Post-Partisan Sociology (Guest Post by Chris Martin)
[Guest post by Chris Martin, graduate student in sociology, Emory University]
What’s the difference between social work and sociology? The two fields ought to be quite distinct, but as a sociologist myself, I sometimes can’t find the line between sociologists, who study society, and social workers, who remedy social problems. In fact, Karl Marx believed that interpreting society was less important than changing it, and he is the first member of sociology’s holy trinity.
Here’s the more important question—Is it OK to blur the distinction? Does it compromise scholarship when sociologists try to remedy social problems? If sociology, like economics, drew scholars from various ideological backgrounds, I think it would not be problematic. There would be room to debate the pros and cons of new and old forms of social order. American sociology, despite its progressive origins, once had such diversity. Sadly, that diversity has now vanished.
As Jonathan Haidt pointed out, at a 2011 social psychology conference, disciplines face problems when ideological diversity vanishes. Members of the discipline congeal into a moral tribe, which unites around the pursuit of fixed ideals. Because the left dominates social psychology, Haidt argued, social psychology sometimes resembles such a moral tribe, one that shares its totems and taboos. Conservatives (and libertarians) are either ignored or caricatured.
In a new article in The American Sociologist, I examine how sociology faces a similar problem. The article “How Ideology Has Hindered Sociological Insight” (ungated version here) draws attention to three problems.
The first is avoidance of taboo topics and conclusions. The taboos in sociology are similar to the ones that Haidt identified in his 2011 talk about social psychology: Ideas such as that “victims” are sometimes blameworthy, that sexes and races biologically differ from one another, that social beliefs are inborn rather than constructed, and that stereotypes sometimes match average group attributes.
I can see why research on these topics is hard to swallow, but how probable is it that the universe cares about the moral taboos of a small community of researchers who happen to live in the 21st century? In other words, wouldn’t you expect to reach morally troubling conclusions at least some of the time?
The second problem is data censoring. Often, data are trimmed to fit a liberal cause. Consider the case of White privilege. In the canonical article on White privilege, Peggy McIntosh noted, among other things, that her Whiteness endowed her with the privilege of housing affordability: “If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford ….”
Here McIntosh correctly implies that Whites are better off than Blacks—but incorrectly implies that Whites are better off than everyone else. White income actually lags behind Chinese-American, Filipino-American, Jewish-American, Indian-American, and Japanese-American income. McIntosh may not have had these figures at hand in 1989, but they’re easily available now. Yet they’re persistently trimmed because they interfere with the story that whites, as the majority-group oppressor, have privileges that are denied to all minority groups.
The third problem is limited empathy for outsiders. In everyday life, we often think we have social insight—we assume that we know what information other people hold in their heads. In fact, we have a tendency to assume that if we know something, other people know it too. In reality, of course, that doesn’t always hold. In fact, we don’t even know if other people use the same vocabulary that we use.
For instance, liberals often talk about inequality as a synonym for unfairness. They then describe conservatives as tolerant of inequality. However, inequality (in itself) may simply not be salient for people who aren’t liberals. It’s not that these people don’t care about fairness, but rather that they don’t think that inequality of outcomes necessarily implies unfairness. People (and groups) may differ in how hard they work, or in how valuable their contributions are in the current economy.
Because of these three problems, I believe that American sociology is not producing the very best work that it could produce. What is the solution? I agree with Haidt and his co-authors (in a recent paper) that the answer is diversity. We need to find and encourage more non-liberals to join the field of sociology. We don’t need the proportion of conservatives, liberals, and libertarians to match the proportions in the US population. That goal would be absurd. But we sorely need to change the current state of affairs. One social psychologist, Lee Jussim, recently wrote how he enacted change—see his blog post “How to Encourage Non-Liberal Students in Psychology.”
The irony here is that sociologists care about race, gender, and class diversity not just for the sake of social justice, but also for the sake of bringing different perspectives into the classroom. Given the relevance of political polarization to the study of social divisions, isn’t it obvious that sociology needs political diversity too?
Cited Article
Martin, C. C. (2015). How ideology has hindered sociological insight. The American Sociologist. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1007/s12108-015-9263-z (ungated version)
Jews aren’t white???
This article misses the forest for the trees. Is there a “conservative” physics? Biology? Of course not, the concept is prima facie absurd. The problem the author harps on is one at the fringes. Yes, the similar world view of many sociologists will impact what they choose to study. It will also have an impact on the Kuhnian Cycle as paradigms shift. BUT, it is not THE problem. THE problem is the fact that a significant portion of the discipline jumped off the postmodern ledge.
