The Heart of Sociology
James Moody
The Ohio State University
Department Brown Bag, 4/29/05
Introduction
•Points of Departure
•A battle for symbolic power
•Is anybody listening?
•What Knowledge?
•Where does sociology fit?
•Sociologically unique theory
•Making Sociology Relevant
•What do we want to say?
•How do we get the message out?
•Conclusions
Points of Departure: A battle over symbolic power
Why name it “Public sociology”?
“Knowledge of the social world and, more precisely, the categories
which make it possible, are the stakes par excellence of political
struggle, a struggle which is inseparably theoretical and practical, over
the power of preserving or transforming the social world by preserving
or transforming the categories of perception of that world.” (p.236)
“Every field is the site of a more or less openly declared struggle for
the definition of the legitimate principles of division of the field.”
(p.242)
Pierre Bourdieu Language and Symbolic Power
Points of Departure: A battle over symbolic power
Why name it “Public sociology”?
The power to name is the essential step in any battle over the “legitimate principles of
division” in a social field, such as the discipline of sociology.
•Appropriating “sociology” is an attempt to legitimate a political project
•Reifies the practice of appending non-scientific adjectives to “sociology”
(“Critical sociology”, “Policy Sociology”, “Professional Sociology”)
•This is a brilliant tactical move,
•Uses our general practice of defining sub-fields (“Organizational
Sociology”), but slyly changes the meaning of “sociology” in the process.
Compare:
• Political Sociology  Sociology of politics
• Public Sociology  /  Sociology of Public(s)
•Once the term is in circulation, the defining details are largely irrelevant.
Power comes in establishing the term, not by filling in the particulars.
Points of Departure: A battle over symbolic power
Why name it “Public sociology”?
How has this symbolic move been so easily perpetrated?
•Linguistic familiarity
•We are so used to the “<modifier> sociology” construction in our
scientific practice, that we easily misread the significance of the new
appropriation.
•Repetition & (mis)recognition
•Simple repetition in “debates,” talks, and plenary sessions reifies the
concept by selectively (mis)recognizing the meaning & content of
these events as support for the project.
•This would be like counting the number of people at a rally without
accounting for which candidate they supported.
•Plays on a social activist bias in the discipline
Points of Departure: A battle over symbolic power
Why name it “Public sociology”?
Why do it?
•Internal:
The appropriation of power through naming is a covert way to change
the direction and values of a field. Since this particular project plays
well into the generally progressive politics of most sociologists, it’s
often well-received.
This move has a well-repeated history in sociology (see Abbott’s
Chaos of Disciplines).
•External:
By casting the project as sociology the legitimacy of a scientific field
is appropriated for political projects.
Points of Departure: A battle over symbolic power
Why name it “Public sociology”?
What should we do about it?
•Nothing
The best response to this project would have been to simply ignore it. You
kill a bad book by not reviewing it, not by giving it a bad review. The best
counter-move in a symbolic battle is to not acknowledge the move in the first
place.
•Turn the debate
It’s too late to do nothing, so let’s change the focus of the question. We
should use this as an opportunity to ask:
•What is sociology and where does it fit in the social sciences?
•How can we make our scientific work relevant to wider audiences?
Points of Departure: Is anybody listening?
What would effective “public sociology” look like?
Burawoy says “public sociology” is :
A dialog between sociology and its publics
•Sociologists as sociologists engage in direct political discourse &
action.
•This should rest on moral questions “regenerating sociology’s
moral fiber”
•Effectiveness would thus imply getting noticed, failure is equal to
public indifference.
Points of Departure: is anybody listening?
Burawoy lists 5 recent exemplars of public sociology, all taken by the
ASA, how many of them appeared in the press?:
•Brief to supreme court on the Michigan decision: 0
•Statements on Race (proposition 54, 2003 “importance”): 4
•Resolution against the war in Iraq: 1
•Resolution against a constitutional amendment banning same-sex
marriage: 0
•Protesting the imprisonment of Saad Ibrahim: 1
Nobody is paying attention to these political statements.
The media does, however, report our substantive findings
Points of Departure: is anybody listening?
What effect would effectiveness have?
This is probably good news.
•Coupling sociology for politics is more likely to delegitimate sociology than
legitimate our political programs.
•Consider Nadar’s involvement in the 2000 ASA meeting.
•The only coverage the N.Y. Times gave to that meeting was an editorial
titled “Sociologists to the Barricades”1 that ridiculed the overly political,
simplistic, and clearly ideologically motivated presentations, mocking any
scientific activity.
•Richard Tommasson, summarized this by saying “Three and four decades
ago people confused sociology with social work, now they may confuse it
with a revolutionary party.”2
•If sociology is equated with liberal politics our scientific work will be similarly
read. Our ability to remain above the fray is crucial to being heard at all.
1 http://www.crab.rutgers.edu/~goertzel/asameetings.htm
2 http://www.asanet.org/footnotes/septoct00/publicforum.html#Sociologists
Points of Departure: is anybody listening?
What effect would effectiveness have?
•A counter argument is that sociology need not take a particular political
stance.
