Should the products of Sociological study not lead us towards Utopia?

If Sociological study illuminates the conditions by which societies operate shouldn't we be getting some pretty firm, evidenced-based explanations from sociologist about what a stable, tolerant, progressive, responsible, and confident society should look like, along with some firm proposals about how that might be achieved?

If Sociology does not at least attempt to do this isn't it rather redundant as a field of endeavour, having no practical application beyond the limited scope of Academe?

Five days and nobody is prepared to explain, justify or defend Sociology? It seems to me that if Sociology lacks a reason to exist then Sociologists are unnecessary too.

Perhaps a specific 'Sociology' sub-forum is serving the same function here as Sociology departments in academic institutions, to flatter the egos of those engaged in a pointless exercise?

I have a BA in Sociology, and so am bookmarking this

Mixing two issues.

Sociology, in similar fashion as economy for example, uses scientific methodology to describe systems - society. If you question the ability of sociology to make accurate predictions, then you are probably right saying that its ability to predict is somehow low especially in comparison with natural sciences, yet again in similar fashion as is the power of economic predictions.

What is the problem? Or why is it useless? We do not call meteorology for example useless just because predictions made more than 3 days ahead are of questionable value. If nothing, it gives us better understanding of or insight on how weather works.

tuco wrote:Mixing two issues.

Really?

Well, maybe. A little... just to get things going. Perhaps.

tuco wrote:Sociology, in similar fashion as economy for example, uses scientific methodology to describe systems - society. If you question the ability of sociology to make accurate predictions, then you are probably right saying that its ability to predict is somehow low especially in comparison with natural sciences, yet again in similar fashion as is the power of economic predictions.

What is the problem? Or why is it useless? We do not call meteorology for example useless just because predictions made more than 3 days ahead are of questionable value. If nothing, it gives us better understanding of or insight on how weather works.

This is a nice justification for the tacit inability of Sociologists to draw valuable conclusions about that which they study.

So, Sociology is a respectable, proper science after all. It even employs scientific methodologies. But we are reminded that it is not an exact science, that it's somehow less than a complete science, only slightly sciencey. Psuedo-sciencish perhaps?

You seem to want it both ways.

I do not think sociologist are barred from making predictions about society and how it operates. I think they are just encouraged to keep their mouths shut, to not draw meaningful conclusions from their own research - or perhaps, to limit their conclusions to that which is mostly/only of interest to other sociologist.

Sociology seems rather keen to eschew any notion of what might comprise the ideal society, even though the notion of the ideal is plainly implicit in much of what it produces. The field may produce sound finding firmly rooted in rigorously acquired and validated data about important stuff like (say) inequality, or social mobility, or gender or disability discrimination, etc, things which play out within societies and limit the scope and experience of individuals and groups while diminishing society as a whole. And yet Sociology and sociologist do not seem to want to go the whole hog and outline the condition a society should, could, or might want to think about aspiring to in order to achieve a society unencumbered by such vagaries.

The sociologist will no doubt say that it not the responsibility of their discipline to lead society towards betterment, let alone Utopia - Sociology only studies and reflects the operating conditions of society according to the available data blah blah blah. A view perhaps supported by a claim that this is what a 'perfect science' is after all, a non-judgemental presentation of the facts of the matter.

To that I would probably say, "Hmm."

So, why do we need sociologists to reflect the conditions of society? I can do that if I want or choose to, can't I? A journalist can do that too, and then tell me about it surely? Why do we (collectively) need a specific discipline to discern the societies in which we live? Do we not just need an interest in life and a healthy dose of curiosity and a willingness to engage in social discourse (of some sort)?

"Ah," I hear the rhetorical sociologist retort, "But the journalist and you do not have the blanket of respectability that we sociologist work under. We are not merely curious or interested in these matters, we are engaging in 'a Science!' "

Pull the other one...

(It seems to me at least that) Sociology simply fails to live up to its potential. For in spending much time distracted by ephemera, idly describing the sub-cultures among tattooed and non-tattooed body piercers in inner-city Swansea, producing obscure yet wordy papers on behalf of benighted academic institutions for obscure journals and second-rate conferences (activities which seem both indulgent and almost exclusively involving the sociologist demonstrating their sociological prowess and technique for the benefit and approval of other sociologists btw), this potentially noble endeavour misses an opportunity to have the kind of real, positive and significant impact on the everyday lives of real people which the proper sciences have been busy producing for last 250 years or so.

So, what say you apologists for the redundant half-science then?

Honestly, and I have said it before, my opinion about social sciences is not too high so I do not have particular need to defend sociology, but if we are going to question sociology as science, we should also question psychology, economy, anthropology or linguistics for example. I am not saying we should not, just stating the obvious really.

