November 6, 2012 2:20 pm
Whatever Happened to Sociologists?
Image: Mehran Heidarzadeh
It’s a running joke in academic circles. There are scientists, and then there are “scientists.” Physics, math, most of biology, that’s all science. Psychology, evolutionary biology, ecology, that’s a little softer. And then there’s sociology.
Uncyclopedia defines sociology as “a cult based around the intellectual pseudoscience of studying society. Physicists in particular like to rag on the discipline. Take Alan Sokal, who submitted an entirely nonsensical paper to a sociology journal and got it published. The paper, called “Transgressing the Boundaries – Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity” contained sentences like:
The Einsteinian constant is not a constant, is not a center. It is the very concept of variability — it is, finally, the concept of the game. In other words, it is not the concept of something — of a center starting from which an observer could master the field — but the very concept of the game.
Its publication prompted a call to re-evaluate just what sociological journals were publishing and how rigorous they could possibly be.
But sociology wasn’t always the brunt of jokes from other scientists. In fact, for a long time sociology was just another scientific discipline. Stephen Turner recently wondered just what happened? He writes (in the Journal of Sociology no less):
Sociology once debated ‘the social’ and did so with a public readership. Even as late as the Second World War, sociologists commanded a wide public on questions about the nature of society, altruism and the direction of social evolution. As a result of several waves of professionalization, however, these issues have vanished from academic sociology and from the public writings of sociologists. From the 1960s onwards sociologists instead wrote for the public by supporting social movements. Discussion within sociology became constrained both by ‘professional’ expectations and political taboos. Yet the original motivating concerns of sociology and its public, such as the compatibility of socialism and Darwinism, the nature of society, and the process of social evolution, did not cease to be of public interest. With sociologists showing little interest in satisfying the demand, it was met by non-sociologists, with the result that sociology lost both its intellectual public, as distinct from affinity groups, and its claim on these topics.
Basically, he’s wondering: what happened to sociologists? When did they give up questions of human nature, altruism, society? Well, Turner argues that a big problem is that sociologists started getting political. “It is evident that many of the most enthusiastic adherents of the new model of professionalization in the United States had roots in the left, and not infrequently in the Communist Party itself.” And that political slant limited the types of questions sociologists were allowed to ask. He writes:
Sociology was once a place where intellectuals found freedom: Giddings, Sorokin, Alfred Schutz and many others who could have pursued careers in their original fields chose sociology because of this freedom. To some extent sociology still welcomes outsiders, though now it is likely to be outsiders with ties to the Women’s Movement. … But in general, the freedom of the past is in the past.
Turner’s basic point is that sociology is now a joke because every sociologist is a liberal. That’s not untrue: over 85 percent of the members of the American Sociological Association (ASA) vote for either the Democratic or Green parties. One survey found the ratio of Democrats to Republicans in the ASA to be 47 to 1. Now, whether or not sociology is joked about because its researchers political leanings is another question. But that’s the argument Turner seems to be making here.
More from Smithsonian.com:
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While I have no doubt that the move towards politicizing sociology came from the left, it is not a left or liberal movement per se. If you look at worldviews thru Milton Rokeach’s measure of “open vs. closed mindedness” you will find that liberals are over represented at the open minded end of the spectrum, but, there are at least a few very vocal closed minded individuals on the left end of the spectrum. I think you’d find that this movement is not a produce of liberals as much as its a product of closed mindedness.
Comment by Brian Fellow — November 7, 2012 @ 2:29 pm
One correction: the Sokal piece was not submitted to a sociology journal. It was submitted to Social Text, which describes itself as a cultural studies journal. Its publication did *not* generate ‘a call to re-evaluate just what sociological journals were publishing and how rigorous they could possibly be’, it raised questions about whether the humanities could sensibly comment on natural science, about Sokal’s ethics, and about the coherence of some varieties of postmodern theory. Another important feature of the Sokal case was that Social Text was not peer-reviewing at that time. As someone who regularly reviews for a variety of sociology journals, I can’t think of a single one which would have given Sokal’s piece a second glance. It’s not sociology that’s the joke, but something else entirely.
Comment by Robert van Krieken — November 12, 2012 @ 10:56 pm
Hi Robert,
Thanks for the note, and clarification! I think the confusion between cultural studies and sociology happens a lot, so while the Sokal piece wasn’t in a sociology journal, it often gets lumped into some of the common criticisms of sociology. The whole Sokal affair is an entirely different debate I suppose, and, I think it’s worth nothing that it’s not like physics is without its controversies either, like the Bogdanov twins – which were published in journals that were peer reviewed.
Rose
Comment by Rose Eveleth — November 13, 2012 @ 7:15 am
Hello Rose….well, ‘often’, I don’t know…the point is that it’s a serious misconception, and it’s disappointing to see it being repeated here. The fact is that sociology as a discipline has been, on the whole, pretty consistently hostile to anything that doesn’t have a clear and well-founded argument. Some varieties of self-styled postmodernist thought, which the Sokal piece parodies, is just one example of that. But I have to take issue with the portrayal of sociology as a ‘joke’ in academic circles. In my own context at the University of Sydney, for example, there’s a new centre for the study of obesity and cardio-vascular disease, and while there’s no shortage of medicine and public health academics keen on getting involved, the Centre is also desperate to include social scientists, above all sociologists, because it allows them to make claims about their understanding of the social dimensions of this particular set of medical and health issues. In my view sociology as a field is in a very strong position in the broad array of scientific disciplines, because social change is an important dimension of how the world changes, as much as scientific or technological change. Personally I’d also say that if sociology is in a weaker position in some countries, much of that is attributable precisely to its success in changing the way people think, so that many sociological concepts are now experienced simply as common sense. I have to say I found the piece a cheap shot – I’m sorry, I can’t think of a more polite way to put it.
Comment by Robert van Krieken — November 13, 2012 @ 5:28 pm
Yikes. I’m a sociologist, and I agree our filed is ripe for criticism. Perhaps I’ll return to offer a defense of our worthiness. But first, some facts about the characterization of this hoax as an existential crisis in sociology.
1. Sokal, the author who wrote the hoax, is not a sociologist; he is a physicist.
2. Social texts, the journal where the hoax occurred, is a cultural studies journal (although the distinction between that and sociology might be too fine to explain here).
3. The editor who presided over that issue, Andrew Ross, is also not a sociologist (I think his phd is in something like literary theory–but I agree that he may see himself as a sociologist).
4. The journal of sociology, referred to as the authoritative venue for this type of discussion, is currently the 87th ranked journal within the discipline (it’s the flagship journal of the Australian sociological association–who knew?).
Again, these facts do not discredit the idea that peer review in sociology, and our disciplinary shift away from matters that are relevant, are sources of concern. Rather, I offer them to show that there is more to this issue than meets the eye. Also, blog entries based on a quick scan of a Wikipedia entry on Sokal and the abstract of a recent journal article are a pet peeve of mine. /rant
Comment by Ken — November 21, 2012 @ 3:19 pm