Verstehen

Verstehen (also known as Interpretative Sociology, German for understanding, pronounced as though it rhymes with fair-stain) was used by Max Weber to describe a process in which outside observers of a culture (such as anthropologists) relate to an indigenous people on the observer's own terms. This concept has been both expanded and criticized by later social scientists. Proponents laud this concept as the only means by which researchers from one culture can examine and explain behaviors in another. While the exercise of verstehen has been more popular among social scientists in Europe such as Jürgen Habermas, verstehen was effectively introduced into the practice of sociology in the United States by Talcott Parsons, an American follower of Max Weber. Parsons incorporated this concept into his 1937 work, The Structure of Social Action.

Critics of verstehen such as Mikhail Bakhtin and Dean MacCannell counter that is simply impossible for a person born of one culture to ever completely understand another culture, and that it is is arrogant and conceited to attempt to interpret the significance of one culture's symbols through the terms of another (supposedly superior) culture.

See also

• antinaturalism
• antipositivism