THE SOCIOLOGY – FACING THE NON-CLASSICAL DILEMMA –
BETWEEN THE "MEDIA ACTIVITY" AND THE "SCIENTIFIC INACTIVITY"
Transformation of the sociological legitimacy
Valentin Danchev
This analysis purports to decipher a paradoxical situation. A year ago a popular professor
and researcher was presented on a public media as an ‘inactive’ sociologist, and this title was
not a journalist mistake. It explicated an existing public reflex according to which a
sociologist ought to work in a sociological agency, rendering people’s opinion on some
burning issue as percentages and pie charts. In the public discourse ‘the sociologist’ is always
‘in action’, registering the social attitudes to the ‘lukewarm topics of the day’, rather than
being a sardonic observer with a disinterestedly cool (or critically sizzling) tone. Against this
background, the academic sociologist in question (despite his affinity for publicly relevant
research topics and the fact that he did not fit the cliché of ‘metaphysical theoretician’) could
legitimately be classified as ‘inactive’. At the same time, the ‘active sociologists’ popular in
the media came up with a document on ‘Divisions within the Community’. There, they
defined their activities as a ‘research business’, thereby distinguishing themselves from
‘academic sociology’. The ‘Divisions…” pleaded for the cessation of the long-established
practice of calling research companies ‘sociological agencies’ or the interpreters and public
presenters of research data – ‘sociologists’.
As it transpires, the community of academic sociologists defining themselves as
such are not publicly recognised in this capacity. At the same time, however, the popular
sociologists wanted to shed the ‘old clothes’ of the ‘academic sociologist’ signifier. They
were already defining themselves as ‘researchers’, although in the last 15 years many of
them had used the image of scientific analysis to gain public trust.
***
This situation is not just a matter of ‘mixed-up’ apprehensions – it is a symptom of the
changing public roles of social science and the transformations in the field of sociological
knowledge. In the collisions between the two fractions the changing landscape of the social
sciences is being substantiated.
This development is the normal consequence of a long-term process: the differentiation
and polarisation of two incompatible roles in the social sciences – that of academic reflection,
1
on one hand, and of the visible immediate data from surveys, on the other. On the level of
academic education in sociology the controversy between ‘active’ and ‘inactive’ is articulated
in the opposition ‘empiric’ vs. ‘theoretical’ sociology. The permanent conflict Weber had
situated at the core of the social sciences – the conflict between scientific ethos and practical
action – now finds a smooth solution. After a series of historical cascades this conflict
between two mutually related imperatives was brought down to self-sufficient roles performed
by different agents.
Paradoxically, science was viewed as being on the side of ‘practice’,
because it represented methodologically complete knowledge and a cookbook for social
action, whereas academic sociologists were rather classified from the media publicity under
‘theory’.
What were the reasons for this polarisation of roles and radicalisation of the positions? The
creation of competing political parties and the economisation of social life brought forth the
so-called sociological agencies, which made public opinion polls in various spheres, the
electoral researches being especially visible in the media. As they measured ‘opinions’ rather
than civic ‘positions’, the electoral polls (especially in pre-election periods) produced a series
of public scandals and conflicts. Agencies were accused of presenting politically modified
data, interpretations with biased implications seeking to legitimise political action or ‘boost’
somebody’s rating. Despite being 'fuelled' by several agency sociologists, the scandals started
setting the logic of the sociological field. They formed the public idea of sociological
expertise and reflected negatively on the overall image of sociology in Bulgaria. It was in the
course of these processes that the sociological community was ‘imagined’ and despite its
heterogeneity and group/institutional separatism found the unifying principle for community
identification. In order to overcome the discredit of the prestige of the profession, in 2004,
The Bulgarian Sociological Association found a solution (like ASA in the 1960s (see
Friedrichs 1970: 118-124) in the formulation of a code of ethics, a regulative compass for
sociologists in their professional work:
The Code defines the ethical principles and criteria making up the basis of the professional responsibilities
and professional behaviour of the sociologists united in BSA. It represents a general moral framework and
a system of reference points for problems encountered by sociologists in their daily work 1.
The code regulates mainly the process of scientific research and academic work. This is not
accidental. The code seeks to change the public image of the sociological community – ‘an
1
http://bsa-bg.org/documents/ethical_code.pdf
2
amorphous formation with blurred boundaries and vague professional criteria’ (Boyadjieva
2005: 280) – through the differentiation of electoral and marketing agencies from sociology
‘as a science’. With this move the sociological community was trying to differentiate itself
from ‘the research business’, to avert the blurring of professional standards and to reclaim the
label ‘sociologist’ from the media circulation to the academic one.
The research business, on the other hand, thought it was paradoxical to have BSA – ‘the
association of academic sociologists’ – regulate the activities of research companies; it reacted
by constituting its own Council of Research Agencies (CRA), which is a ‘consultative body
unifying many of the major research companies in Bulgaria, working predominantly in the
sphere of social and marketing research’. According to the official website2, the council brings
together 13 agencies; the website itself, however, is not updated and this is quite normal
insofar as agency strategies do not generate universal interest (it is constituted as universal
only in respect to the ‘champions of academic rules’). The establishment of CRA is motivated
with the formation of a research market and the need for adequate distinction between
academic practice and research business with all ensuing market, organisational and
institutional consequences. The latent purpose, however, is quite different – the ethical code
and the regulations of the BSA would have revealed certain deficits in the publicised data, the
lack of continuity in the results, irrelevant interpretations and implicit political and financial
interests.
In the end of the day, the sociologists did not reach an agreement: academic sociologists
suspected agencies in political and financial ties, whereas business researchers accused the
scientists of being detached from the points of high social tension and – having mastered their
categories and conceptual schemes – of imposing a complicated conceptual apparatus, which
is unnecessary as social reality is simple and measurable.
