow the owners of the means of production. Their interpretation was that the working classes had submitted themselves, heart, mind, and soul, to the culture industry — run by the ruling class and designed to keep the working class distracted and disconnected from their own cultural roots. Weber's focus on interpreting the meanings of social interactions led to intense qualitative analysis. Durkheim's focus on social facts led to intense quantitative analysis.

Conclusion: Methodology as One Part of the Whole

The outcome of their respective methodologies and methodological principles on their understanding of society was thus less than the sum of all their parts: each was impacted in their understanding by more than their methodologies could allow. Weber's understanding was shaped by more than his approach to studying the phenomenon of experience. Durkheim's understanding was shaped by more than his sense of social facts and the utility of the scientific method in examining human society. Each carried within him a lifetime of experience that undoubtedly shaped their views and produced contradictions as well as eureka moments in their thought and writings. As a framework for understanding human society, sociological methodology was but one aspect of their art.

References

Durkheim, E. (1895). The Rules of Sociological Method and Selected Texts on Sociology and its Method. W. D. Halls (Trans.). New York: Free Press.

Weber, M. (1904). Objectivity of Social Science and Social Policy. Retrieved from