Sunday, January 17, 2016

"It is impossible to explain how social order is maintained without the role of ideologies." Explain and assess?

Interpretivists take the position that, unlike natural sciences, social sciences are rarely capable of producing empirical evidence. This is mostly due to the fact that they rely on people, society, culture, and so on, which have so many variables and don't follow universal rules.

With regard to your question, positivists would likely assert that the laws and rules that govern society are or should be free from the influence of ideologies and various shifting belief systems. To a certain extent, this point is a strong one inasmuch as we can't change our legal systems every time the law clashes with a particular belief about morality. The interpretivist, on the other hand, might argue that all laws originate from ideologies and therefore are always changing and evolving to match the ideologies of the society they govern.


For example, two hundred years ago slavery was entirely legal in the United States because the majority of the population saw nothing wrong with owning another person. It was only when enough people decided that slavery was morally reprehensible that they decided to outlaw the practice. Although this is an extreme example, a positivist would have argued that the law should be free from ideological influence, in which case slavery would have never been outlawed.


Does that make sense?

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