Instrumental Positivism in American Sociology

Abstract

Positivism in American sociology has taken a number of forms, but only one of them, the instrumental positivism of a certain type of empirical social research, is commonly regarded as both positivist and distinctively American, and it is with this that this chapter is primarily concerned. ‘Instrumental positivism’ - the term is my own - is instrumental insofar as it confines social research to only such questions as the limitation of current research instruments allow, and it is positivist insofar as this self-imposed constraint is indicative of a determination on the part of sociologists to submit to rigours comparable to those they attribute to natural sciences (cf. Bryant, 1975). First coming to prominence in the late 1920s, instrumental positivism has dominated American sociology from the late 1930s onwards. It has proved compatible first with action theory and then structural functionalism, whose formal elaboration were in both cases very much minority pursuits, and it has easily withstood the occasional challenge from other conceptions of sociology and social research, for these have never been sustained by many for long. From the 1960s and 1970s onwards, however, it has also suffered ever intensifying criticisms from a variety of sources.