ABSTRACT
As cognoscenti will already know, the discipline of sociology in Britain lacks the sympathy to quantitative approaches that marks the subject in the United States. It is not difficult to provide indications of this orientation in British sociology – indeed, in some measure to quantify its prevalence, if I may be ironic for a moment. The recent compilation by Wakeford (1979) of syllabuses of undergraduate methods courses in British sociology departments has a distinctly diverse character; from courses where there is indeed a considerable quantitative emphasis, these syllabuses range along a continuum to the very opposite position of some courses where subjects like the philosophy of science and linguistics not merely predominate, but dominate to the exclusion of virtually any other aspect. This sort of content in what are avowedly courses in sociological method seems highly perverse when one considers the harshness of the economic climate into which most contemporary sociology graduates go. Most obviously at the present time, but also during most of the 1970s, there have been increasingly fewer teaching jobs within sociology as well as rapidly declining opportunities for graduate research. Thus, sociology graduates currently go into a world where – if they are to use their sociological knowledge and training at all – it is going to be in some research capacity in a part of the private sector or (even now) the public sector. In a competition for employment in this sort of economic situation, even a modest acquaintance with quantitative techniques, with the execution of social surveys, with data analysis and with their interpretation is a commodity that is rather more marketable than an exegetical knowledge of Wittgenstein or hermeneutics (whether single or double) or even a total understanding of why people say ‘Good morning’ to each other.