Our hypothesis is that sociologists failed to read the signs of the new situation. The
problem lies not in the group division, which is a fact on a supra-national level3, although it is
worth looking into the reasons for this development. The problem is not in the gap between
theory and applied empirical research, either: as sociologists well know, theoretical analysis is
a type of practical activity, and every practical activity implies some kind of theory. The
problem lies in the reconfiguration of the boundaries between social sciences, the
2
http://www.online.bg/elections/index_new.htm
We are referring to the establishment of the International Sociological Association (ISA) and the European
Society for Opinion and Marketing Research.
3
3
political and the economic field, and in the growing level of their interweaving and
interference. The intensification of changes undoubtedly charts certain social fields, but
on the other hand, the multiplication of mediators and the emergence of many new
‘global’ players make the differentiation of these spheres increasingly difficult. On the
surface this process is expressed in conflicts and scandals which are interpreted as
malicious action on the part of certain agents of the research business. Not that those
were inexistent. But to seek the solution in the delineation of the classical differences between
‘sociology’ and ‘business’ only reconciled the formalist consciousness and the concrete
strategies but did not solve the problem of the regulation of the changing and increasingly
‘fluid’ public sociological roles. The amorphous character of the sociological community
is a symptom of the penetration of sociological knowledge in different spheres of public
action and – simultaneously – of its reduction to the status of technological instrument
for measuring amorphous attitudes. We cannot blame the agencies as they are also
operating in a dynamic environment, which affects them and is affected. No matter what the
quality of their research might be, sociological agencies operate in a variety of spheres and
distancing oneself from them will not change the fact that ‘sociology as a science’ is reduced
and marginalized4, and this public discredit has a negative influence both on the attraction
of young researchers and on the possibility to make fundamental research and produce
new knowledge. The distinction only masks the problem. An analysis ought to find the
genesis of the situation in sociology and the preconditions for the expansion of
‘competing perspectives’ – the agencies and the authors of political cookbooks – think
tanks5.
THE HISTORICAL GROUNDS OF A CERTAIN IDEA
Why are academic sociologists recognised as ‘inactive’? Why are they marked in public
discourse as ‘closet scientists’ sticking to some ‘purity of concepts’ but taking no part in the
discussion of public issues and tendencies? Do academic sociologists compensate their own
inaction by focusing on the behaviour of sociological agencies? Was the vilification of the
As one of them put it, ‘Only in science can the state or somebody else invest in the luxury of researching
problems which are interesting to science itself, to society, etc.’ Journalism and Sociological Publicity. A Public
Discussion. Sociological Problems, 2.2005.
5
See Krastev, I., The Liberal Estate: Reflections on the Politics of Think Tanks in Central and Eastern Europe;
Deyanova, L., The filed of public opinion: between the “factories for data” and “factories for arguments”
4
4
media sociologist intended to mark the enemy and ascribe some stable value to the
increasingly unreal existence of academic sociologists?
***
In an ideally-typical situation, the institutionalisation and functioning of pre-1989 sociology in
Bulgaria was directly dependent on the dominant social relationship – that of the state.
Scientific activities were organised institutionally and hierarchically as an instrument for
implementing the tasks set by the state. Personal positions expressed this interweaving of
power and science – the pioneers of Bulgarian sociology played leading roles within the
Communist party. Their participation in the field of social science gave them high status,
social prestige and the opportunity to perform ‘social engineering’ – the specific role of
‘gurus’ in the societies of administrative command. In this environment the prestige and
applied instrumentality of the discipline are not questioned, which leads the social sciences to
take their high role for granted, as they have not had to secure it through competing strategies.
In their own genesis the social sciences are built as a scientifically-systematic response to
politically predefined social problems, which led to their structurally passive and instrumental
character. Sociological knowledge was thus often cast as a legitimizing tool for party visions
and decisions. This, however, was not the result of the unscrupulous actions of the party elite
but reflected the structural character of the social environment. From the very start socialist
society was thought as a ‘system’, a principally unchangeable construction. Although
ideologically assigned to the future, the institutional organisation and the ideological
fundament generate not change but stasis. But if the goal of the socialist society is static
reproduction – of both social structure and status – then the results of sociological research
becomes useless. Typologically speaking, the generation of specific new knowledge is
essential only in a dynamically changing social environment, or else it becomes pointless and
starts functioning as a fake institution – sociological theory is still being created and research
is still conducted on an organizational level, but there is no publicity relevant to the cognitive
ethos of sociology.
That is why on the surface academic life is full of compensating officious presentations –
conferences, seminars, research projects, readings. In the logic of socialist society knowledge
is not a matter of publicity, which has been reduced to theatrical ritual. Knowledge is
configured in networks, which objectify and channel the socially important ‘knowledgepower’ expertise and compensate the deficit of public scientific information. These networks
are outside the public sphere, but in the same time they are not merely informal relationships
but objective structures of the field itself (Deyanov 2003: 73).
5
Thus we can articulate two typologically different pre-1989 ‘subjects’ in the social sciences:
1) A network of high-status sociologists, mediators between the scientific and political fields;
2) ‘scientific workers’, recruited primarily on the principle of party logics; they provide the
full scope of the so-called ‘make-believe publicity’, while at the same time successfully
performing the social function of socialist economics, aptly defined by Kornay as
‘unemployment on the working place’.
