Conflicts in Social Science

Anton Van Harskamp

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN: 9780415148269
• eBook ISBN: 9781134753161
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Negocios en general

Through detailed case studies, the contributors look at conflicts in social science arguing that they must be resolved at the level of the individual discipline rather than at the level of philosopy. They explore different ways in which social scientists deal with the tension of being simultaneously party to a conflict and a contributor its settlement.

1 CONFLICTS IN SOCIAL SCIENCE

Anton van Harskamp

What is the use of social science? An apparently naïve answer is that social science can contribute to the betterment of society: its systematically verified truth may provide the key to the settlement of disruptive conflicts. To take two random examples: by gaining insight into the cycle of debt and poverty in the Third World, social science is supposed to do its part in helping to find solutions for the conflicts in the Third World; by investigating the causes of child abuse in the nuclear family, it is supposed to do the same in numerous families. The same applies to many more areas of antagonism and conflict. At any rate, this is what many students expect who go to university or college to study social science (Webb 1995:156ff.).

Are we really dealing with a naïve answer? The authors of this volume presuppose that this is not the case. It is an inherent claim of social science that it can function as one of the (intellectual) tools in the settlement, i.e. closure, management or containment, of social conflicts. Some sociologists even suggest that ‘their’ science is socially indispensable: given the discordant chaos of groups and social worlds, its theoretical findings not only contribute to mutual understanding, but they also induce us to commitment to rational, non-violent persuasion, which is so badly needed in this irrational and violent world (Berger and Berger 1972:363).

Even if one does not share this fairly idealistic view, it is still reasonably safe to advance the opinion that the social sciences originally were designated as the most rational way to deal with conflicts in a constantly changing world. The conjunction of events linking the political and socio-cultural thrust of the American and French revolutions to the vast socio-economic changes in the nineteenth century produced the great founding fathers of the social sciences directed at conflicts which were disturbing social order (Laeyendecker 1981; Heilbron 1990; De Wilde 1992). Marx and Engels, for instance, were searching for the explanation of class conflicts; Durkheim was driven by the intuition that the socio-cultural cohesion of nation and state in the French Third Republic was torn apart by individualization and other conflict-conducive processes; Weber was fascinated by the question of why precisely rationalization occurred in a Western context and why it resulted in a ‘frozen conflict’ between the individual and bureaucratic apparatuses. Despite the differences between these great figures, they devised their theoretical conceptions, either in a direct way (Marx, Engels, etc.) or in a more indirect way (Durkheim), as a means of gaining practical results in a conflict-ridden world. Even Weber, who explicitly recognized conflict as inherent in modern social structure, and who did not subscribe to the idea that social science should have an immediate impact on social policy, was motivated by a personal concern that social science should ultimately contribute to counterbalancing the increasing number of value conflicts in the Western world; conflicts which he considered as consequences of the paradoxical outcome of rationalization: the expansion of irrationality (Albrow 1990:283ff.; Sica 1990:13, 101, 195ff.).

THE QUESTION

This brings us up against a problem. Despite the lofty inherent claim of social science that it is supposed to contribute to the settlement of conflicts, the social facts are that the field is heavily torn by intellectual conflicts. The student who intends to study social science with a humanitarian concern will soon find out that any belief in a social scientific truth which could contribute to the settlement of conflicts is lost among a myriad of conflicting theories and interpretations. The most obvious question will then be: Can social science satisfy its inherent claim to contribute to the settlement of conflicts when the field of social science is divided by conflicts?

To make the question still more disturbing for the student, intellectual conflicts not uncommonly radiate into the world ‘out there’. Some sociologists of science even suggest that the traditional distinctions between science and the world ‘out there’ are blurred. The German sociologist of science Peter Weingart, for instance, detects a process of de-differentiation between social sciences and public policy-making. It is often unclear whether we are dealing with a conflict in matters of public policy with a social scientific dimension, or with a social scientific conflict with a policy dimension (Weingart 1983:235). We have only to think of debates concerning the fight against crime, such as those for and against the enlargement of the jurisdiction of investigatory services, not to mention questions relating to immigration control, family planning methods and countless other topics. People always try to defend their own point of view by means of social scientific expert assessment. In this process, numerous social scientists find themselves caught up in an inextricable entanglement of scientific conflicts and societal antagonisms. This all seems to make it even more difficult to live up to the claim of settling conflicts.

