I Know Where I’m Going Sometimes.

October 2nd, 2007 Posted in Review

Review:

Looking back over these posts I see that I have etched on this blog screen assertions about the nature and uses of the sociological project. These are glosses on the optimistic sociology I picked up and carried as a student apprentice. I see them as a balance against the misleading exaggerations of the past.

So when I say that sociology is the most general and inclusive study of the plural I am calling all the specialists in politics, economics, family, the military, crime and punishment, the arts, medicine and etcetera to recognize what they share with each other, to remember that the part of their work concerning social life may take the same form or process found in the work of different specialists, and so may belong to all. The encounter is an encounter no matter the institution. I also urge all to ignore divisive boundaries, except when they are the subject of study. Like the bloodhound on the path of a scent–over the fence and under the wire, no detours, stay on track.

So I argue (rather successfully I think) against sociology as a hard science but I urge that we retain the scientific ethic–an emphasis on the data of the senses, the empirical, and an attempt to push our objectivity and openness up to our moral limits. And when our disdain and disgust or our love become a barrier or enticement we need to recognize and admit it. We should try to separate the work from the politics and the ideology and our self-interest even as we know we will fall short.

As observers we are in the soup, we are part of the field we study and as actors in the field we each have the capacity to initiate an original act–sui generis. We are never to be considered automatons even if we behave as such. This suggests a problematic, however rare, within every social ordering. Change and staying the same are both here and both now.

Meanwhile we have begun the consideration of substantive issues. Social formations in the using up of economic value. The social organization of social research. The large applicability of the unit act as a model via the encounter of two actors (individuals or social formations). The connection via social form of the spectator-player model to other seemingly dissimilar settings offers unexpected comparisons.

As we thrashed around developing these topics we began to find relationship: interaction, gift, exchange, transfer–the mediation of our togetherness after face-to-face. An asymmetry of means, a screen or block around which we still reach one toward the other.

Not systematic but, like the Martian newly arrived and jabbering away, we are trying to say something.

Next post we’ll move on to the question of the human group.

Who’s that knocking?