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SUMMARY:Researching social problems: Putting the cart before the horse? - 
 Dr Apurv Chauhan\, University of Brighton
DTSTART:20171024T120000Z
DTEND:20171024T130000Z
UID:TALK73243@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Dr. Juliet Foster
DESCRIPTION:What do we gain in defining and researching social problems as
  ‘objective’\, ‘quantifiable’\, and ‘measurable’ phenomena? In
  his influential 1971 paper\, Herbert Blumer critiqued the social sciences
  for chasing what is usually taken as the ‘objective’ aspect of social
  problems. Guided by their objective\, quantifiable formulation\, we often
  purport knowing what a social problem is before we begin researching it 
 — in other words\, we put the cart before the horse. Using my research o
 n poverty as an example\, I will logically examine both realist and constr
 uctivist approaches to the study of social problems and point out some com
 mon errors in each. I will argue that in researching social problems\, psy
 chology has come to suffer from what Francis Bacon called the idola theatr
 i — the dogmatic tendencies of research borne out of wrong laws of demon
 stration.
LOCATION:Ground Floor Lecture Theatre\, Department of Psychology\, Downing
  Site
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