For a New Classic Sociology

A Proposition, followed by a Debate

Alain Caillé, Frédéric Vandenberghe, Alain Caillé, Frédéric Vandenberghe

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367750015
• eBook ISBN: 9781000203523
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Philosophy
• Index: Social Sciences

This book examines the future of the social sciences and the reconstruction of society in contemporary times. Drawing on the lead piece For a New Classic Sociology, it calls for a new theoretical synthesis that overcomes the fragmentation, specialization and professionalization within the social sciences. The position paper and the responses by a team of world-class social theorists provide an alternative to utilitarianism and the colonization of the social sciences by rational choice models, propose a new articulation of social theory, and moral, social and political philosophy. It recommends a return to classical social theory and explores articulations between theories of reciprocity, care and recognition.

A radical intervention in the study of the social sciences, the volume will be indispensable to scholars and researchers across the social sciences, especially social theory and sociology and social anthropology.

Contributions by Frank Adloff, Jeffrey C. Alexander, Francis Chateauraynaud, Raewyn Connell, François Dubet, Philip Gorski, Nathalie Heinich, Qu Jingdong, Mike Savage, Michael Singleton and Philippe Steiner.

PART I
Position paper
For a new classic sociology. Reassembling social theory, the Studies and moral philosophy

Alain Caillé and Frédéric Vandenberghe

Introduction: The prospects of social theory
The prospects of social theory¹

While humanity is entering the third millennium, sociology is entering its second century. Our question is whether it was merely, like anthropology, a discipline of the twentieth century or whether it can continue for another two centuries. There’s an increasing number of sociologists, sociology teachers and sociology students around the world, but for several reasons, it is not clear whether this seemingly favourable situation will last, nor whether the discipline will survive for a long time in its current form. Not that sociology is in crisis. It isn’t. Overall, that is what we find most worrying. We’re facing a “perfect storm” and entering a protracted phase of global turbulence. The crisis is not going to disappear. We’d better get used to living in a toxic environment. From now onwards, we will have to face simultaneously the advance of the “ecological desert” and the descent into “sociological hell” (Danowski and Viveiros de Castro, 2014: 29), both reinforcing each other. With its increasing professionalization, sociology, however, courts the risk of becoming irrelevant. There are numerous investigations of local social problems, from drunken driving in Alabama to bullying on the Internet and discrimination of Thai transsexuals in Paris. About the global economic crisis, however, it has hardly anything special to say.² The sociology of the environment is only a small niche within the discipline. Despite Giddens’s (2009), Urry’s (2011) and Beck’s (2016) valuable interventions in the public sphere, it does not really raise the temperature of our debates and controversies.³ Anthropologists (like Latour and Viveiros de Castro), historians (like Chakrabarty) and geologists are more concerned about the coming Anthropocene than the sociologists. When their contributions are not couched in obscure jargon or impenetrable maths that give them a scientific semblance, their observations remain so close to common sense (with ample verbatim quotations from interviews) and everyday life (with detailed descriptions of banal situations) that one wonders what distinguishes sociology from sociography or even from (realist) literature.

Both in its expert and common-sense versions, one finds a lot of moral posturing and ideological positioning. There is nothing wrong with muckraking. We share the ideology and we’re all in favour of “public sociology” and “civic sociology”. But if denunciations of global capitalism and sympathy with the downtrodden could change the system, we would know it by now, and we would also be less worried about the coming catastrophe.

We desperately need more modesty, more ambition and more hope. More modesty, because sociology is only a subsystem within the system of science, which is itself a subsystem of society. The idea that we can change society with a piece of engaged writing is preposterous. More ambition, because only a new reassembling of social theory, the Studies and moral philosophy can make the social sciences relevant again as the reflexive medium of societies at the edge. And definitely more joy, because the litany of denunciations of domination and the plethora of hypercritiques of exploitation have transformed sociology into a “melancholy science” (Vandenberghe, 2018b).

In a money-driven world that admits only the measure of immediate profitability for the stockholders, the usefulness of sociology is challenged indeed. The fact that the value of sociology comes from its objection to utility certainly adds to its charm; it does not make its contributions to the global discourse more relevant, though. The discipline may not be in crisis; it nevertheless displays increasing uncertainty about its identity, its project and its legitimacy. The ritual invocation of Marx, Weber and Durkheim as “founding fathers” of sociology does not restrain disorientation and fragmentation of the discipline. While it constructs an illusionary continuity between the past and the present, it precludes exploration of continuities with older traditions (natural law, philosophy of history, humanities, moral and political philosophy, political economy). The canonization of the classics checks disciplinary drift, but it only does so by relegating other authors to the periphery of the discipline. Who still reads Tocqueville, Comte, Spencer or even Parsons?

A century later, the attempt at canonization repeats itself in the introductory courses to sociology, but now it is Giddens, Bourdieu and Habermas who are enthroned as “neo-classical sociologists”. As if the discipline had stopped at the beginning of the ‘90s! Meanwhile, the “new theoretical movement in sociology” (Alexander, 1988) has become an old hat. The scholastic exercises to link agency and structure may still attract some novices, but it has run its course and become formulaic. The intellectual consensus has petered out, only to be replaced by a moral and political front. While the discipline is ideologically united and self-consciously positions itself left-of-centre of the political spectrum – yes, indeed, critique has become hegemonic in the field – theoretically, methodologically, empirically and normatively sociology remains divided as ever. Occasional controversies about sociology are squabbles within sociology that only underscore how the discipline has become at once largely academic and politicized, exactly the contrary of what “public sociology” (Burawoy, 2005) was supposed to be. They certainly don’t serve the discipline. Neither do they justify its abrogation from the curriculum, as happened in Japan.

