Quote:
Originally Posted by Muhammadwd
Looking at it from a purely research based perspective, it is not possible to study the whole concept of moral degeneration via the scientific method. You can select a certain aspect of moral degeneration such as, the reasons for the decline of social mores while interacting with women in an office setting in Pakistan. I was baffled by the very nature of this question when I saw it in the exam. When you set out to scientifically study a topic, you make sure that you pick an aspect that is narrow and focused, not broad and general. Even if you look at it purely as a CSS exam question, it is not feasible to attempt it because there is no way you can satisfactorily cover all aspects of moral degeneration. If sociological commentary on this topic was required, without research centrism, it would have been much more prudent to spend time on this question. The reason is that you can apply sociological theory to answer the different aspects of moral degeneration which not only covers multiple aspects but also provides a theoretical base to discuss those aspects. The scientific research method can only focus on one aspect at a time. For example, if I were to prove scientifically that one reason for moral degeneration is the decline of religion, I would go about choosing a population and a subsequent sample and control group for observation and interviews. However, the decline of religion requires a separate sample, as do other aspects of moral degeneration. Theoretically, however, I would be much better served by Marx's theory of religion, or Weber's and Durkheim's subscriptions of religion to answer the reason of this decline. Moreover, the Theory of Anomie and other relevant theories can also help me explain other aspects of moral degeneration in the time required for me to answer one question in the exam. Therefore, this question is, in my opinion, is put there to lull the student into a false sense of security. Its statement is overly simplistic, and it is a deceptively long question to answer in just 35 minutes.
I would love your views on whether there is a simplified approach to answering this question.
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Fully agree with your point of view. The term "Moral Degeneration" is far too broad and with far too many factors involved for a single comprehensive study to be created that can ever even hope to study all of it. And then on top of all that "morality" is necessarily subjective and hence any study revolving it can neither be conclusive nor universally accepted. I found this really interesting article which though I can't read as its a paid journal it still raises very valid questions regarding the sociology of morality and ethic theories. (
https://link.springer.com/article/10...186-007-9044-y ) It also seeks to contrast Weber and Durkheim's approaches to Morality which is an interesting contrast in itself.
Personally if I was pressed to attempt this question and couldn't see any other option I'd focus on the first half more.
"How can moral degeneration be scientifically studied?" This question most definitely is doable and you can add in approaches of previous sociologists to illustrate how it has been studied scientifically. I'd also add a portion while attempting which focuses on the WHY is it so difficult as a sociological concept; mainly rooted in how any attempt at studying moral degeneration is based on a baseline concept of "morality" itself which not only changes across time but is not the same even among people living in the same locality. Religion influences it but so do things like economic and social class. This adds layers of complexity to this topic which need to be handled carefully by any researcher.
Also the wording of the second half is really interesting to me; "Delineate the entire research process for studying this phenomenon." I could interpret this as being an extension of what I discussed above and instead of creating a specific research design as an example would simply work out the steps theoretically. So for example step one would be doing some preliminary digging into what has been done before and what theories people have based their researches on. Step two would be maybe to get a basic survey into how people living in the locality/social/economic/professional etc class (aka the people who we are interested in) define morality to begin with so that we have a baseline to go on in order to study the phenomenon of moral degeneration and so on and so forth the steps would continue being more general rather than written around a specific hypothesis.
This approach might make the question appear a tad bit haphazard but I'd avoid committing to a single end all sort of study/research.