DOMINANT

APPROACHES AND
IDEAS IN THE SOCIAL
SCIENCES

Prepared by: Ms. Mary Joy Adelfa P. Dailo, LPT

 DOMINANT APPROACHES AND IDEAS
IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
Empirical-Analytical • Microlevel Approaches
Approaches - Rational Choice Theory
- Symbolic Interactionism
• Macrolevel Approaches
- Structural Functionalism
- Institutionalism
• Interdisciplinary Approaches
- Human-environment System Approach

Historical-Hermeneutic Psychoanalysis
Approaches Hermeneutic Phenomology
Empirical-critical Marxism
Approaches Feminism
MICROLEVEL APPROACHES IN
THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
Rational Choice Theory (RCT)
• Would you rather lose the ability to read or the
ability to speak?
• Would you rather live without water or live
without electricity?
• Would you rather lose your best friend or all of
your friends except for your best friend?
• Would you rather never run out of battery power
for your phone or always have free Wi-Fi
wherever you go?
• Would you rather eat rice with every meal and
never be able to eat bread or eat bread with every
meal and never be able to eat rice?
• Would you rather lose all your money and
valuables or lose all pictures you have ever
taken?
• Would you rather find your true love or a suitcase
with five million dollars inside?
• Would you rather know when you are going to
die or how you are going to die?
• Would you rather be feared by all or loved by all?
• Would you rather know an uncomfortable truth
or believe a comforting lie?
• When faced with several courses of action, people
usually do what they believe is likely to have the
best overall outcome.
• Individuals actions are based on their preferences,
beliefs, and feasible strategies.
• It needs other perspectives to help explain why
individuals have the interests they do, how they
perceive those interests, and the distribution of rules,
powers, and social roles that determines the
constraints on their actions.
• Started during the behavioral movement
influenced by Auguste Comte’s view of
positivism in the nineteenth century and of
the ‘Vienna Circle’
a. Observable behavior, whether it is at the
level of the individual or the social
aggregate, should be the focus of
analysis; and
b. Any explanation of that behavior should
be susceptible to empirical testing
• Game Theory
- strategic interdependence, a situation
where others’ choice of strategy affects an
individual’s best choice and vice versa.
• The individual is the actor making decisions
• Individuals have all the rational capacity, time,
and emotional detachment necessary to choose
the best course of action, no matter how complex
the choice.
• Rationality is silent about whether preferences of
an individual are benevolent or evil.
Herbert Simon
- bounded rationality
- Given limited information, time and cognitive
capacity to process information, individuals use
standard operating procedures as a heuristic device
and as a shorthand guide to rational action.
- Action is procedurally rational if it is based on
beliefs that are reasonable given the context the
actor is in.
• What is a rational choice theory?
• How does it explain social
behavior?

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MICROLEVEL APPROACHES IN
THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
Symbolic Interactionism
Seeing a man and a woman holding hands
Someone sneeze in front of you
Jollibee
Belt
Beach
Ulan
Lola
• A sociological framework that focuses on
the different meanings individuals attach to
objects, peoples, and interactions as well
as the corresponding behaviors that reflect
those meanings and/or interpretations.
George Herbert Mead
- gestures are
significant because they
can either accentuate or
contradict that which we
are verbally stating
• “self” – the part of an individual’s personality
composed of self awareness and self-image
• The process of self discovery and self-development
is enacted by the threefold through the:
play stage – children’s identification of key
figures in their environments;
game stage – children extrapolate from the
vantage point of the roles they have simulated by
assuming the roles of their counterparts; and
generalized other stage – the widespread cultural
norms and values we use as a reference in evaluating
ourselves
1. Meaning is an important element of human
existence.
2. People identify and mold their unique symbolic
references through the process of socialization.
3. There is a cultural dimension that intertwines
the symbolic “educational” development.

Premises that constitute

Symbolic Interactionism
• How does one make sense of his or her actions,
interactions, and experience?
• How does social experience develop one’s self?
• What is the importance of communication of
communication in human actions and
interactions?

