In: Psychology
compare and contrast the methodologies and perspectives of historians, thropologists, and sociologists. How useful are their assumptions and practices?
Historians
Historians gathers primary source of a given structure/monument/scripture etc. He/she generally collects the information as an evidence and formulating ideas about the past, as history deals with the past situations. They accumulate information from letters , diaries , photographs etc. Primary data are the ones which are acquired through by the person personally and in hand experience . Whereas the secondary type of information deals with the ones which were already collected by somebody else, and therby the researcher uses that information as a tool to cite his problem.
Hence , by tracing the past events one can know about the history of earlier times. Eg : The Indus Valley Civilisation was discovered by the historians itself.
Anthropologists
Anthropologists tends to study the culture , the way of living of people . The study is known as Ethnography. Ethnographic study involves the technique such as interviewing , biographies, life histories etc. Comparitive study is a well known one , which is being studied by the anthropologists. It studies the evolution of the existing people living in the society . Eg : A cultural anthropologists study various type of cultures in our country . In order to study the pattern of different cultures , he/she travels extensively .
Sociologists
The sociologists study the trend /pattern of society . They observe the society in general.
In order to view the problem , they use the techniques such as quantitative and qualitative data to analyse a given sociological problem. They generally start with a Hypothesis of a given problem. A hypothesis is a statement/problem which has a link with the study of human society . Self - awareness is a crucial point for the sociologists to examine a problem. Sociology is the study of human sociey , their behaviour , their problems . etc
Eg : Durkheim studied the types of suicide in the society. He studied the pattern and trend of society. What led the person to commit such an act ? Why was the rate of suicide increasing at a faster rate?It was a methodological study by Emile Durkheim , to study the social facts of the society. Hence, it was found that suicide rates of men were much higher than that of women. Suicide rate of singles were higher than those who were married.