In opposition to this counterfeit publicity a third group was formed, refusing to participate in
the flirtation with the political and its imagination. This refusal was constituted through the
formation of an instructive public discourse, but it was intended as closed, enigmatic, and
situated beyond official publicity. The deeper certain scientific issues are investigated, the less
transparent they become for party logics. From a certain point of view this strategy might be
called ‘dissident’ insofar as it creates an ‘opaque trace’, principally impenetrable by the
omniscient eye of power. It also builds enclaves of public discussion in search for the specific,
the particular rather than the general; in search for new layers of reality – precisely because
official discourse was ‘one-dimensional’ and did not allow for any scientific effort, these
researchers focused on other heterogeneous layers of reality, taking a cue from the young
Marx, from Mamardashvili and Foucault.
They built their own vocabulary and ethos,
principally impermeable by official power. This community was not disciplinarily
homogeneous: philosophers, sociologists and medievists gravitated in its intellectual field. In
fact, interdisciplinarity was its ethos – as disciplines were univocally defined within the
framework of ‘the system’, so their reproduction in the ‘reclusive’ role would also reproduce
the boundaries of possible experience in the world this field was trying to set itself apart from.
The purpose was to erase the boundaries; or even to question their essential validity or at least
their universal stability.
Of course, these three ideal types have no claim to be exhaustive. They do not cover the
professional differentiation of the academic field, nor the gradually generated theoretical and
methodological culture, which took the discipline out of the primordial6 mix between
positivism, evolutionary theory and dialectical materialism. A number of important
sociological books remained outside the vision of this research perspective.
The goal of the historical cross-section in this analysis is modest: taking up scattered
fragments in order to trace the interweaving of specific relationships, which in their turn could
6
The main sociological academic research centres in Bulgaria were only institutionalized after the late 1960s.
The Institute of Sociology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences was established in 1968, the Department of
Sociology at the University of Sofia – in 1974.
6
shed light on current developments in the social sciences. Science as a social practice,
produced against a specific social background and in turn emanating specific patterns of
thought and action in the social world.
And so, let us summarise the basic principles operating in the field of the social sciences:
First, sociology is construed in the logic of the classic socialist society and exists through its
relation to the static in their principle and theatrical institutions, which are the principal client
and addressee sociological surveys. This relationship is not merely organizational; it is
incorporated in the sociological notions, methods and branch specificities.
Secondly, the departure from official structures of the state and their network duplicates is
only possible as a community act of ‘differentiation’ and ‘self-enclosure’. There are, however,
no structural conditions for exercising a minimum of critical publicity in the field of official
science, as the autonomous citizens and the horizontal chains of relationships are lacking.
After 1989 sociology underwent substantial transformations: paradigmatic approaches were
differentiated, the conditions were set for the emergence of academic pluralism and autonomy
in the choice of research endeavours.
At the same time, however, the social changes and the accompanying social crises revealed
the deficit of sociological analyses and formed unrealistic expectations to sociologists, who
were looked upon to explain the logic of the changes and the possible perspectives
(Boyadjieva 2005: 281). The increased social expectations to sociology, however, clashed
with the public perceptions of its socialist genesis and ideologisation. From the onset of social
transformation, when sociology should set the coordinate system for orientation in the
changing world, the trust in the sociological community was shaken (Nikolov 1992: 99). In
fact, in the beginning of the so-called transition period individual sociologists took part in the
public debate. Their legitimacy, however, was not generated by sociological analyses. Their
voice was heard only insofar as they fit into the role of the ‘committed intellectual’ – the
dominant format of public speech in the first few years after 1989 (see Deyanova 2000).
The negative public image of sociologists, a legacy of their structural role in the socialist
project, was an important problem but hardly definitive for the current perception of
sociologists as ‘inactive’. Sociologists today often explain their negative image with the fact
that in the public sphere sociology is reduced to ‘demoscopy’ – ‘snapshots’ of electoral
attitudes and daily varying political ratings. As we already said, sociology did acquire its
media visibility through surveys of this kind, but is this not merely a symptom of the
problem?
7
In my opinion the crucial question is whether the restructuring Bulgarian society
presupposes sociological analysis and, secondly, what kinds of sociological sensitivity and
theoretical reflection would allow us to identify the logic of structural changes on a
national scale in the context of globalising tendencies?
The scientists interviewed in the course of this research identified the problems of the social
sciences on different levels, but almost invariably failed to ask themselves whether the social
reality is actually cognisable from their research paradigm. Nor did they discuss the
purposes of any particular analysis. Science is accepted as important per se; none of the
respondents have reflected upon its radically changing validity, or upon the sociocultural background against which its meaning and addressee are generated. In the
interviews, conducted as part of this project, as well as in other debates, the scientists
emphasised the following problems: the lack of a national strategy, the lack of financial
resource and investments, the normative deficits, the disjunction between scientific research
on one hand and social problems and public policies, on the other; the lack of evaluation
criteria; the feudal instruments for financing science. Indeed, the problems on a political,
financial, normative and institutional level are of central importance. At the same time it is
obvious that the respondents see the problem as a series of ‘lacks’ instead of looking into the
specific field of social science.
This is not accidental. Not only in science, but also in other social spheres which are changing
their trajectories, transition is characterized by the lack of subjective ideas about its logic and
direction. Consequently, the attention of those ‘immersed’ in the sphere is focused on
individual problems (or lacks), but not on the changing socio-cultural forms and the complex
influence of these changes on the financing, on the normative framework or on the
institutional format. It is hardly fortuitous that a distinct ‘access’7 to this perspective is
demonstrated only by a couple of the interviewees who take part in different public fields and
– provisionally and metaphorically - identify themselves as ‘foreigners’ to the sociological
community.
If we look at the social grounds of this phenomenon, we will identify the principal difficulties
in the sociological reconstruction of fundamental social transformations.
