Television- Raymond Williams
In Chapter 5 of Television, entitled “Effects of the technology and its uses”, Williams identifies the persistent debate in the social sciences about the relative merits of quantitative (ie. based on data) and qualitative (based on “value judgments”, “participation”, and “involvement of the investigator” p 121). Williams explicitly favors the latter, and offers a critique of many social scientists’ regard for “scientific method” above all other “modes of experience and analysis”. He argues that the isolation of television (or indeed any other communications medium) leads to over-simplified discussions and displaced identifications of cause and effect. Such an approach, as is often the result of analyses of data sets gathered by “sociologists of mass communication”, fails to acknowledge the centrality of intentionality and agency in the institutions that shape and define the medium of TV and its uses. According to Williams, studies of this sort essentially miss the point of sociological inquiry (theorizing about why people do things), focusing too heavily on the effects instead of examining the causes; he argues that very few of the effects of TV identified by empirical studies come near to “satisfying the criteria of scientific proof or even general probability” (p 119). He further differentiates between the “cultural science” which he practices, and the “sociology of communications”, the former type of research usually being funded by social interest groups and political or cultural authorities, while the latter is mainly funded by those groups whose actions and influence might be scrutinized by sociological research of the type advanced by Williams (eg. broadcasting companies, market research and ad agencies, and political parties). Williams’s argument can be framed as a warning against technological determinism and against determined technology, and promotes an examination of “real social, political and economic intention”.
Out of context, Neuman’s critique of Williams appears to place him on the other side of the argument about methods of sociological research. The “uneasiness” Neuman identifies is well-argued however, and Williams offers a sound theoretical basis on which future studies that employ methods of “gathering data to test” the ideas he proposes within. Perhaps one of the most significant points Williams makes in Television is that “the institutions and social policies which get established in a formative, innovative stage have extraordinary persistence into later periods, if only because they accumulate techniques, experiences, capital, or what come to seem prescriptive rights” (p 148).