In this position paper, we propose a series of integrated reflections on the current state of the social sciences. We are inspired by Alvin Gouldner’s The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology (1970) and want to update it to bolster sociology and make it relevant for the present age. Half a century ago, Gouldner criticized the conjunction of positivism, utilitarianism and value-freedom in a bureaucratized Academic Sociology that was in service of the welfare state. Aligning himself with the New Left and the psychedelic counterculture, he announced the demise of Soviet Marxism and Parsonian functionalism. At the end of the book, he called for a “reflexive sociology” that would be at the same time historical and personal, critical and existential, scientific and sentimental. By now, the welfare state has come under serious attack. The “administrative deconstruction of the state” is advancing fiercely. Once the welfare state is gone, it most probably will be gone for good. The times have changed and so has Academic Sociology. His call for an anti-positivist, axiologically engaged, slightly romantic social science has lost nothing of its actuality, however. Now, as then, the dominant drift of the counter current will be “toward an anti-utilitarian sociology” (Gouldner, 1970: 409).

Our aim is to contribute to the development of a general social theory along anti-utilitarian lines.⁴ The book contains five sections. It opens with a brief analysis of a quadruple fragmentation within the social sciences: the autonomization of theory and research, the fragmentation among theories, the separation of sociology and the Studies, as well as between the social sciences and moral, social and political philosophy, (1) As an alternative to the rational choice models of neo-classical economics, it develops the contours of neo-classical sociology and calls for a new alliance of social theory, the Studies and moral and political philosophy, (2) Through an articulation of metatheory, social theory and sociological theory, it advances a loose integration of theories of social action, order and social change and spells out the minimal requirements of a pluralist position (3) Although it fully acknowledges the importance of Marxism, it critically reconsiders its legacy and proposes an anti-utilitarian formulation of critical theory that is inspired by Marcel Mauss’s anthropology of The Gift (4) Finally, in dialogue with theories of care and recognition, it presents and proposes the gift paradigm as a general social theory that, with a little help from our friends, is able to rearticulate the other theories, throw new light on them and bring them into a productive dialogue in which all parties are transformed. Tentatively, we suggest that it offers the best platform for the emergence of a new discursive formation within the social sciences and we hope that it will be able to federate the various disciplines. Following the decay of Marxism, culturalism, structuralism and functionalism, we need a transversal approach and we need to start somewhere. In the spirit of Marcel Mauss, we propose our position as an opening gift.

Notes

1. 1 A first, much-abbreviated version of this position paper was published in the European Journal of Social Theory (2016, 19, 1, pp. 3–21) under the title: “Neo-classical Sociology: The Prospects of Social Theory Today”. First of all, anticipating our response to the comments we have received and which are published in the second part of the book, we want to thank the participants to the debate for their earnest engagement with our ideas. Their generous responses remind us of the happy etymological coincidence between thinking and thanking. We are also grateful to Aakash Chakrabarty, the commissioning editor at Routledge India in Delhi, for his unwavering support and his belief in the project.
2. 2 See, however, the three-volume set of the Possible Futures Series, edited by Craig Calhoun and Georgi Derluguian (2011), as well as the analyses in Wallerstein et al. (2013).
3. 3 Francis Chateauraynaud’s pragmatics of societal transformation (Chateauraynaud and Debaz, 2017) is perhaps the only encompassing sociological research programme on ecological risks that can accompany controversies over longer periods of time without falling into the trap of catastrophism. Through systematic variations of scale, he has been able to analyse simultaneously the global interconnection of systemic risks (the “Anthropocene”) and the emergence of local alternatives in the interstices of the system (the “contra-Anthropocenes”).
4. 4 While our defence of a consequent anti-utilitarianism is ecumenical and cosmopolitan in intent, we have also seized the publication in the English language as an opportunity to display the work of the Anti-Utilitarian Movement in the Social Sciences (MAUSS) to a larger public. The many references to the work of Alain Caillé and the MAUSS are not self-indulgent. They were actually introduced into the text by one of the authors (FV) and are thought of as an invitation to constructive debate and dialogue. For an attempt to circumscribe the ethical principles of convivialist debates, see Caillé (2018).

1
Four fragmentations

When we look at the current situation of sociology, we see four fragmentations – two internal ones and two external ones.

The gap between theory and methods, teaching and research

The first fragmentation within sociology is that between teaching and research, theory and methods, concepts and techniques, abstractions and operationalizations. On the one hand, we have the instruction of classical and contemporary sociological theory (SOC 101: Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Simmel; SOC 201: Bourdieu, Giddens, Habermas, sometimes also Luhmann, though, granted, his work is definitely more difficult to instruct). The introductory courses are given at the beginning of the curriculum to students who are generally too young to grasp its significance. The result is rather predictable: Sociology is identified with a positivist, objectivist and determinist account of society (culled from the first chapter of The Rules of Sociological Method), an iron-cage vision of modernity (extracted from the final pages of The Protestant Ethic) and a trenchant, yet stereotyped, critique of neo-liberal capitalism (inspired by the Communist Manifesto). On the other hand, there’s hands-on training for empirical research, both qualitative (participant observation, interviews, life histories, etc.) and quantitative (multiple regression, correspondence analysis, geodata, etc.), which is required of both researchers and research apprentices alike.

Increasingly, the ‘field’ and the ‘data’ define the identity of its practitioners. In many countr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Part I Position paper: For a new classic sociology. Reassembling social theory, the Studies and moral philosophy
• Part II The debate: Comments, critiques and a response
• Index