Out of curiosity, how do you figure sociologists have the tacit inability to draw valuable conclusions? A practical example? I will try to get back to your last post later as I do not have the time now, however, this has not come from nowhere so I am curious what's the trigger despite it is irrelevant to the point you try to make.

tuco wrote:Honestly, and I have said it before, my opinion about social sciences is not too high so I do not have particular need to defend sociology, but if we are going to question sociology as science, we should also question psychology, economy, anthropology or linguistics for example. I am not saying we should not, just stating the obvious really.

Of course.

tuco wrote:Out of curiosity, how do you figure sociologists have the tacit inability to draw valuable conclusions?

Of course it's not that all the conclusions of Sociology are invaluable, just that as an endeavour the field seems fragmented and lacking a focus or reason d'etre.

Much of sociology seems distracted by the perpetuation of frivolous academic papers (and here I must confess that I make these remarks from outside of the field), reluctant to engage in big, society defining research or to follow its conclusions to their logical limit.

As I said, Society does not seem to be taking an active role in public discourse about what kind of society we might aspire to. The discipline seems rather 'academic,' in both senses of the word, that is; mostly limited to Academe and mostly irrelevant/without practical purpose.

This 'implicit inability to draw valuable conclusions' was perhaps an overly rhetorical flourish, and might be better expressed in terms that the apparent value of sociological conclusions to society appears less important than the academic value to the sociologists concerned.

tuco wrote:A practical example?

No specific example. Just a bee in my bonnet kind of thing.

tuco wrote:I will try to get back to your last post later as I do not have the time now, however, this has not come from nowhere so I am curious what's the trigger despite it is irrelevant to the point you try to make.

The trigger for my rant (let's face, that's what it is) is (of course) personal; my ire at the apparent and woeful absence of the sociological voice in public discourse. If Sociology, as a valuable area of epistemic enquiry, cannot inform an evidence-based, rational approach to public policy rooted in observation and an understanding of the practicable and the detrimental, then it is really failing to live up to its potential.

The most recent spur to my ire was Our Glorious Leader's rather medieval Fathers Day Pronouncements that society should shame and stigmatise absentee fathers. No reference to evidence is made, no consideration of how society operates or the variety of social conditions which lead to this and similar situations. Just an appeal to emotion and a finger-pointing charge of personal irresponsibility, scripted in convenient tabloid-friendly sound-bites. This typifies the impoverished state and quality of public discourse around so many plainly social, not personal, issues for me.

Now I'm sure one might say that the concerns of the political operative are essentially political, not social. And yet politics plays out within society and is concerned with the management of national resources and the exercise of executive and administrative power. As much as politicians would love politics to play out within a purely political arena insulated from real life, it does not quite work like that. If politics is a force which forms and transform society then Sociology should claim a role in informing society, and to do this Sociology needs to give up its fence-sitting non-judgemental 'perfect science' claim to political neutrality and use c.150 years of sociological endeavour and experience to delineate the bad from the good and to outline what a better society might look like.

As such I think it's time for the Sociologist to turn up the volume in talking about the virtues of a rational, evidence-based approach to public policy. Yes, Sociology needs some poster-boys and -girls. If Sociology can't manage this then it will have proved itself mostly useless.

I think you'll probably have grasped the gist of my thrust by now.

Mostly useless, yes. Unless one aspires to middle management in some Human Services field.

Talk about soft among soft sciences, Sociology has to be the softest.

I will snip through, if you'll forgive me, in an attempt to address some of the points made.

THWOTH wrote:
If Sociological study illuminates the conditions by which societies operate shouldn't we be getting some pretty firm, evidenced-based explanations from sociologist about what a stable, tolerant, progressive, responsible, and confident society should look like, along with some firm proposals about how that might be achieved?

Yes and no. We have to distinguish between knowledge and application of knowledge. Lets take a practical example. I like practical examples:

In recent Global Commission on Drug Policy Report evidence-based explanations were presented and recommendations based upon it made. This report is not exactly controversial among Academia, or it is at least consistent with what (our local) experts on drugs were hinting at for years. Yet, when presented to the so-called general public, it was met with, more or less, controversy depending on various factors characterizing societies in question which could be summed up as the so-called cultural differences at best, plain ignorance at worse.

Does it mean the report has no value? I do not think so.

THWOTH wrote:
So, Sociology is a respectable, proper science after all. It even employs scientific methodologies. But we are reminded that it is not an exact science, that it's somehow less than a complete science, only slightly sciencey. Psuedo-sciencish perhaps?

As mentioned before, depending on our understanding of pseudo-sciencish, personally I will not argue it is an exact science.