Whenever established institutions and social factors are in danger of being eliminated through
social innovation in a ‘situation of transition’, they start acting ‘undercover’, or ‘informally’,
as they find themselves incompatible with the manifest social innovations (Simmel 1906:
7
We are not discussing their concrete attitude to the problem; we are interested in their positions on a purely
structural level.
8
472)8. Unlike the ‘one-dimensional’ recipes of transition analysts, ‘transition situations’ are by
default associated with an ‘informal layer’, which is in turn related to the survival of the social
groups and factors which have regulated basic knots within the social network. The ‘informal
status’ is an instrument for the transformation of ‘old social forces’. Besides deferring their
disappearance, it allows them to modify components of their structure, giving them new status
in the configuring social environment. Consequently, in the period of transition the social is
fundamentally impenetrable for the sociological instrumentarium. This supposition is made on
the level of the ‘subject matter’.
Let us now focus our attention on the institutional addressee of sociological knowledge. When
the dominant social groups are trying to simulate changes in order to maintain and modify the
previous social structure, the sociological instrumentarium is superfluous.
In such an
environment ‘public’ institutions act mimetically and ad hoc, while the essential social
relations take the form of shortcut, non-routine chains of interaction, inaccessible to
sociological analysis (Elias). In the transitional situation social relationships as a whole and
economic relationships in particular take place mainly in informal networks, only indirectly
bound to state institutions. These types of mutually oriented interests are immediately related
and ‘incognizable’ with the instruments of Western science.
The situation is similar in relation to the so-called ‘informed citizen’ as a sociological
addressee. In the course of transformations a number of social groups lose their status and fall
into social isolation. From the perspective of their undifferentiated experience it is impossible
to distinguish between the social and the sociological problem, which means that a publicly
relevant sociological analysis must be reduced to the level of social issues in one aspect or
another.
In short, there are no structured and publicly presented civic values and interests, which
minimises the role of sociological analysis. At the same time, there is a structured ‘informal’
interest constructing a ‘spontaneous order’ in the transitional period and generating
relationships underneath the visible principles and institutions.
These factors demonstrate why sciences were marginalized and why so far there has been no
structural change in the sphere of science and education.
And yet we cannot understand the lack of policy and strategy in science - the type of
financing, the normative framework and the institutional structure – without looking into the
changing relations in the last 15 years. It is not enough to say that the financing of the social
8
Simmel, Georg. "The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies." American Journal of Sociology 11 (1906):
441-498.
9
sciences is insufficient and that the state distributes the resources in a single-handed and
non-transparent manner. We have to explain it.
THE UNDERLYAING “DESIGN” OF THE SCIENTIFIC FIELD
Just because the Bulgarian social environment was ‘scientifically immunized’, in the period
of fundamental social transformation in the 1990s science and education were utilized for
state purposes, i.e. the preservation of the so-called ‘social concord’. Consequently, the
social patronage (most visible in the preservation of the monument institutions of the
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences) is publicly legitimate and self-evident.
To this day the principle of ‘supremacy of the state’ has not undergone any organizational
changes or structural and ideological reformation in the sphere of science and education.
This principle guides the constellation of institutional mechanisms – the expenditure model
of resource distribution, the centralized subordination system, stimulating the lack of public
transparency (see Danchev 2005). The state monopoly on resources distributions makes
scientific institutions closed and non-transparent to the public, because the financing does
not depend on the achievement of any social tasks that have been publicly presented, but is
only intended to cover the natural expenses of the physical reproduction of scientific and
academic
structures.
This
‘expenditure-centred’
budgeting
approach
generates
irresponsibility in the actions of research institutes, as their academic policies are not related
to the academic achievement, whose absence is not sanctioned at all.
Science and higher education were politically transformed into ‘social instruments’ for
preserving ‘social concord’. Any policy and financing in this area were reduced to the
function of maintaining the buildings and the staff without any criteria for scientific
achievement. This institutional approach was transferred to the National Science Fund,
although it was created for radically different purposes – for project-based financing of
scientific research in Bulgaria.

The Fund translates the current priorities of the European framework programmes and
funds without analytically formulating any long-term national strategy:
“…policies in the scientific sphere are made sporadically as a result of either
‘external pressure’ or the ‘Bulgarian translation’ of ‘European academic fashions’
(interview with an educational expert).

Absence of any national priorities for scientific research, although the task of their
formulation is set in the ‘Strategy for Scientific Research’. Priorities are formulated for
10
concrete competitions, but without a clear procedure they cannot serve as a framework
of reference (interview, educational expert).

The Fund is dependent upon executive power; decisions are taken by political figures
rather than experts.

The selection of committee members is non-transparent. There is no institutional
environment and clear mechanisms for recruiting the committees.

The work of the National Science Fund is marred by ‘doubts for unofficial lobbyism
by influential figures’ or defined as ‘feudal instruments – reproducing circles of
personally dependent agents’.
We can continue to list the deficits in the organization of the Fund, but they are only
important as a symptom of the type of national policy in the sphere of science. The
situation in the humanities and social sciences is even more complex – the range of
grants offered by the Fund clearly indicates that they are not among ‘the priorities’. Any
existing competitions specific to the field of the Humanities and Social Sciences are brought
down to two types: translating European objectives or redefining the national project for the
upcoming accession of the country to the European Union.
The titles of the winning project reveal two parallel tendencies. On one hand, there is a
movement towards increasing technicality, which is reflected in the terms used in the project
title: ‘standardisation’9, ‘a system for measurement’, ‘efficacy’10. On the other hand, the titles
are permeated by archaic categories, ‘monuments’ of national patriotism, whose 19th century
validity was restored by the late socialism. It was commonplace to see the explicit goals of the
competition reproduced mimetically in the project titles.
