As you know we’ve all been at an academic conference this week in Washington D.C., honouring Peter Berger, and I was inspired by my fellow blogger, Brian Pitt, who presented an excellent paper (soon to be published!) outlining the basic tenets of sociological inquiry. One of these, Brian says, is a preoccupation with social problems. I think he is correct in this assertion. And there is certainly a strong tendency in sociology to defend this focus. Michael Burroway has even claimed that sociology, as its primary scientific goal, should pursue ‘an agenda for social justice’.
But maybe we need to rethink this sociological preoccupation with social plights, or at least compliment it with a different form of sociology? Looking partly to the developments that have taken place in psychology, one can see new trails of knowledge for sociology to pursue. Ever since Sigmund Freud and Joseph Breuer reported their studies of hysteria in 1895, there has been a deep focus, some would say an obsession, in psychology with mental instability and illness. Freud reported how the pressure that female subjects were put under in modern society led to neurotic patterns of behaviour, that the individual was inevitably intwined with the development of society, and that the norms of emerging capitalist, modern societies suppressed desires and feelings to an extent that led to severe hysteria, especially among women who were marginalized in society. Psychoanalysis in its first 20 years rests on this foundation – analysis of hysteria (as well as dream analysis).
But today psychology is much more than this. Martin Seligman has built a name for himself through so-called ‘positive psychology’ which studies studies strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive.
It is essentially turning social inquiry on its head, which can be a productive technique for illuminating one’s field of study. The question no longer becomes ‘why do things not work’, but is instead ‘why do some things work?’
Why do some people not commit crime, for example? It would seem that people with low time preferences, such as poor and disenfranchised groups, and especially those with hopeless future prospects, could benefit from crime. In the larger picture, for marginalized people, crime certainly pays. To claim anything else is moral propaganda. If crime did not pay, it would not take place, as the nobel laureate Gary Becker has helped us throw light upon.
Why do some people break negative social inheritance? In spite of the plethora of data that sociologists have amassed regarding socio-economic status and its relation to educational attainment, we have no sociological theory to explain how a disenfranchised child of a single mother can rise above his peers and not only graduate from the best universities in the world, but also become President of America.
Why are some people wealthy compared to just a hundred years ago? If we look at poverty, we also have to look at the fact that social distribution of wealth across classes has exploded in the last two hundred years, against the backdrop of millenia of poverty and exploitation.
Lord Bauer once famously said that there are no causes of poverty — only of prosperity. To me, this is the number one phenomenon for sociology to explain today. While a focus on social problems has had its right and relevance historically in the field of sociology, we should compliment it with a positive sociology that does not presuppose a fully-functioning, perfect system as a starting point or as an achievable goal, but instead marvels at the wonder of that which actually works in today’s incredibly complex and strange world.
- David Pontoppidan
Good post Dave. Let me (re)state, however, that I cited Buroway, J. Turner, etc. not because I believe that their scholarly interests in social problems is THE correct one. Rather, my emphasis was more about the journal “Social Problems” – and its intellectual focus on the irony of the “social construction” of social problems.
Superb point, but a poor one too. I am also troubled by sociology’s “social problem” (or dare I say it) it’s “social work” focus. This reminds me of Park/Burgress’ science of sociology–part of its focus was to break sociology out of its social work foundations. They made the same argument: sociology should be concerned with what works (not in a utopistic sense), but nonetheless a positive focus.
However, do you not think that the ‘negative’ sociology casts light on the other side of the coin? I.e. the study of what’s wrong throws light onto what’s right? The values that make that possible?
Of course, the other argument, which I would guess most sociologists would make, is a foucauldian one–the behavior that make social success possible constitutes the opposites–they exist simultaneously in social space. This is the reformulation that Bourdieu makes: the distinctions that give rise to success are exactly those which are against failure–they are part of an apoetic self-constituting whole.
Or take the Marxist step: those on the top are just living off the surplus labor of the underclass. Of course, one then has to deal with all the labor theory of value nonsense.
I just came across a good anology in a Collins book (of all places): “The forces that hold society together are invisible. One learns about them when they are broken, like walking into a plate-glass window.”
Over at OrgTheory a while back, they had a map of the ‘citation core’ of the field, based on cits from ASR, AJS and Social Forces papers:
http://orgtheory.wordpress.com/2009/08/14/sociologys-citation-core/
Though stratification is in there, and the social movements literature is traditionally linked with issues of social justice, the map also reveals networks and organizations as ‘core’ topics in sociology.
None of this detracts from your overall argument for a ‘positive’ sociology, but it’s worth noting that it’s not just inequality in soc.
Aint nothin like Reverse Sociology!!!!