THWOTH wrote:
I do not think sociologist are barred from making predictions about society and how it operates. I think they are just encouraged to keep their mouths shut, to not draw meaningful conclusions from their own research - or perhaps, to limit their conclusions to that which is mostly/only of interest to other sociologist.

We live in a world where personal and collective well-being is, or many like to believe so, largely determined by wealth. How wealth is measured we do not need to spell out. This does not hold true for everyone but in general it is not easy to argue against. Now, who cares what sociologists tell us? We have our own gurus before whom even the mighty Jesus is a cartoon-like character. They are called economists and we listen to them because they tell us how to acquire wealth. They tell us (almost) nothing about stable, tolerant, progressive, responsible, and confident society, but who cares? The thesis of Gross National Happiness is a doctrine from third world religious monarchistic loons and cannot stand against their thesis of Gross National Product and never ending growth. Happiness does have its limits, I am led to believe.

Ever heard: GDP will decline by 3.27%? Decline to where? To the value it was 6 months ago? It was not so bad 6 month ago was it?

THWOTH wrote:
Sociology seems rather keen to eschew any notion of what might comprise the ideal society, even though the notion of the ideal is plainly implicit in much of what it produces. The field may produce sound finding firmly rooted in rigorously acquired and validated data about important stuff like (say) inequality, or social mobility, or gender or disability discrimination, etc, things which play out within societies and limit the scope and experience of individuals and groups while diminishing society as a whole. And yet Sociology and sociologist do not seem to want to go the whole hog and outline the condition a society should, could, or might want to think about aspiring to in order to achieve a society unencumbered by such vagaries.

I am not sure I can agree here. We seem to be stuck with the idea that it is sociology and sociologists who hold us back somehow. There are no prophets, no ultimate truths. There is an open society, ideally, where conditions are defined by a consensus. Knowledge and application.

THWOTH wrote:
The sociologist will no doubt say that it not the responsibility of their discipline to lead society towards betterment, let alone Utopia - Sociology only studies and reflects the operating conditions of society according to the available data blah blah blah. A view perhaps supported by a claim that this is what a 'perfect science' is after all, a non-judgemental presentation of the facts of the matter.

Here we are. No doubt.

THWOTH wrote:
To that I would probably say, "Hmm."

So, why do we need sociologists to reflect the conditions of society? I can do that if I want or choose to, can't I? A journalist can do that too, and then tell me about it surely? Why do we (collectively) need a specific discipline to discern the societies in which we live? Do we not just need an interest in life and a healthy dose of curiosity and a willingness to engage in social discourse (of some sort)?

"Ah," I hear the rhetorical sociologist retort, "But the journalist and you do not have the blanket of respectability that we sociologist work under. We are not merely curious or interested in these matters, we are engaging in 'a Science!' "

Pull the other one...

From where I sit, they are to inform society, to write evidence-based reports, to explain how stuff works, to make recommendations consistent with the will of an open society. No more no less. If they'll call to arms they will become politicians, and politicians are well known for having their own agenda on top of their priority list, not agenda of society. If someone knew the truth, that someone could hold power and rule, which is against the very idea of an open society, yet consistent with political rhetorics.

THWOTH wrote:
(It seems to me at least that) Sociology simply fails to live up to its potential. For in spending much time distracted by ephemera, idly describing the sub-cultures among tattooed and non-tattooed body piercers in inner-city Swansea, producing obscure yet wordy papers on behalf of benighted academic institutions for obscure journals and second-rate conferences (activities which seem both indulgent and almost exclusively involving the sociologist demonstrating their sociological prowess and technique for the benefit and approval of other sociologists btw), this potentially noble endeavour misses an opportunity to have the kind of real, positive and significant impact on the everyday lives of real people which the proper sciences have been busy producing for last 250 years or so.

So, what say you apologists for the redundant half-science then?

Perhaps we fail to live up to our own potential. The moment we will start treating sociology in similar fashion as economics there is no doubt in my mind it will be able to deliver comparable results.

Wait, because sociology isn't treated as important as other social sciences it ISN'T important? I'm not sure where your anger is coming from. So Cameron made a speech about society and sociologists didn't get involved?

There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding as to what Sociology actually is in this thread. It isn't suppsoed to make predictions. One of the most important sociological works relates to studies of Religion and it never gets discussed in this forum. Is that sociology's fault or is it our fault for not acknowledging or being aware of the work sociologists actually do?

The great debate in sociology has always been whether it is to be treated as a science or not. Qualitative or quantatitive methodology? From my understanding sociology had done away with the Positivism of Popper and it's attempts to try and mimic the natural sciences. and into a more qualatative approach rightfully hesitant to make large scale predictions or to attempt to find rules and laws. I like to view it in the same way I do history, only dealing with modern day society and examining social interactions, social institutions, norms, values, social behaviours and group dynamics, etc.

