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Ideology and the Social Sciences Contributions in Sociology, 0084-9278 ; No. 131 Kinloch, Graham Charles.; Mohan, Raj P. Greenwood Publishing Group 0313312893 9780313312892 9780313003707 English Ideology, Social sciences. 2000 HM641.I34 2000eb 301 Ideology, Social sciences.
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Page i IDEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
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Page ii Recent Titles in Contributions in Sociology Alienation, Ethnicity, and Postmodernism Felix Geyer, editor Cultural Practices and Socioeconomic Attainment: The Australian Experience Christopher J. Crook The Civic and the Tribal State: The State, Ethnicity, and the Multiethnic State Feliks Gross The American Ritual Tapestry: Social Rules and Cultural Meanings Mary Jo Deegan, editor Birth Alternatives: How Women Select Childbirth Care Sandra Howell-White Crossing the Line: Interracial Couples in the South Robert McNamara, Maria Tempenis, and Beth Walton Authentic Ethnicities: The Interaction of Ideology, Gender Power, and Class in the Italian-American Experience Patricia Boscia-Mulé Stalking the Sociological Imagination: J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI Surveillance of American Sociology Mike Forrest Keen Korean Immigrants and the Challenge of Adjustment Moon H. Jo Citizenship and Ethnicity: The Growth and Development of a Democratic Multiethnic Institution Feliks Gross Making a Life in Yorkville: Experience and Meaning in the Life-Course Narrative of an Urban Working-Class Man Gerald Handel Movies, Masculinity, and Modernity: An Ethnography of Men’s Filmgoing in India Steve Derné
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Page iii IDEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES Edited by Graham C. Kinloch and Raj P. Mohan Contributions in Sociology, Number 131
GREENWOOD PRESS Westport, Connecticut • London
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Page iv Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ideology and the social sciences / edited by Graham C. Kinloch and Raj P. Mohan. p. cm.—(Contributions in sociology, ISSN 0084–9278 ; no. 131) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–313–31289–3 (alk. paper) 1. Ideology. 2. Social sciences. I. Kinloch, Graham Charles. II. Mohan, Raj P. III. Series. HM641.I34 2000 301—dc21 99–056455 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 2000 by the International Journal of Contemporary Sociology All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99–056455 ISBN: 0–313–31289–3 ISSN: 0084–9278 First published in 2000 Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.greenwood.com Printed in the United States of America The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Page v To Increasingly Diverse, Self-Aware, Relevant, and Democratic Social Sciences
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Page vii Contents Preface 1 Ideology and the Social Sciences: Introduction Graham C. Kinloch and Raj P. Mohan I THEORETICAL ISSUES 2 Ideology, Myths, and Social Science Raj P. Mohan and Graham C. Kinloch II IDEOLOGY AND THE RESEARCH PROCESS 3 The Theory of Sociological Thought and the Research Process Max Koch 4 Sociological Research on Discontinuous Change Henk A. Becker III THE POLITICAL CONTEXT OF IDEOLOGY 5 Changing Professional Ideologies of Finnish Sociology Ilkka Pirttilä and Jaakko Nuotio
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Page viii 6 Beneath the Veil of Market Rationality: Cognitive Lumping and Splitting in Narratives of Economic Development S. Wojciech Sokolowski IV THE ACADEMIC CONTEXT OF IDEOLOGY 7 The New Theories of Postmodernity and Hypermodernity: Social/Ideological Context and Implications for Inequality Eva Etzioni-Halevy 8 The Paths of Recognition: Boudon, Bourdieu, and the “Second Market” of Intellectuals Jacques Coenen-Huther 9 Science Under Siege: Interest-Group Politics Confront Scientific Knowledge and Authority Robert Perrucci and Leon E. Trachtman V BIOGRAPHY AND IDEOLOGY 10 Academic Portraits: Autobiography and Scientific Censorship in American Sociology Loïc Wacquant 11 Shifting Discourses: Postgraduates’ Reflections on Their Theoretical Choices Patricia Harris 12 Biography and Professional Ideology: Two Case Studies Graham C. Kinloch and Marvin P. Dawkins Selected Bibliography Index About the Editors and Contributors
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Page ix Preface This book was originally conceived by the editors as a special issue of the International Journal of Contemporary Sociology and was published largely as such in the October 1998 volume with the title ‘‘Professional Ideology and the Social Sciences.” A new chapter has been added to the collection (“Academic Portraits: Autobiography and Scientific Censorship in American Sociology” by Professor Wacquant), while the remainder have been revised and/or expanded for inclusion in this volume. The work is expected to make a contribution to a number of academic areas, including the sociology of knowledge, social theory, social methods, comparative social science, social problems, and graduate education. The editors would like to thank the following for their assistance in this enterprise: • The International Journal of Contemporary Sociology and its editorial staff for its earlier publication of most of the chapters included in this volume and for its permission to use them as the basis of this work; • The contributing authors for their cooperation and hard work in writing, revising, and finalizing their fine chapters for the book; and, • Dr. James T. Sabin, for cooperation in publishing this volume. We are grateful to them all and sincerely hope this book will contribute to fruitful insight and debate concerning the creation of knowledge in the social sciences. Graham C. Kinloch Raj P. Mohan
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Page 1 1 Ideology and the Social Sciences: Introduction Graham C. Kinloch and Raj P. Mohan The blindness of social scientists to the broader issues underlying contemporary political debate is obvious, perhaps, except to the totally insensitive. Less evident, however, is the extent to which modern social science continues to reflect the subjective traits of authors and the contexts in which they operate, rather than the “objective facts” or “insights” they claim to develop. This volume responds to this state of affairs by focusing on the ties among the subjective traits of social scientists, the contexts in which they conduct research, and the kinds of ‘‘knowledge” they produce. The project’s scope was as multidisciplinary and worldwide as possible in the attempt to understand the major effects of professional knowledge on the social sciences. Authors were requested to select a major area within their discipline, delineate a central issue or topic within it, identify relevant authors and researchers, and analyze the work in relation to the researchers’ subjective traits and contexts. We requested that they specify the links between subjective factors and the production of knowledge as clearly as possible. Finally, contributors were encouraged to suggest ways in which ideological or subjective boundaries might be overcome. Professional ideologies may be viewed as attempts by intellectuals to relate to society through the creation of symbolic models of reality and “reductive abstractions” that reflect their “individual and group interests” (Kinloch 1981: 16). Such abstractions, furthermore, highlight the restraints involved in their perspectives: in most cases ideology involves inevitable blindness to the limiting and potentially distorting effects of particular con-
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Page 2 texts and motives on authors’ views of their surrounding “reality.” Consequently, they often tend to emphasize a particular and limited view of that situation as universal and exclusively correct. The perspectives and kinds of insight so developed inevitably tend to be highly restricted as a result. While attainment of absolute objectivity is clearly impossible, greater awareness of these contextual limitations is both feasible and vital to making the social sciences a more viable factor in constructive social change; hence this book, which contains the analyses of a wide variety of social scientists, focusing on a number of aspects of the manner in which professional ideology affects the discipline. The contributions to follow relate to five general topic areas: major theoretical issues relating to major terminology; the research process as ideology; the political context of changing ideology; major factors influencing the academic setting; and the relationship between personal biography and professional ideology. The introduction by Drs. Kinloch and Mohan distinguish among the major concepts ideology, myth, and science, highlighting their central differences and similarities, varying functions, and relation to the social sciences. They conclude that scientific consensus combined with maximum academic diversity is vital to the general improvement of knowledge. The next two contributions focus on the manner in which ideology influences the research process. Dr. Koch is particularly concerned with the manner in which the investigator’s presumed familiarity with the surrounding social world, a kind of “spontaneous sociology,” represents a potentially major obstacle to the development of ‘‘sociological knowledge.” He concludes that the researcher’s need to objectify his research results and academic position is vital to avoid related “ideological traps.” In a different vein, Professor Becker outlines the manner in which sociology has neglected to study discontinuous change due to data scarcity, low problem awareness, and, in particular, its positivist bias. Consequently, our understanding of modern social change as a complex process has been severely limited. Clearly, both everyday and scientific ideology may have a major impact on the research process. Professional ideologies are particularly influenced by the political environments in which they emerge and flourish. In this regard, Dr. Pirttilä and Mr. Nuotio provide detailed insight into the changing nature of Finnish sociology in the context of the welfare state. They delineate its shift from “soft academic instrumentalism,” dominant during the period of the expanding welfare state in the 1960s and 1970s, to its present “fragmented reflexivity,” typical of a more pragmatic, academically diverse situation. They conclude that the role of the social scientist in modern society is becoming increasingly complex and uncertain. In the case of Poland, Dr. Sokolowski offers a fascinating study of the manner in which political, cultural, and cognitive factors influence “narratives of economic develop-
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Page 3 ment,” reflected in the processes of cognitive “lumping” and “splitting.” He concludes that moving the social sciences beyond the development of “mere cultural texts’’ is vital to their relevance to “popular discourse.” From these analyses, awareness of and relating to the societal context is crucial to understanding the political context of social science. Focusing on academic context, Professor Etzioni-Halevy critiques contemporary theories of postmodernity and hypermodernity for their relative neglect of the “growing gap between the rich and the poor” in modern society, reflecting changing social, political, and intellectual contexts. Of particular concern is the manner in which social theorists tend to legitimize “the present trend toward growing inequalities.” She concludes that “forceful and widespread critique” of these theories is vital to maximize their “egalitarian potential.” Changes in the university environment and potential seduction of intellectuals by the media are discussed by Professor Coenen-Huther in his analysis of the differing views of Boudon and Bourdieu on this issue. The former explains this development as a function of a degenerating university environment; the latter focuses on characteristics of the modern media and journalism. Coenen-Huther concludes that these two analysts’ different settings may account for their differing explanations of this phenomenon. Next, Drs. Perrucci and Trachtman present an in-depth study of groups alleged to have “antiscience” attitudes, including feminists, environmentalists, fundamentalists, the political left and right, and other community leaders. They conclude that the “interest group hypothesis” explains why certain groups criticize science better than “popular disenchantment with science” does and feel that in light of their data future knowledge needs to be “socially and democratically situated.” These chapters highlight the degree to which academic environments influence intellectual attitudes and the perception of science. The final three chapters focus on the interaction between biography and ideology. Professor Wacquant, in a fascinating essay, evaluates the autobiographical accounts of eight famous members of the American Sociological Association, concluding that, while this approach could make an important contribution to a “genuine reflexive sociology,” these portraits are highly limited by their academic, impersonal, formal, and self-effacing approaches to the topic. Central here is the manner in which professional ideology constrains personal biography. Professor Harris offers a microscopic case study of how a small group of graduate social science and humanities students react to the dominant intellectual regimes they are exposed to during the training experience. She points to the complexity of these dynamics revealed in the ongoing interaction between “institutional and individual factors,” particularly a student’s academic background. The final contribution presents the biographies of two academics, very different in background, but who share similar sociological interests and perspectives. These brief biographies link the effects of crucial experiences, or
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Page 4 breaks in biographical continuity, to their changing intellectual perspectives, shifting both of them away from the traditional and scientific toward more critical, activist orientations. Clearly, personal biographies may be constrained by professional and academic environments or subject to significant “breaks in continuity.” The chapters underline a number of factors and needs crucial to making the social sciences more relevant to contemporary social issues: 1. more scientific consensus within academic diversity 2. greater avoidance of “spontaneous sociology” and related “ideological traps” 3. higher awareness of the “positivist bias’’ and “discontinuous change” 4. greater sensitivity to the emerging “uncertainties and complexities” of the social sciences’ role in modern society 5. the need to move the social sciences significantly beyond “mere cultural texts” to relate them adequately to “popular discourse” 6. more focus on the issue of growing inequality in modern society 7. greater awareness of the problematic effects of the modern media on scholarship 8. the crucial need to make scientific knowledge more “socially and democratically situated” 9. the need to free autobiography in sociology from professional ideology, opening it to the “existential mediations through which social determinants mold scientific production” 10. greater sensitivity to the interactive relationship between dominant intellectual paradigms and student reactions in the graduate training experience 11. awareness of the need for heterogeneous rather than narrow societal experiences in graduate and career-related education In general, the analyses highlight the need for the social sciences to become increasingly diverse, self-aware, relevant, focused, democratic, existentially sensitive, and heterogeneous if they expect to overcome the limitations imposed by their traditional professional ideologies and make effective contributions to constructive social change in the forthcoming century. We are most grateful to the authors for making these insights possible. REFERENCE Kinloch, G. C. 1981. Ideology and Contemporary Sociological Theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
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Page 5 I THEORETICAL ISSUES
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Page 7 2 Ideology, Myths, and Social Science Raj P. Mohan and Graham C. Kinloch Human thought has evolved through a number of stages, ranging from myths (a set of unprovable notions regarding what makes life worthwhile), moving through religion (a special brand of myth that attempts to account for the inexplicable) and philosophies (assumed absolutes that make life significant) to ideologies (the particular perspectives of subgroups, reflecting their material and normative interests) and science (belief in the insight provided by particular methodologies) (Mohan 1987: ix). While the last two of these tend to be predominant in modern society, their predecessors continue to exist regionally and internationally. However, the role of values in science is subject to continuing debate, epitomized by Gouldner’s famous denunciation of Weber’s call for scientific objectivity (Gouldner 1973). Furthermore, confusion persists regarding the role of ideology in social science, masking the degree to which facts reflect the subjective characteristics of their authors, inevitably limiting their societal effectiveness. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the complex relationship among ideology, myth, and science and their relationship to social science. We will also examine the Eurocentric nature of social science and how it has been shaped by particular cultural traditions. We begin by examining the various functions of myth and ideology. THE SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF MYTH AND IDEOLOGY While there are fundamental differences between ideological and scientific assumptions, the former is not only an intellectual and propaganda