It ultimately transpires that the politically supported function of the Fund is to maintain
the network of the academic establishment, i.e. more or less to support the theatrical
science formed during socialism. To give but one example, two thirds of the approved
projects in the ‘National Identity’ competition are compiled by teams from the
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. This strategy, however, is not clear and explicitly stated
9
We have to take into account that this terminology is most often utilized in educational projects dedicated to
the quality and efficacy of education. This problem has different dimensions in Bulgaria and in Europe as a
whole – if in Europe it is related to the unification of educational systems and the integration of market
mechanisms in education, in Bulgaria the goals are far more prosaic, related to the introduction of minimal
standards of academic quality.
These words are based on a long-term idea – that аny qualitative change in either education or the army must
mean technologisation, the introduction of modern technologies, as the social environment is experienced as
principally static. As a consequence, the attempts to bring about qualitative change in the organization and inner
values of the educational and scientific institution were permanently diverted as the project resources were used
for separate technological innovations, most often computers, etc.
10
11
but carried out through invisible networks of social agents who feudalise the Fund, block
academic competition and undermine the trust in this type of ‘competition-based’
instruments (this opinion is shared by the majority of respondents).
Another form of state patronage is the participation of sociologists from the Bulgarian
Academy of Sciences in expert evaluations of programmes on employment, social support,
etc. As on the organisational level the Institutes are formed in the bosom of
‘administrative’ sociology (Beck: 346), their fundamental range of theories and
categories is based on their interaction with the state. This institutional and financial
dependency on the state, however, together with the absence of critical perceptions,
makes such social evaluations formal and superficial reproductions of public programs’
results and activities. Because ‘administrative’ sociology has no instruments for registering
the fluid relationships that go beyond institutions and are therefore a marker of their
anachronicity and inadequacy.11 To give but one example, the National Statistic Institute, the
administration, the financial budget and the ‘administrative sociology based on the national
society’ did not take into account a non-classical problem like migration until a ‘think tank’
showed that immigrants supply the second-largest total sum of investments in Bulgaria.
Another specific field for the scientists from certain sections of the Institute of Sociology is
expertise for ‘inter-departmental use’. But when the public organs have to legitimise or
initiate a certain policy, they assign the corresponding research not to the Bulgarian Academy
of Sciences, but to an agency for public opinion polls and/or a ‘think tank’, broadcasting the
results in the media.
It is true that the National Science Fund supports the activities of the academic
“players” in local context, but it is even clearer that the Fund distributes a very
unsubstantial resource among ‘small groups’ and consequently does not set the logic of
the scientific field.
As a rule the state organisation of academic and scientific institute does not allow for any
long-term and large-scale scientific research. Sociologists have found a way out of this
situation by applying for programmes of the Open Society Institute, ЕС, UNDP, the
Fulbright Foundation, as well as participating in programmes of the World Bank and
other international institutions.
11
As the institutional reform never did take place, in their current state the institutions only mimetically resemble
a regulator. In all the essential points, however, they continue using the legitimacy of the past – something which
is primarily demonstrated by the lack of goal-oriented activity, an expenditure-based budget and a tendency to
ignore the socially engaged civic subjects (if and when they exist). This administration lacks by default any
instruments for the registration of changed relationships.
12
In fact, two parallel processes have taken place – the global opening of science weakened the
pressure for changes in Bulgaria. As a consequence, science remains highly dependent upon
the state, but this is unsubstantial for a great part of the sociologists, because their academic
status is important only as an institutional warranty for research applications to foreign
foundations. To a certain degree this situation is paradoxical – the Western donors are
sponsoring research which not only fails to form new – or alternative – elites or social forces,
but in fact maintain the status quo. As the projects infuse fresh resources for scientific
research and specialisations, scientists do not become autonomous from the post-socialist
state, remaining in its orbit of dependency.
And yet, this sociologist swing towards foreign donors has some undoubtedly
positive dimensions – it generates social activity among the social scientists in postsocialist countries, fostering sensibilities and imagination for issues beyond the scope of
local science, etc.
At the same time, however, this practice generates a series of problems:
1. The lack of continuity and the tackling of ‘ready-made’ research problems. The
applicants acquire the peculiar habit of wasting no effort to identify the research
problems within the Bulgarian context and their relationship to supra-national
tendencies, adjusting instead their research to the changing priorities of international
foundations.
At this point we have to make a distinction among the types of
sponsoring institutions. Some cross-national projects arrive in ‘the periphery’ with preformulated indicators, requiring applicants to describe reality according to the
classifications of ‘the centre’. Yet such colonising approaches are a rare (if significant)
phenomenon. More frequently, a Bulgarian team works jointly with other researcher
groups, having the opportunity to define clusters of problems within a rather general
framework. As I can judge from my practice of evaluating internationally financed
projects, however, the dominant practice is that of copying the goals and objectives
formulated in the terms of the competition itself. This flaw is less the result of donor
policies than an effect of the absent scientific potential for defining a research
problem.
2. “Bullet-list” fetishism. As the financing process involves certain articulated criteria,
research proposals start resembling these criteria – it turns out that the actual (and
therefore hidden) goal of the research is to identify and follow the criteria and
ideological frameworks of the financing organization. As a result, the projects abound
with popular ‘mantras’: teamwork, multiplication effect, lead partners, research
13
consortium or networking, project teams, research design, etc. The opening and
democratisation of research funds, together with the strategy for incorporating the
applied functions in the scientific field itself, cannot take place without unification of
the tasks and criteria. The problem is that the intensification of this approach leads to
the formation of the autonomous activity of ‘project-writing’, where ultimately the
definition of a good project is reduced to ‘well-written’, relevant to the style and the
popular ‘mantras’. Thus the projects mimetically repeat the predefined tasks without
identifying (in the general case) any problematic situation which requires a research
solution. This leads to the technologisation of the research project, the minimization of
epistemological criteria and their replacement with magical practices for securing
sponsorship in this specific market.