When you have social scientists who don’t believe in science because it “privileges” the “discourse” toward white heterosexual males or other such nonsense, that is when you have a problem. Science isn’t anything other than a methodology to study objective reality. The only true assumption one needs to make is that their IS an objective reality. Many sociologists have followed Foucault off the deep end and ended up in relativist hell where all of our knowledge is “socially constructed” and there is no truth, let alone Truth. Yes, it is important to understand that what we consider deviance within any given society at any time is to some extent a social construct, Foucault had a point. But if you take it too far, you end up with no place to stand to make any critique or any statement of fact. You end up spouting nonsense like: “female genital mutilation is an accepted part of [pick a culture that engages in the practice] culture, and therefore needs to be judged within that cultures ethical and moral framework. It is an essential element of [whatever] culture, and should be appreciated for its beautiful representation of [whatever] cultures moral values.” Or some such drivel. More importantly, you can never make any truth claims, because everything is socially constructed. I was in grad school studying sociology at the PHD level, and I had other students actually say things like “gravity is a social construct.” This removes all meaning from the concept of “social construct.”
Furthermore, there is a conservative social science, it’s called economics. Within the field of economics, a generation of failed engineers has taken their hard earned math skills and entered the castle, pulling up the drawbridge behind them. These individuals have crafted beautiful mathematical models simulating human behavior. The only problem is they never bother to challenge their models with real world empirical data. When they do, lo and behold, their models don’t hold up. This isn’t exactly unexpected. Their models have built in assumptions about human behavior that Herbert Simon discredited in the 50’s. Modern day scientists (behavioral and neuro-economists) have validated Simons critiques of these assumptions.
When I was in grad school, Michael Burawoy was the head of the ASA. He created a debate about “public” sociology, which is the “social work” part of the discipline that the author is talking about. This is not a new debate. Sociology as a social science has no room for social work. Buroway was wrong then, and the recycled idea is wrong now. If you are a social scientist, you should be engaged in farthing our understanding of how the world works. That is the gig, along with passing on that knowledge. Leave the changing of it to the politicians or the postmodernist naval gazers.
If you actually trained social scientists in the scientific method, and instilled the values of science in the social sciences the way they are in the “hard” sciences, you would solve many of the problems the author is concerned with. If you value scientific knowledge and it’s advancement, you are much less likely to “fudge” the numbers. Of course it still happens, you can’t completely remove human nature from the equation (which Haidt should surely understand). And of course we still have to account for Berger and Luckmann, which just makes in more difficult, not less rewarding or important. After all, the “hard” sciences have their own issues, Schrödinger’s Cat/Heisenberg Uncertainty, but they still manage to produce results that have helped our species advance. And there are social scientists aside from the aforementioned behavioralists and neuro-economists. There are complexity and evolutionary folks who are embracing what modern day biology is teaching us. I suggest you look at Jonathan Turner as one standout in this group, but there are plenty of others.
Finally, I’d briefly like to address the “white privilege” comments. If you define “white privilege” as economic advantage, then you have limited it in scope and redefined the concept. This isn’t useful or even honest. White privilege, as far as my understanding goes, encompasses many more resources then economic ones. It is more of a Bourdieuian concept; other types of capital are involved. Symbolic, network, cultural, all of these play a role. This is why a drunk white man carrying a rifle down a public street gets talked down while a black kid in Cleveland with a toy pistol gets shot to death after the police drive up within five feet and wait 1 second. This is not rocket science, and shame on Haidt for pushing this nonsense in his twitter feed. I’m afraid he needs to look at his own work on self reinforcing beliefs and examine how they led him to uncritically proclaim this worthy of publication.
Best,
Anders Carlson
Funny you mention there is no conservative physics – when right now conservative and liberal physicists are battling it out over the American physical Society’s statement on climate change.
Liberal physicists claim climate change cannot be questioned, and conservative physicists say it can be questioned, and the science behind climate change is questionable.
As a result, the APS split into two camps…with the liberal camp kicking off scientists off their climate change statement committee and replacing them with a “public relations” people.
it is interesting that liberal scientists reject scientific method in this case, a case which Anders Carlson fails to see due to partisan blindness.
http://judithcurry.com/2015/04/07/draft-aps-statement-on-climate-change/
Median household (HH) income in the U.S. in 2013
White, not Hispanic $58,270
Asian $67,065
That looks like a big difference to me. Why have privilege if it does not lead to a better outcome? Is there such a thing as Asian privilege? If whites have privilege why not use it to make more money? Are whites squandering their privilege? Or is there something that is a stronger force than privilege?
Anders: “Furthermore, there is a conservative social science, it’s called economics…” Since you are a trained sociologist, while I am not, I would love to see what study you base this assertion on? From my recollection, most surveys show that a plurality, if not a majority, of trained economists identify as liberal.
Also, “This is why a drunk white man carrying a rifle down a public street gets talked down while a black kid in Cleveland with a toy pistol gets shot to death after the police drive up within five feet and wait 1 second.” That’s a provocative anecdote, so I’m curious what you think about this article: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/25/race-and-justice-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/