Bauman Sociology Kuper

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sociology

More intimately than any other discipline that investigates the patterns of humaninteraction, sociology is associated with the advent of modernity, and this forseveralreasons.

First, perhaps the only common denominator of the great number of schools of thoughtand research strategies that claim sociological provenance is their focus on society. Thisfocus may take one of two forms. Some sociologists have taken as their subject thosestructures and processes that can properly be conceived only as the attributes of atotality (that is, shown not to be reducible to the traits of the individuals or associationswhose interlocking and mutually dependent actions form that totality). Others have beenconcerned rather with the difference that is made to the condition and the conduct ofindividuals and groups of individuals by virtue of the fact that they form partof such a

totality, called society. But society, understood as the supraindividual, anonymous, andnot immediately visible site of powerful forces that shape individual fates andprompt orconstrain individual actions, is a modern creation (distinct both from the polis, the site ofarticulated intentions, open debate, decision making and explicit legislation, and thehousehold, the sphere of free exercise of individual will, both of which are rooted in premodernhistory). Within society, actions tend to take the form of conditioned anddetermined (and thus more or less predictable) modes of conduct, shaped as theyare by a

constant pressure towards uniformity. But because society is the rule of nobody with nofixed address, the mechanisms underlying this conditioning, the source of pressurestowards uniformity, are far from evident. They are not represented in the awareness of theactors whose behaviour they shape. They must first be discovered in order to begrasped.Only once statistics had been developed did it become possible to set apart society as anautonomous object of study, as an entity distinct from individual, motivated actions, sincestatistics allowed for the uniform representation of a mass of actions, stripped

ofindividuality.

Second, another typically modern phenomenon is the constant tension between humansuprooted from their traditional and communal settings, transformed into individuals andcast into the position of autonomous subjects of action, and society, experiencedas adaily constraint upon, and ultimately the outer limit to, the action of individu


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al will. Theparadox is that the modern individual neither can be fully at home and at peacewithsociety, nor can he or she exist (indeed, come into being as an individual) outside society.In consequence, the study of society and of the tension between its capacity both toconstrain and to enable, has been prompted throughout modern history by two diversethough connected interests, in principle contradictory to each other in their practical


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The social science encyclopedia 1408

applications and consequences. On the one hand there is an interest in manipulatingsocial conditions in such a way as to elicit more uniform behaviour of the kinddesired bythose in positions of power. The central question here is one of discipline, that is ofcoercing people to behave in certain ways even if they do not share, or even reject, thegoals set by the designing and controlling agencies. On the other hand, there isan interestin understanding the mechanisms of social regulation so that, ideally, their enablingcapacity can be revealed, allowing people better to resist constraints and pressurestowards uniformity.

It goes without saying that these two interests are at cross-purposes. One aimsto limitthe very human freedom that the other is designed to promote. More precisely, there is aclash between the two kinds of freedom that the respective interests require, an

d in theend they undermine each other. The pursuit of enhanced uniformity is conducted in thename of improving human control over nature, that is, in the name of a collectivefreedom to shape the world in conformity with a vision of human needs or human nature.Yet the objective of controlling nature also inevitably entails the control of human nature(in practice, of human individuals), that is, of imposing patterns of conduct which wouldnot necessarily be followed if matters were left to take what we call their natural course.

The inherent ambivalence of the modern human condition, situated in a society thatsimultaneously constrains and enables, was reflected in the self-definition of sociology asthe scientific study of society and of the aspects of human life that derive from living insociety. Much sociological work has been inspired by a variety of controlling agencies,which sought precise and efficient instruments for eliciting disciplined and manageablebehaviour. Above all, the modern state had to install and sustain law and order through

the rational design of an institutional network that would constrain individuallife.Theoretical models of society constructed by sociology more often than not presented aview from the top, from, as it were, the control room. Society was perceived asan objectof social engineering, while social problems were depicted as in the first place problemsof administration, to be met by legal rules and the redeployment of resources. On the


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other hand, sociology responded willy-nilly to the resentment felt against the oppressionentailed in social engineering, for it inevitably exposed the artificial, arbitrary, manmadeand contrived character of social institutions, which the powers that be claimedwere objectively necessary or rational. That is why throughout its history sociology hasattracted criticism from both sides of the political divide. Power-holders willgo onaccusing sociologists of relativizing the kind of order they are sworn to promote anddefend, and so of undermining their hold over their subjects, and inciting whatthey see asunrest and subversion. People defending their way of life or their ideals against what theyexperience as oppressive, stifling constraints imposed by resourceful powers arelikely toobject that sociology serves as a counsellor to their adversaries. The intensityof thesecharges will in each case reflect not so much the state of sociology as the state of socialconflict in which, by virtue of the very nature of its work, it is inescapably enmeshed.