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MACROLEVEL APPROACHES
IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
Structural Functionalism
 Lawyer
Mother
Father
Police
Doctor
Priest
Teacher
Banker
Producer
• A framework for building a theory that sees
society as a complex system whose parts work
together to promote solidarity and stability.
• Developed by Talcott Parsons under the
influence of Max Weber and Emile Durkheim

Social structure – any relatively stable pattern of

social behavior. Ex. Family, government, religion,
education, economy
Social functions – the consequences of any social
pattern for the operation of society as a whole
Robert K. Merton
- any social structure may have many functions
Manifest functions – the recognized and intended
consequences of any social pattern
Latent functions – the unrecognized and unintended
consequences of any social pattern
Social dysfunction – any social pattern that may
disrupt the operation of society
- caused by lack of consensus among peoples in a
given polity or society about what is helpful or harmful
to society
1. Within every social structure or system – politics,
family, organizations – each member of the system
has a specific function.
2. Those functions can be small or substantial, are
dynamic in nature, and work toward the same
purpose: to keep the system operational within its
environment.
3. Change is evident within any society or system;
however, for the system to survive, it must adapt to
that change in order to maintain its equilibrium.

Premises that constitute

Structural Functionalism
Adaptation : acquiring and mobilizing sufficient
resources so that the system can survive

Goal Attainment : setting and implementing goals

Integration : maintaining solidarity or
coordination among the subunits of the system

Latency : creating, preserving, and transmitting

the system’s distinctive culture and values

Imperatives for Societies to Survive:

• What keeps societies together?
• What causes social dysfunction?
• How important are the social functions of
the social structure to the maintenance and
stability of societies?

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MACROLEVEL APPROACHES
IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
Institutionalism
• Formal and informal structures that can
influence social behavior.
• They can:
Constrain / Empower
Prevent / Enable

Institutions
• Political institutions
• The institutional approach can be understood as a
subject matter, as a method, and as a theory.

Subject matter – Public administration, a

subdiscipline within social science is the study of
the institutional arrangements for the provision of
public services.
Method – the traditional or classic institutional
approach is descriptive-inductive, formal-legal,
historical-comparative.
Descriptive – it employs the techniques of the
historian and explores specific events, eras, people,
and institutions
Inductive – inferences are drawn from repeated
observations
• Classic institutional approach systematically
describes and analyzes phenomena that have
occurred in the past and explain contemporary
political phenomena with reference to past
events.
Formal – it involves the study of formal
governmental organizations
Legal – it includes the study of public law
Comparative – “institutions can be understood and
appreciated only by those who know other systems
of government… by the use of thorough
comparative and historical method… a general
clarification of views may be obtained” - Woodrow
Wilson
Theory – the classical institutional approach does
not only make statements about the causes and
consequences of political institutions but also
espouses the political value of democracy.
• Normative – concerned with ‘good government’
• Structuralist – structures determine political
behavior
• Historicist – central influence of history
• Legalist – laws plays a major role in governing
• Holistic – concerned with describing and
comparing whole systems of government

Critics
David Easton
– most influential critic of the traditional study
of politics, founded the classic institutional
approach.
1. The analysis of law and institutions could not
explain policy or power because it did not cover
all the relevant variables.
2. “hyperfactualism” or “reverence for the fact”,
meant that political scientists suffered from
“theoretical malnutrition”, neglecting “the
general framework within which these facts
could acquire meaning.
• New Institutionalism – embody values and power
relationships, and to obstacles as well as the
opportunities that confront institutional design
• Normative Institutionalism – political institutions influence
actors’ behavior by shaping their values, norms, interests,
identities and beliefs.
• Rational Choice Institutionalism – denies that institutional
factors produce behavior or shape individuals’ preferences,
which they see as endogenously determined and relatively
stable. Political institutions influence behavior by affecting
the structure of a situation in which individuals select
strategies for the pursuit of their preferences.
• What is the difference between old and
new institutionalism?
• Do institutions and institutional contexts
matter in explaining human behavior?

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• Old Institutionalism is concerned with the
impact of institution upon individuals but
New Institutionalism is also concerned
with the interaction between institutions
and individuals.