•“Public sociology has no intrinsic valence – it can as well support
Christian Fundamentalism as it can Liberation Sociology or
Communitarianism” -- Burawoy , p.11
•But every example we’ve seen so far has been for left and far-left
causes and positions.
•It doesn’t matter that this might well follow from good social
science. It will be interpreted as “just” political.
•Ultimately, the goal of using sociology to legitimate politics is self-defeating.
The same “power of naming” that allows claiming a space for “public
sociology” will let those best skilled at using symbolic power simply equate
“sociology” with “politics.”
Points of Departure: is anybody listening?
This does not mean we should do nothing.
•
The lack of direct political action can be politically relevant.
•
Tendencies to stay out of politics can be seen as extremely
conservative: it favors what is currently in place.
Fixing the points of debate
•
The role of sociology (I think) should be to identify the social facts that
political actors will have difficulty denying. We should provide the “is” to
politicians “ought”.
•
Which implies
(1) We need to have something useful to say
(2) What we say needs to be seen as legitimate descriptions of the world
people are interested in.
(1) follows from sociology’s unique empirical and theoretical position.
(2) Combines our claim to objective, scientifically grounded knowledge with
disseminating that knowledge more widely.
What Knowledge?: where does sociology fit?
Can sociology lay any legitimate claim to unique knowledge?
•Perennial debates over the existence of a theoretical core to the
discipline
•Rapid growth in the internal diversity of topics sociologist study:
50
Number of ASA Sections
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2010
What Knowledge?: where does sociology fit?
Can sociology lay any legitimate claim to unique knowledge?
•Rapid growth in the number of social science journals:
What Knowledge?: where does sociology fit?
Can sociology lay any legitimate claim to unique knowledge?
•This growth & diversity has been seen as evidence for the ultimate
emptiness of sociology as a scientific discipline.
•But disciplines are created dynamically by the exchange of ideas, not
the number of ideas. That is, we recognize work as much by who they
speak to as by what they speak about.
•The clearest empirical trace of this communication is citation.
Disciplines can then be defined as clusters of work that speaks
more to each other than to anyone else.
What Knowledge?: where does sociology fit?
Can sociology lay any legitimate claim to unique knowledge?
•Sociology “fits” at the center of the social sciences. We are not as internally
cohesive as Economics or Law, but more so than many (anthropology, allied
health fields).
•This represents a tradeoff. We have traded unique dominance of a topic
(markets, politics, mind, space, history) for diversity & thus centrality.
•Sociology is interstitial discipline (Abbott, 2004) in at least two-senses:
•There is no content topic we can reasonably exclude
•We pull together, and generate, the ideas and topics covered by
specialty disciplines.
•This makes us uniquely positioned to provide comprehensive insights on
particular empirical questions.
What Knowledge?: Sociologically Unique Theory
Is there a set of unique theoretical tools & concepts that sociology uses to
understand substantive topics?
These are the core elements that form our scientific “collective conscious”
making possible the wider “organic solidarity” that comprises the empirical
scientific work of the discipline.
My strategy is to ground the abstract ideas of structure and agency
embedded in Sewell, Giddens or Bourdieu by embedding them in key
action arenas (Networks, Organizations, & Markets ) which are intimately
linked to questions of meaning (culture) and regular, repeated rules for
social action (institutions), all of which rest ultimately on the distribution of
people in places (population & ecology).
What Knowledge?: Sociologically Unique Theory
A proposed schema for primary sociological elements
Scope of
individual
agency
Networks
Organizations
Markets
Institutions
Culture
Determinacy
of social
structure
Population / Ecology
What Knowledge?: Sociologically Unique Theory
A proposed schema for primary sociological elements
The Action arenas (Networks, Markets, and Organizations) are were actors
do things.
We have currently given much of this domain to other disciplines, but
there’s no reason we can’t re-appropriate it.
The meaning regions (Culture & Institutions) rest squarely on Sewell’s
treatment of “schemas” (rules that guide social action but that are
simultaneously re-created in their use), differing only in their regulatory
power and resilience.
Population & ecological distributions result from the combined behaviors of
actors’ use and reaction to the meaning and regulatory dimensions, but in
turn shape the possible actions actors can take. (This is nearly Durkheim
wholesale).
What Knowledge?: Sociologically Unique Theory
A proposed schema for primary sociological elements
The typical substantive topics that sociologists deal with on a
day-to-day basis then emerge from the intersection of these sets.
For example:
•Power or exploitation result from access to resources
embedded in the action arenas and shaped by the meanings
dimensions
•Categories like class, race or gender become a pattern of
relations instead of essential social or biological elements.
Any substantive domain can be treated in this way and, I think,
typically is treated this way even if not put in this particular
language.
What Knowledge?: Sociologically Unique Theory
A proposed schema for primary sociological elements
The point, of course, is not the correctness of this particular proposal.
It’s that our interstitial position in the field of social science allows us to
take a wider view of the social world than any other discipline.