Understandably, both sets of adversaries would like to delegitimize the validityofsociological knowledge and to deny its scientific authority. Such assaults makesociologists acutely sensitive about their scientific status. They prompt ever renewed, yetforever inconclusive attempts to convince both academic opinion and the lay public thatthe knowledge produced by sociologists, as a result of the application of sociological


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methods, is superior to unaided and freely formed popular opinions, and that itcan evenclaim truth values equivalent to those imputed to the findings of science.

The boundaries of sociological discourse

The term sociology has been in use since the second quarter of the nineteenth century,mostly through the influential work of August Comte, who not only coined the name fora not-yet-practised area of study but also claimed for the future science the status of ageneralized and generalizing knowledge of the laws governing the progressive yetorderly development of human society (in his terms, the laws of social dynamicsandsocial statics)knowledge that would be obtained by deploying universally applicablescientific methods of observation and experiment. When attempts to establish sociologyas a superior source of comment on human experience (as scientific knowledge in

generalis superior to folk beliefs), and particularly to introduce it as a separate academicdiscipline into a field of study already occupied by subjects that had become establishedand recognized at an earlier stage, were undertaken in Europe and the USA at theturn ofthe century, the pioneer sociologists chose to spell out the genuine or putativedifferencesbetween the subject-matters or approaches of sociology and its older and establishedcompetitors. These pioneer sociologists wished to define and fence off an area of reality

that none of the established disciplines had explored, and/or a type of knowledge that nodiscipline had hitherto provided.

Emile Durkheim, retrospectively acclaimed as one of the founding fathers of sociologyas an academic discipline, followed the French positivist tradition and postulated theexistence of specifically social facts, which had been left out (and by their very naturecould not but be neglected) by other types of human studies, and particularly bypsychology, the most obvious competitor for the job of explaining the observed

regularities in human conduct. Durkheim postulated the objective status of suchsocialfacts, that is their irreducibility in principle to the data of individual, subjectiveexperience. (By objectivity he meant the assumed independence of social facts from theself-consciousness of human actors, and also their power to coerce the conduct ofindividuals and to bring them into line should they veer from socially acceptedstandards.) This necessarily implied that such facts should be treated in the wa


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y allrespected sciences study their areas of reality: objectively, from the point ofview of anexternal observer, without reference to subjectively experienced states of mind and themotives of the actors.

At the same time, another founding father of academic sociology, Max Weber, inspiredby the German Geisteswissenschaften and Kulturlehre traditions, attempted to setthe newdiscipline apart by following what was virtually the opposite strategy. Sociology was tobe distinguished by its approach and interpretative stance, rather than by claiming that aseparate set of facts constituted an exclusive domain for its study. For Max Weber,sociology was distinguished by its attempt to understand human conduct (always ameaningfulpurposivephenomenon, unlike the behaviour of inanimate bodies that canbe explained, but not understood) in terms of the meanings that actors invest intheiractions. Unlike the natural-scientific explanation of events with reference to external


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causes, sociological understanding was to be an inside job. What set apart properlysociological explanations was that they operated at the level of meaning. To understandsocial action one had to postulate the meanings that made sense of the observedconduct.

The differences between the disciplines collectively designated as social sciences (ofwhich sociology is one, alongside psychology, anthropology, political science andvarious others) were, however, originally determined by the kinds of questions theyposed about humans, regarded as social beings, that is, as entities whose conduct isregular, by and large predictable, and also potentially (given the availabilityof adequateresources) controllable, and who are for these reasons potential objects of study in thesense defined by the strategies of modern science. These questions were in turndictated

by the often practical and policy-oriented interests of the modern state and other agencies.Only later were the originally contingent differences reinforced through the progressivedepartmentalization of academic research and teaching, and it was then argued that eachdealt with an allegedly distinct and autonomous aspect of human reality.

The core of the discourse of sociology has been relatively well defined by a distinctivewritten tradition, but it has been, and remains, notoriously frayed at the edges, despite thefact that for most of its history it struggled to set itself apart from related

academicenterprises, and thus to demarcate the area over which it exercised exclusive sovereignty.The frontiers of sociology are porous, letting in materials formed within otherinterpretivetraditions and other discourses. It is also far from clear (let alone universally agreed) whatsort of propositions belong to sociology proper, and from which sites such propositionscan be formulated if they are to be accepted as being sociologically relevant. Littlewonder that there are few, if any, themes, topics, questions or practical interests that may

be classified as unambiguously and exclusively sociological without their assignmentbeing contested by other discourses within the humanities or social sciences. Moreover,as commentators on human experience, sociologists share their subject-matter withcountless others, not only members of other social scientific communities but also withnovelists, poets, journalists, politicians, religious thinkers and the educatedpublic in


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general.