The straightforward adherence to the
preformulated priorities is one of the factors for the fundamental detachment of most
Bulgarian social scientists from the burning social issues, as the donors often identify
problems which are – or seem to be - not particularly pressing.
3. The specific formulation of the task reconstructs the process of the research
endeavour, where the scientists have to take part in the public debate and ‘produce’
their addressee rather than merely ‘investigating’ it. In this requirement for
‘participation’ the project situation redefines the role of the social sciences and
seemingly ‘reconciles’ the classical conflict between civic and scientific values.
The culture of sponsored projects gives the scientist a very different status vis-à-vis
classical modernity, where the addressee is the nation-state, seen as the bearer of
‘universal interest’ and therefore as a guarantee, while the scientist (whose concepts
are isomorphous with the state) is by definition politically disengaged.
4. In a local context, the work on international projects leads to heterogeneity of the
national scientific field. Scientists do enter into discussions in the course of their
routine academic activities, but as research increasingly ‘takes place elsewhere’, these
discussions often induce boredom and drowsiness in a great part of the participants.
At the same time, a significant part of the social sciences are working on different
projects financed by international donors. But as participation and financing are
competitive, the discussions on the project research are not public outside the formal
‘dissemination of project results’. Consequently, the national scientific field was torn
into incoherent fragments. The research results are not subjected to a public
discussion; the adequacy of their instrumentarium to the specificity of the subject
matter is not questioned, nor are the overall effects disputed. This is normal, insofar as
14
the scientific field is transformed into irreconcilable enclaves who are associated with
international networks rather than the logic of the national academic field. This
process is a symptom of the reconfiguration of the academic field and double
switching of Bulgarian social scientists.
On one hand, there is an illusory
homogeneity on the level of national scientific institutions, but just as long as the
state is practically not a primary agent in the production of science, merely
preserving some organisations for its own administrative purposes. On the other
hand, we are witnessing heterogeneity on the level of European research. As
sociologists participate there as individuals, science starts following their
individual trajectories. I would not lament the lack of shared purpose or overall
project of the social sciences; in the present situation that would be an idealized
‘bad dream’. The problem is different.
5. When separate teams are conducting fragmentary cross-national research, they
have no structural interest of stirring a public discussion in the Bulgarian
environment. But without a public discussion within the sociological communities
there can be no minimal standards for evaluating sociological research. This
allowed the sociological field to be permeated by a number of non-professionals
who claimed to be doing sociological research or expertise but had no elementary
understanding of the principles of this activity.
6. Project applications, on the other hand, are related to proving the advantages of
the applying team, which automatically means erasing any references to
competing research. It turns out that not knowing or reading different studies on
the same subject is concordant with the very logic of the research process in
Bulgaria.
7. There is no continuity of research efforts – they change with the modification of
politically generated priorities for science on a European scale. Of course, the
priorities are set by scientific committees with research criteria in mind, but they
still reflect to a large extent the European idea of policy implementation, laying a
corresponding emphasis on cross-national studies. In turn, those are only possible
if the local references of the subject matter are erased and the research is based
on a dozen universal suppositions. This pattern includes ‘the model of democratic
consolidation’, set in ‘the paradigms of the transition’ or the theoretical model of
Hofstede,
who
presents
culture
in
hypostatic
oppositions
like
individualism/collectivism, masculinity/femininity, etc. Cross-national analyses are
15
meaningful as long as they are related to the social legitimacy of cross-national
policies, programs and normative regulations. Comparative research is a logical
development in the growing interdependency between the regions. The basic problem
was that national sociology had not researched and understood a number of important
specificities of Bulgarian society. In the last 17 years sociology was not an
autonomous order with essential influence or a mediating role in the social processes
in Bulgaria. That is why in cross-national research projects Bulgarian sociologists do
not represent the specific forces, groups and agents (to use Callon’s terminology).
They simply do not know them. From there on the only possible move is the import of
ready-made theoretical model with almost universal claims for validity (like
Hofstede’s theoretical model). Of course, these models are also associated with
science’s new function of identifying long-term social, political, economical and
cultural tendencies on a global scale. It is only natural in this situation to
minimise the importance of local differences and to focus the research on several
methodologically outlined basic factors without taking an interest in their social
‘integration’.
What is essential in this case is that the Bulgarian – local –
sociology had not coined any new concepts to identify the new realities. Even if it
had the chance, it could not participate fully in a European debate for
formulating adequate research criteria and indicators. As a result, the social was
‘signified’ with ahistorical categories like ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ cultures, a
knowledge that could not serve as an instrument for the concrete environment it
was configured in.
All this merely reinforced the public notion of the ‘inactive’ sociologist. The surprising fact is
that this notion is valid among the sociologists themselves. It is a recurring motif in the
interviews that ‘in the last fifteen years most scientists have detached themselves from the
actual social processes and continue to inhabit and investigate an imaginary (or has-been)
world’ (interview, sociologist). Sometimes this thesis is formulated differently: ‘Insufficient
engagement of the social sciences for the most important problems of contemporary social
development’ (interview, sociologist).
At first glance these statements sound logical. The crux of the matter, however, is that the
speaker always excludes his position, discussing the tendencies in social science as a whole.
This turns out to be a characteristic structure of the field, which is nonetheless interpreted
16
by the respondents as a problem of ‘other sociologists’, ‘other paradigms’. How can we
explain this paradox? To answer this question, I will use two approaches – one
methodological, the other related to the history of institutions.
