ABSTRACT
The chapter explains why philosophical debates are important for sociology, even if they are not always acknowledged. It focuses on the debate between realist and interpretive traditions and reviews the anti-realist arguments of Alfred Schutz, which influenced Berger and Luckman. The chapter also focuses on the issue of relativism through considering the ideas of Peter Winch and Thomas Kuhn. It reviews how these issues are relevant to sociology through examining the field of social problems research, a subtradition of symbolic interactionism which has investigated how these are 'socially constructed' through the claims made by politicians, the media and pressure groups. The chapter explains how researchers have come to spend increasing amounts of time debating epistemological issues, focusing on the critiques advanced within this field by poststructuralists and ethnomethodologists. It considers the relevance of these debates and approaches for housing researchers, and possible ways in which constructionist research in this field could develop.