There is another reason that sociology has been unable to make the transition from thestatus of a discourse to what Michel Foucault terms a discursive formation. It ischaracterized by what Anthony Giddens (1976) describes as a double hermeneutics.The object of sociological commentary is always an already experienced experience,filled with meaning, interpreted and narrated even while it is still (for a sociologist) rawmaterial. Unlike the objects dealt with by the natural sciences, which are not as a rule partof the daily practice and experience of non-specialists, the objects of the sociologistshermeneutical efforts are the products of a competent, wide-ranging and incessantthough largely unreflectivehermeneutical activity on the part of the lay membersofsociety.

Apart from the fact that the data of sociology are in this way secondary or second level,the interpretative operations of the sociologist do not differ in kind from the

layhermeneutic practices that are already embedded in the objects of its studythat are,indeed, responsible for the constitution of these objects. It is not immediatelyapparentand must therefore be proventhat professional sociological interpretations are


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necessarily superior, more credible, trustworthy and otherwise privileged than theprimary, lay meanings that they are intended to improve upon or to replace. Henceagain in striking contrast to the practices of most natural sciences, but in common withthe experience of many human sciencesthe clarification of its relationship to commonsense (that is, lay sense, beliefs that have been denied the status of professionalknowledge) and intensive methodological self-reflection constitute an integral,andinordinately prominent, aspect of sociological work.

The most common strategy of sociologists is to denigrate popularly held opinion,andto cast doubt upon the introspective capacity of actors. However profound the otherdifferences between them may be, most schools of thought in sociology agree thattheactors hold at best a hazy, at worst a mistaken, image of the true motives and r

easons fortheir conduct, and that they cannot reliably represent the social forces that affect theirlives, for they reason from within the confines of their own, always partial andfragmentary, life experiences. On that view, common sense is incoherent and internallycontradictory, vulnerable to distorting influences, and always in need of correction. Beingmere opinions, popular interpretations should be treated as objects of researchand not asa source of true knowledge. This strategy of denigrating common sense is supplemented

by the effort to elaborate methods of data collection and an interpretive methodology thatmight claim the authority of established scientific procedures, so assuring a degree ofreliability of sociological knowledge to which mere opinions, which are not formed in asimilarly methodical fashion, cannot aspire.

The formative interests of sociology

The projects of research and teaching that were collected under the name of sociologyin the USA were stimulated by concerns about the turbulence that was caused by r

apidindustrialization and the massive immigration in the urban areas of the AmericanMid-West in the early twentieth century. These concerns were shared initially by politicians,social reformers and religious preachers (the first academic sociologists beingdrawnfrom their ranks). The constantly changing social world seemed to be poorly integrated,the direction of change unconstrained by shared traditions or by self-regulating


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communal mechanisms. Consequently the options were apparently wide open, offering aperhaps dangerous freedom for social experiment. The social setting, and therefore alsohuman conduct, seemed to be flexible and pliableavailable for rational design andforsocial engineering. In this context, the emerging science of society regarded itself asfirst and foremost an instrument of policy for local governments and social workers. Thepolicies to be designed with social-scientific inspiration and assistance were intended todeal with deviation, abnormality and pathology. In short, they aimed to resolvesocial problems. Society was seen, indeed, as first and foremost a collection ofproblems,and the science of society was accordingly asked to deliver a theoretical guideto practicalproblem solving.

A similar practical bias also characterized continental European sociology when,likeits North American counterpart, it began to be assimilated into the universitiesat the end

of the nineteenth century. However, the Europeans did not concentrate on problem


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solving. Rather, the emerging social science was intended to enable rational humanbeings to play a conscious part in the large movements of history, movements that werebelieved to exhibit a direction and logic, if one that had yet to be revealed. Sociologywould therefore enable people to feel more at home in an unfamiliar world, moreincontrol of their own actions andcollectively and obliquelyof the conditions underwhich they were obliged to act. In other words sociology, it was hoped, would discoverthe historical tendency of modern society, and modify it. In the place of a spontaneous,elemental, poorly understood process, it would set an orderly, monitored development. Itwas also widely assumed from the start that not all modern transformations wereunambiguously beneficial and desirable. Sociology therefore had to alert the public, at alllevels but in particular at the level of the law-makers, to the dangers hidden inuncontrolled social processes, and it had to propose ways of preventing such und

esirableprocesses from materializing, or to propose ways of repairing the damage.