A central assertion in this volume is that the question raised by the prospective student is a very serious one. It touches on the self-image and the social credibility of the social sciences. However, it is not uncommon to play down the seriousness of this question. Three relativizing views should be mentioned in this respect: first, that conflict is not a neglected issue in thesocial sciences but a major field of study; second, that the role played by conflict is not always negative, but often fulfils positive functions in society and the world of science; and, third, that social science is inevitably a conflict-ridden enterprise, which seems to mean that complaints about the occurrence of conflicts are not useful.

The reader will perhaps be surprised, but the authors of this volume endorse these views too. However, we do not think that they can function as a relativization of the question which is at stake here and so let us briefly indicate what these views are and what they entail.

We are well aware of the fact that conflict constitutes one of the most fruitful sources of reflection and ingenuity in the social sciences. The study of conflicts in society is a major stimulus in the refinement and development of the knowledge of social structures and actions (Coser and Larsen 1976). However, we shall argue that, although conflicts are an important object of study, reflective knowledge about conflicts, as far as social scientists are involved, is a wrongly neglected issue in contemporary social research.

We also hold the view that social conflicts, considered as a struggle over values and claims to status, power and resources, can fulfil positive functions. For instance, conflicts can clear the air between competing groups, direct struggling parties to the expression of their own identity, reduce an atmosphere of uncertainty by the maintenance of group boundaries, and stimulate a common search for shared basic assumptions and values or for safety-valve institutions, etc. In short, they may increase rather than decrease the adaptation or adjustment of social relationships or groups (Coser 1964; Stevens 1994). And as far as the finding of facts, theories and basic assumptions in the social sciences is also a socio-cultural process, it is quite sure that conflict can be a positive factor. ‘Controversies’, writes Helga Nowotny, ‘are an integral part of the collective production of knowledge; disagreements on concepts, methods, interpretations and applications are the very lifeblood of science and one of the most productive factors in scientific development’ (cited by Mendelsohn 1987:93). All the same, we are bound to say that not every conflict in science is a productive factor. In particular, the first three chapters in this volume, dealing with conflicts in the field of ethnography and cultural anthropology, refer to conflicts in which the participants find themselves engaged in an almost destructive intellectual trench warfare, while at the same time they realize that the settlement of conflict would mean real progress in their field. We suppose that virtually every social scientist knows of conflicts in his or her field which have reached an anti-productive deadlock.

But—to turn to the third relativizing view—is it not a plain fact that the social sciences are essentially a conflict-ridden enterprise? Are the practitioners in this field not urged to accept that a lot of conflicts cannot be settled at all? We shall argue here that the nature of social science entails the inevitable character of conflict in this field. All social scientists find themselves caught up in a constellation in which not only cognitive arguments but also normative,cultural and social interests are at stake. However, we shall also argue that this may not result in indifference as to the settlement of conflicts. One reason for this is that some conflicts simply must be settled. The more a social scientific discipline is engaged in framing actual decisions in a situation of dispute, the more the practitioner of this discipline feels constrained to take sides in a conflict, and above all at the same time to point to a workable settlement. The last three chapters in this volume are illustrative in this respect: in the field of political science, moral philosophy and legal studies, one generally cannot afford to remain neutral in a conflict, because plausible arguments for a settlement have to be advanced.

What is at stake in this volume, then, is the question of whether social science can satisfy its inherent claim to contribute to the settlement of a conflict, while social scientists are aware that they are a party to the very same conflict.

The reader will notice that this volume displays a Dutch connection. Although the question at stake has a general validity, most case studies are centred on or have their origins in a Dutch context. Perhaps it is even possible to see a Dutch connection in the general stance of the authors in this volume. On the one hand, they all are convinced that conflict is inherent in society, and in so far as science is a socio-cultural process, that conflict is not an intrusion of irrational factors into proper scientific reasoning but is inherent in it. On the other hand, every author is interested in the way in which social science can be a valuable instrument to deal with conflict in a productive and non-violent way. We do not conclude from the inherency of conflicts that a biased partiality in social science is all there is; nor do we infer that the only plausible option left is a detached, melancholic observation of the worldly turmoil. Perhaps our stance is in a certain way induced by a Dutch tradition. Traditionally, the Netherlands is a country in which highly antagonistic religious, ideological and ethnic sections of the population live in close proximity to one another. This seems to foster an attitude in which conflict is openly designated and defined, while all the conflicting parties are convinced that their own conflicts must not be played out to the end, but must be managed and constrained. The system of compartmentalization was once a fine illustration of this attitude (Lijphart 1975). Even the smooth, non-violent yet deep cultural transformation of the Netherlands in the 1960s can be considered as the consequence of a habit which favours the displaying of conflicts within a framework of consensus (Kennedy 1995).

