The problem with sociology: morality, anti-biology and perspectivism.(Universities)

SOMETHING IS SERIOUSLY amiss with sociology. It is more than a century and a half since the most influential modern variants of sociology began to be formulated, starting with Marx's Communist Manifesto. Sociology came into universities about a hundred years ago, and for at least the last fifty years it has been well represented in universities across the Western world. Despite this time, sociologists have produced little disciplinary knowledge; they agree on almost nothing, not even on the nature and extent of their disagreements. Sociology is a mess. Yet few sociologists, at least in their more public pronouncements, acknowledge this, preferring instead to present their work as an organised discipline producing knowledge that contributes to the wellbeing of humanity.

Sociologists say they are enquiring into social life with the aim of understanding it. But if they were doing this, if they were really disciplined by their subject matter, sociology would have the characteristics of a discipline. It would profess a body of agreed knowledge about social life, and have organised ways of setting out and resolving disagreements by reference to evidence about social life. Instead, sociology remains deeply fragmented and chaotic. This suggests that sociologists do not share what they say they share--a project of intellectual enquiry--but that they give priority to activities other than enquiry.

Some of the anti-intellectual activities of sociologists, such as jargon-mongering, name-dropping, and rushing from one fashion to another, are well known. These activities are, however, merely careerist symptoms of an underlying problem; they flourish because of a failure to generate the collective conventions of enquiry and debate that would expose them as inane.

What orients sociologists away from enquiry into social life more than anything else is moralism. Moralists are most opposed to enquiry when they conjure up the illusion of a moral Authority existing above social life, and then talk about social life as if they are authorised by this Authority to prescribe and proscribe behaviour. Among other problems, this kind of moralism makes it all but impossible to connect sociology to biology, leading to a set of intractable difficulties that can be put under the rubric of the nature-nurture dualism. It also leads to perspectivism, a reaction against the chaos produced by the interminable warring of moralities. Perspectivism is widespread because it enables sociology to be presented as an organised, professional discipline.

Moralism, anti-biology and perspectivism are the core components of an anti-enquiry ethos that runs strongly through sociology. This ethos is generated and sustained, not so much by elite sociologists who "turn a blind eye to it", but by the many rank-and-file sociologists and postgraduates who teach and study in tertiary educational institutions around the world. Critical commentary on this ethos is almost absent. The following discussion challenges this silence.

THE PROBLEM OF MORALITY: ENQUIRY VERSUS OBEDIENCE

WHAT IS PROBLEMATIC about morality in sociology? The answer is nothing, or lots, depending on what and how morality is built into sociology.