The founders of the new discipline and their successors, whose ideas were laterto beabsorbed into its canon, agreed on this understanding of the calling of sociology, even ifthey differed in their interpretation of the crucial features and guiding factors of thehistorical trends that they all wished to grasp. Comte (17981857) identified themovingforce of history in the progress of scientific knowledge and, more generally, inthe

positive spirit. Herbert Spencer (18201903) envisaged the passage of modern societyfrom the conflict-ridden military stage to a peaceful industrial stage, where a multitudeof products became available for distribution. He foresaw a continuous progresstowardsthe increasing complexity of society, paired with the growing autonomy anddifferentiation of individuals. Karl Marx (181883) expected the progressive control overnature to result eventually in the complete emancipation of society from the constraints ofnecessity arising from wanta redemption from misery and strife, which would put an

end to the alienation of products from their producers and to the transformationof thoseproducts into capital deployed to enslave and further expropriate the producers,eventually putting to an end all exploitation. Ferdinand Tnnies (18551936) conceivedof a historical succession whereby the original Gemeinschaftthe natural togetherness ofcommunities held together by mutual sympathy, solidarity and co-operationwould be


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replaced in modern times by Gesellschafta web of partial, purposeful, impersonalandcontractual bonds. Emile Durkheim (18551917) focused his analysis of historical trendsupon the progressive division of labour and thus the growing complexity of the socialwhole. He proposed a model of society integrated first by the mechanical solidarity ofsimilar segments and later by the organic solidarity of functionally differentiated yetcomplementary classes and professional groups. Max Weber (18641920) representedmodernity mainly in terms of an ubiquitous rationalization of all spheres of social life,thought and culture, and the increasing role played by action grounded in the calculationof means and ends at the expense of the non-rational or irrational, custom-boundoraffective forms of conduct. George Simmel (18591918) emphasized the passage fromqualitative and differentiated to quantitative and uniform relations, and underlined thenew and growing role played by universalizing and disembedded forces, best exemplifiedby the institution of money and by abstract, categorical thought.

The appearance of sociology coincided in continental Europe with a wave of optimismin the creative, life-improving potential and the universal destiny of European


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civilization, which was identified in the public mind with civilization as such.That faithdrew inspiration and apparent confirmation from the rapid and unresisted globalexpansion of European rule and influence. The profusely demonstrated practicalsuperiority of the European way of life seemed to offer the budding social science anuncontroversial model of social development in general, and a standard by whichtomeasure other societies and to anticipate their future development. Then, as later,sociology was in tune with the general intellectual mood of the time, sharing thewidespread belief in progress, the expectation of constant improvement, the convictionthat all present or future problems could be solved through the advance of science andtechnical know-how, if the political will existed, and the expectation that rationallyorganized, humane societies would come to dominate the world. Sociology aimed tobe apart of this progressive change, through reflecting upon the course history had

taken andwas likely to take in the future, and thereby supplying the standards by which practicalmeasures might be evaluated. The identification of unsolved and potentially dangerousproblems, and criticisms of misguided or ineffective ways of handling social problems,was seen as an integral constituent of the task of sociology.

At the time of the establishment of continental sociology, Britain was the centre of aworldwide empire. The principle of indirect rule in the colonies presupposed that the

conquered populations were enclosed and by and large self-reproducing totalitiessocieties in their own right. Evidently different from metropolitan societies, yet viableand retaining their own distinctive traits, they put on the agenda the task of thecomparative study of societiesa task undertaken by what came to be known as socialanthropology. Until the middle of the twentieth century, social anthropology dominatedsocial science in Britain, thereby delaying the establishment of academic sociology. Theemergence of sociology in Britain coincided with the dismantling of the empire and the

concomitant concern with the study of Britain itself. The circumstance that sociologyentered public debate in Britain at a time of retreat and retrenchment, rather than at a timeof expansion and optimism, as had been the case in continental Europe and the USA, wasto have consequences for the status and public reception of sociology in Britainfor a longtime to come.


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The changing profile of sociology

Attempts are often made, misleadingly, to reduce the variegated and open sociologicaldiscourse to a succession of clearly demarcated periods, each distinguished by thedominance, or at least prevalence, of a single paradigma coherent and circumscribedbody of interrelated concepts. Yet one can hardly think of sociology as a discursiveformation with boundaries, let along as characterized by the practice of normal sciencein Thomas Kuhns sense, focused upon a shared paradigm. Always part and parcel oftheintellectual life of its time and place, the shifts in the interests of sociological discourseand in the tasks that sociology sets itself reflect more than anything else general culturalchanges.

By common consent, the second part of the twentieth century has brought the mostradical of all shifts to which modern culture has been exposed since its inception. The


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most seminal, and the most important of its intellectual consequences, was the collapse ofthe hierarchy of values that had hitherto underpinned modern culture. A new scepticismbecame established, that put in question all modern certainties, above all the convictionthat the western type of society represents the form of civilization that will eventuallyachieve universal dominion, and that (notwithstanding temporary slow-downs andoccasional set-backs) a continuous progress towards a more rational and accident-proofsociety has already been assured. Closely connected with this crisis of confidence hasbeen the retreat of the powers from the project of global domination, as well asthegradual yet relentless fall from grace of the ideal of an all-regulating, ubiquitous,obsessively legislating state engaged upon great enterprises of social engineering.

