Concept-dependent Social Phenomenon

1 William Molnar 1. After reading Sayer (esp. pp. 29-35), give and explain an example from your own area of interest of a concept-dependent social phenomenon.

A definition of concept-dependent social phenomenon would help before giving an example from my own area of interest. According to Sayer “Social phenomena, such as actions, texts and institutions “(p 6) are concept-dependent. Later on, Sayer, in discussing social knowledge, states that A large part of our social knowledge, including much of social science takes for granted and reinforces this understandable reification of human action, critical theory challenges it as real but nevertheless false. These features of our society go some way towards explaining the ignorance among many social scientists of the concept-dependent and socially produced character of their objects of study. (p 42) Sayer also states previously that “In practice, there is usually a partial identity of subject and object, so that we are often already familiar with the meaning of the social phenomena in our ‘object’” (p 27). Sayer feels that by understanding social phenomena “is by no means just a question of understanding concepts in society and the meanings of practices” (p. 28). Again he states “concept-dependent nature of social phenomena. What does this mean? It obviously denies the (tempting) assumption that meanings are merely descriptions which are only externally applied to social phenomena, as they are to non-social objects” (p 29). He is also quoted as saying “the most obvious candidates for intrinsically meaningful social phenomena are the ideas, beliefs, concepts, and knowledge held by people in society” (p 30). In his discussion on Critical theory and the relationship between subject and object, he states “In order to understand and explain social phenomena, we cannot avoid evaluating and criticizing societies’ own self-understanding” (p 39). In the question about Verstehen, Sayer states that the science concerned with the interpretation of meaning is called “hermeneutics” and states that “Using this term we can say that the study of natural objects only involves a single hermeneutic while the study of ideas and concept-dependent social phenomena

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involves a double hermeneutic. In the field of education, an example of a concept-dependent social phenomenon would be the knowledge the student learns. Like Sayer’s example of money and the condition that the users need to have an understanding of what exchanging money means and need to understand what the coins and paper stands for, so the student also must have some concept of knowledge and what the knowledge stands for along with what it means to exchange their knowledge and ideas. They also have the rights of ownership of that knowledge just like the rights and ownership of the money ownership and exchange. Knowledge would be the concept-dependent. Another example of concept-dependent social phenomenon would be the practice of taking a state standardized test. A necessary condition for taking these tests is that the students must have an understanding of what state standardized means. If we don’t prepare the students for the test and just let them take the test allowing them to choose any multiple choice answer the want, it wouldn’t count as a standardized test but a test of circling in dots. The thing to remember is that “social phenomena are concept-dependent” according to Sayer (p 30). In this last example, one can distinguish between the physical behavior (the taking of the test) and the meaning of the actions involved (answering the questions) Concept-dependent is something that is symbolic and Sayer feels that “Sometimes material objects which do not depend at all for their existence upon our conception of them may nevertheless be ascribed a concept-dependent function in society” (p 33).

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2. What is verstehen, and how is it connected to Sayer’s view that social science must be critical of its object (toward the end of chapter 1)?

Sayer explains verstehen as if “someone ‘read’ a social situation well or badly. This is a revealing description, for the understanding to which we refer, sometimes termed ‘verstehen’” (p 35). He gives an example of verstehen by comparing it to reading a book. He claims that at first we do not understand a book just by observing the shape of the words, but by interpreting their meaning. “To this reading, we always bring interpretive skills and some kind of pre-understanding of what the text might be about. In other words, there is an interpenetration and engagement of the ‘frames of meaning’ of the reader and the text” (p 36). Verstehen was used as “an example to show the use of empathy to understand the motives of actors and the source of hypotheses explaining their action” (p 37). Verstehen is also universal and is not a special technique or procedure but is common to all knowledge, both in nature and society. By contrast, a very much less examined kind of interpretive understanding is used in everyday practical contexts, where people are rarely aware that their actions presuppose it. It is exactly this unawareness which explains the above misunderstanding of verstehen by unreflective social scientists. (p 37) Verstehen is connected to Sayer’s view that social science must be critical of it object “derives from an assumption that its subject-object relations are no different from those of natural science” (p 41). Sayer also points out that even those who believe social science should be value-free recognize that this critical element can’t be avoided. His example of the economist supporting the value-freedom doctrine is a good example of showing a connection to Sayer’s view. Sayer states that “I am not saying that social scientists should criticize things simply

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because they may happen to disapprove of them. Rather, the point is that the explanation of social phenomena entails that we critically evaluate them” (p 40).