Double Hermeneutic Theory

Studying social behavior has always been an issue for scholars in social sciences field. This is not because they have not enough knowledge or experience. One of the main reasons is because society changes, and keeping the same sociological methods to study society and its entities might end up not being appropriate. Anthony Giddens (1993) in his book New Rules of Sociological methods, Giddens critics the use of sociological methods to study human behaviors. Indeed, he argues, “The social world, unlike the world of nature, has to be grasped as a skilled accomplishment of active human subjects” (pp. 163). However, some scholars such as Charles Tilly thinks that the problem is deeper. Tilly (1984) in his book Big Structures, Large Processes, …show more content…
Indeed, Giddens explains how “the sociological analysis of any social system must engage in a double hermeneutic, paying close attention to the ways in which ‘structures’ both constrain action and make meaningful action possible” (pp. 235). The essence of Giddens ‘argument is that to be able to study society, researchers should be aware of the way that society is organized. In every society, norms are most of the time reviewed by governing bodies. Further, this could lead research to study individuals that would reflect the society they live in rather than reflecting who they truly are. Moreover, he (1993) states, “We should understand human societies to be like buildings that are at every moment being reconstructed by the very bricks that compose them. The actions of all of us are influenced by the structural characteristics of the societies in which are brought up and live; at the same time, we recreate (and also to some extent alter) those structural characteristics in our actions” (pp. …show more content…
First, who says laboratory says sciences and not social sciences. This is why Giddens insists on the term double hermeneutic. To be able to interpret the world of social sciences, scientific research methods should not be involved. Humans have effects on their lives. Controlling them during research would not give to the researcher the result they want most of the time. However, we looked at some cohort studies. Cohort study is also called panel study. It is a form of longitudinal study. Since there was not a lot of study about surveillance and big data, looking at a few cohort studies about surveillance and the internet helped us to choose what the appropriate research methods for our