The most momentous consequence for the shape and status of sociology was the

disappearance of the vantage point from which most of the orthodox sociologicalworkhad been done: that of the cockpit, or control room, of an administrative centrewillingand resourceful enough to treat society as an object that could be closely monitored andmanaged, once social processes had been analysed into a series of definable andinprinciple resolvable problems. To be sure, much of the work done in sociologydepartments retains the impress of the past of the discipline, when it was sustained bydemands emanating from expanding warfare and welfare bureaucracies. None the less the

overall trend is away from the old ways and towards new cognitive perspectives. Therecan be no doubt that the nature and tasks of sociological work are now understood in avery different way from that taken for granted in the first half of the twentieth century.

To sum up, the focus of sociological interests is shifting from structure to agency, fromsociety understood primarily as a set of external constraints that restrict thefield ofchoices available to the members of society, and to a large extent determine their

behaviour, to social settings that are understood primarily as pools of enablingresourcesfrom which the actors draw in order to pursue their own goals. Society is conceived ofless as a self-perpetuating pattern of social positions and functions, more as an ongoingprocess, which in its course puts together and dismantles (always temporary) networks ofdependency and stages for action. Though the category of society is not likely to vanish


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from sociological discourse, its meaning is undergoing fateful changes. Increasingly, thecategory is used in the sense of sociation (actors entering into or abandoningrelationships) oryet more symptomaticallyin the sense of sociality (meaning thevery capacity of actors to sociate). This is arguably the crucial shift: other new traits ornew emphases that will be listed below, and which set contemporary sociologicaldiscourse apart from the received tradition of modern sociology, may be represented asits manifestations or consequences.

Where once sociology was concerned above all with stability, self-reproduction andrepetitiveness, and with the ways and means of securing these (the central preoccupationof the once dominant systems theory of Talcott Parsons and equally of the opponents ofhis structural functionalism), attention is moving towards the study of innovation. It isunderstood that every action is to an extent a creative act, though it always takes accountof extant, already meaningful patterns. The emphasis is also shifting away fromthesearch for laws and regularities. These were conceived of as preceding the actio

n,affecting its course while themselves remaining unaffected. Actions are no longerportrayed as determined but rather as contingent, each a unique creation and therefore not


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truly predictable. Doubt is also cast upon the predictive value of statistics. It is acceptedthat the most frequent or numerous phenomena will not necessarily represent thetrendsof the future. In consequence, there seem to be no clearcut criteria by which toanticipatethe consequences of events, their impact and durability, and thus to judge theirsignificance. This in turn leads to the erosion of once central, privileged objects or areasof sociological study. Since sociologists no longer evoke basic conflicts, main links orsteering processes, it is not obvious why certain topics, actors or events ought to begiven priority by the sociologist.

The attention of sociologists is accordingly shifting from the control room (from issueslike the impact of the state, class domination, etc.) to mundane, elementary interactions,to the grassroots level of social reality, to what actors do to one another and

to themselvesin the context of face-to-face interaction. Largely under the influence of Alfred Schtzsargument that the world within reach supplies the archetype for the actors model ofallother universes of meaning (Schtz 1982), it is assumed that the essential skills andknowledge reflectively or unreflectively deployed by the actors in their daily life areultimately responsible for what is perceived in retrospect to be a global, impersonal trend,or the persistence of objective structures.

Once actors were conceived of as knowledgeable and in principle prone to selfmonitoring,the prime task of sociological investigation became the reconstruction oftheir knowledge. This dramatically alters the role assigned to common sense insociological discourse. Initially conceived of as alternative, poorly informed andessentially false interpretation of social reality (to be criticized, correctedor supplanted)it now becomes the major resource for sociological interpretation. To an unprecedenteddegree, sociology now assumes a hermeneutical stance. It emphasizes that socialrealitiesare intrinsically meaningful (endowed with meaning by the actors who produce the

m),and that in consequence to understand those realities one must reconstruct the actorsmeanings. This does not necessarily mean that the sociologist strives to achieveempathy:to discover what is going on in the minds of the actors, to bring to light theirconsciousmotives and explicit goals. Sociologists still tend to deny that the actors arenecessarilythe best judges of sociological interpretations. But the hermeneutical approach


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does meanthat explanations or interpretations of social realities must treat the actors as meaningdrivenand meaning-creating, rather than as being pushed and pulled by impersonal,objectively describable forces and constraints.

Another intimately related trend is the switch in interest from external coercion andconstraint to the actors self-construction and self-definition. Actions are meaningful,actors are knowledgeable, reflecting constantly upon their own identity and motives. Onemight say that if human beings were seen by orthodox sociology as driven primarily bynecessity and as the target of social forces, they tend to be construed now, more oftenthan not, as identity-driven and motivated, choosing subjects.

The most general trend is to move down the levels of social organization in search ofthe genuine levers of social actions. Contemporary sociologists accordingly payparticular attention to community at the expense of society (which in modern sociologywas assumed to be, for all practical purposes, identical with the nation-state).