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Page 8 weapon but also a valuable conceptual tool. Ideologies may be guiding principles, valuations, and maxims concerning particular goals and means, no matter who uses them, even if they are not scientifically established theories. These kinds of ideas are useful, nevertheless, if portrayed as “theories” by scientists. It is the function of the researcher to inquire whether a theory is scientifically acceptable. Accordingly, they can be classified according to whether they are offered as scientific theories believed to be true or whether they are meant as useful tools used to reinforce some kind of behavior. Furthermore, ideological deductions are assumptions that have increased our awareness of questionable scientific and popular beliefs, as illustrated by the influence of Marxism on our comprehension of ideologies and their development. Ideological attacks also formulate hypotheses alternative to those tacitly assumed, freeing people from the habit of regarding the familiar as exclusively valid. At the functional level, ideologies offer coherent sets of values around which individuals and groups may organize. Hitler’s racial myths, which helped organize many German people around his ideas, represents a major destructive example. As Halpern (1961: 137) has rightly observed, ideologies have played major historical roles in many societies, with mixed consequences. It is important to emphasize that the functions of myths and ideologies differ considerably. The former tend to organize and integrate individuals and groups while ideologies often have the opposite effect, segregating and consolidating groups in opposition to each other. Halpern (1961: 137) has usefully distinguished between the two concepts as follows: 1. Myths involve the study of the origins of beliefs in historical context. The study of ideology involves understanding the molding of beliefs by social situations. 2. The social function of myth is to bind together social groups as wholes, that is to establish social consensus. The social function of ideology is to segregate and serve special interests within societies. Some claim that the beliefs that constitute an ideology may be rational; others apply the term ideology only to beliefs they deem illusions. Some call religious beliefs ideological; others restrict the term to political beliefs. The terms religious and rational are also used in diverse ways. Is Marxism a religion? Or Zen? Is art a rational activity? Or criticism? Or theology? Acceptable reasons can be given for any answer to these questions. This implies that key terms are used in different ways on different occasions, resulting in misunderstanding and unprofitable arguments. If this is the nature of ideologies, we can agree with the position taken by Halpern, cited above, that myth and ideology can build consensus or segregate people and serve special interests at the same time they help to integrate and organize. In a recent book, Freire and Macedo (1997) explore the role of ideology
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Page 9 in the shaping of divisive social categories such as gender, ethnicity, class, race, and so on and challenge the denial of ideology or the end of ideology theses proclaimed by many conservatives since the fall of the Berlin Wall. They explain that it is necessary to gain a deeper understanding of how ideology underlies all social and political discourse and actions. Under-standing of ideology can help educate informed citizens to cope with the realities of the twenty-first century, increasing their awareness of sub-cultural diversity and of a society’s types of socioeconomic inequality as reflected in minority group perceptions and reactions. Refusal to acknowledge the central role of ideology is itself an ideological act that prevents citizens from becoming full participants in their own governance. IDEOLOGY: VIEWS AND FUNCTIONS The term ideology, unlike other terms, does not possess a clear and consistent meaning. It is usually agreed that the term refers to systems of beliefs about human conduct. However, there are various opinions on what kinds of systems should be covered by it. Some are prepared to regard a few sentences, such as the Apostolic Creed, as enough to constitute an ideology, while others think of ideology as more complex. Ideologies are systems of evaluations that attempt to explain our experiences in understandable and logical terms. As such, they seek to stimulate and precede action; consequently, they are indispensable in dealing with human reality. They provide us with a set of comprehensible values that make life meaningful. They are largely ruled by emotion and institutionalized mythology. However, the influence of a social ideal is independent of its logic or rationality. These kinds of myths are believed and acted upon by a large number of people who value them as escapes from reality. They also tend to represent symbolic “world views” that may legitimize elite economic and political interests, functioning in an exclusive, simplistic, and ethnocentric fashion (Kinloch 1981: 6–9). There are also ideals and ideologies that an influential section of society may condemn as “bad” or ‘‘immoral” (wars, for example), but they affect social life nevertheless. On the other hand, there are numerous ideals recognized by many for their immense value, which may nevertheless be largely ineffective (the concept of world brotherhood propagated by many religions, for instance). This makes it difficult to deal objectively with the problem of ideologies, since they may be defined as either true or false. Some may be accepted as true (e.g., propaganda), while what is regarded as a science by one school (e.g., Marxism) may be called an ideology by another. They can also be irrational; otherwise, how could we explain such a unique phenomenon as the belief of millions of Germans that Hitler was a superman belonging to a superior race or that the Japanese King Hirohito was a divine figure?
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Page 10 While the seventeenth century produced a phrase such as the “climate of opinion,” the eighteenth century realized that ideas can be situated in their social settings (Becker 1932: 5). Montesquieu, for example, suggested that human mentalities were conditioned by the systems surrounding them, while Machiavelli distinguished clearly between the ideas of those in power and others subject to it (Mannheim 1952). In general, ideology, myth, and doctrine are terms that may be applied to the same phenomena with different but overlapping connotations. However, those who hold to ideologies very seldom question whether they are rationally coherent or incoherent, true or false, practical or impractical, although opposing critics always point out their weaknesses. Otherwise, how can we explain Hitler’s ability to convince his followers about the discredited ideology of racism or the practice of sati in eighteenth-century India? A largely forgotten French philosopher, Destutt de Tracy (1754–1836), used the term ideology for the first time in 1801 (Van Duzer 1935). He used it to refer to the radical empirical analysis of the human mind, most consistently formulated in the eighteenth century by Étienne Bonnot de Condillac. The word was also contained in the “new way of ideas”first formulated by John Locke in his ‘‘Essay Concerning Human Understand-ing.” The term was also used by the leaders of the French Revolution as an indispensable tool for putting down political and religious dogmas. The legitimation granted to revolutionary denunciation by analysis as the only philosophy accepted by the revolutionary government was the source of the term ideologue referring to the only recognized philosophers of the day (Aiken 1956). Napoleon Bonaparte also applied it to his critics, referring to them as “ideologues”—those believing in republican or revolutionary ideas. From then on, the term took on a derogatory meaning, which is attached to it today (Pareto 1935). Marx is also well known for his view of ideology as false consciousness, representing group interests, particularly those with economic power, resulting in perceptual blindness and alienation (Kinloch 1981: 4–6). More recent thinkers, such as Habermas, have com-mented on the relationship between science, technology, and ideology as a form of “technocratic consciousness” (Habermas 1970). In general, then, this term has proved useful in providing insight into the context and consequences of particular types of ideas. THE SOCIETAL CONTEXT Ideas are clearly related to the social contexts in which they develop and operate. In this regard, ideologies reflect a society’s increasing social differentiation in which a growing variety of cultural and economic subgroups develop heterogeneous viewpoints and perspectives, in contrast to the more
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Page 11 homogeneous types of consciousness typical of earlier and more unified societies. Consequently, ideologies may be viewed as the product of societal differentiation and development, particularly stratification, in which emerging group diversity is accompanied by a plurality of perspectives reflecting their differential socioeconomic position in society (Kinloch 1981: 10–13). Such a situation contrasts starkly with earlier societies, which typically feature relatively homogeneous, unifying myths or, later, the emergence of a variety of religions. Different reactions to social change and development are also behind various ideologies: some individuals and groups resist social change, reflecting more conservative orientations; others advocate major modifications in the social order, involving more radical views; while still others strive to reform the status quo, taking a more liberal approach (Kinloch 1988). Whatever the response, all three represent attempts to reattach themselves to society or reintegrate the social order on a particular basis, involving various political policies. These reactions also reflect different views of the basis of reality, ranging from a belief in nature as causal, through historical dynamics, to human ideas such as reason. Such various “explanations” also tend to be correlated with different methodological approaches to their application, including science, historical analysis, and pragmatism (Kinloch 1981: 22–26). In this manner, different reactions to social change also imply different theories, methodologies, and political policies. Societies may also be viewed as based on particular types of cultural ideology or belief systems. These have been classified into the scientificor technological, the civic or more humanistic, and the revolutionary, highlighting societal equality (Kinloch 1981: 27–28). In this manner, social organization reflects a society’s predominant underlying cultural values or beliefs. In general, then, ideas clearly reflect aspects of their societal contexts, including the consequences of social differentiation, differential reactions to social change, and the political implementation of cultural values. Human ideas tend to move from relatively homogeneous myths dominant in earlier, more unified societies, through the gradual emergence of a variety of religions, to the plurality of ideologies and dominance of scientific beliefs typical of many contemporary countries. In any event, the major impact of societal context on changing ideas is clearly evident. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SCIENCE AND IDEOLOGY Critics claim that the questions science asks, the way observations are interpreted, the way decisions are made to legitimize data are all conditioned by the social, cultural, and political climate of the times. In addition,
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Page 12 presuppositions always interfere in the process of knowledge production. Fashionable ideas of scientific analysis change over time and can be swayed by ideology. Science and ideology are two distinct domains that overlap particularly in the social and human sciences. The former involves the means by which humans may transform their environment, including their own social relations; it is a set of mental habits, an organization of modifiable knowledge, and a collection of changing tools (Roucek and Mohan 1965). Its minimum form involves empirical knowledge, which allows a society to live from generation to generation, and is found in a more or less developed form among all people. But while ideologies are also found among all people, they represent an uneven mixture of scientific and everyday statements of philosophical generalizations and principles of social order, moral dicta, expressions of wishes, and faith. In some respect, ideologies can best be compared to religious theories: a certain portion of them may be accepted as facts, but others only on the basis of faith. The miracles accomplished by science and technology have produced a widespread belief that the scientific method can solve all problems. However, science can research only those phenomena that can be investigated and cannot pass final judgment on the value of the subject studied. The distinction between science and values is evident from the comparison of the laws of motion and canons of art. The realm of science represents the public domain of positive knowledge while the world of values is the private dominion of ideological claims. Positive knowledge is public property, transmitted directly from one generation to the next, while values represent the standards by which we judge the significance of human action, and hence are different. The meaning of good and evil, of joy and sorrow, of beauty and justice—all these are only ideological convictions and constitute our story of wisdom. Although all scientific concepts rest ultimately on observation, there are many portions that are purely rational: analysis of terms, deductions from existing theories, explorations of the logical relations among concepts, and among theories; thus logic is constantly applied to science because according to scientific principles, logic embodies the rules of valid thinking. Scientific laws are derived from, as well as tested by, observation and experiment. Measurement can never be exact in an absolute sense, and this margin of error must be always taken into account in all interpretations of gathered data. Scientists are prepared to admit their investigations or conclusions might be wrong, but the ideologist is never wrong and justifies the weaknesses in his or her ideological claims by changing “the meaning of meaning,” blaming critics for their “deviation-ism,” and by stressing that the ‘‘belief,”“hope,” and intentions are more important than the tested results. Science is pragmatic and the theories are judged by a single criterion: do they work? The validity of theories is usually measured by the verification of predictions. This procedure is the es-
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Page 13 sence of scientific method and serves to control the powerful but dangerous approach of inductive reasoning. Science questions everything. Ideology takes its illusions for granted; it declines to question them, not even seeing the possible contradictions between one factual assumption and another, refusing to correct the distorting influences of its selected facts based on universal assumptions regarding the nature of reality (e.g., all human beings desire peace). While science bases hypotheses on assumed facts, ideologists presume their assumptions are facts, and accept only the evidence that ratifies the conclusions of their ideological assumptions, since they are not interested in scientific truth, but in their ideals dressed up as ideology. Scientific guessing is labeled as a guess; but ideological guessing is presumed to be the facts. Social phenomena are complex and their social causation is the result of numerous variables. However, ideologists—often by using an over-simplified a priori hypothesis—boil down all causes to one or a few simple phenomena. Sociologically then, ideological thinking is mainly “wishful thinking,” posing as science (Roucek and Mohan 1965: 181). The spokes-people of ideological formulas are not interested in scientific knowledge (unless it helps them) but in reinforcing their preconceived notions. Basically, ideologies reflect the fact that our existence is pervaded with values: all our actions are regarded as “right” or “wrong,” as they “ought to be,’’ or “ought not to be.” On the other hand, science describes and explains “what is” and considers moral statements to be wishful thinking. Ideologists, however, are not interested in scientific research, unless it supports their ideology, since their claims are based upon half truths, dogmas, revelations, and assumptions. Scientists, however, tend to reason out their conclusions the opposite way: based on research as a thoughtful investigation designed to revise, or confirm, or supplement accepted conclusions in the light of newly discovered facts. Ideologists, on the other hand, do not want to revise—only to confirm, support, and supplement their original belief in spite of newly discovered facts that might nullify their contentions. Intellectual curiosity is the hallmark of research sponsored by scientists and the spirit of research demands that they consider impartially all available data pertaining to the matter under investigation rather than act in arbitrary or hasty manner. Ideologists, in contrast, consider only the facts that fit their ideological constructs. While this discussion has highlighted the clear distinctions between science and ideology, it is also important to emphasize that the former is often, if not always, used in an ideological manner, reflecting the particular interests of major interest groups, particularly those with major types of economic and political power. Using various kinds of abstractions and simplifications, modern power elites, particularly technocrats, use scientific arguments to legitimize societal stability and protection of the status quo in a manner that protects their dominance in a general, empirical, and