Without attaching too much weight to this conjecture, let us proceed to the question of why precisely conflicts in which social science itself is embroiled deserve our special attention. We consider that recent thinking on the development of science has focused on conflict as a privileged locus for approaching an understanding of the feasibilities of science. Some reasons for this conviction will be given in the following section. However, in particular with regard to the social sciences, we also consider that the question of theprospective student is not really tackled in the existing literature. This is a distinctive characteristic of the present volume, for the answer to the student’s question is not provided in the first place by purely theoretical social science nor by the philosophy or sociology of science. The authors are convinced that, if there is a plausible answer at all, it must in the first place be demonstrated by workers in the field at the level of the particular disciplines. We will conclude this introduction with a short summary of the various problems which are tackled in the chapters.

SCIENTIFIC RELATIVIZATION OF SCIENCE?

When one tries to obtain reasoned impressions of recent philosophical and sociological views of the development of science, one soon runs up against paradoxes. It is not unlikely that one of them will be the paradox that the relativization of the social sciences as instruments of conflict settlement is probably increased by the social scientific study of science. In this connection, let us touch on some elements in the recent history of the study of science.

It is no exaggeration to say that Thomas S.Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1970) not only stimulated the historical study of the sciences immensely, but also introduced an entirely new perspective on the phenomenon of science and on the ways in which science is embedded in the always conflict-ridden societal context. In the latter sense, it is justified to think in terms of a period before and a period after Kuhn.

Before Kuhn, the dominant view of science was determined by the conviction that there should be a sharp distinction between the cognitive content of science, its cognitive procedures (methodology) and the focal intellectual norms of the scientist, on the one hand, and the social, economic, political, psychological, even philosophical and religious conditions in which science was produced, on the other hand. According to Barry Barnes, many theories of knowledge were morality plays set in a Manichean cosmos (Barnes 1982:22). Science in its most ideal expression was imagined as a world of light, as an area of agreement by rational and consensual appeal to facts and validated theories, whereas the real world was supposed to be ruled by irrationality, convention, dogma, and many other figures dressed in black. Only the atmosphere which shaped the conditions in which science was executed was thought to be disfigured by conflicts. Of course, it was known that scientists were always in conflict, but these conflicts were interpreted as having a purely intellectual nature. They were encompassed by the ‘ethos of science’ which Robert Merton once outlined so impressively (cf. Mulkay 1979:21ff.). The conflicts and controversies in the world of science were considered as highroads to the overcoming of all conflict, main stimuli to reach out for the one and only truth that will ultimately emerge and prevail.

One of the most decisive influences of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is probably that it made clear that this image of science was basically an idealizedone, far removed from the real world of science, for Kuhn undermined the neat demarcation between science and non-science. He demystified the image of a disembodied scientist who, motivated only by the institutional imperatives of science—according to Robert Merton these were universalism, communism, disinterestedness, organised scepticism—functioned as ‘a camera, recording truth as a film records an image’ (Barnes 1982:42). Kuhn, however, made it clear that all sorts of social and cultural contingencies were involved in the judgements and inferences of science.

Debates on Kuhn’s achievement were above all centred around the well-known concept of ‘paradigm’. This concept was heavily criticized by many philosophers because of its indisputable vagueness, and the judgement of Kuhn’s critics was corroborated when it became obvious that Kuhn himself was unable to clear up the concept. Nevertheless, the concept has gained its right to exist. This may well be because we have come to realize that the function of this concept is not to designate a certain state of affairs in a clear and distinctive way, but to make us aware of a complex series of questions. ‘Paradigm’ is a sensitizing concept. It says that, in observing reality, it is neither reality itself nor the meticulous use of methods which determine in the first place which parts of reality we select and which statements are true or false. The concept ‘paradigm’ tells us that the a priori Gestalt of the set of issues at stake plays a major role in directing groups of scholars towards the identification of these problems and the required methodology. This is particularly the case when a scientific field enters a state of crisis, and scientists and scholars are in conflict with one another about the question of whether the existing theories and methods fit the new phenomena. Investigation of this kind of crisis in the history of science made clear to Kuhn the complex nature of a transition to a new paradigm. These decisive ‘developments’ in science are not induced by the desire to provide new answers to apparently insoluble questions; they are mainly brought about by a shift in the Gestalt which communities of scientists attach to their particular set of questions.