For a longtime, sociologists believed that community was a relic of pre-modern times, bound todisappear in the course of modernization. It is now being restored to a centralposition in


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sociological analysis, and is regarded as the ultimate source of actors meanings,and thusof social reality itself. Communities are considered to be the bearers of tradition, which issustained and recreated by the actions of their members; to be the ultimate source ofwhatever commonality and sharing is to be found in the actors meanings; and to bethepoint of reference in the process whereby the actors define themselves and construct theiridentities (and so, reciprocally, sustain the community). Unlike society, which isidentified with the nation-state, communities have no objective boundaries (thatis,boundaries guarded by coercive powers). They are fluid, and the strength of thegrip inwhich they hold their members may vary too (that grip being none other than theintensity of the actors emotional identification with what they conceive as, or imagine tobe, community).

Sociologists say that communities are imagined. As conceived in contemporarysociology, community is postulatedthe postulate becoming reality where actions areundertaken as if it was a reality. There is therefore a constant interplay between actorsand their communities, neither being assigned priority in sociological analysis.

Alternative sociologies

The perspectival shift in contemporary sociologythe new self-awareness that admitsthe community-, culture-, time-bound nature of any sociological discourse and body of

knowledgeis simultaneously responsible for, and a response to, the emergence ofalternative sociologies that promote different interpretations of shared socialrealities.These insist that a plurality of interpretations is inevitable, given the difference betweenthe experiential vantage points from which interpretive efforts are launched. Tobe sure,earlier social theorists sometimes argued that there was an intimate affinity betweenposition-related experience and the style and content of sociological knowledge.Mostnotably, this is true of the Marxist thesis that there is an unbridgeable opposition between

the bourgeois and proletarian view of society. The novelty consists, first, in anextension of the perspectival principle from two opposing classes to a multitudeofcategories distinguished by ethnic, gender, or cultural characteristics, and theovertacceptance of the interested nature of each perspective (for each serves the needs of agroup whose collective experience it claims to articulate, and each is necessaryfor theintegration of the group and the sustenance of group tradition). Moreover, the a


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lternativesociologies abandon the claim to objectivity and to exclusive truth, openly admitting therelativity of any interpretation. However strong the mutual interest (both approving andcritical) that various alternative sociologies show in the assertions of others,littleprogress has been made so far towards a genuine synthesis of interpretive standpoints.Given their strategies and their understanding of the nature of sociological work, it islegitimate to doubt whether such a synthesis is a realistic objective. More likely thecoexistence of alternative perspectival sociologies will be a lasting (nay constitutive)condition of sociology.

Arguably the most prolific and influential among alternative sociologies has been bornof the new awareness of the specificity of gender-related experience, inspired by thefeminist movement of the second half of the twentieth century. Feminist sociology, like


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other alternative sociologies, assumes that all knowledge is socially situated.In otherwords, it is related in both its subject-matter and its interpretive angle to anexperienceunique to a specific group or category, distinguished by the content of its lifeconcerns.Mainstream sociology, on this view, has been situated in the essentially male context ofthe relations of ruling (Smith 1987)in the world of paid labour, politics and formalorganizations. Emerging in this context, and serving it, the mainstream, male sociologyproduces rulership texts that masquerade as objective knowledge. They construct andimpose general identities and classifications, and deploy abstract, impersonal andanonymous categories that denigrate or exclude from the realm of the significantall real,personal life experience. The assumed objectivity of such knowledge, feministsociologists aver, is a mere pretence; its allegedly non-partisan viewpoint canbe

seriously asserted only in so far as male domination itself has been exempted from thediscourse, while providing its tacit premise. Once that premise is questioned, it becomesclear that mainstream sociology is but one of the many potential situated sociologiesone that focuses on a selected part of the social, excluding other parts. In particular itleaves outand fails to account forthe social world as it is experienced and livedbywomen. For this reason, a sociology by women and for women needs to be developedtosupplement the extant male sociology, and simultaneously to expose its limited s

cope, itssituatedness, and its unwarranted bid for monopoly, reflecting as it does at thelevel oftheory the practice of male domination.

On this view, the part of the social on which the new female sociology must beconstructed is the sphere of daily domestic life, childcare, service-oriented activities, inwhich womens roles are cast and moulded. But female sociology is not set apart only byconcentrating on a specific, often underplayed area of experience. The differentexperience of women must also be processed in a new way, steering clear of the m

aleinclination to abstract, depersonalize and categorize. Such a sociology should aim toreturn to the real and the concrete. Women are immersed in the practical contextof theeveryday/everynight world, the world of the actual and specific, which they never leave(at least in their gender-specific capacity). This kind of experience, marginalized anddeclared out of court by the dominant sociological discourse, must be granted so


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cialsignificance so that womens lives can be brought back from the margins to which theyhave been exiled to the centre of social life and of the knowledge of the social.