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Page 14 economically rational manner, blinding the general population to the kinds of inequality underlying it (Habermas 1970). According, while extensive “research” may be involved in all this, the actual use of science is far from objective, clearly reflecting elite ideologies. IDEOLOGY AND SOCIAL SCIENCE Much of contemporary social science may be viewed as the reaction largely of establishment-oriented academics and other analysts to the perceived kinds of social problems or disorder created by industrialization in the context of modern society. A major part of their response consists of the attempt to impose some kind of social unity or reintegration on a scientific basis, using concepts such as “society” or the “social’’ dimension of human existence, along with collected empirical data (Kinloch 1981: 44– 47). This reductive abstraction and reaction process has been concentrated through the dynamics of professionalization and emerging dominance of academic elites at both regional and national levels of the academic enterprise. Consequently, professional social science may be viewed predominantly as elite, academic, scientific ideology. Furthermore, is research influenced by ideology, politics, and social fashions of the day? This question lies at the heart of the intellectual debate, forcing scientists to reexamine their notion of objectivity. The dominance of sociology by Western Europe and North America is well known. T. K. Oommen (1995), president of the International Sociological Association (1990–94), has examined membership trends by country and geographical region. Although ISA membership increased between 1991 and 1994, geographical imbalance in member participation remained significantly high, with the majority coming from Western Europe and North America. This supports the view of Wallerstein (1997), the organization’s current president. Social science has largely been Eurocentric throughout its institutional history. This is not surprising, since social scientists were largely located, at least until 1945, in five countries—France, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, and the United States. Even today, despite their global spread, the large majority of social scientists worldwide remain European. However, since the post–World War II emergence of independent nation-states from their colonial contexts, European domination of social science has been under significant attack, particularly for its attempted transplantation of cultural ideas to other societies. Difficulties involved in making cross-cultural comparisons have been raised by writers such as Stanley (1997), while others have noted the degree to which language has a major effect on our minds (Hoijer 1954). Scholars and intellectuals always react to their immediate cultural milieu in the production of their ideas. Development of the social sciences largely
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Page 15 involved responses by intellectuals to their milieu in Western Europe and the United States. Comte, Durkheim, Weber, and Marx, to name only a few, reacted to their respective societies. According to Wallerstein, social science’s Eurocentrism has been strongly attacked during the past three decades and for good reason, given the limited, distorted analyses this dominant perspective has produced. He concludes that such a task is far from simple, running the risk of reinforcing rather than reducing this perspective’s hold on the profession (Wallerstein 1997). The sociology of knowledge deals with how types of thought are created and maintained by particular groups in specific contexts. Marx proclaimed that a society’s economic structure provided a foundation not only for social life but idea systems as well. Weber rejected this view by suggesting that ideas do not emerge from one component of social life, in this case the economic, but that philosophical, religious, linguistic, and scientific ideas and values, together with the structure assumed by a society, are all interdependent constituents of human action. Mannheim (1952) argued that people use knowledge to adapt to their environment. Since environment is not the same everywhere, knowledge will differ. If every group has its own ideology, so that knowledge is related to the perspective of the knower, Mannheim questions whether any knowledge can be “true” or possess a general validity that transcends the subjectivity of the group. The knowledge produced by social science will approach some sort of universality when scholars from different groups, strata, and national origins can develop some consensus about what is known and how it should be interpreted. This is one way Eurocentrism might be eliminated. Perhaps the International Sociological Association can assume this challenge. CONCLUSIONS This chapter has dealt with a number of central topics: the social functions of myth and ideology, the significance and types of ideology, the social context in which ideas operate and change over time, the relationship between science and ideology, and social science as ideology. We made a number of major points: 1. Myths tend to increase social consensus while ideologies are largely divisive. 2. Ideologies represent “systems of belief concerning human conduct” and have varied historically between the positive and negative. The meaning of the term has also changed over time. 3. Ideas reflect their societal contexts, including the consequences of social differentiation, differential reactions to social change, and political implementation of cultural values.
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Page 16 4. Ideas have tended to move from relatively homogeneous myths dominant in earlier societies, through a variety of religions, to a plurality of ideologies and dominant belief in science typical of many modern societies. 5. Science tends to question everything while ideology takes its illusions for granted. Nevertheless, science is often used in ideological ways. 6. Social science largely tends to reflect a particular ideology and is professionally dominated by European practitioners. Based on this analysis, we conclude that ideologies of whatever type will probably continue to be a part of society, no matter how ‘‘modern” or “developed” society might appear to be. Nevertheless, it is important to make the social sciences more culturally diverse in order to develop a broader-based consensus regarding knowledge and its interpretation; otherwise, our “professional” insights will continue largely to reflect the narrow backgrounds and interests of Europeans rather than humankind as a whole. To maintain such ideological narrowmindedness would continue to make our enterprise highly ethnocentric and conceptually distorted. It is clear that ideology and increasing diversity are closely connected and that both should be valued and maximized in the social sciences in order to gain a fuller and more accurate view of our complex world and the need for multidimensional understanding, research, and solutions to contemporary social problems. The contributions to follow tend to reflect this concern in their emphasis on academic and methodological diversity and democracy, the importance of “popular discourse,” the major issue of growing inequality, and the need for heterogeneous societal and academic experiences in graduate education. Intellectual and academic diversity, rather than narrow homogeneity, is clearly called for in these analyses. Finally, it is not possible to predict whether the day will ever come when all people will agree that they have at last found the ultimate meaning of life, but at present it appears unlikely. However, it should be noted that the quest that drove humankind from the first myths, to religion, to philosophy, and to the creation of an almost endless variety of ideologies continues in the case of social science. We also appear to need mythmakers, whatever we call them—sages, shamans, priests, philosophers, intellectuals, or ideologues (Mohan 1987: ix). Consequently, ideologies will probably remain a part of human society, despite their obvious limitations. REFERENCES Aiken, Henry D. 1956. The Age of Ideology: The 19th Century Philosophers. New York: Mentor. Becker, Carl L. 1932. The Heavenly City of Eighteenth Century Philosophers. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
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Page 17 Freire, Paulo, and Donaldo Macedo. 1997. Ideology Matters. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Gouldner, Alvin W. 1973. “Anti-Minotaur: The Myth of Value Free Sociology.” In A. W. Gouldner, ed., For Sociology: Renewal and Critique in Sociology Today. New York: Basic Books. Habermas, Jurgen. 1970. Toward a Rational Society. Boston: Beacon Press. Halpern, Ben. 1961. “Myth and Ideology in Modern Usage.” History and Theory 1: 131–201. Hoijer, Harry. 1954. Language and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kinloch, Graham C. 1981. Ideology and Contemporary Sociological Theory. En-glewood Cliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall. ———. 1988. Society as Power: An Introductory Sociology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Mannheim, Karl. 1952. Ideology and Utopia. New York: Harcourt Brace. Mohan, Raj P. 1987. ‘‘Preface.” In R. P. Mohan, ed., The Mythmakers: Intellectuals and the Intelligentsia in Perspective. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Oommen, T. K. 1995. “Report from the Outgoing Executive Committee.” International Sociological Association Bulletin 64: 4–7. Pareto, Vilfredo. 1935. “The Theory of Derivations, 1245.” In V. Pareto, ed., The Mind and Society. New York: Harcourt Brace. Roucek, Joseph S. and Raj P. Mohan. 1965. “Sociological Methods and Goals Versus Ideological Methods and Goals.” Indian Sociological Bulletin 2: 179– 82. Stanley, Liz. 1997. “Social Transformation? Exploring Issues in Comparison, Development and Change.” Sociological Research On Line. Van Duzer, Charles Hunter. 1935. Contribution of the Ideologues to French Rev-olutionary Thought. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press. Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1997. “Eurocentrism and Its Avatars; The Dilemmas of Social Science.” Sociological Bulletin 46: 21–39.
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Page 19 II IDEOLOGY AND THE RESEARCH PROCESS
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Page 21 3 The Theory of Sociological Thought and the Research Process Max Koch In this chapter I raise the issue of how and to what degree a productive relation between epistemological principles and sociological thought is real-izable in the research process. This chapter deals with our own field as sociologists: the connection of ideological forms with which one appropriates the social world and the production of sociological results. To serve this aim it is not necessary to add another approach to the long tradition of “ideology theory.” Rather, I will make an attempt to apply this tradition to our practice as sociologists; in other words, I would like to contribute to a theory of sociological thought. First, I will discuss four sociological classics—Durkheim, Marx, Weber, and Comte—and relate them to epistemological preconditions for sociological thought. Second, I want to show how one can, if not overcome, nevertheless objectify ideological risks: I will argue that research completely free of ideology remains an unobtainable ideal, as research never can be carried out independently of particular interests. Therefore the most suitable course of action is to objectify both these interests and the researcher’s standpoint within the academic arena. IDEOLOGICAL TRAPS OF SOCIOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE The science of sociology is necessary because there are external relationships independent of individual will and consciousness. They are “unconscious” in the sense that they are not accessible to simple reflection. That essential characteristics of relationships and their mode of appearance do
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Page 22 not coincide is true for all sciences. However, in the case of sociology supposed familiarity with the social world is plainly the highest obstacle for sociological knowledge. Far too often sociologists have simply taken over everyday terms and theories for their sociological reflections and research. Such a sociology runs the risk of reproducing spontanteous sociology and that is why it is the task of the sociologist to overcome the illusion of immediate knowledge. In order to understand the ideological obstacles of sociological knowledge more adequately, I would like to deal with certain classical texts from Durkheim, Marx, Weber, and Comte. For the definition of a theory of sociological thought, the affiliation of a piece of sociological research to a particular social theory is secondary to the question of whether certain epistemological principles are considered in their research. Principles, as such, unite authors who otherwise differ in their sociology; however, many authors have confused their particular social theory with the theory of sociological thought. I intend to juxtapose authors whose different doctrinal positions mask their common epistemological position. Is there a certain scientific “attitude” that unites the classics of sociology and that even today may help us to handle ideological risks in our research? THE PRINCIPLE OF NONCONSCIOUSNESS: ÉMILE DURKHEIM When faced with the fact that many politicians and journalists act as if they were sociological experts, many sociologists fail to subject their research to epistemological principles with the result that their research often affirms everyday knowledge. In this regard, Durkheim refers back to the beginnings of natural science. Before the sciences of physics and chemistry were known, people already possessed notions about physical and chemical phenomena that went beyond pure perception. “Such, for example, are those to be found intermingled with all religions…. These notions or concepts—however they are designated—are of course not legitimate surro-gates of things. The products of common experience, their main purpose is to attune our actions to the surrounding world; they are formed by and for experience” (Durkheim 1982: 60). Reflective thought precedes science. This provisional (from a scientific perspective) notion leads back to the ‘‘founder” of the theory of ideology, Francis Bacon (1561–1626), and his notiones vulgares, or praenotiones. It is these idola that distort the true appearance of things, but that we nevertheless mistake for the things themselves. If this were the case for the natural sciences, it was even more so for sociology. “Men did not wait on the coming of social science,” wrote Durheim, “to have ideas about law, moral-ity, the family, the state or the society itself, for such ideas were indispensable to their lives” (Durkheim 1982: 60). But with the rise of sociology,
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Page 23 those common notions were not replaced by scientific notions altogether. Instead they are “commonly used with assurance, as if they corresponded to things well known and well defined, while in fact they evoke in us only confused notions, an amalgam of vague impressions, prejudices and passions” (Durkheim 1982: 62). Given that the influence of everyday knowledge on the research procedure is so great, we should remember Durkheim’s advice to treat all the things we want to examine as if we did not know anything about them. Since the impressions that we have been able to make of them in the course of our lives have been made without method and uncritically, they must be discarded. Thus, Durkheim’s rule says that the sociologist should assume the state of mind of physicists or chemists when they venture into an as yet unexplored area of their scientific field. “As the sociologist penetrates into the social world he should be conscious that he is penetrating into the unknown. He must feel himself in the presence of facts governed by laws as unsuspected as those of life before the science of biology was evolved. He must hold himself ready to make discoveries which will surprise and disconcert him” (Durkheim 1982: 38). Unfortunately, Durkheim’s rule contains a problem for concrete research in that there is no alternative to taking our everyday knowledge as a starting point for our scientificreflections. If we still do not want to merely sell immediate knowledge as scientific knowledge, we have to regard the former as a point of departure for the provisional theoretical “construction of the sociological object” in the sense of Bourdieu, Chamboredon, and Passeron (1991: 14; see also Koch 1996: 188ff). Durkheim argues that this provisional definition is a logical critique of ordinary language and therefore this critique must be considered a prerequisite for the controlled development of scientific notions. Sociological objects cannot simply be taken from everyday life but have to be redefined from a theoretical standpoint. As an important preliminary prerequisite, this requires a seperate stage in the research process. THE MEDIATION OF EVERYDAY CONSCIOUSNESS IN BOURGEOIS RELATIONS OF PRODUCTION: KARL MARX How then can sociology establish itself as a science that can overcome common sense? Durkheim concedes that Karl Marx had a “fertile idea’’ that “social life must be explained, not by the conception of it created by those who participate in it, but by profound causes which escape awareness” (Durkheim 1978: 127). Marx, for his part, brought those structures of bourgeois society that obstruct an “objective” perspective to the foreground of scientific discussion. In the introduction to “Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy” (1973) he rejects both the “illusion of conceiving the real as the product of thought concentrating itself ” and the
