i CHARLESTON CONTRADICTIONS: A CASE STUDY OF ...

science, as the positivists would have us believe, but rather how that data is analyzed and
interpreted. When social phenomena are being studied, Sayer believes that meaning is the
most important thing to understand and that everything is “concept-dependent.” This is
because social science research is not studying inanimate objects that can be quantified,
but rather elusive concepts like thoughts, idea, emotions, beliefs, and knowledge (Ellis
2010b).
He uses the example of currency to explain how dependent things are on their
concept, stating that “A necessary condition of the use of money is that users should have
some understanding of what the act of exchanging little metal discs and specially printed
pieces of paper for commodities means or ‘stands for’” (Sayer 2010, 30). While coins and
bills can be evaluated on the basis of their physical properties (weight, thickness,
material, chemical makeup, etc.), this evaluation using positivistic methods would not
provide any insight to the social scientist seeking to understand why these objects have
cultural significance or what their cultural value is.
Likewise, employing the tenets of relativism would not necessarily aid social
science research using the same example of currency. A relativist would argue that the
social scientist would need to be part of the social and cultural group that created and
traded the currency in order to truly understand the meaning it has to that particular
group. Therefore, an American would not be able to interpret the meaning behind a Euro,
since that is not the currency used in the United States. Sayer argues that the philosophy
of Critical Realism provides a basis for the currency to be evaluated that avoids the
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