The feminist-inspired alternative sociology takes gender as the key differentiatorofsocial situatedness and situated experience. It considers gender to be the constitutivefactor of the most consequential social division and social conflict, as well asthe basis ofthe critical dimension of social domination and oppressionthat is, of patriarchalrule.Other alternative sociologies select their key differentiator differentlymost often fromclass, ethnic or racial attributesbut on the whole they share the assumption thatallknowledge of the social is position bound, situated and interested, and treat with reserveany claims of unencumbered objectivity, suspecting that behind such claims mustlurk abid for domination, and an apology for oppression.


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Areas of sociological study

Sociology is a widely ramifying discipline, subdivided into numerous fields ofspecialized study, often united quite loosely by little more than shared hermeneuticstrategies and an ambition to correct common beliefs. The demarcation of these fieldsfollows quite closely the institutionalized, functional divisions in organized society,answering the effective or assumed demand of the established areas of management.Thus specialized bodies of knowledge have accumulated that focus on deviance andcorrective or punitive policies, politics and political institutions, army and war, race andethnicity, marriage and the family, education, the cultural media, informationtechnologies, religion and religious institutions, industry and work, urban living and itsproblems, health and medicine.

Not all specific research interests, however, can be referred unambiguously to

administrative demands. The endemic ambivalence of sociology, which can be tracedback to the ambivalent response of the early sociologists to the rationalizationproject ofmodernity, manifests itself in the persistence of areas of study that have no directadministrative application, and are even potentially disruptive from the managerial pointof view. To be sure, the distinction between the potentially stabilizing and destabilizing,overt or latent intentions and effects of sociological knowledge cuts across thethematicdivisions, none of the specialized fields being entirely free from ambivalence.

Still,certain areas of sociological thought address themselves more explicitly than others toindividuals resisting managerial manipulation and attempting to assert control over theirown lives. Relevant areas of study include social inequality (whether based on class,gender or race), identity-formation, interaction in daily life, intimacy anddepersonalization, etc. In contrast to management-oriented areas of study, thereis apronounced tendency to cross-fertilize, to borrow insights, to dismantle boundariesbetween different areas of expertise. This is in keeping with the overall strate

gic aim ofrestoring the wholeness of life and personality, which are fragmented and separated byinstitutionalized divisions.

Major theoretical influences in contemporary sociology

The formative, classic ideas of Marx, Weber, Durkheim or Simmel continue to constitutethe backbone of sociological discourse, providing the reference point for selfid


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entificationover the wide range of schools and styles between which sociologicalpractice is divided. The classic works are frequently revisited, reread and reinterpreted inthe light of changing experiences, interests and priorities. Given the spread ofinterpretations imposed upon the variety of original classical insights, revivals of classicsources may serve the integration of sociological work or sustain the division betweendifferent schools of thought. Talcott Parsonss social action and system theory, whichunder the name of structural functionalism dominated the sociological scene in the1950s and 1960s, was constructed as a (highly idiosyncratic) interpretation of the classic


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sociological tradition. So was the opposition to Parsonsby C.Wright Mills, RalfDahrendorf, David Lockwood, John Rex and otherswhich prepared the ground for theeventual replacement of the Parsonian version of sociology by providing new insightsinto the classical foundations of the discipline.

The most seminal of departures that led in the course of the 1970s to widespreadcriticism and rejection of what Anthony Giddens termed the orthodox consensus wasthe phenomenological revolution. Initiated by Berger and Luckmann (1966), therevolution was sustained by a spate of radical reformulations of the subject-matter andproper strategy of sociological work. The posthumously published work of AlfredSchtzserved as the main theoretical inspiration and authority. It prepared the way for theinfluence of the continental philosophies of Husserl and Heidegger, and theirhermeneutical applications in the writings of Paul Ricoeur and Hans Gadamer. Theeffectof the exposure to phenomenology was to shift interest from external, extra-subjective

structural constraints to the interpretation of the subjective experience of actors; and fromthe determination to arbitrate between objective truth and prejudiced opinion tothe effortto reveal the conditions of knowledge rooted in communally transmitted traditions.Harold Garfinkels ethnomethodology (that treated the social as the accomplishment ofknowledgeable actors, in the course of their everyday work) added further impetus to thereorientation of sociology away from objective systems and structures and towardssocial agency, self-reflexive, intentional action and its unanticipated consequences, a

move most emphatically expressed in the work of Anthony Giddens. There has beenagreater openness of sociology to developments and fashions in other disciplines,andmore generally in other areas of culture. Apart from phenomenology and hermeneutics,powerful influences have been Adorno and Horkheimers critical theory, Wittgensteinsphilosophy, Lvi-Strausss and Barthess semiotics, Foucaults philosophy of knowledge,Braudels historiography, Lacans psychoanalysis and Derridas deconstructionto namebut the most obvious instances.

