Sociologists on Sociology

Robert Mullan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781000573824
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Originally published in 1987, this edition in 1996, Sociologists on Sociology is a unique and sometimes controversial account of the development, disputes and the future of sociology as seen through the eyes of eleven of the world's leading sociologists at the time. Consisting of interviews with – Anthony Giddens, Robert K. Merton, Howard Becker, Peter Townsend, Ralf Dahrendorf, Peter Worsley, Stuart Hall, John Rex, Michael Mann, Laurie Taylor and Ann Oakley – the book explores such crucial issues as the nature of deviance, the scientific status of sociology, the relationship of Marxism and sociology, the contours of race and class, feminism, relevance of ethnomethodology and the procedures of participant observation. The contributions of such figures as Goffman, Mills, Parsons, Weber and Foucault are assessed, and in clear and concise language the contributors discuss their own theoretical interests and empirical work in the field.

Students and practitioners of the social sciences will find the book a fascinating and a uniquely direct insight into the thoughts of sociology's leading figures and a remarkable cumulative assessment of the state of the discipline itself.

Part I

Introduction

British sociology today stands in the shadows of academic life after a quarter of a century of rank, rancorous and resisted growth, its proponents weary from internal schism and dispirited by both establishment rejection and popular misunderstanding. Yet these tribulations are largely the consequences of its own success – enthusiasm for an intellectual apparatus promising enlightenment on public issues of immense importance, the over-rapid university expansion of a single decade after nearly a century of official neglect. It is a time for defence and consolidation and at such moments of uncertain direction any group is wont to appraise its own history. Appraisals appear and can bear fruit provided that they are harnessed not to recrimination about the past but to defining work for the future.

A.H. Halsey (1984), p. 15.

Sociology can only be a society’s understanding of itself and this, of course, is contested and constantly in flux; in other words no orthodoxy exists (Mann, 1983, p.v.). However despite this plurality advances are made and which are in a sense forms of cumulative knowledge. For example following the conceptual clarifications made by Bachrach and Baratz in their study of power, who would dare not to include non-decisions in their analyses of power (Barach and Baratz, 1963). More specifically because social life is complex and beyond the grasp of most, sociology is about demystification, and some would add that it is therefore also subversive.

In the late Raymond Aron’s opinion, the trouble with British sociology is that it is ‘essentially an attempt to make intellectual sense of the political problems of the Labour Party’ (in Halsey, 1982, p. 150). And certainly the investigation of social inequality and a commitment to social reform have been prominent in the development of British sociology. However, although the development of British sociology – and, the year 1834, the date of the Report of the Commission on the Poor Law and the founding of the Statistical Society of London, is ‘about as rational a date’, argues Abrams, ‘for beginning a history of British sociology, as one could hope to find’ (1968, p.vi) – has been a history of a struggle to become institutionalised and a solid reliance on both the ‘founding fathers’ on the one hand and survey-dominated empirical research on the other, 1968 changed the discipline out of all proportions. Rex may well be overstating the case, but he certainly has a point that following the 1960s a new generation of sociology of students ‘emerged in Europe as well as in Britain, who had little knowledge of Weber but considerable acquaintance with the applications of Marxist theories in the pages of the New Left Review’ (1983, p. 1003). Rex concluded that (1983, p. 1005);

What most young sociologists were receiving by the early seventies was a sociology based on a political critique of capitalism on the one hand and an understanding of deviance on the other … there was little place in this for the study of Weber and Durkheim. If they were prepared to make some obeisance to theory they did so by quoting half understood themes from Giddens; Althusser, Garfinkel, or Habermas.

The 1970s produced all sorts of developments some of which seemed to threaten the status of sociology as a coherent discipline. For instance the emergence of micro-sociology and in particular ethnomethodology, a development which John Goldthorpe talked of as having an ‘increasingly divisive effect within the sociological community at large’ (1973, p. 449). But the most sustained pressure came from Marxism, feminism, and the renewed interest in epistemology derived from the work of such strange bedfellows as Althusser, Kuhn, and Feyerabend, and which resulted for a time in a new ‘subjectivism’.

Anthony Giddens

‘If western sociology is to be saved from its continuing crisis, Anthony Giddens may be the author to achieve it’, says John Uny (1977, p. 911), and certainly without doubt Giddens has been the most oft-quoted British sociologist in the past decade of sociology. Indeed, in his publications his own name is printed larger than his titles. Rex, in a quite succinct account, notes the Giddens’ work represents ‘in a very striking form the philosophization of sociology’, indeed an attempt to ‘rewrite sociology’ (1983, p. 1005).