Two points are important in this respect. In the first place, a paradigm is not a cognitive, but a normative concept: it directs a community of scientists at a pre-scientific level towards their field of study and towards the kind of problems that are prevailing. In that sense, a paradigm delineates in advance the scientific problematic, even what a correct scientific process is, including what criteria are valid in testing hypotheses. In the second place, parts of a paradigm are elements which, according to the traditional image of science, belong to the always conflict-ridden world outside the sciences. A Kuhnian paradigm may comprise not only philosophical views on the fundamental nature of reality, but also the basic normative ideas and concepts which are usually not open to scientific discourse for the simple reason that they themselves are the cornerstones which enable a scientific discourse.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was the beginning of a trend in the study of science in which the distinction between the presupposed conflict-free world of science and the conflict-ridden world ‘out there’ was blurred. A lot of more or less subtle distinctions were used to avoid the seemingly unpleasant consequences for the lofty image of science which Kuhn’s way of thinking seems to entail. Most of them were varieties of the distinction between the external and the internal dimensions of science. Some popularity was gained, for instance, by an older distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification. The former was the sphere in which idiosyncrasies, particular interests, negotiations, power and status, in short all kinds of contingency, including conflicts, were considered as external means by which a group of scientists came about their theoretical findings; the latter was supposed to be a conflict-free sphere in which only facts and sound arguments determined theoretical knowledge. Various philosophers and sociologists of science, however, are telling us today that this distinction cannot be maintained. As far as the concept ‘context of justification’ implies that it is plain reality which in the last resort determines theoretical knowledge, the concept points to some kind of ‘retroactive falsification’. This entails an epistemological denial of the insight that all theoretical knowledge comes down to human interpretation, an insight which involves the inevitability of different and conflicting interpretative views (Goodman 1978). Furthermore, it entails a sociological denial that, at the cognitive level of choice, validation and evaluation, the world of science is—albeit implicitly and mostly without acknowledgement by the profession or after being rendered innocuous by massive qualification—based on the ‘normal’ mixture of personal, social and political antagonisms (Mendelsohn 1987; Woolgar 1988).

Those who were alarmed by this tendency to undermine the demarcations between science and non-science thought they could detect a dangerous relativistic and self-defeating impulse in thinking about science. At a purely philosophical level, one can understand the grounds for apprehension. Kuhn himself certainly was not and is not a radical relativist. He allows, for instance, some non-conflictual cross-paradigm intelligibility, and he is inclined to think that paradigms are essentially complementary, apparently presupposing that every paradigm brings out some aspects of the world, however partial or minor they may be (Harré and Krausz 1996:83ff.). Just because of the great but none too subtle visions of Kuhn, however, a radical extrapolation was looming of the vague lines that he had started to sketch, leading to consequences which were devastating with respect to the conflict-solving potential of science. A dangerous point is supposed to be reached whenever the case is made for scepticism: the proposition that, since every ‘paradigm’ is bound to the particular and changing forms of life, to a specific social tradition, or to the inclinations and tastes of a community of scientists, it is impossible to choose between alternative theories. Conflicts between these theories have to be played out until they fade away for non-epistemic reasons (loss of interest, death, external constraint, etc.). This form of scepticism is bound to lapse into even more radical positions (Weindel 1990:49ff.). For instance, it may lead toindifferentism concerning the possibility of a scientific search for truth at all, or into the rather cynical stance that, since a rational choice between scientific alternatives is thought to be impossible, one is entitled to present one’s own theory as the only valuable theory with all possible means, except of course rational and argumentative ones, while assuming that ‘truth’ is no more than a rhetorical device that is always subsidiary to particular interests, such as political ones (Devine 1989).

These radical forms of relativism ...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• ROUTLEDGE STUDIES IN SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THOUGHT
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• CONTRIBUTORS
• 1 CONFLICTS IN SOCIAL SCIENCE
• 2 REALITY EXISTS: ACKNOWLEDGING THE LIMITS OF ACTIVE AND REFLEXIVE ANTHROPOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE
• 3 METHODOLOGICAL LUDISM: BEYOND RELIGIONISM AND REDUCTIONISM
• 4 MULTIPLE IMAGES OF ETHNIC REALITY: BEYOND DISAGREEMENT?
• 5 NATION AND DEMOCRACY: CONFLICT OR BALANCE?
• 6 PUNISHMENT OR CHILD ABUSE?: MORAL CONFLICTS AND TWO LEVELS OF INCOMMENSURABILITY
• 7 ON THE OBJECTIVITY OF JUDICIAL DECISIONS