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Page 24 empiricist naivity of taking as their scientific object the supposed “real” object in its concrete totality. For example, the population of a society can be properly understood only on the basis of the work of scientific abstraction. “It seems to be correct to begin with the real and the concrete, with the real precondition, thus to begin, in economics, with, for example, the population” (Marx 1973: 147). However, this approach turned out to be false. “The population is an abstraction, if I leave out, for example, the classes of which it is composed. These classes in turn are an empty phrase if I am not familiar with the elements on which they rest. E.g. wage labour, capital etc. These latter in turn presuppose exchange, division of labour, prices etc.’’—in other words: the entire universe of capitalist economy. Marx dis-tinguishes quite distinctly between the way reality is researched and the way it is represented. The population, “this chaotic conception of the whole,” is, at this stage, no more than a provisional definition. From this point of the scientific process one could now move analytically toward increasingly simple concepts and thinner abstractions. Having arrived at the “simplest determinations” possible, which Marx locates in the double character of commodities and the corresponding conversion of social relations into material and natural characteristics, “the journey would have to be retraced until I had finally arrived at the population again, but this time not as the chaotic conception of the whole, but as a rich totality of many determinations and relations” (Marx 1973: 147). Marx presents commodities as the “most abstract concrete,” whose analysis also allows access to further economic categories, social relations, and modes of consciousness.1 The distortion of social and natural phenomena is not limited to the characteristics of commodities but can be found at practically all stages of abstraction in Marx’s Kapital. One could see this as a “stepladder” of mystification: when one analyzes the process of circu-lation, the commodity used as money seems to have a natural quality that defines societal wealth as “general equivalent.” At the level of production relations, increasing productivity seems to be a natural feature of capital and not a product of the socialized form of industrial work. At the next stage all work appears to be compensated with the wage fetish, which Marx sees as the basis of all further mystifications: consequently, if profit cannot be explained by surplus labor, then it must have other sources. The peak of distortion of social qualities is the theory of the three factors of production, where none of the relations between profit and productive work can be established: The ownership of labor generates wages, the ownership of money generates interest, and the ownership of land generates rent. Exclu-sively bourgeois forms of production, relations, and consciousness are considered “natural and eternal laws of production.” The concrete is concrete, writes Marx, because it is the concentration of many determinations. “Along the first path the full conception was evapo-
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Page 25 rated to yield an abstract determination; along the second, the abstract determinations lead towards a reproduction of the concrete by way of thought” (Marx 1973: 148). Marx’s critique of German philosophy and its foremost representative Hegel is that the latter fell into the illusion “of conceiving the real as the product of thought concentrating itself, whereas the method of rising from the abstract to the concrete is only the way in which thought appropriates the concrete, reproduces it as the concrete in the mind. But this is by no means the process by which the concrete itself comes into being” (Marx 1973: 148). By reconstructing the social world as a product of his thoughts, the sociologist appropriates his object, i.e., society, in a specific way, which is, therefore, quite different from an artistic, religious, practical, and mental appropriation of this world. THE POINTLESS GOAL OF EXPLAINING HISTORICAL PARTICULARITIES THROUGH NATURAL OR PSYCHOLOGICAL CONSTANTS: MAX WEBER Max Weber’s analysis is linked to the approaches of Durkheim and Marx by its common position that the social should be explained by the social and, ideally, only by the social. His historical and comparative approach made him particularly aware of the temptation to explain phenomena an-thropologically or psychologically. In response to those who explain capitalist conduct with reference to auri sacra fames (the hallowed hunger for gold), Weber states clearly that the impulse to acquire or pursue gain or money has in itself nothing to do with capitalism: “This impulse exists and has existed among waiters, physicians, coachmen, artists, prostitutes, dis-honest officials, soldiers, nobles, crusaders, gamblers, and beggars. One may say that it has been common to all sorts and conditions of men at all times and in all countries of the earth, wherever the objective possibility of it is or has been given” (Weber 1958: 56). The greed for money is obviously not what makes the capitalist spirit different from the precapitalist spirit: “The greed of the Chinese Mandarin, the old Roman aristocrat, or the modern peasant, can stand up to any comparison” (Weber 1958: 57). The auri sacra fames is as old as humanity. Therefore, the people who gave in to their avaricious desires ‘‘were by no means the representatives of that attitude of mind from which the specifically modern capitalist spirit as a mass phenomenon is derived” (Weber 1958: 57). Rather, Weber emphasized as an essential result of his comparative work the main characteristics of Western capitalism. These characteristics are in fact the same as those that Marx presented in his systematic approach: the rational capitalist organization of (formally) free labor, rational industrial organization, at-tuned to a regular market, the separation of the business world from the home and rational bookkeeping. Weber’s approach in no way aims, or even attempts, to give a sociologi-
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Page 26 cal explanation to all aspects of human reality; rather it serves as a reminder not to resort to explanatory principles borrowed from other sciences (e.g., biology or psychology) until the efficacy of specifically sociological methods of explanation have been fully tested. If one appeals to transhistorical and transcultural factors, one is condemned, at best, to simply give an account of the ways in which institutions resemble one another, while failing to comment on what defines their historical and cultural specificity. When Weber insisted that sociology should never dissolve into psychology of any kind, he stressed the point that one should not derive social structures from “motivations” of an anthropological or psychological character. On the contrary, Weber, Durkheim, and Marx would all have been in agreement that the task of a sociologist is to derive the ideas and the motivations of individuals from objective social structures, which are often not perceived by themselves. THEORY AND METHOD: AUGUSTE COMTE Auguste Comte already knew in the beginning of the nineteenth century that methods of the social sciences should not be studied apart from the research in which they are used. The fact that Comte refuses to dissociate method from practice must be stressed in a time in which the discourse of the “pure method” is already established. Even if the dispute between “theorists” and high priests of method has escalated, they have in common the fact that they dissociate method and theory from the operations in the research process. Comte wrote in 1830: I do not know if, in the future, it will become possible to construct by a priori reasoning a genuine course on method, wholly independent of the philosophical study of the sciences; but I am quite convinced that it cannot be done at present, for the great logical methods cannot be explained with sufficient precision apart from their applications. I venture to add, moreover, that, even if such an enterprise could be carried out eventually, which is conceivable, it would nevertheless be only through the study of regular applications of scientific methods that we could suc-ceed in forming a good system of intellectual habits; this is, however, the essential object to be gained by studying method. (Bourdieu, Chamboredon, and Passeron 1991: 1) More than 150 years later we can affirm that the modern separation in methodical and theoretical specialties has not been useful. The call for methodological perfection is likely to lead to a displacement of epistemological vigilance. The sociologist who believes he or she can avoid the task of modeling the facts on the basis of a theory often submits himself or herself to a construction of which he or she is unaware. Instead, for example, of questioning an object and asking whether it is worth measuring, or even exam-
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Page 27 ining whether the chosen instruments measure what they are supposed to measure, researchers often waste their time with methodological excesses. Similarly, when “theorists” refuse to measure their constructions and control them empirically, their theories often end up as metaphysics and prophecy. CLASSICAL SOCIAL THEORIES AND THE THEORY OF SOCIOLOGICAL THOUGHT: A PROVISIONAL RÉSUMÉ In the first part of this chapter we raised the question whether there are certain constants in bourgeois society that prevent an objective sociological perspective. We also asked how far classical sociological authors who dis-agree in fundamental aspects of their social theory nonetheless agree in their epistemological standpoint or, more precisely, in the theory on the development of sociological knowledge. Indeed, in this particular respect it seems to be productive to discuss authors together who in other respects of their work are treated as opponents. Marx, Durkheim, Weber, and Comte agree that the principal ideological obstacle for sociology as a real science is the supposed familiarity with its object, which far too often is regarded as being directly understandable. All discussed authors are linked by the common epistemological attitude that essential characteristics of social relationships and their mode of appearance normally do not coincide and that is why a theoretical foundation of social research is necessary. In detail, it is Durkheim who stresses the great influence of everyday knowledge in sociology. If Durkheim is right that penetrating into the social world means penetrating into the unknown, it follows that immediate knowledge is the necessary point of departure for the scientific process, but it has to be replaced by sociological knowledge, which is developed in the course of this process. Marx, for his part, stressed those structures of bourgeois society that cause ideological perceptions of the social world, e.g., commodity, money, and wage labor. From his point of view the social must be understood as the result of individual action, but most of the time as the unintended consequence of this action. Only through scientificreflection is the concrete understandable as the “concentration of many determinations.’’ Weber’s historical perspective in no way contradicts Marx’s systematic method—rather, it is its most important completion. His advice that the sociologist should always look for social factors and arguments when discussing social problems seems to be as actual as in the beginning of the twentieth century when it was written. As it follows from his example of the greed for money, we should not borrow explanatory principles from other disciplines as long as our specifically sociological approaches have not failed. Last but not least, Comte warns that the possibility of formulating an objective sociological approach is by no means widened by a continuing separation of theoretical and methodical discussion. Sociological
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Page 28 constructions must be based on a provisional theory, and this theory itself must be controlled empirically. EPISTEMOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES AND THE ACADEMIC FIELD In what follows I would like to confront the above-outlined ideological risks and epistemological principles with the reality of a concrete research process. How can the break with spontaneous sociology be achieved and how can the above epistemological principles be considered in the research operations? I have no intention of questioning the common premise that the research process is a cycle of successive phases (observation, hypothesis, experimentation, theory, observation, etc.), but this point of view nonetheless is somewhat tricky. By projecting the phases of this cycle onto a set of mutually exclusive stages, one could be misled into believing that the whole process of research is not present in each and every one of them. Moreover, this image fails to capture what Bourdieu, Chamboredon, and Passeron called “the logical order of epistemological acts—break, construction, testing against the facts—which is never reducible to the chronological order of the concrete operations of research” (1991: 57). If we approach a new problem, it is first from a state of observation. At this stage there is no other possibility but to use everyday discourse on the problem as a point of departure for the design of the study. The next step would be—partly against, partly on the basis of, our preknowledge—to define hypotheses, Idealtypen in the sense of Max Weber, in terms of a provisional, theoretical model. The risks of sociological practice described above can be most clearly seen in the initial stage of the experimental cycle: the application stage. Once having submitted an application to a sponsor, be it public or private, the first stages of the process of research have already been carried out, that is, observation, hypotheses, and a proposal of the empirical operations. If one hopes that the epistemological principles in an application will be considered and appreciated, one must also take into consideration whether those who decide on the realization of a research project, above all its financing, are social scientists themselves, a factor that itself depends to a high degree on the structures of the national scientific system. If the financial support of sociological research is conducted by interest groups, unions, or, even worse, political parties, their “experts” often are not capable or not willing to judge a plan of research independently from everyday knowledge and a political agenda. Consequently, the temptation to reproduce spontaneous sociology is not only the consequence of the peculiarities of sociology as science but also of the specific relationship between the sponsors of a project and the recipients of funding. This relationship has the effect of reducing the distance between scientific and every-
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Page 29 day discourse. Even social scientists well aware of the ideological obstacles of sociological thought cannot avoid this reduction. Applying for and receiving funding for research projects is a social act in itself, whose certain laws and peculiarities do not correspond with the principles of sociological thought. An application must consequently be seen, on the one hand, as an expression of concentrated scientificreflection, but on the other hand, as a nod in the direction of the ruling scientific system. Since the sociologist has to respect its internal laws, research plans always contribute to reproducing this system. The scope for the realization of new ideas and approaches is small. The rebuke for the disregard of the rules of this game ranges between well-meant advice from established ‘‘experts” and complete exclusion from the scientific world. Faced with this problem, there is of course no easy way of adhering to epistemological principles during the research process. The only “solution” available is a pragmatic one: In his or her research report (since doing so in a research application would make the likelihood of being funded worse), the sociologist should clearly lay out his or her specific position in the academic field. Thereby the scientific systems’ influence on the research process can be objectified and viewed in isolation, so that any results present a more realistic picture of reality. LESSONS FROM PRACTICE To conclude, I would like to deal with two examples from my own work as a sociologist.2 The first topic is without further public interest, at least in Europe and the United States: the change of social structure in Chile during the past decades. In this project, which has been a cooperation of Freie Universität Berlin and the Chilean Programa de Economia del Trabajo, we analyzed the social effects of the shift toward neoliberal economy in the seventies and eighties. The theoretical part consisted of an approach to social space and social class elaborating on the contribution of Pierre Bourdieu. The empirical work mainly dealt with sociologically relevant dimensions of social change, in particular social class and income. The occupational data was gathered by the Universidad de Chile (see Koch 1998, 1999). The situation in the application stage was uncomfortable and pleasant at once: Since Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft—the principal German public research fund—normally does not spend much money on topics concerning development in Latin America, the probability of obtaining support was not very high. On the other hand, when I wrote the application I decided not to make many compromises. Since in the case of a South American country only few Germans see themselves as “experts,” the scientific discourse does not have to be laboriously defined against the common sense. Hence, there was no great interference either in the application stage or when I wrote the research report in Berlin. I dare to generalize this
