Philosophies of Social Science Research Nicholas Gane

 ‘The Coming Crisis of Empirical Sociology’ is one of the most cited social science journal articles of the past 10 years  The main argument of this piece is that the social sciences are losing their territorial claim over the ‘social’ and the methodological tools that are used to study it  A key question: is research that was previously done by social science now being performed (with greater resources) outside the academy?

 Savage and Burrows: ‘Our concern is that in the years between about 1950 and 1990 sociologists could claim a series of distinctive methodological tools that allowed them to claim clear points of access to social relations, but in the early 21st century social data is now so routinely gathered and disseminated, and in such myriad ways, that the role of sociologists in generating data is now unclear’ (p.886).

 In 2006, Roger Burrows and I published an article in Sociology entitled ‘Geodemographics, Software and Class’.  We were interested in new classifications of consumer populations that were being produced by big commercial organizations such as Experian (a FTSE listed company with a market cap of nearly £12 billion)  We were interested, in particular, in a classification they produced called Mosaic

 Mosaic produces a classification of global populations by working with an unrivalled data set (at least within the academy)  Their marketing blurb: ‘Experian’s Mosaic UK consumer classification provides an accurate understanding of the demographics, lifestyles and behaviour of all individuals and households in the UK’.  They gather data from the following sources…

 ONS’ annual Expenditure and Family Survey  University of Essex’s British Household Panel Survey (BHPS)  Research Now’s online panel of 350,000 consumers and their demographic and media consumption  YouGov’s specialist survey of 66,000 consumers and their financial behaviour  GfK NOP’s Financial Research Survey of 60,000 consumers and their personal finance  Characteristics  BMRB’s Target Group Index survey of 25,000 adults consumption of products, brands and media  Experian Hitwise’s online competitor intelligence of  8 million internet users

 This is effectively a form of commercial social science (with huge datasets and processing power)  It produces a spatial mapping of social class by ‘classifying all individuals, households or postcodes in the United Kingdom’  It divides this population into ‘141 Mosaic person types aggregated into 67 household types and 15 groups’  For more information, see _2009_brochure.pdf‎

 What does this mean for social science research within the academy?  ‘Fifty years ago, academic social scientists might be seen as occupying the apex of the – generally limited – social science research ‘apparatus’. Now they occupy an increasingly marginal position in the huge research infrastructure that forms an integral feature of what Thrift (2005) characterizes as knowing capitalism’ (p.886).

 This is the title of a book by our Vice Chancellor: Nigel Thrift  It is about a new world in which capitalism becomes increasingly lively: it is mediated by advanced computational machines and often involves ‘play’ of various sort  This form of capitalism often knows a lot about us  It also harvests concepts and ideas from the social sciences and puts them to work within business settings

 Give the following example of their sense of a coming crisis  Savage: part of an ESRC project that proceeded through 320 postal questionnaires and 30 life histories  Dwarfed by commercial research: someone at the same conference from a telecommunications company ‘he had the entire records of every phone call made on his system over several years, amounting to several billion ties’ (pp.886-7).

 ‘This is data which dwarves anything that an academic social scientist could garner. Crucially, it was data that did not require a special effort to collect, but was the digital by-product of the routine operations of a large capitalist institution. It is also private data to which most academics have no access’ (p.887).  Data is big business…  How can academic research compete?

 The sample survey: ‘allows us to generalize and predict through revealing enduring regularities by the use of inferential statistics’ (p.889)  National sample surveying began (in the UK) in the 1930s and are central to longitudinal studies such as the British Household Panel Study  Savage and Burrows: ‘its glory years…are in the past’ (p.889) – response rates dropping, a low level of spatial granularity, less purchase outside the academy…

 ‘key agents in the research apparatus of contemporary capitalist organizations now simply don’t need the empirical expertise of quantitative social scientists as they go about their business’ (pp.890-1).  They add: ‘in the current situation, where data on whole populations are routinely gathered as a by-product of institutional transactions, the sample survey seems a very poor instrument’ (p.891)  They give the example of Amazon

 ‘Our polemic thus far may strike a ready chord amongst the majority of UK sociologists who are critical of quantitative approaches and prefer qualitative methods. However, any complacency here is very misplaced’ (p.893).  The crisis may vary in different national settings, but in the UK it centres upon the ‘in depth interview’  It has become part of popular culture…

 ‘although it was sociologists who pioneered the use of these methods in allowing popular narratives to be made ‘public’, the routine use of such methods in all forms of contemporary journalism, from the colour magazine to the Oprah Winfrey show, marks a clear shift of expertise away from the academy’ (p.893).  Again, a loss of methodological jurisdiction: is social science losing its authority?

 A new set of epistemological and methodological challenges  Savage and Burrows state: ‘We have argued that the repertoires of empirical sociology need to be rethought in an age of knowing capitalism. This call goes far beyond the now familiar demand for more methods training but asks for greater reflection on how sociologists can best relate to the proliferation of social data gathered by others, which we currently largely ignore’ (p.895).  What is the answer? ‘Live’ or at least livelier methods…?

 Some took issue with Savage and Burrows’ argument  For example, Rosemary Crompton: ‘if there is a “crisis” in empirical sociology it is one relating to an absence of quantitative expertise, rather than the presence of the “wrong” variety’ (2008:1218).  But this doesn’t really counter their argument, in some ways it reinforces it: why is there a lack of quantitative expertise…?

 Richard Webber (designer of the original Mosaic classification) also responds – largely supporting Savage and Burrows’ argument by looking at other possible datasets (see 2009)  His aim: to look at how ‘how administrative and transactional data are being creatively harnessed to address issues of sociological importance in greater detail than is possible using conventional survey methods’ (p.176).

 In 2009, Savage and Burrows published a response  The declare: ‘Welcome to the world of ‘knowing capitalism’ (Thrift, 2005): a world inundated with complex processes of social and cultural digitization; a world in which commercial forces predominate; a world in which we, as sociologists, are losing whatever jurisdiction we once had over the study of the ‘social’ as the generation, mobilization and analysis of social data become ubiquitous’ (p.763).

 The conclusion they draw is that ‘What we need to recognize is that social research circuits now proliferate so extensively, using such a variety and range of methods, that we need to place our own internal sociological squabbles on one side and collectively consider how we deal with the fundamental challenge of dealing with the proliferation of social data’ (p.765).  Again, the question is: how should we confront this challenge?