Let us start by asking ourselves which reality we are talking about. For the ‘institutional
analysis’ the investigation of daily life is an ‘escape from reality’, while the
phenomenological approach accuses the proponents of institutional analysis in excessive
generalizing which fails to register hybrid forms and the aesthetic dimensions of reality
dominant in the late modernity. Unlike the unified and monolithic reality of socialism, in the
current phase of the social sciences those different paradigms are reading through different
levels of analysis, using disparate notions of ‘reality’ and ‘proximity’. These notions,
however, are not considered legitimate (this is an important problem we cannot discuss here).
In the last few years the intensification of the ongoing transformations has led to the
‘multiplication of mediators’, which in turn generates multiple and varied analytical
approaches.
The historico-institutional argument is the following:
Research takes place only as far as sociologists leave the organisational framework of
academic and scientific institutions. Science – its quality notwithstanding – is practiced only
as long as it goes outside the system, outside the University of Sofia and the Bulgarian
Academy of Sciences, which are considered rather stodgy and non-conducive to scientific
research (or perceived as a ‘snug place’ where any person who went into science at the time of
socialism could wait for his retirement on this warm and cosy, institutionally guaranteed job).
In this context scientific research seems an in-ordinate effort far transcending the institutional
framework and opportunities. Science is thus practiced as an individual endeavour, an
independent effort to compensate the institutional deficits.
As this involves individual
strategy and networks rather than channelled processes, each of the participants sees himself
as an exception to the rule – the rule being a ‘capsulated’ scientific community disassociated
with the social processes, excluding a few sporadic academic projects (see interviews).
Whenever sociologists reflect upon the social sciences in their entirety, each one envisages the
same institutional and normative framework blocking scientific research. Their achievements
stem from the process of transcending this framework – single-handedly, through networks or
individual efforts which are hardly the projection of any institutional relationships. In this
situation ‘the salvation of the drowning is their own concern”, while science (when it does
take place as such) is an individual or networking action to overcome institutional deficits.
This explains the paradox whereby each respondent defines himself as ‘researching real
17
problems’ and perceives the social sciences as ‘petrified’ and indifferent to real social
processes. With this argument I am by no means claiming that sociologists in Bulgaria are
tackling relevant research and social problems but their ‘single-handed approach’ does not
allow them to see this fact. The great majority of ‘scientific workers’ is disengaged from
public processes and the formulation of research problems. My point is that the same persons
who generate new scientific knowledge take up a position to describe the community as
disassociated from real processes (although the same community is what keeps them
together).
So far we have discussed the possible sources of the idea of the ‘inactive’ sociologist – an
idea that has seeped into the sociological community itself. In the next few paragraphs
we will ask ourselves who are the ‘active’ sociologists and what made this particular type
of sociology publicly relevant. I want to look into the type of analytical mediator
required by the changing societies.
LEGITIMIZING THE PRESENT
One of the conditions for the relevance of sociological analysis is the fundamental
awareness of the social actors that social life is structured and long-lasting, i.e. its
tendencies can be analysed as a prerequisite for making sociological forecasts (Berger
2001: 194). When the fundamental relationships take place outside the public sphere and
social life is practiced as a series of ad hoc survival strategies that can be registered in surveys
but not publicly debated or altered, there can be no expectation for sociological analysis and
tendency forecasts.
Whom Is Sociology Speaking To? Which Sociology?
…to public institutions?
Instead of integrating any regulative mechanisms, public institutions are merely simulating a
programme-type working model without making any important changes in the socialist
organisational pattern. This substitution produces daily institutional crises which are
extinguished with panic PR. As a consequence, institutions very rarely use analytical
sociological information. They have a structural need for ad hoc sociological data to help
them legitimise their actions or justify their absence. Thus, even when agencies
18
presented the situation correctly, they still sanctified to a certain extent the existing
order, supplying it with a numerical expression, a numerical image. Even when they
were criticizing ‘the state’, they were practicing the same gesture, as the critic is a
conformist in a criticaster society. Criticism is a component of the reproduction of a
single and indelible ‘power’, a constitutive element of its structure.
…to the public?
In the life of any large homogenous groups there is no ‘politics’ – no institutionalised
opportunities to influence their daily social relationships. Without any predictability,
organization and planning of one’s personal life there can be no sensibilities for organisation
on the level of public interaction. This generates the expectations for simple political/mythical
decisions oriented to concrete groups of people (populism). The public debate for the
formulation of social causes and regulators is unpopular and practically insignificant.
On the other hand, the non-public mechanisms for the social success of the economic
subjects are blocking the emergence of legitimate group social and economic interests
and their public assertion. In this format the sociological problem is reduced to its social
dimensions.
This is the reason why the popular analytical perspective did not go
beyond the numerical registration of public opinion to tackle the issue of demoscopic
instruments. There certainly are some in-depth analyses in some spheres, but for the most
part they have no continuity (as they respond to the situative strategy of their sponsors), they
are not made public and remain fragmentary, unrelated to other academic or non-academic
research.
Sociological expertise is reduced to great extent to surveying the party electorates and the
ratings of party leaders. This process has an earlier analogue – in the period of transformation
the social sphere was perceived as an amorphous alloy susceptible to political modelling.
As politics represents a structure in domination, it is the focus of radicalized expectations for
mending the ‘misshapen’ social reality. Politics, on the other hand, still takes place as a massmedia process, performed not in the public space but in the media. The ‘electoral sociologist’
involved in this game was perceived as an ‘active’ sociologist. The only opportunity of being
an active sociologist in this environment was to take up announcing political results in the
‘media limelight’.