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Page 30 experience in a first thesis: When the sociologist approaches a topic without further public interest, the risk of succumbing to spontaneous sociology is not as high as when approaching a topic of public attention. In another project proposal to Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, colleagues from a research network and myself have chosen mass unemployment and the trend toward social exclusion in the European Union as a research topic and so touch upon an issue that is widely discussed in public. Also, this situation is both advantageous and disadvantageous for the sociologist. The advantage is that a popular topic attracts attention in certain circles that may well lead to greater recognition.3 The probability of obtaining public support is high. The possible negative effect for the scientific process, however, may well be more important than the positive effect, as the unemployment crisis represents a social problem omnipresent in everyday discourse. The corresponding general thesis is as follows: When the sociologist approaches a topic of great public attention, the break with spontaneous sociology is even more difficult than usual. In the application I argued as follows. When discussing unemployment, reference is made usually to the high labor costs in Europe in comparison to Japan and the United States and to the supposedly outsized welfare state system. The neoliberal argument proposes that the stability of the national budget and currency always have priority over an active labor market policy, whereas the defenders of a European welfare state see active labor market policy as the central issue—even at the cost of stability. Indeed, labor market policy is an expression of all the societal struggles that are relevant to the issue of employment. The occupational system is influenced by labor market policy through different channels, specifically through systematic information and advice, wage subvention, the elimination of training deficits, and regulation and deregulation of employment contracts. Bearing this social fact in mind, it is noticeable that in both public and economic discourse labor market policy is mainly treated as an independent variable. By reducing the analysis to its effects on employment, the different forms of labor market policy in Europe are considered as if they were “natural.” Labor market policy, as a sociological object, comes from political and public discourse, and as such the sociologist should view it as raw material: as a point of departure for his or her practice as a researcher, not in the first regard as an explanatory factor, but above all as an object that has to be explained for itself. Marx may have treated labor market policy as a concentration of determinations. Why one European country prefers a neoliberal course and another follows the “Scandinavian route” in the sense of Esping-Andersen (1996), can be understood only if one considers the development of historically specific class structures after the Second World War as continuing from older industrial arrangements of labor markets and labor organization, pressure groups, and forms of cooperation between in-
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Page 31 dustry and state. In order to understand this transformation process adequately, we have to consider the structures of power and interest connected with it and the processes of social exclusion and discrimination and how they are addressed in the concepts of class.4 The main area of interest for the sociologist is less the character of labor market reforms than the strategies of the important collective actors (entrepreneurs, unions, state) and the kind of coalitions that arose during this process. Or, on a more profound level: Are there indications of a connection between, on the one hand, class and occupational structure, how it came about in Europe in contrast to the United States and Japan, and, on the other hand, the strategies of the relevant collective actors with respect to the labor market? I have chosen this example in order to show the importance of clarifying at the beginning of a research project both the object of explanation—the dependent variable—and the theoretical means of approaching this object. The application is a suitable and pragmatic opportunity for this “construction” of the scientific object. The following period, unpleasant and nerveracking for every sociologist, between application and confirmation of a project can be used for the specification of theoretical hypotheses and for the operationalization of the empirical steps of research. Once the project is approved, one is in the advantageous position of already having a provisional theory on the object of examination and so the empirical work can immediately begin. Many researchers complain about the short periods of financial support, which do not allow them to treat their object of interest in an adequate way. Indeed, a certain logic (publish or perish) predominates in the scientific field: The only scientists who can hope to receive further financial support are those who manage to produce a voluminous publication in the period of time allotted to their last project. Fieldwork has often suffered greatly from the pressure to publish results, which often devaluate within a short time. However, more important, many researchers can be observed who fail to adequately specify their hypotheses before the genuine fieldwork begins and then move over to time-consuming methodical maneuvers. In order to construct a sociological object, it is not sufficient to put criteria borrowed from common experience into complex data-processing operations. As we can learn from Comte, the discussion of the “method” is not to be confused with the systematic definition of the theoretical problematic—a confusion that consequently leads to unnecessary odysseys during the process of research and sometimes to miraculous results. My final remark refers to the research report. From an epistemolgical standpoint, this report should not only show the initial hypotheses of the project as clearly as possible, but also the researcher’s position in the academic field and thereby the dialectic of the applicant, the financing organization, and the scientific system and how this dialectic influenced his or her theoretical constructions and empirical results. Moreover, in the sense of
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Page 32 Max Weber’s differentiation between Nominaltypus and Realtypus, the distance between the original theoretical model and the empirical results has to be objectified. This distance serves as an empirical control of the theoretical hypotheses and at the same time is the point of departure for the final theory on the object of investigation. On the basis of the provisional theoretical construction and the empirical results, this theory reveals those relations, concealed from everyday knowledge, that assign the object its specific position in the social world. At the same time, this paves the way for the scientific explanation of the commonsense ‘‘ideological” perception of the object of investigation. CONCLUSION The discussion of Durkheim, Marx, Weber, and Comte has shown that these authors, although their theoretical approaches are of course different, share a similar point of view with respect to the definition of a theory of sociological thought. Since the supposed familiarity with the social world represents the highest obstacle to sociological knowledge, it is necessary to break free from spontaneous sociology. To serve this aim, Durkheim’s reference to the beginnings of natural science is as helpful as the Marxian method of Critique of Political Economy. Weber’s advice to explain the social by the social, and possibly only by the social, is still as important as Comte’s warning to dissolve the connection between theory and method. When confronting these epistemological principles with the concrete research process, certain restrictions come to the foreground. The example of the application stage has shown that a research program is not only the expression of concentrated scientificreflection but also of the ruling academic system. That is why a research completely free of ideology will remain an unobtainable ideal. Given this general restriction, the consideration of epistemological principles in a research project is easier when the sociologist approaches a topic without further public interest. Conversely, when approaching a topic omnipresent in public discourse, the sociologist is confronted with greater interference by self-styled “experts.” In this situation the research report acquires great importance. It is here where the sociologist should objectify both the specific research results and his or her own position in the academic field and its influence on these results. NOTES This chapter is based on my article in the International Journal of Contemporary Sociology 35:2 (1998). With her critical comments on contents and style, Eileen Laurie has greatly contributed to the chapter.
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Page 33 1. Hence, Marx’s theory of ideology by no means assumes that the consciousness of the dominated is somehow “manipulated” by the dominators. On the contrary, even the ruling classes succumb to ideological ideas that have their source in the capitalist mode of production. 2. I purposely expose myself to criticism because in the final analysis error is one of the most productive factors in the scientific process. 3. Moreover, in the design of the study the contradictory position of a sociologist of the “young generation” comes to the foreground. Such researchers on the one hand must try to gain the respect of the more experienced and established colleagues but on the other hand have to resist the temptation to simply join an already existing “school” in order to have sufficient liberty to develop their own “profiles” as researchers. 4. See, for a notion of the ideological impact on the discussion of “exclusion’’ and “underclass,” Herkommer and Koch (1999). REFERENCES Bourdieu, Pierre, Jean-Claude Chamboredon, and Jean-Claude Passeron. 1991. The Craft of Sociology: Epistemological Preliminaries. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter. Durkheim, Émile. 1978. “Review of Antonio Labriola.” In M. Traugott, Émile Durkheim on Institutional Analysis. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Durkheim, Émile. 1982. The Rules of Sociological Method. London: Macmillan. Esping-Andersen, Gosta. 1996. Welfare States in Transition: National Adaptations in Global Economies. London: Sage. Herkommer, Sebastian, and Max Koch. 1999. “The ‘Underclass’—A Misleading Concept and a Scientific Myth? Poverty and Social Exclusion as Challenges to Theories of Class and Social Structure.” Pp. 89–112 in Paul Littlewood et al., Social Exclusion in Europe: Problems and Paradigms. Aldershot, Eng.: Ashgate. Koch, Max. 1996. “Class and Taste: Bourdieu’s Contribution to the Analysis of Social Structure and Social Space.” International Journal of Contemporary Sociology (Oct.): 187–202. ———. 1998. Unternehmen Transformation: Sozialstruktur und gesellschaftlicher Wandel in Chile. Frankfurt/ Main: Vervuert. ———. 1999. “Changes in Chilean Social Structure” (“y Del Caribe”). Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos/European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 66 (June): 3–18. Marx, Karl. 1973. Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy. Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin. Weber, Max. 1958. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
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Page 35 4 Sociological Research on Discontinuous Change Henk A. Becker There are reasons to suspect, as will be demonstrated in this chapter, that research on discontinuous change has remained underdeveloped in sociology. Three hypotheses can be proposed for this neglect. First, that ideological reasons have played a role. We are dealing with an area of sociological research that for a long time seemed to offer little opportunity for arriving at the kind of lawlike statements that are preferred in sociology, particularly in the discipline’s analytical tradition. Analytical sociology has evolved from positivism, and we consequently need to check whether a positivist bias is still active. Second, we can hypothesize that a scarcity of data has been responsible for this neglect: Analysis of the effects of a major war, for instance, requires data that cover a number of decades. Until recently this kind of information was extremely scarce. Third, we can hypothesize that the limited state of the art in the analysis of social problems has contributed to this problem also. Until the early 1980s sociologists did not realize that the major effects of discontinuous change might be felt for a long time, sometimes even more than half a century. However, the severity of these long-term effects has become apparent in the mid-1990s. In this chapter we want to explore answers to two questions: 1. Has the study of discontinuous change been neglected in sociology, and if so, how can this neglect be explained? 2. If the study of discontinuous change has been neglected in sociology, how could this neglect be mitigated or eliminated?
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Page 36 Before we can embark upon looking for an answer to these questions we will have to define the main concept. We define discontinuous social change as a rupture with the past in a social system. As an example we can take a war. This example also illustrates a number of problems with the concept. Wars do not always have a clear-cut beginning and ending. Nor is there a clear-cut distinction between a military and a civil war. This implies that there is no unambiguous difference between continuous and discontinuous change. It is standard practice in sociology to use a benchmark approach in situations like this. We will focus on discontinuous macrochange and its effects on behavior and institutions. We will also look at discontinuous mesochange and its effects, but only in passing. Other types of discontinuous change will not be discussed. In this chapter, first the positivist roots of the analytical tradition in sociology are discussed. After this, the emergence of research in sociology on discontinuous change is sketched, looking at examples of adequate and inadequate explanations and interpretations. Finally, conclusions and a discussion are presented. THE POSITIVIST HERITAGE In the analytical tradition in sociology a question that is vital has been asked since the emergence of positivism—or positivisms, because it never was a homogeneous movement (Bryant 1985). The question reads: “Can the end result of sociological investigation be formulated as ‘laws’ or ‘lawlike’ generalizations of the same kind as those established by natural scientists?” (Bryant 1985: 8, citing Giddens). For a long time the subject of laws in social science has been approached by way of the “covering law model” as presented by Hempel (1942), which d’Andrade (1986: 19) describes as follows: The covering law model of science seems close to the way people think about science: on the surface, the model seems unexceptional. Its main outline goes as follows: (a) science consists of a search for “general laws” to explain events; (b) the statement of a general law can have different logical forms, but it typically makes a universal generalization across some domain of events; (c) the main function of general laws is to connect events in patterns, which are usually referred to as “explanation” and “prediction.’’ Major debates about the covering law model have involved whether it corresponds to what historians do, or could do, and whether it can be used more generally in explanation of human behavior. There has also been an extended and inconclusive discussion of the necessary and sufficient characteristics a statement must have to be a general law. Since the mid-1970s, most social scientists treat the covering law model and the methodological prescription of testing hypotheses by predictions
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Page 37 as metaphors only and not as rigorous requirements. Social scientists deal with systems that contain a lot of “disorder” (also called “chaos” or “noise”). The most convincing contemporary answer in sociology to the question comes from Boudon (1984) who (with regard to social change) distin-guishes relatively closed and relatively open situations in social systems. Open situations show a relatively large degree of “disorder.” He sees two categories of generalizations, matching these types of situations. In the first place there are laws and theories stricto sensu. Laws and theories, which might be falsified according to the requirements formulated by Popper, are rare in sociology, and presumably they will remain rare, because the subject matter of sociology shows a lot of disorder. Boudon’s second category contains formal theories. These theories he sees as “not in themselves directly applicable to reality, but which offer a mode of discussion or describe ideal examples which may be useful in the analysis of certain process’’ (1984: 219; 1986: 207). Boudon has little faith in the search for general theories stricto sensu. But if partial or local theories are aimed for, some situations might be sufficiently “closed” to make success feasible. He states that “the only scientific theories of social change are partial and local ones” (1984: 220; 1986: 208). We focus in this chapter on relationships between macro and micro phenomena and also on relationships between meso and micro phenomena. It is methodologically correct to model the first type of phenomena by macro-to-micro hypotheses, and the second type of relationships by meso-to-micro hypotheses. We can expect three types of phenomena and hypotheses. In the first place we can expect continuities. As an example, we can take successful continuation of a tradition in a society, for a long time showing behavior that is in harmony with the prescriptions of the tradition. It is adequate to use macro-to-micro hypotheses to model the continuity of the traditionally required type of behavior. Another example is a successful resistance to change in a social system in which diffusion of one or more innovations has been attempted. In the second place, we can expect continuous (or linear) change. As an example we can take a successful gradual process of guided emancipation. It is adequate to use macro-to-micro hypotheses, showing a continuous process of increasingly emancipated behavior. In the third place we can expect discontinuous (or nonlinear) change. As an example, we can take the effects of a famine on the diet of pregnant women and the health of their unborn children. We suppose that the effect of the famine ultimately is brain damage in children. Now, hypotheses about mental health of children in cohorts before, during, and after the famine will predict discontinuous change in the dependent variable: the mental health of the children.
