This chapter surveys the various contexts within which the history of NZ sociology is to be set. The analytical tools of sociology of sociology are considered, followed by a discussion of the data drawn on in constructing this book. The characteristics of NZ society and its history are sketched, and then the configuration of NZâs universities and research infrastructure are outlined. These backgrounds will be drawn on as providing explanations in the substantive chapters on the history of NZ sociology.
1.1 Conceptualising
Christian Fleck (2015) has recently suggested a set of key areas which provide some guidance for the analysis of scientific enterprises: people, ideas, instruments, institutions, and contexts. Within this framework, Kuhnâs conceptions of paradigms (or traditions) will be broadly drawn onâin the detection of conceptual/methodological shiftsâand more generally in pointing to the role of âresource mobilisationâ (effects of various available resources at different times/places).
The conceptual scheme being deployed has four levels. The first is the context, at both national and international levels, of university structures, research funding structures, and other institutions. Disciplines (and similar units) operate within these contexts and in turn are composed of departments, disciplinary âfractionsâ (e.g. mainstream/other), and specialties. Finally, across all these units are the people involved: academic staff, researchers, administrators, students, and âconsumersâ or âaudiencesâ, together with their social characteristics, attitudes and behaviours, and their individual and collective âoutputsâ. Explanation of the outcomes of NZ sociology needs to draw on, not just each of these four levels, but their combinations.
Disciplines lie at the conceptual centre. Academic disciplines are socially constructed, and their boundaries are patrolled by those maintaining them. The foundations for the present international (at least Anglo-Saxon) line-up of social science disciplines was laid in the 1890s, although recent decades have seen a loosening and increasing fluidity of disciplinary boundaries, with the emergence (and occasional decline) of various fields of study. Throughout, though, Sociology (including in NZ) has been able to maintain a strong sense of disciplinary identity. On the other hand, formal Sociology has far from captured the whole range of sociological activity.
There have always (and increasingly) been two sociologies or âfractionsâ: those in the mainstream programmes of mainstream universities and those âin the marginsâ or âotherââperhaps a distinction between Sociology and sociology. Mainstream departments are defined as those formally swearing allegiance to Sociology as a discipline and (mainly) associating with institutions, such as Sociology Associations, which also formally see themselves as centrally attached to sociology as a discipline. Outside this mainstream many scholars or other intellectuals are infected with a sociological perspective but practise their sociology beyond the confines of formal Sociology departments. The relationships between the two fractions changes over time. The wider perspective and siting of sociology has been enhanced in recent decades by a gathering and widespread consensus around a stable of social theorists (e.g. Foucault, Bourdieu) and of social research methods, both of which seem, if anywhere, to be located within (or at least loosely linked with) Sociology as a discipline.
In some countries these fractions are more visible: some apparently âSociologyâ specialties have separate institutional lives separate from mainstream Sociology, which can be glimpsed in US sociology by separate associations (e.g. the American Society for the Study of Religion). Some specialties are institutionalised as separate fields within neighbouring disciplines: one is educational sociology within the education discipline, but there are also political , economic and other sociologies which occupy interstitial areas between Sociology and other disciplines. Of course, what in shorthand is presented as a dichotomy in practice is a continuum.
Disciplines are largely located in various national contexts and can operate in quite different ways across these: hence the concept of a ânational sociology â which reflects the particular features the sociology relating to a country might possess, compared to other national sociologies. Such features might reflect characteristics of the society or of the community of sociologists domiciled in it, or studying it, or all of these. There exist several related models of a national sociology which might guide interpretation. A purist disciplinary model would involve a national sociology reproducing (or even adding to) classical or mainstream âcoreâ sociology, especially for students, without much regard to local circumstancesâalthough there might be some local application. A more locally centred model begins with the conception that any society has a set of myths about its own characteristics and that local sociology (together with various other knowledges and ideologies) stands at various removes from that. In this conception, local sociology is in debate with the common myths and with alternative images of the society and is guided in its research agenda by the publicâs concerns. Another model is quite different and involves seeing sociology as less of an academic activity and more as cognitive frameworks shaping social action. Broadly, one depiction is that a national sociology is what sociologists domiciled in that country do and another is a sociology focusing on the subject-matter of a particular country (irrespective of where the sociologists involved in such sociology are domiciled). This book will explore the extent to which there is a NZ national sociology.
Raewyn Connell (e.g. 2007) has argued that there is a hierarchy amongst national sociologies: imperial or metropolitan âcoresâ colonise social research in the âperipheryâ, sucking out its academic talent and its data, which are to be interpreted by theories provided by th...