Two other developments should also be noted. First, North American sociology los

tthe dominant position that it had gained in the years following the Second WorldWar. Ithas been in retreat at home, due to the diminishing resources of its sponsoringbureaucracies, while its empirical methodology, once the source of its greateststrengthand appeal, has found less application in European sociology due to its changedconcernsand strategies. Second, there has been a growing interchange between nationalsociologies, sociological discourse acquiring increasingly a transnational chara


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cter.Examples are the worldwide impact of Jrgen Habermass (1979) communicationtheory, Niklas Luhmanns revised system theory, Ulrich Becks (1992)Risikogesellschaft, Frederik Earths analysis of ethnic boundaries, or Pierre Bourdieus(1985) notions of cultural capital and habitus.

The post-modern controversy

Through the works of Charles Jencks, Jean-Franois Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, GianniVattimo, Alberto Melucci, Michel Maffesoli and other writers, the twin issues ofthereassessment of the current trends of modern society and of the aim and functionof


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sociological work have moved to the centre of sociologists concerns, expressed inwhatcame to be called the post-modern debate.

The nub of the debate concerns the thesis that the modern project has ground toa haltor exhausted itself, being displaced by post-modernitya non-systemic condition ofmultiple realities, of change without direction, with no prospect of being controlled.Doubts are voiced as to whether the present condition is so distinctive and novel as towarrant the description postmodern. Habermas (1979) and Giddens (1993), for instance,insist that the features described as postmodern are traits of a late or maturemodernity,and that the modernist project is still far from exhausted. Others, however, argue that thedemise of utopias, of the trust in progress and in historical direction, as wellas thecollapse of projects to impose universal and uniform cultural standards and structural

patterns, testify to a decisive break.

Both sides in the debate invoke the concept of the society of risk, originallyintroduced by Ulrich Beck (1992) and now very generally accepted. One view is that themodern forces of science and technology have further reinforced their central position,since only techno-science can locate, articulate and deal with the new, global risks. Thecontrary view is that present-day society is shaped by its responses to the newriskscreated mostly by past responses to risks previously revealeda process that feedspostmodern

fragmentation.

With respect to the microsocial level, some maintain that the notorious fluidityofindividual identity, the instability of personal relationships, signal the fulfilment of thelong modern development towards individual freedom. The alternative view is thatthecurrent human condition is marked above all, in characteristic post-modern fashion, bythe difficulty of holding on to already acquired identities.

Finally, another hotly contested issue is the connection between the condition c

alledpost-modern and the affluence of certain highly developed consumer societies. Doubtsare accordingly raised as to the global significance of the post-modern condition.

The views adopted as to what are the appropriate strategies for sociology in thenewcircumstances are closely related to the stands taken in the debate between modernists


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and post-modernists. Those who argue that contemporary society is increasinglypostmodern maintain that sociology ought to take stock of the multiplicity of cultures,traditions and forms of life, and thus concentrate its efforts on facilitating communicationand understanding between distinct realities rather than continue the search fora uniqueand universally binding truth, in defiance of communally grounded and tradition-boundlocal, lay knowledge. Those who hold this view are ready to accept that sociology isessentially an attempt to replicate, somewhat more systematically, the interpretiveactivity in which all members of society are engaged, in the daily activities ofsociation.Not everyone, however, is prepared to abandon the modernist ambition of social scienceto provide privileged knowledge, which is bound to expose the frailty of lay beliefs andeventually to replace them with scientifically grounded, objective truth, and whichaspires to co-operate in political and legislative efforts to establish rationalstructures thatwill make possible and promote the replacement of lay enterprises with rational,

scientific projects.

Zygmunt BaumanUniversity of Leeds


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References

Berger, P. and Luckmann, T. (1966) The Social Construction of Reality, New York.

Giddens, A. (1976) New Rules of Sociological Method: A Positive Critique ofInterpretive Sociology, London.

Schtz, A. (1982) Life Forms and Meaning Structure, London.

Smith, D.E. (1987) The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology , Boston,MA.

Further reading

Bauman, Z. (1991) Intimations of Postmodernity, London.Beck, U. (1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, New York.Bourdieu, P. (1985) Languages as Symbolic Power, Oxford.Coser, L.A. and Rosenberg, B. (1985) Sociological Theory: Selected Readings.Fay, B. (1975) Social Theory and Political Practice, London.

Giddens, A. (1993) Sociology, Cambridge, UK.Habermas, J. (1979) Communication and the Evolution of Society, Oxford.Heritage, J. (1984) Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology, Oxford.Mestrovic, S.G. (1991) The Coming Fin de Sicle, London.Turner, B.S. (1990) Theories of Postmodernity, New York.Whistler, S. and Lasch, S. (1987) Max Weber: Rationality and Modernity, London.

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