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Page 38 In analytical sociology, hypotheses showing continuity are preferred. They model relationships in a very parsimonious way. The preference for parsimonious models is rational. Hypotheses modeling continuous change are considered second-best in analytical sociology. Hypotheses about discontinuous change are relatively complex and therefore are avoided as much as possible. So far there is no methodological bias. A methodological bias enters the scene when discontinuous change is neglected in sociological models. Another methodological bias arises when discontinuous change is modeled as continuous change, or even modeled as continuity. We will call these two types of methodological biases positivist biases because they can be interpreted as an exaggerated, dysfunc-tional compliance with methodological rules that play a dominant role in positivist methodology. Using the covering law model and formulating theories stricto sensu is not wrong in general. It is only wrong in situations when the covering law model and theories stricto sensu lead to a distortion of the social phenomena they try to describe and explain. As an example of description, explanation, and interpretation of discontinuous change, I will discuss generations research. In this kind of research sociologists search for the effects of discontinuous macro change on behavior of individuals who have been exposed to this kind of change during their formative years. Sociologists search for the emergence and development of new generations in society. Many research questions in this field can be answered by covering laws and theories stricto sensu, as we will see in the next section. It is impossible to answer all research questions in this way, however, because too much systems noise is involved. In other cases, these kinds of research questions have low priority. Research resources are scarce and this scarcity requires prioritization. When much systems noise and scarcity of resources is involved, sociological researchers use interpretation. In general, sociological research requires both explanation and interpretation (Esser 1993). As we saw above, in generational research both are used. In generational research not only explanation and therefore not only the analytical tradition is applied. The analytical tradition is applied together with the interpretative and the historical traditions. Each tradition contributes to the answers to research questions (Becker 1990a, 1990b, 1992; Becker and Hermkens, 1994). THE LONG WAY In this section we will discuss examples of sociological research on discontinuous change that illustrate methodological biases, a lack of data, or inadequate problem analyses. The examples will come from discontinuous economic transitions. An overview of sociological research on discontinu-
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Page 39 ous change and its effects can be found in general literature on generational research (e.g., Becker 1990b, 1992; Becker and Hermkens 1994). Discontinuous Economic and Social Change Coenders and Scheepers (1998) have been able to demonstrate support for ethnic discrimination in the Netherlands from 1979 to 1993. Their data indicate that support for ethnic discrimination had decreased in the late seventies and early eighties but has increased since the mid-eighties up to the early nineties. The results show that support for ethnic discrimination is more widespread in times of high and increasing levels of ethnic immigration, as well as growing unemployment. With regard to both disciplineoriented and policyoriented research these results are highly relevant. The analysis by Coenders and Scheepers is an example of sociological research that has profited substantially from recent expansions of databases. As our next example we take Jonsson’s (1993) study of persisting inequalities in Sweden. Jonsson looked at whether life chances, understood as educational outcomes, have equalized in Sweden during this century. He used a large-scale data set consisting of four merged nationally representative samples, encompassing cohorts born from the turn of the century up until the early 1970s. The first aim of the study was to test the hypothesis of an equalization of educational attainment. A secondary aim was to shed light on the nature and causes of equalization, trying to unravel the mechanisms behind changes in educational inequality. Jonsson stated that if we find equalization we must ask which background characteristics decrease in importance for educational attainment. Did school reforms have their intended equalizing effects? Is educational expansion a precondition for more equality? He further discussed educational policy relating to equality. He stated that the political element in the expansion was indirect but should not be neglected. First, the increasing pressure on the school system to meet the increasing demand generated by the “baby boom” was not countered by increased selection. Second, the government took this opportunity to remodel the entire school system (that is, the 1962 and 1971 reforms) since it was already seriously overloaded. The empirical analyses were carried out in two stages. First, regressions were run with years of education, or grade level, as the dependent variable. Second, a series of logit models were fitted, using “survival” at consecutive educational transitions as the dependent variable. With regard to causes of equalization, Jonsson concluded that although we cannot expect to find anything like a complete answer to this question, “it is essential to discuss it from both a scientific and a policy perspective.” He believes, first, that it is enlightening to view equalization among women and people from rural areas as a combined effect of decreasing barriers and
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Page 40 changing incentives. Among people from rural areas, expansion (i.e., regional diffusion) of secondary education, introduction of financial support for lodging, and so on, and improved communications have torn down old barriers; at the same time the decline of the agricultural sector and the growth of white-collar and service work have provided greater incentives to enroll in secondary education. For women, discrimination within families in favor of their brothers has probably decreased. But the rapidly increasing demand for female labor may be the more important mechanism behind shrinking gender differences in education. Jonsson concludes that the class equalization in educational attainment suggests that we should look for multiple causes; educational reform does not suffice in this respect, and changes within the family, in the labor market, and at the workplace should also be considered. In his concluding discussion, Jonsson remarks that major changes in educational attainment during this century, particularly the greater participation of women and the children of farmers, are likely to be consequences of increased incentives for labor-market participation. A challenge for future research on educational inequality would be the extent to which changes in the labor market can account for changing, or persistent, educational inequality. Our reaction to this study can be summarized in two questions. First, why have the ‘‘why questions” in the research project been treated by interpretation and not by explanation? Jonsson’s aim was to shed light on causes of equalization, as we saw. Second, why have they not been addressed by Jonsson in his study but have been left as challenges for future research? Because these questions have not been dealt with, we can consider Jonsson’s article a valid example of the type of neglect we focus on in this chapter. Discontinuous Military and Political Change In the twentieth century two world wars have raged. It is important to submit these wars and their consequences to comparative international analysis. However, sociologists have only limited empirical data on the two world wars. World War I took place in a period in which large-scale sociological research was not possible. We have also to keep in mind that many people were convinced that future wars could be avoided. Shortly after World War II there was only limited interest in the effects of the war on behavior and institutions. Many individuals tried to forget the whole episode as soon as possible. Describing and explaining the long-term effects of warfare have received attention only recently in the 1990s. An exception to this neglect is the analysis of war memories. Mosse (1990) has explored the impact of both world wars on recollections, values, and institutions. He has described how the biased image of a romantic war
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Page 41 has suffered during and after World War I. Developments during and after World War II have strengthened the process of deromanticizing military conflicts. Mosse bases his conclusions on a content analysis of written material on wars. The emotional and normative changes triggered by wars have been further explored in Israel. It turned out that most individuals there who have been exposed to the consequences of combat for long periods have been able to cope with their recollections of horror (Holsti and Rosenau 1980; Lomsky-Feder 1995). In the Netherlands many individuals who experienced the war during their formative period are confronted with a revival of war traumas when they grow older. As soon as their careers become less demanding and they become eligible for early retirement, their war memories become manifest and they have to undergo psychiatric treatment. In 1989 West and East Germany were reunited. After this political change a period of reconstruction began in the new parts of the Federal Republic. Pensioners in the East were given the same rights as their western counterparts. Young people were able to profit from improved educational opportunities. New jobs were primarily given to young, well-educated men and women. The population aged thirty to fifty in the early 1990s has had to shoulder the heaviest burden in the reunion. Unemployment has been relatively high in these cohorts. Surveys held in the late nineties showed that a relatively high percentage of individuals in these cohorts felt that they were treated as second-rate citizens. Sociologists have studied these developments extensively (e.g., Bertels 1994; Bertram 1995; Häder and Häder 1995; Jugendwerk der Deutschen Shell 1997; Meulemann 1996). These studies have mainly been descriptive. Only a few analyses present an explanation of behavior based on general behavioral theories (Kropp 1998; Opp 1997; Opp, Voss, and Gern 1995; Völker 1995). Cultural Shocks The early seventies saw the appearance of the first publications by the political scientist and sociologist Inglehart on the Silent Revolution, followed by the principal work based on this hypothesis (Inglehart 1977). He analyzed material from a number of the European Economic Community surveys. In 1970 and 1971 interviews had been held in France, West Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, and England. Comparable data on the United States were also available. Inglehart’s starting point was a hypothesis of scarcity based on Maslow’s theory regarding the hierarchy of human needs. Once physical need and the need of physical safety are satisfied, a human being will need nonmaterial satisfaction, particularly selfdevelopment. A second hypothesis relates to socialization: experiences during a person’s formative period take root more firmly than experiences from other phases in life. The birth cohorts in Western countries after
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Page 42 World War II have not actually experienced the hardships of the thirties crises and the war years. They have been raised during periods of relative prosperity. As their material needs have been largely satisfied, they can expect to produce a postmaterialistic value orientation. With reference to his model, Inglehart predicts that in the Western countries the influence of the materialists will gradually diminish and the influence of the postmaterialists will increase. This process is the silent revolution. Inglehart’s argument comes down to two generations: the predominantly materialistic cohorts born before the end of World War II and postmaterialistic cohorts born after the “watershed” at the end of World War II. Because of the dying off of the older cohorts and the pushing forward of new cohorts, a general shift in favor of the postmaterialists would take place. Inglehart has been sharply attacked for this hypothesis since its publication. Below only the outline of this criticism will be given. In the first place he has been reproached for disputably operationalizing “materialism” and “postmaterialism.” He works two items a respondent selected out of four: (1) maintaining order in the nation, (2) give the people more say in important government decisions, (3) fighting rising prices, and (4) protecting freedom of speech. If a respondent chooses (1) and (3), then he/she is a “materialist”; if he/she chooses (1) and (4), then we are dealing with a postmaterialist. Mixtures are not included in further analysis. Felling, Peters, and Schreuder (1983), for example, state that we are dealing with ‘‘bourgeois” value orientations as opposed to “nonbourgeois” value orientations. It has been argued that Maslow’s theory is not differentiated enough, depicting too rough a picture especially for the analysis in question. Inglehart follows a covering law approach by deriving hypotheses from the theory of Maslow. Inglehart does not apply a theory that explains effects of discontinuous cultural macro change like the “Cultural Revolution” of the sixties and early seventies in the West. He could have tested hypotheses derived from theories predicting the effects of romantic movements, for example. He could also have tested hypotheses dealing with the effects of discontinuous economic change. This researcher provides a theory on the emergence and development of political generations. In the theory of the “patterns of generations,” the emergence, development, and disappearance of general and partial generations is explained (Becker 1990b, 1996). According to this approach, value orientations that have been acquired during the formative period only persist if they have been reinforced later. Value orientations relating to drastic power sharing and other types of substantial democratization were not reinforced after the mid-1970s in the West (Gadourek 1982, 1998). As a consequence, many of them faded away. In contrast, value orientations concerning the emancipation and the role of women in the West were strengthened significantly after the “Cultural Revolution.” These still reign in the late 1990s (e.g., Van Deth and Scarbrough 1995; Iedema, Becker, and Sanders 1997).
