So Far, So Good.

January 1st, 2008 Posted in Review

I’ve been chipping away here for several months now, time to peek at the image I’ve engraved in the rock so far.

Remember that my premise is that each of us in social life acts within his own understanding of our social space. This is the ordinary sociology. It is like speaking prose–no way to avoid it. Sharing of concepts and insights with the people and increasing their knowledge and sophistication is one of the more optimistic functions of sociological specialists.

The apersus so far…

1) The study of the society and culture can not conform to the requirements of hard science. The social observer can not extricate himself from the social situation he studies. In addition he is committed to a morality, however warped it might seem to others. Emotionally laden values govern the human psyche however inexactly. The absolute objectivity and neutrality demanded by science can not be achieved. We still can strive for honest and reliable reporting even while appreciating our dilemma.

2) There are limits set on the scope of sociology by academically imposed departmental divisions. A large number of disciplines share an interest in social life and order. The student and the practitioner should not permit the organization of the university into subject boxes to deform his interest unless it focuses on the distortion of the academic system itself. All the diverse specialties should recognize and accept this overriding unity and be alert to shared and linked concepts and theories.

3) The positive method based on what-is should be balanced by the negative method that poses the question of what-isn’t. In art it is distinguishing the figure from the field. My favorite example is the bull who only seeing the flapping cape and missing the matador and his sword pays with his life.

4) Social life, culture and social order are constructed. They are made-up, discovered, built-up, and accepted or rejected by the people involved. Track back and find that conventional and established forms either did not exist at some prior time or had some other shape then. Track forward and expect these same conventions to disappear or radically change. Under this presumption staying the same would require a dynamic explanation and analysis. These constructions are obvious in professional sports–inventing new teams, taking the bat out of the pitcher’s hand, unlimited substitution in U.S. football and so on. The sub-prim mortgage crisis seems to turn on the invention of bundling of batches of mortgages into larger denomination securities with expected lucrative returns. This inventiveness is a generalized human capability that is in play in all sectors of human life. I think it should be part of the standard value actor–the ordinary, average person used as the everyman of sociological theories. He is as likely to make-up or discover something as he is to have had a sandwich for lunch.

5) The concept of charisma as outlined by Max Weber is a complex concept–it has several notions mixed together–contact with the ineffable, refusal of the authority or leadership of the other, an interest in the winning of power, and then the inventiveness needed to create the new religion. What I propose is to take this creativity from charisma and let it stand alone. Now we can recognize it in all social sectors. If you don’t see it look for the resistance and suppression that have been organized against it. With making the new an ordinary act, the old unchanging social system, so stable and solid, turns out to be a special case of total resistance to the new. It takes a lot of contrary work to not change.

6) Have a care with the use of the idea of social system. The interlocking of parts in a social order–a fit so tight and precise as though made by a master carpenter–depends upon not clearly distinguishing the people activating and acting out a particular social order from the abstract social pattern itself. By confusing the two–the people and the description of the pattern of action–we deny the possibility of invention and choice that we know the people always have.

We know from experience that people who immigrate from one society to another change language and social institutions. People who convert to a new ideology or religion or accept a newly organized Utopian life style also make radical shifts from one social order to another. I know it is not as easy as changing a shirt but it can happen. The sociologist locked into the unalterable combo of social system and the people might be seen as locking the people into the old way.

I will continue with these notes later.

Note: I have been unaware of a school in academic sociology called Public Sociology. They have been digging along a line very close to the ordinary sociology we are urging here. Very impressive to me. They seem to be talking within the academic green zone though and are in danger of never reaching the larger audiences of active but unrecognized players in any and all fields, the people who are well into their ordinary sociologies whether academically ready or not.