The dangers of “comprehensible” sociology

Timur M. Khusyain­ov
Nation­al Research Uni­ver­si­ty High­er School of Eco­nom­ics

The dan­gers of “com­pre­hen­si­ble” soci­ol­o­gy

Abstract. This paper con­sid­ers the prob­lem of the atti­tude to soci­ol­o­gy and soci­o­log­i­cal research by var­i­ous social agents (employ­ees of var­i­ous state and pub­lic orga­ni­za­tions, media rep­re­sen­ta­tives, etc.). The author iden­ti­fies the prob­lems that arise from the fact that most peo­ple con­sid­er soci­o­log­i­cal data and their use under­stand­able and easy, and read­i­ly treat them to con­firm their asser­tions with­out hav­ing a prop­er under­stand­ing of how these data have been obtained and of the rel­e­vant method­olo­gies need­ed by the study. Along with it, the author elu­ci­dates a man­i­fes­ta­tion of pseu­do-com­pe­tence, which also results from today’s avail­abil­i­ty of a large amount of var­i­ous infor­ma­tion and research tools to a wide range of the Glob­al Network’s users.

Key­words: soci­ol­o­gy, medi­a­ti­za­tion of sci­ence, sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tion, non-sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge, soci­o­log­i­cal knowl­edge, pseu­do-com­pe­ten­cy, ICT, soci­o­log­i­cal research, ques­tion­naires, Open Sci­ence

DOI: 10.5840/dspl2020313

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