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Page 43 Our next example presents some results from the work of the European Value Systems Study Group (EVSSG). The first wave of interviews was held in 1981. In 1990 the second wave was carried out in almost all the countries of Europe, including those of Central and Eastern Europe, and in the United States and Canada. The hypotheses guiding the analysis of the findings were: (1) as countries advance economically, the values of their pop-ulations increasingly shift in the direction of individualization, (2) they tend to be fragmented, (3) individualized value systems in modern societies will converge (De Moor 1995: vi). If individualization is defined as a continuous increase of differences between the behavior of individuals, as we advo-cated, the hypothesis of individualization with regard to values was not corroborated in this research (Ester, Halman, and De Moor 1993). Furthermore, Ester, Halman, and De Moor do not provide an explanation for the fragmentation and the convergence of the value systems they analyze. They leave this explanation for further study (Ester, Halman, and De Moor 1993). Evidently, they have a preference for hypotheses that show continuous developments. In any case they do not test hypotheses that suggest discontinuous change. Discontinuous Demographic Change In 1980 Easterlin published Birth and Fortune. In this book he explains how the numerical size of birth cohorts can be a major influence on the chances for the personal well-being of their members. A relatively large cohort leads to education in packed schools, difficulties of finding a first job, a slow career—in short, a series of handicaps. If one compares the 1930–1940 cohorts with those of 1940–1950 and those of 1950– 1960, Easterlin’s conclusion, at first sight, looks convincing. The “baby boom” has indeed resulted in a difficult youth for the cohorts involved. However, one must realize that economic prosperity in these decades has fluctuated, and changes in value orientations have occurred. If for example a relatively extensive group of cohorts is introduced to the educational system and to the labor market in times of economic prosperity, then the general expansion may be sufficient to cope with the effects of this. It does not alter the fact that the correlation between the size of the cohorts and the chances for self-development could be productive as a hypothesis in several investigations, however. Easterlin’s theory has been a starting point for theories concerned with the effects of discontinuous demographic change on individual (behavior) and systems levels (for example, graying and greening of the population). On a descriptive level we find analogies with the outcomes of generational accounting. The baby boom in the West, which occurred in most countries between 1946 and 1970, is in many respects a unique development. There are exceptions to this development, however. In the former West Germany, be-
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Page 44 cause of the lost war, no baby boom occurred between 1946 and 1955. West Germany had a small baby boom between 1955 and 1970. This provides opportunities for a comparative analysis of the effects of discontinuous demographic macro change in Germany and other Western countries (e.g., the Netherlands). The graying of the population started in West Germany earlier than in the Netherlands. As a consequence, the problem of the costs of the graying of the population started to be felt earlier in Germany. Because in Germany many elderly live with their children or other relatives, the costs of the graying of the population have been relatively low. In the Netherlands, serious problems with regard to the costs of the graying of the population are expected between 2010 and 2050. Costs will be distributed in an uneven way between older and younger generations. This implies that there will be more and more political pressure for a redistribution between generations of costs and benefits related to government services, and so on (see, e.g., Kotlikoff 1992). Discontinuous Change on a Meso Level Rogers (1995) analyzed more than 2,000 evaluation reports on diffusion of innovations. He looked at the consequences of characteristics of the policy-making actor, the innovative message, and the receiver of the message. Most innovation campaigns represent discontinuous change on a meso level, aiming at effects on behavior and institutions. The analysis by Rogers has been evaluated positively many times (Becker 1990a). For some reason he has not taken into consideration that an analysis of diffusion of innovations has to take discontinuous change into account. The success of an innovation campaign during a period of economic prosperity has to be distinguished from the success of an innovation campaign during a period of economic hardship, as an example. This study is part of a large category of sociological analyses that shows a latent methodological bias. Discontinuous change that evidently can have an impact is simply not discussed. CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSION Our first question concerned whether the study of discontinuous change showed signs of relative neglect. With regard to the hypothesis of a methodological bias, we have been confronted with a straightforward neglect of discontinuous change by Jonsson and by Rogers. A misrepresentation of discontinuous change was found in the work of Inglehart, De Moor et al., and Easterlin. Lip service to the requirement for explanation was paid by Jonsson. With respect to the first hypothesis, we found examples of a methodological bias that can be interpreted as a positivist bias. Our second hypothesis dealt with scarcity of data. With regard to discontinuous economic and social change, the study by Coenders and Schee-
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Page 45 pers represented a breakthrough with regard to the acquisition of data. This type of analysis of ethnic discrimination would have been impossible until recently. Concerning the third hypothesis, we can conclude that a lack of problem awareness has hampered the analysis of discontinuous change regarding the Second World War. Relevant data are largely lacking. A partial neglect was found with regard to the analytical approach in a number of studies. Both Jonsson and Easterlin restricted their study to a description, while an explanatory approach would have been feasible and relevant. Our second question was related to further activities. How could the relative neglect best be mitigated or eliminated? With respect to this issue we first would like to suggest that explanatory models in sociology dealing with macro-to-micro and meso-to-micro relationships should pay attention to both continuous change and discontinuous change. If one of these types of variables is involved, they have to be dealt with explicitly. If one or more of these types of variables is not relevant in the study, this should be stated explicitly, for instance in a declaration of “ceteris paribus.” Also, this information could be provided in the statement regarding the initial conditions of the hypothesis or theory involved. Furthermore, we would like to suggest that description ought to be sup-plemented by explanation, whenever appropriate, by using the covering law approach. Theories should be designed according to the requirements stated by Boudon, taking account of noise active in the social system. Finally, we emphasize the need to take a close look at the field of study and the research questions that are concerned. In many cases, the field of study requires explanatory, interpretative, and historical studies. The study of generations has been offered as a major example in this regard. This implies that each of the three main traditions in contemporary sociology has to come forward with a contribution. In the distant future, most types of discontinuous change will have been studied often. Perhaps a comparative analysis of more than two thousand wars and their effects on behavior and institutions over a period of fifty years will be available. If so, many questions regarding discontinuous change can be answered using the covering law approach. Even in the distant future, wars will reveal both common and unique characteristics. The latter will require application of general theories of social behavior. Sociological research will always require a combination of a covering law analysis and a case study approach. A guiding image envisioning a dominance of scientific laws in sociological analysis would be a positivist illusion.
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Page 46 REFERENCES Becker, Henk A. 1990a. “Achievement in the Analytical Tradition in Sociology.” Pp. 8–31 in C.G.A. Bryant and H.A. Becker, eds., What Has Sociology Achieved? London: Macmillan. ———, ed. 1990b. Life Histories and Generations. Utrecht: ISOR. ———, ed. 1992. Dynamics of Cohort and Generations Research. Amsterdam: Thesis. ———. 1996. “Generations and Justice over Time.’’ Social Justice Research 9(2): 185–98. Becker, Henk A., and P.L.J. Hermkens, eds. 1994. Solidarity of Generations. Amsterdam: Thesis. Bertels, L. 1994. Gesellschaft, Stadt und Lebensverläufe im Umbruch. Bad Ben-theim: Gildehaus-Verlag Metta Metten. Bertram, H. 1995. Ostdeutschland im Wandel: Lebensverhältnisse-politische Ein-stellungen. Opladen: Leske + Budrich. Boudon, R. 1984. La place du désordre. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. ———. 1986. Theories of Social Change: A Critical Approach. Cambridge, Eng.: Polity Press. Bryant, C.G.A. 1985. Positivism in Social Theory and Research. London: Macmillan. Coenders, M., and P. Scheepers. 1998. “Support for Ethnic Discrimination in the Netherlands 1979–1993: Effects of Period, Cohort, and Individual Charac-teristics.” European Sociological Review 14(4): 405–22. D’Andrade, R. 1986. “Three Scientific World Views and the Covering Law Model.” Pp. 19–41 in D. W. Fiske and R. A. Shweder, eds., Metatheory in Social Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. De Moor, R., ed. 1995. Values in Western Societies. Tilburg, Neth.: Tilburg University Press. Easterlin, R. A. 1980. Birth and Fortune: The Impact of Numbers on Personal Welfare. New York: Basic Books. Esser, H. 1993. Soziologie: Allgemeine Grundlagen. Frankfurt, New York: Campus Verlag. Ester, P., L. Halman, and R. de Moor. 1993. The Individualizing Society: Value Change in Europe and North America. Tilburg, Neth.: Tilburg University Press. Felling, A., J. Peters, and O. Schreuder. 1983. Burgerlijk en onburgerlijk Nederland: Een national onderzoek naar waardenörientaties op de drempel van de jaren tachtig. Deventer, Neth.: Van Loghum Slaterus. Gadourek, I. 1982. Social Change as Redefinition of Roles: A Study of Structural and Causal Relationships in the Netherlands of the “Seventies.” Assen, Neth.: Van Gorkum. ———. 1998. On the Variability of Social Life: A Few Empirical Studies. Groningen, Neth.: Institute of Sociology, Groningen University. Häder, M., and S. Häder. 1995. Turbulenzen im Transformationsprozeß: Die in-dividuelle Bewältigung des sozialen Wandels in Ostdeutschland 1990–1992. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1995.
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Page 47 Hempel, C. G. 1942. “The Function of General Laws in History.” Journal of Philosophy 39: 35–48. Holsti, O. R., and J. N. Rosenau. 1980. “Does Where You Stand Depend on When You Were Born? The Impact of Generation on Post-Vietnam Foreign Policy Beliefs.” Public Opinion Quarterly 1–22. Iedema, J., Henk A. Becker, and K. Sanders. 1997. “Transitions into Independence: A Comparison of Cohorts Born Since 1930 in the Nethterlands.” European Sociological Review 13(2): 117–37. Inglehart, R. 1977. The Silent Revolution, Changing Values and Political Styles among Western Publics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 1990. Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Jonsson, J. O. 1993. ‘‘Persisting Inequalities in Sweden.” Pp. 101–32 in Y. Shavit and H.-P. Blossfeld, eds., Persistent Inequality, Changing Educational Attainment in Thirteen Countries. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Jugendwerk der Deutschen Shell Politische Orientierungen. 1997. Jugend ’97: Zukunftsperpektiven gesellschaftliches Engagement politische Orientierungen. Opladen: Leske Budrich. Kotlikoff, L. J. 1992. Generational Accounting: Knowing Who Pays, and When, for What We Spend. New York: Free Press. Kropp, P. B. 1998. Berufserfolg im Transformationsprozeß: Eine theoretischempirische Studie über die Gewinner und Verlierer der Wende in Ostdeutschland. Amsterdam: Thesis. Lomsky-Feder, E. 1995. “The Meaning of War Through Veterans’ Eyes: A Phenomenological Analysis of Life Stories.” International Sociology 10(4): 463– 83. Meulemann, H. 1996. Werte und Wertewandel: Zur Identität einer geteilten und wieder vereinten Nation. Weinheim und München: Juventa Verlag. Mosse, G. L. 1990. Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Opp, K.-D. 1997. Die enttäuschten Revolutionäre: Politisches Engagement vor undnach der Ende. Opladen: Leske Budrich. Opp, K-D., P. Voss, and C. Gern. 1995. Origins of a Spontaneous Revolution: East Germany, 1989. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Rogers, E. M. 1995. Diffusion of Innovations, 4th ed. New York: Free Press. Shavit, Y., and H. P. Blossfeld, eds. 1993. Persistent Inequality: Changing Educational Attainment in Thirteen Countries. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Van Deth, J. W., and E. Scarbrough, eds. 1995. The Impact of Values. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. Völker, B. 1995. Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot … ? Institutions of Communism, the Transition to Capitalism and Personal Networks: The Case of East Germany. Amsterdam: Thesis.