It seems the university courses most likely to turn believers into atheists are sociology, anthropology and similar. That alone makes sociology priceless and I would argue should be compulsory!

Sociology's raison d'etre is the same as any other inquiry: knowledge.

To say it's the bottom or lowest of the social sciences is just to say that you have ranked it. If you rank things, there will always be a bottom and a top. Should Sociology be magically removed, there would be another bottom rank in your classification. Should Sociology be removed, then an area of inquiry would be lost.

There are lots of good Sociology classes; if you haven't read Durkheim or Foucault, then you can probably be excused from knowing anything about the topics.

I studied Anthropology at UCL. They did a combined course of 3 distinct elements; Biological, Material Culture (interpretative archaeology) and Social Anthropology, in the latter there were numerous sociology components - if you are going to study people's customs and social institutions, can you suggest a better academic field?

It is a soft science, and I don't think it purports to be anything else. It combines elements of psychology, philosophy, linguistics, economics, history, and looks at the institutions common throughout societies that we take for granted.

Personally, I detested it. I started my degree loving the social side from the perspective of ethnography and looking at various culture's traditions, but by the 2nd year I had dropped all social anth courses except the one mandatory one in favour of biological ones. But my dislike of it doesn't devalue it as a study, nor does it establish its lack of worth.

It's where I learnt about the scientific method in great detail, more so than any science class. All my critical thinking skills came from sociology, I'd have to say that they're much better developed than all my friends who took science degrees.

If you can't think of at leats 5 important sociologists, then you probably shouldn't even be commentating in this thread.

THWOTH wrote:Should the products of Sociological study not lead us towards Utopia?

If Sociological study illuminates the conditions by which societies operate shouldn't we be getting some pretty firm, evidenced-based explanations from sociologist about what a stable, tolerant, progressive, responsible, and confident society should look like, along with some firm proposals about how that might be achieved?

If Sociology does not at least attempt to do this isn't it rather redundant as a field of endeavour, having no practical application beyond the limited scope of Academe?

I woke up at 5am thinking about this.

All these accusations could equally be thrown at science or any other discipline. Fact is, sociology is still a very radical subject. Banned in Greece under fascism for being too revolutionary and encouraging people to oppose the current structure of society. It teaches us things that undermine the very fabric of a socially conservative society. In which subject do you think you'll spend most focus on feminism, marxism, minority rights, social movements, authority, power structures and so on? It's sociology.

My very first A level sociology lesson I was told that the knowledge I'd obtain would alter the way I viewed the world. It did. I was also told this knowledge could be used for two things, to change the society I lived in or use it to exploit people's weaknesses. Think about it.

THWOTH wrote:Should the products of Sociological study not lead us towards Utopia?

If Sociological study illuminates the conditions by which societies operate shouldn't we be getting some pretty firm, evidenced-based explanations from sociologist about what a stable, tolerant, progressive, responsible, and confident society should look like, along with some firm proposals about how that might be achieved?

If Sociology does not at least attempt to do this isn't it rather redundant as a field of endeavour, having no practical application beyond the limited scope of Academe?

Silly, you have not been paying attention to what sociology has been upto for all these years. Who do you think helps in formulating the propaganda,the stereotypes,the intellectual defense for wars, the atrocities and genocides. Sociology has been used to achieve states objectives, there is no funding for "good living".

There are more things in life that are useless. Lots of consumption is a waste. Lots of entertainment a waste of time. Compared to that, sociology isn't.

I dissagree that sociology didn't achieve anything. Modern society is influenced a lot by sociology. But, i don't know if it is a positive influence.

Daan wrote:There are more things in life that are useless. Lots of consumption is a waste. Lots of entertainment a waste of time. Compared to that, sociology isn't.

I dissagree that sociology didn't achieve anything. Modern society is influenced a lot by sociology. But, i don't know if it is a positive influence.

I think it has been negative, sociologists and literary intellectuals are the the new priests of the state.To control the minds.

cavarka9 wrote:

Daan wrote:There are more things in life that are useless. Lots of consumption is a waste. Lots of entertainment a waste of time. Compared to that, sociology isn't.

I dissagree that sociology didn't achieve anything. Modern society is influenced a lot by sociology. But, i don't know if it is a positive influence.

I think it has been negative, sociologists and literary intellectuals are the the new priests of the state.To control the minds.

Yeah, i concur. There is a fine score of sociologists in the newspaper that i read, which makes me consider doing away of it, once i got less spare time.

What the fuck?

Some of you need to read some decent sociology.