19
Sociologists were basically measured by their ability or failure to guess the outcome of the
election, the percentages they ‘gave’ to a certain party, etc. In the conditions of social
transformation and the lack of differentiated and structured civic interests, public opinion is
too shaky and easily influenced by the factors of the day. That is why sociological forecasts
were often far form the actual results, while ratings ‘wavered’ in accordance with the latest
actions of the politician in question (or the discredit of his opponents). This was followed by
politically biased accusations of falsehood and data manipulation. The discredit affected not
just the agencies but ‘sociologists’ as a whole.
Despite their internal heterogeneity, academic sociologists have a relatively homogenous
notion of the reason for this ‘black’ image – agency sociologists. The speakers of academic
sociology claimed in the mass media that their agency colleagues were ‘guilty’ about the
absence of a civil society, as they presented bare facts and compared the percentages of
abstract opinions, thus paving the road for doxocracy... But the behaviour of the agencies is a
structural element of the field and can by no means be reduced to the malicious actions of
individual researchers, who often came from (or still are) in the ranks of academic sociology.
The strongest argument to that effect is that even if the data is presented as conditional
snapshots of public opinion and an instrument for informed social action, in the public
imagination it could start serving as a fetish, a reality generator. The research issue is how a
certain society perceives a given form of social knowledge as publicly relevant and how
knowledge starts building imaginary references. Demoscopic surveys, brought down to the
function of technological instruments, are just one of the symptoms of this problem.
THE FUTURE DEFICIT
Sociological agencies give a daily visibility to the political ‘present’, but when it wears
itself out, we have to construct ‘the future’. The basic instrument for filling the political
vacuum and the ‘future deficit’ become the think-tanks.
In 1997 a ‘swing of the pendulum’ wore out the ideological bipolar confrontation and the
political elites its logic had constituted. The whole political spectrum (hoping to survive and
preserve its status quo through the mechanism of simulated change) ‘centres’ upon Bulgaria’s
accession to the European Union and NATO. Joining the EU, however, is not a publicly
discussed issue but the last solution of problems generated in the ‘transition’ period when
many social groups are blaming the political sphere for their lost positions and social
isolation. Against this horizon Europe is presented to ‘the electorate’ as a smooth,
20
homogenous and internally unified instrument for laying down rules and achieving status; an
instrument that cannot be generated within the Bulgarian context.
The think-tanks become publicly relevant not so much with their concrete programs or
ideologemes, but with their capacity as a mediator for the achievement of the political
means/objective – the country’s accession to the European Union (through intitiating
public policies and reforms in different areas).
Despite their internal heterogeneity (Deyanova), the ‘argument factories’ share several
general factors. The role of think tanks cannot be understood without looking into the social
and political implications of this type of social expertise.
Firstly, they set a direction and an agenda which go beyond the political present and serve as a
reference point to political elites in the legitimate project of ‘Europe’. It is no accident that the
headquarters of the main political parties formed their own ‘think trusts’ generating
alternative projects with European overtones. Another detail in the image of think tanks is
their mediating role and flexible policy, which prove to be very successful in a political field
formed by strong ideological clashes.
Secondly, their ‘notebooks’ are full of social formulas and technological instruments for
change, which do not stand up to scientific criticism but are thinkable, simple and publicly
accessible. Because their aim is not ‘scientific reflection’ but the realisation of concrete
practical actions. What could serve this purpose better than the ideology of neoliberalism and
the theory of rational choice, which interpret the individuals inscribed in a concrete
environment as transparent abstract subjects operating in a regime of means and ends?
Thirdly, as the legitimate mediators of Western experience, the dominant think-tank
ideologemes quickly permeated political programmes, strategies and other official documents
for ‘external’ use. Scientists often identify the think-tanks as ‘empty-headed’ heralds, because
their recipe books are full of social formulas and technological instruments for changes,
unsupported by any scientific verification or argument. In an unstable social environment,
however, such ‘well-wishing’ messages are the only ones that can be integrated without
unsettling the network of local structured interests and elites. Because the alternative of the
think-tanks is not reflexive scientific analysis but mostly the nationalist rhetoric of the
military-patriotic elites championing the ‘autochthonous’ and closed-off Bulgarian nation, or
the nomenclature elite, the legitimate mediator of the past.
Somewhat paradoxically, the think-tank patterns are positively concordant with the social
expectations as they plead for reforms in ostensibly ineffective spheres such as market
economy, organized crime, jurisdiction, public health, etc.
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CONCLUSION
In the course of the transformations social science in its heterogeneity does not build up any
social solidity or addressee. In the first years the moral/intellectual discourse was dominant,
but in the next phase – for a number of reasons – the academic discourse became ‘inactive’,
outside the public agenda, disintegrating into a series of fragmentary projects oriented towards
various research problems, networks and sponsoring funds. The problem is not even the
quality of the research, as in the period of early transition the financing of science had
predominantly social functions. The problem is that the logic of the field excludes any
structural conditions for a debate on research hypotheses, the focus on identified problems, the
use of implicit or explicit classifications. If there is any shared ground, it is generated at the
‘meetings’ in scientific and academic institutes, but remains empty and sterile because science
has long since left those places – largely because of their institutional and financial
dependency on the mediating role and subordination of the state.
A cascade of transformations in the social sciences has led to the generation of new
sociological discourses and new forms of their ‘uses’. Sociological agencies started playing a
central role as their ad hoc public opinion surveys sanctified the political ad hoc strategies and
lent normalcy to the present beyond the concrete character of the data. Yet as the present
was continuously wearing itself out, after 1997 the European Union became the legitimate
future and a new player the think tanks - took a long-term role on the stage of sociological
expertise. They compensated a major deficit after the first years of the transition, when the
exaltation with democracy had already died away – the future deficit. As power could not
be legitimised in the crisis of the present, it created a new myth and made the think
tanks the legitimate social expert – the mediator of the future.
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