The initial reaction of philosophers to sociology had been hostile and their view of the essential impossibility of a science of sociology had been summed up by Peter Winch in The Idea of a Social Science (1958). Increasingly, however, the idea gained ground that if a ‘simplistically conceived science of sociology was impossible, there was a space to be occupied by a philosophic discipline’ (Rex, 1983, p. 1005). In a series of books Giddens has reviewed the schools of critical theoiy, hermeneutics, positivism, ethnomethodology and structuralism, and has now begun to develop his own theory of ‘structuration’. Rex is surely not too cynical when he concludes that (1983, p. 1005);

There are many who would argue that Giddens represents the major significant development in English sociology. This claim, however, is difficult to assess, since it is extremely unlikely that there are many practising sociologists who even begin to understand the issues with which he is concerned.

Perhaps, in extreme summary form, what can be noted is that Giddens’ work emphasises more than many the role of human agency, and that Giddens’ claim that his work has major significance for the understanding of late capitalism and communism is somewhat difficult to evaluate.

The State Of Sociology

Of course at any given moment, sociology or social science consists of ‘what duly recognized social scientists are doing – but all of them are by no means doing the same thing, in fact not even the same sort of thing’, and of course social science is also ‘what social scientists of the past have done – but different students choose to construct and to recall different traditions in their discipline’ (Mills, 1970, p. 26). Mills’ comments point to a difficulty in discerning trends or drifts in sociology over the past few decades, namely different sociologists are doing all sorts of different things for all sorts of different reasons. However I suspect a great number of sociologists are carrying out their craft in what they see as a quite traditional manner; namely small-scale empirical research using survey techniques and interviews, policy oriented, and possibly linking the research to middle-range theories.

Also we must remember that sociology, quite simply, is not merely the work of sociologists. Non-professional sociologists can make, as well as use, sociological knowledge and insights. Just think of the likes of Raymond Williams and Richard Hoggart, and furthermore George Orwell who, in The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) for example, brilliantly captured aspects of traditional working class family life. Indeed Worsley talks of the ‘mystique of professionalism’ which assumes that the ‘only significant thinking about society which sociologists need take account of seriously is that done by sociologists, i.e. that which is “occupationally real”’ (1974, pp. 4–5).

Sociology (and social science) has suffered over the past few decades from the deaths of some of the more free-thinking members of the discipline, who were also original and powerful thinkers; for example, Raymond Aron, Philip Abrams, Michel Foucault, Erving Goffman, Alvin Gouldner, T.H. Marshall, and, of course, C. Wright Mills. In addition, influential ‘sociology’ books over the decades have been few: Vance Packard’s The Status Seekers (1961) demonstrated the investigative nature of sociology; politically connected works like Anthony Crosland’s The Future of Socialism (1956) and Galbraith’s New Industrial State (1967); the sophisticated accounts of J.W.B. Douglas in The Home and the School (1964) and David Glass’s Social Mobility in Britain (1954); Rex and Mooore’s forceful Race, Community and Conflict (1967) which also made The Times editorial; Hoggart’s quite classic, and still neglected, The Uses of Literacy (1957); Runciman’s imaginative Relative Deprivation and Social Justice (1966); Abel-Smith and Townsend’s reformist Poor and the Poorest (1965); Winch’s The Idea of a Social Science (1958); Goldthorpe and Lockwood et al. and The Affluent Worker series (1969); Stanley Cohen’s edited Images of Deviance (1971); all of Parsons, Goffman, and also Garfmkel’s Studies in Ethnomethodology (1967); Reisman’s The Lonely Crowd (1950) was not as influential as in its home, but Robert K. Merton’s Social Theory and Social Structure (1957) and Mills’ The Sociological Imagination (1959) were; Giddens’ Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971).

If we can discern drifts over the past few decades of British sociology, notwithstanding the features already noted, they would probably be the following. Firstly, there is more plurality than ever in terms of methods, theories, and indeed over the purpose of the discipline. Secondly there is the claim which is hard to substantiate, that the contemporary climate is essentially anti-positivistic. Thirdly – and this is not so surprising following the dissatisfaction with functionalism – there is increasing stress on the side of human agency as opposed to structure (although of course the two are not in fact separable). Structuralism was short-lived. Finally, following a period of ‘epistemological anomie’ and a partial decline in research output, there is a counter-attack with an emphasis on theoretically-informed empirical research.

Part II

1 John Rex

John Rex is currently Emeritus Professor at the Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations, at the University of Warwick, is probably most well known for two important books published in the 1960s and constantly re-printed. Key Problems of Sociological Theory (1961) was both one of the first attempts to take ‘theory’ seriously in British sociology and also provided a cogent critique of functionalism. In 1967, and with Robert Moore, Rex published Race, Community and Conflict which was an imaginative fusion of the ideas of Weber and the Chicago School (of urban sociology), together with a detailed empirical investigation of a region of Birmingham.

