Peter Emmerson

5.4.2 What sociologists can do for sociologists.

At least physicists have produced waves as conceptual technology to explain aspects of highly proximate materials such as liquids, even though using them to interpret the behaviour of radio technology may be stretching them beyond the distance needed for enough perceptual interdependence to provide a more thorough interpretation. Unfortunately, the same is not true for sociologists, or social scientists in general: it is as if sociologists have reached their version of the wave – particle dilemma just beyond the starting line with the issue of structure – agency for example. On one level both are pseudo-problems correlated with too high levels of idealism.

I would suggest that natural scientists have until now managed to resolve previous dead-ends because they are at a greater distance from idealism as their problems are inherently more practical: even though the idealistic impulse is explored through the activities of the immensely influential pure mathematical truth-finders, theologians and philosophers are at a much greater distance and play a much smaller part in the work of physicists than sociologists as I have explained earlier in the essay. Relatedly, natural scientists have had much greater success at making the leaps of imagination that go beyond the barriers imposed on their insight by theometaphysical conventions that specify outcomes in terms of ideals such as moral truth; if it works it’s sufficient. Such a position has allowed much greater proximity to the objects they research even with their dependency on pure mathematics: the attempt to model the much more alien sub-atomic world, where a whole new mathematics had to be invented by the figuration dominated by Heisenberg may be a step too far.

For sociologists with their much closer proximity to theologians and philosophers and their conventions, it is more difficult to see beyond the ideal horizon: theometaphysical conceptual technology is so ingrained in the thinking and perceptions of sociologists that the attainment of relative detachment takes more time. The very material sociologists analyse, people and that which bonds them together, are a source of ideals: there is no moral problem such as poverty in planetary analysis. Sociologists have a habitus much closer to Homo clausus than do biologists: over-involvement is everywhere. Correspondingly, it is arguable that sociologists need to pay greater attention to idealism and have more to gain by abandoning the use of ideals such as objectivity and exploring the possibilities of ‘relative detachment’. This humanizes the process of doing social scientific research by jettisoning pseudo-debates about alien experiences such as value-freedom, structure and agency. I might suggest that scientists are people who exercise their skills in self-control and conceptual sensitivity in order to create dynamic models, low in idealism. Such models require researchers to distance themselves sufficiently from their values so that they can interdependently gain closer proximity to the problem under consideration to allow them to do science. As far as I can see this will increase their level perceptual interdependency with their subject matter so that they can make better sense of it.

By de-idealizing sociological thinking and models sociologists may establish a better fit with their dynamic social subject matter and thereby improve their scientific understanding of social processes and the problems that occur. It strikes me at this point to mention something the Austrian psychologist Heider felt important, that human beings have a remarkable understanding of the world that social scientists can only dream about. On a daily basis we predict what will happen very well, not with exactitude but with sufficient skill to offer good probability of success. We go wrong more often than not because we allow our desires to over-ride our experience. Why therefore, should it not be the case that social science could improve its understanding with the help of more realistic concepts and models? People on one level are objects bound together by processes we cannot see. For early scientists the stars were connected by supernatural forces: the concept of gravity developed by Newton expressed God’s invisible divine laws. Gradually astronomers and physicists have moved away from theology and philosophy to achieve a level of ‘relative autonomy’ that facilitated a change in identity from natural philosophy to natural science. Yes, human beings have the ability to reflect and adapt their behaviour in a way that planets do not, but much of the time we act in an habitual fashion and cannot but reflect on how often we don’t learn the hard lessons of the past. In the heat of the moment we rely on habit, a compound of genetic predisposition and learning. Much of our thinking and activity is relatively predictable: rates of re-offending for those released from jail is a case in point. Is it not the models and concepts of social science that make such common sense regularities obscure? It is my argument that we should consider how idealism skews our perceptions, patterning our sensory experience with anti-real understanding and keeping us at a distance from that which we study, and what can be known. Is not the point about science when all is said and done that it just gets closer to the world of sensory reality than any other method? But to see more clearly you have to have the tools for the job. The microscope is a piece of technology that offers a greater degree of visual precision than the eye for small objects. It brings human thought processes much closer to the material it wants to understand. This closeness to the material, which is a feature of more reality-orientated models, helps distance researchers from their values to produce people with even greater relative detachment we call scientists, much less prone to flights of fancy. With less idealistic concepts and models sociologists might also produce better technology, process technology, and see more clearly.

Returning to the example of class. From an over-idealistic perspective, the processes involved in the problems inappropriately modelled as class are viewed through a veil of excessively static conceptual material that derives from the structural analyses of Marx and Weber: the limitations of structuralist models were discussed earlier in connection with Foucault (2.3.3) and Marx (4.2.2). In particular, by giving precedence to structure they dehumanize people who are explored as though they have no emotions: this is Homo clausus in action. Both models contain a set of class compartments which have not a hope I hell of mimicking the dynamics of identity and conflict. Such a rigid perspective is so distanced from that which it pretends to describe that it encourages the researcher to make the facts fit the theory, especially as the model being used is heavily idealistic and therefore prone to truth statements: if I look out on the world from the distance provided by the concepts of truth technology, I am supremely confident in ignoring or putting aside what doesn’t correspond to what I already know for definite.

From the perspective of a process model the initial move is towards relative detachment, (not the ideal noun of detachment which is nothing but a synonym for objectivity) that heightens the researcher’s consciousness of the danger of idealism. Such a move increases the likelihood of constructing a model much closer to the facts using what we might call process technology, i.e. dynamicized, operationalized concepts and models that fit much better with the material under consideration. Thus the researcher is much more in contact and sensitive to what is being studied and sees more, and in turn is much less influenced by truth statements and less likely to dispense with observations that don’t fit the theory. Because a process perspective is dynamic, its values are much more conditioned by ‘relative uncertainty’, and is less prone to favour any of the superior truth statements contained in the model.