If, as Arendt claims, science rests on the ability to “take a view from
nowhere,” then sociologists have a distinct advantage, because we
don’t carry with us the kinds of disciplinary blinders needed to maintain
strong boundaries.
This should allow us to more effectively communicate to the wider public.
But what do we want to say?
Making Sociology Relevant: What do we want to say?
A few empirical facts: World HIV Prevalence: 38M in 2003
Source: World Health Organization
Making Sociology Relevant: What do we want to say?
A few empirical facts: Social isolation affects suicide more for
females than for males …
Effect of Friendship Structure on Suicidal Thoughts
Net of demographic, family, school, religion and personal characteristcs.
Males
Females
OR
95% CI
OR
95% CI
Network
Isolation
0.665 (0.307 - 1.445)
2.010 (1.073 - 3.765)
Intransitivity Index
0.747 (0.358 - 1.558)
2.198 (1.221 - 3.956)
Friend Attempted Suicide
2.725 (2.187 - 3.395)
2.374 (2.019 - 2.791)
Trouble with People
0.999 (0.912 - 1.095)
1.027 (0.953 - 1.106)
Making Sociology Relevant: What do we want to say?
Percent Carrying Weapons
A few empirical facts: … but isolated males are more likely to carry
weapons than isolated females.
25
Males
Females
20
15
10
5
0
Outsiders
Bridges
(8%)
(25%)
Members
(67%)
Making Sociology Relevant: What do we want to say?
A few empirical facts: Some racially heterogeneous schools are
socially segregated …
Making Sociology Relevant: What do we want to say?
A few empirical facts: … while other heterogeneous schools are
socially integrated. Why?
Making Sociology Relevant: What do we want to say?
…and of course we could go on like this for many more.
Each of these empirical points are politically relevant:
•HIV / AIDS  questions about world position & sexual
behavior
•Social Isolation in Youth  Role of schools, meaning of
gender
•Racial Integration  Meaning of race, Assimilation
Making Sociology Relevant: What do we want to say?
We need to ensure that those with political agendas are
getting the facts right.
Our training is in understanding & explaining the world,
not in political action. We can win debates and arguments
about data, method and findings. We cannot compete in
the political spin cycle.
Often, however, the answer will be “We don’t know.”
Hence the strong need for basic social science research,
research that is not tied directly to a policy outcome, but
instead focuses on fundamental properties of social
interaction.
Making Sociology Relevant: How do we get the message out?
Teaching
Burawoy points out that one of our best arenas for “political
sociology” is the classroom, since we graduate ~25,000 majors a
year.
•Note that this plays directly into the hands of those charging
the academy with political bias.
I agree that we should use our classes, but not to preach a
specific political message.
Instead, we need to generate a population of social science
research literate graduates, who can be honestly critical of
the kinds of data and claims they hear in the political realm.
Making Sociology Relevant: How do we get the message out?
Research
Our best bet for being relevant will be to advertise our findings.
Most of our work is funded by the public, either directly through
grants or indirectly through our university salaries. We should
be accountable for that funding and do our best to expose them
to our research.
This means using the media.
Making Sociology Relevant: How do we get the message out?
Media Coverage
The public finds (quality) research on social life as interesting as we do, and
the science press is very eager to publish solid scientific findings.
I’ve had 3 pieces get significant media coverage. This work has appeared in:
•Talk of the Nation (NPR): 3 Million Listeners2
•Time Magazine: 4.1 Million (Circulation1)
•NY Times: 1.1 Million (Circulation)
•Washington Post: 746,000 (Circulation)
•Glamour: 2.2 Million
•Men’s Health: 1.7 Million
•The Economist: 800,000
•Harpers: 800,0000
•Playboy: 3.1 Million
Total: 16.75 Million readers, plus 2nd tier newspapers, wire
& web.
1) http://www.magazine.org/Circulation/circulation_trends_and_magazine_handbook/11186.cfm
2) http://www.npr.org/about/press/020319.recordbreak.html
Making Sociology Relevant: How do we get the message out?
Media Coverage
Working with the media comes with certain costs:
•We have to make it accessible.
•They will get it wrong. But that’s probably OK.
•The interest of the science press is inversely proportional to the
prominence of political motives in the work.
Conclusions
1) The current push for “public sociology” is a classic exercise in symbolic
power.
• The attempt to place “public sociology” as “just” another type of
sociology is a ploy designed to borrow scientific legitimacy for a
political project.
•
The move risks a two-fold backfire:
• Scientific sociology will be delegitimized by politics
• Illegitimate science will have no positive policy effect.
2) As a discipline, sociology is uniquely situated (a) to bridge other social
science disciplines, (b) bringing to bear unique theoretical insights (c)
about empirical puzzles that are of genuine interest to the public.
Conclusions
Marx famously said:
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the
point, however, is to change it.”
Theses on Feuerbach, XI
Before we can change the world, we need to understand it. As it turns
out, the world is much more difficult to understand that Marx and his
optimistic 19th century companions ever imagined.
The sociologist’s primary purpose is to contribute this understanding. It is
possible to change the world without understanding, but you will
rarely be happy with the result.