In Race, Community and Conflict Rex and Moore coined the term ‘housing classes’, in describing a class struggle over the use of houses which in fact they saw as the central process of the city as a social unit. The housing market they saw as distinct from the labour market since men in the same situations in the latter may have differential degrees of access in the former. Despite criticisms (see Saunders, 1980, pp. 67–76) the concept has remained extraordinarily useful. Over a decade later, Rex carried out another empirical study in Birmingham, this time with Sally Tomlinson, and in 1979 published Colonial Immigrants in a British City. In this Rex continued his theme that ‘race relations was utterly dependent upon some form of class analysis’ (1983, p. 162), yet this could not please a new generation of ‘radical’ and often black, theorists in the area of race relations. Prescod, for example, in a review of the book talks of Rex and Tomlinson as ‘policy researchers par excellence in the period of black militancy … [and] … He is still making contributions to the sociology of race relations but he is now a liberal pessimist’ (1979, p. 200). While Lawrence in The Empire Strikes Back, a kind of anti-white-sociologists-in-race-relations-research book, talks of Rex’s ‘closer contacts with the Home Office’ and of his embracing ‘their rationalisations’ (1982, p. 131).

Two prevailing themes in British sociology have continued to preoccupy Rex, namely empiricism and functionalism. His own position is often termed ‘structural phenomenology’, which refers to his methodological commitment to a neo-Weberian conception of the phenomenology of social action, and in part upon a theoretical commitment to the ubiquity of conflict in social relations. It is Rex’s status as an ‘all-rounder’, his ability to carry out empirical research and his commitment to theorising, that has given depth to his analysis and endowed it with credibility as serious social criticism. On the role of sociology he is unequivocal (Rex, 1974, p. ix).

sociology is a subject whose insights should be available to the great mass of the people in order that they should be able to use it to liberate themselves from the mystification of social reality which is continuously provided for them by those in our society who exercise power and influence.

__________________

Firstly, can you tell me something about your background in South Africa?

Yes. I went to university in South Africa in the immediate post-war period, having grown up in a poor white South African family which therefore had various natural inclinations towards racism. But as a result of my experience in the war I came back very critical of the South African social system, and was also able because of the grants available to ex-servicemen to go up to university [Rhodes University College, University of South Africa] which I wouldn’t normally have been able to do (..;)

What did you go to read – sociology?

No, I went up actually to read for a BA with a view to going on to a BD to go into the Presbyterian Church and become a minister …

Was there a Chair in the Department of Sociology there?

There was an excellent teacher called James Irving, who’d been, was a man of working class origins from Scotland who had been trained as an anthropologist, had taught in Nanking, then been an extra-mural teacher in England, and he was made Reader in Sociology, and when I met him he was just beginning to read Mclver and Page’s textbook [1950].

Just before I forget, can you tell me what date and where you were born?

I was born on the 5th March 1925, in Port Elizabeth.

You’ve said that you moved to England by accident and found English sociology very disappointing and that it was engaged in ‘the book-keeping of social reform’ [1975, p. 11]. That’s the first thing – and the second thing, that you accept Mannheim’s perspective that displaced persons are in a better position to do sociology, and people who are most aware of sociological problems are the people who by accident go outside of society. Can you tell me then why you were disappointed in English sociology, and was there anything good about South African sociology?

Well, yes. I mean we used sociology in order to achieve political understanding as people who were radically against the system, we recognised then that there were lots of things to do politically, but that in order to do effective things politically one had to understand the world and particularly one had to try to understand what made one’s enemies tick. And, I mean, it’s always seemed to me absolutely essential to reverse Marx’s eleventh thesis and to say that hitherto sociologists have tried to change the world or politicians have tried to change the world; the important thing if anyone wants to change it effectively is to understand it. And actually the kind of analysis which one made of the South African situation was some sort of a class analysis because very few of us believed that Afrikaaners were wicked because they were Afrikaaners, rather we looked at the interests of white workers in that particular situation so that we thought of our sociology as being based on a kind of class analysis, as being Marxist. When I came to England …

Can I just ask you what you were working as in South Africa?

I wasn’t working, well … when I left university I went briefly to teach in a mission school in what was then Rhodesia and I was deemed undesirable as an inhabitant or visitor, largely because somebody who had a personal axe to grind against me used his influence in the Department of the Interior. But they had a dossier on me, and so I had to leave my job, went back to South Africa, worked for a very brief period, as the Superintendent of an African village, or location, and I’d hardly got there when I was also successful in getting a job at Leeds University, where my own professor had previously taught; and coming to England, and looking at the sociolog...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Contents
• Preface to second edition
• Preface and acknowledgements
• Key to transcripts
• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Bibliography