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Page 49 III THE POLITICAL CONTEXT OF IDEOLOGY
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Page 51 5 Changing Professional Ideologies of Finnish Sociology Ilkka Pirttilä and Jaakko Nuotio RESEARCH AT THE CROSSROADS IN THE CHANGING WELFARE STATE Since the Second World War many European countries have become wealth-based societies. Despite high living standards, highly developed production technology, and massive production of scientific knowledge, social problems such as mass unemployment characterize the lives of many people in various Western countries. Moreover, the solutions presented by politicians and social scientists often appear to be insufficient. Some social theorists have suggested that today’s Western societies can be characterized through the notions of complexity, dynamism, and reflexivity (Beck, Giddens, and Lash 1994; Scott 1997; Stehr 1994). Traditions are being transformed into fragmented narratives and the traditional authorities have been replaced with the specialist expert. Spatial and temporal restrictions are in the process of vanishing because of international data communication networks and the impact of global mass media. The dynamics of social change have become violent and people face continuous uncertainty. In the Scandinavian countries the state has traditionally organized a wide variety of services in various areas of economic and social life. The life of an individual person has also become the object of governing and diverse public planning. During the construction period of the welfare state in particular, social scientists functioned in a very prominent role: they were
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Page 52 scriptwriters and directors in the drama of social life. However, it seems that the future role of the social scientist may be that of a catalyst. This chapter will outline the main aspects of social scientific knowledge in a changing welfare state context, presenting the case of Finland as an example. First, we will outline the general social background of the social sciences. Second, on the basis of Georges Gurvitch (1971), who has presented the concept “social frameworks of knowledge,” we will focus on the main features of the institutional and organizational structure of sociology in Finland. Third, we will refer to Jürgen Habermas (1981), who has categorized the interests and forms of knowledge. We will also briefly consider the main forms of knowledge production amongst Finnish sociologists. Fourth, we will shortly describe the main internal approaches peculiar to Finnish sociology. Finally, we will suggest that the ideas of “soft academic instrumentalism” and “fragmented reflexivity’’ are able to characterize the main ideologies. Soft academic instrumentalism characterizes the period of welfare state construction when sociologists in the Finnish universities produced instruments of public policy. Fragmented reflexivity means the situation where the sociological field has divided into segments and theoretical approaches and sociologists are working as much as traditional academic researchers, as they are consultants and problem solvers in public and private organizations. The Scandinavian welfare states were built mainly during the ten to thirty years following the Second World War. At that time, large labor markets with corporate organizations, universal and comprehensive social security, and broad public education and health-care systems were created; these are all seen as the special features of the Scandinavian welfare-state model. From a political point of view, the Scandinavian Social Democratic parties were quite influential in transmitting messages concerning democratic services and promoting the happiness that they would generate. Indeed, Göran Esping-Andersen (1990) has labeled the model as the “social democratic welfare state model.” The Finnish welfare state was one of the models created in such a way. The state adopted a central role as the promoter and organizer of welfare. At the very beginning, juridical and technical knowledge was sufficient for the needs of the national administration. Later, however, the emergence of a more complex society necessitated a need to gain versatile knowledge about it. Thus, social scientific research increased in parallel with the expanding welfare services in Finland. Furthermore, a large part of this research was so-called welfare research, which was fairly close to welfare politics and planning (Erikson and Uusitalo 1987). The relationship between academic sociological research and political decision making was at its closest in the 1960s and the 1970s (Allardt 1995; Erikson and Uusitalo 1987). At the time many people believed strongly in scientific planning and rational organization. Professionalism was also
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Page 53 linked with the ideology of the rational welfare state, and, in fact, these two decades have been aptly called the decades of “planning economy” (Alasuutari 1996). In the 1980s the services provided by the welfare state were extended further but were also confronted with increasing criticism. The previous unity of policymakers and sociological researchers changed into a critical dialogue and at times open suspicion. The centralized and bureaucratic welfare services became multifaceted; simultaneously demands for “tailor-made services” were also voiced. To an increasing extent, the actions of the professionals were now to be defined by the clients’ demands. In the early 1990s a deep recession in the Finnish economy initiated a reassessment of the welfare system. Following international examples, deregulation and decentralization became fashionable slogans in the state administration. The ideological doctrines of neoliberalism entered the stage. The state was—and it still is— expected to convey its services to a liberal marketplace. Not only were many national, government-run organizations converted into business enterprises, but also, as the same ideology de-manded, public universities were required to pay close attention to their effectiveness and efficiency. The state also cut subsidies and social remu-nerations (Alasuutari 1996). SOFT ACADEMIC INSTRUMENTALISM In the 1960s and the 1970s the expanding and bureaucratic welfare-state administration offered thousands of jobs for highly educated practitioners of the social sciences. General administration and the regional services, together with their own administration, needed professionals who were able to implement the plans of central administration. Complex planning required “objective social scientific knowledge,’’ which provided the decision makers with methods for the understanding, assessing, and setting of standards. This called for social scientific research. At the same time the belief in governmental social scientific research and centralized planning at the national level was strong. While sociologists functioned as social engineers defining the concepts of welfare policy, according to the principles of the top-down steering and implementing policy they were also social inter-preters declaring modernization in terms of conflict regulation and welfare research. Even a short overview of Finnish sociology can show that the expansive phase of social scientific research occurred primarily in the 1960s and the early 1970s. Numerous new departments, professorships, and research posts in sociology were established in the 1960s. While there were other governmental research institutions, such as The Social Research Unit for Alcohol Studies (founded in 1952), university-based research was the main organizational form of sociological research. University-based social scientific research not only was held in high esteem but had a wide influence
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Page 54 on state policy. From the 1960s onward, five new universities with departments of sociology or social policy were established in the northern and eastern parts of Finland; the sociology departments in three older, southern universities were expanded at the same time. While the resources of university-based social sciences increased remarkably, since the mid-1970s the growth of the resources of social research has varied more from time to time (Falk 1979). At present, there are more than thirty professorial posts in sociology at the twelve Finnish universities. In the 1960s academic social scientists had an important role to play as welfare ideologists and indicators of welfare standards. They promoted a message of welfare. Social scientists attempted to define inequality within society and insisted on more democratic services, open to all citizens. Finnish social scientists produced concepts and set goals for the politicians. Pekka Kuusi ([1961] 1964), for instance, wrote a central social scientific study that was regarded as the bible of Keynesian economic policy in Finland and other Scandinavian countries. Kuusi propagated the importance of state-governed social policy for national wealth and economic growth. Consequently, his principles were adopted by many parties, including the Social Democratic party, and became the cornerstones of welfare policy in Finland. In a similar vein the Swedish social democratic government, led by Olof Palme, commissioned customized studies of living standards and low-level salaries from Swedish social scientists (Allardt 1996). These two examples suggest that in the period there was a close relationship between the politicians and academic social scientists. The interests of sociological research during the age of the growing welfare state can be characterized as those of technocracy and rationalism. The political decision makers instrumentally exploited the results of social scientific research, such as the degrees of living standards. Many politicians also adopted social scientists’ ideas concerning the several dimensions of welfare. Universities produced standardized solutions and the general belief in the possibilities of social engineering was strong. Sociological information was conceived as basic data that can be used in predicting and controlling the social reality. Information formed the framework according to which the state defined the relationships between the producers and users of welfare services. Sociologists also provided the rising left-liberal ideology with new concepts and tools. They also interpreted the state of marginal social groups based on the hermeneutic methodology and kept the social criticism alive (see Allardt 1993). The methodological orientation of the Finnish sociologists can be crys-tallized in the terms positivism and empiricism. American sociology influenced Finnish and Scandinavian sociology very strongly after the Second World War well into the 1970s. Positivist approaches set the standards and defined what is important to study in the field of sociology. Sociologists developed special skills in multivariate techniques and the methods of factor
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Page 55 analysis in particular. Their studies became quantitative and macrosociological. They developed a special interest in studying the structural bases of social conflicts. Some studies analyzed the dimensions of conflicts in Finnish society, and large-scale analyses of social change were produced (Allardt 1993, 1994). An important research field was that of welfare studies. Social scientists first defined the dimensions of welfare and then measured those dimensions. Welfare researchers studied the living standards and the way of living, in addition to lifestyles, and produced quantitative sociographics of Finland and of comparative research settings (Erikson and Uusitalo 1987). Quan-titative research arrangements, surveys, and macrosociological settings were exploited under the auspices of the paradigm of positivistic abstract empiricism (Allardt 1993). In the mid-1970s Finnish welfare research widened its field of interest to the more subjective factors of well-being. For example, Allardt (1976) conceptualized the “being” of a welfare citizen. This study marked a qualitative turn in welfare research: The previously prevalent paradigm of abstract empiricism yielded to the requirements of a continuing multiparadigmatic period. This soft academic instrumentalism characterizes the utilization and production of social scientific knowledge in the construction of the welfare state. The period described above can be characterized as academic because a fairly small and rather uniform group of university-based sociological researchers took the main responsibility for the production of social scientific knowledge in Finland. “Soft instrumentalism,” then, refers to the interests and forms of knowledge as well as to the relationship between the producers and users of this knowledge. Social scientific knowledge was based on objective descriptions and measurements, which one could apply further in a political decision-making process. Academic researchers were highly esteemed and had a great degree of autonomy. At the same time, the researchers related their results to the political and social realities. It can be said that there was a dialogical relationship between the producers and users of knowledge. Social scientists produced social indicators such as living standards and life-type indicators, but they also produced interpretations about them and social problems (see Weiss 1979). Thus we can suggest that decision makers received knowledge produced by social researchers and adjusted it to their decision-making framework. Consequently, research knowledge enlightened the decision makers and enabled them to develop their previous ideas and basic sup-positions. Indeed, social scientific research was able to activate decision makers, welfare professionals, and also citizens to reflect on their opinions. Of course, sometimes decision makers legitimated their already-made decisions without paying any attention to actual research findings and only exploited the authority of scientific knowledge.
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Page 56 FRAGMENTED REFLEXIVITY Finnish sociology started to differentiate in the 1970s (Fuhrman and Kaukonen 1988), a process that still continues into the twenty-first century. The relative unity that may once have marked Finnish sociology is now a thing of the past and the field of sociology has become fragmented (Alapuro 1995). In this section we will first explore the institutional and organizational structure of sociology in Finland. Second, we will analyze the forms and interests of today’s Finnish sociological research. Third, we will examine the internal character of sociological thinking in Finland: What kind of theories and methods are popular in Finland’s social sciences? The main focus of this section is on describing the dimensions of the professional ideology of Finnish sociologists today. One may ask such questions as what legitimates Finnish sociology or what forms of sociology are representative in a changing situation characterized by the rethinking of the very idea and practices of the welfare state. Decreasing financial resources in the state sector have forced sociological research to be more effective. What will the future of the social sciences be in Finland? The social framework of Finnish sociology can be argued to consist of four elements: (1) academic organizations and roles, (2) the institutions and practices of applied research, (3) the forms of research and development work related to social issues, and (4) the representations of sociological thinking in popular media. The Finnish academic structure is based on the departments of sociology at the universities and the support of the Academy of Finland. Today, more than thirty chairs in sociology exist at twelve Finnish universities. The total volume of Finnish academic social science (including sociology and social policy) was 257 research work years in 1995 (State and Standard 1997: 23). The resources of basic sociological research have increased remarkably over those of the 1960s. Yet the new system of governing, often labeled “management by results,’’ has challenged various departments in Finnish universities. Departments are now granted about 90 percent of their funds, and the institutions must be able to raise the rest themselves. Thus, the sociology departments at Finnish universities are practically forced to gain both good results (measured, for example, as the number of graduates and the number of research publications) and extra funds from organizations outside the universities. Applied research in sociology and other social sciences has also increased and established its position. The main institutions outside the university system in which applied and problem-solving sociological research is practiced are the Social Research Institute of Alcohol Studies, the Institute of Judicial Policy, the Institute of Occupational Health, the Institute of Public Health, the National Research and Development Center for Welfare and Health, Statistics Finland, and the research departments of the government
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Page 57 ministries. The total volume of applied sociological research was 116 research work years in 1995 (State and Standard 1997: 26). The third element in the social framework of the Finnish social sciences is research and development. This research and development work occurs both in the public and in the private sectors. Public research-based consul-tation is funded by various ministries: for instance, the Ministry of Employment funds a huge project on Finnish working life. Finland is also a member in the European Union, which has made it possible for Finland to obtain monetary funds from foundations of the European Union. The European Social Foundation in particular supports financially many projects in social affairs. In many cases some social research is also connected with the projects. Because of the principles of “management by results” prevalent in public administration, evaluative research activity has increased significantly in recent years. Many evaluative research projects also include social scientific research. The demand for surveys describing opinions and attitudes has also increased in the private sector, and several sociological studies on customer satisfaction with various services have been carried out. Sociological ideas and conceptions are, on a small scale, visible in the Finnish mass media in the 1990s. Many articles in newspapers and magazines are written or inspired by social scientists. Also, many radio and television programs are, at least to some extent, based on sociological thinking. To summarize, sociological practice can be divided into four subfields: academic organizations and role settings, applied social research with its institutions and ways of acting, research and development activities, and journalistic practices. In many cases the same institution or professional may operate in two, three, or even in all four subfields. Jürgen Habermas’s (1981) model of the interests and forms of knowledge is useful in the analysis of today’s sociological research in Finland. First, Finnish sociology produces descriptive knowledge (information) on Finnish society mainly by quantitative methodologies. This knowledge is produced both by the institutions of university departments and the organizations of applied research. The objects of this knowledge are both objective facts (for instance, population changes and income levels) and subjective facts (for instance, attitudinal changes). For example, the Ministry of Welfare and Health continually produces the barometry on health and social affairs. Its goal is to measure public welfare and health and the conditions of professional practices. The Ministry of Education also researches the attitudes and values amongst the young people in Finland. Habermas’s hermeneutic knowledge may also be recognized in recent Finnish sociology. While this kind of knowledge is mainly produced and utilized in the universities, it can also be taken into account in the public organizations of applied research. This research focuses in particular on
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Page 58 marginal social groups and alternative ways of living. The methodological nature of this kind of social research is qualitative. It may, for instance, categorize qualitative types of unemployed and displaced persons. An awareness of these types may turn out to be relevant for professional practitioners in public services and administration. In fact, qualitative hermeneutic knowledge is more significant in the 1990s than it was in the 1960s. The third type of interest in Habermas’s theory is emancipation. Critical knowledge is the contribution and necessary condition of emancipation. University departments appear to be the only possible places for critical sociological studies. There has also occurred a change in the form of critical sociological knowledge. The new research-based social critic no longer sets grand goals such as social progress. The Marxist arguments dealing with the rearrange-ment of the social conditions have disappeared; modern critical social knowledge in Finland does not give ethical answers but instead asks ethical questions. Pekka Sulkunen (1996) argues that the mission of sociology is not to merely describe society or to say how society should be, but to analyze social discussions in both everyday life and professional life and to make the unknown reasoning known. The critical potency of sociological thinking is based on that activity (Sulkunen 1996). The expansion of various research and development projects has generated a necessity to introduce a fourth cognitive interest and an additional form of knowledge. We would like to argue that it is possible to recognize a form of knowledge derived from developmental interest and action. The logic of this type of knowledge is based on pragmatic epistemology: if one manages to act correctly on the basis of the theory at hand, the good results may imply the truthfulness of the theory. In this way it is possible to thematize action-based knowledge and to locate it within knowledge production. The internal diversification of Finnish sociology started already in the 1970s. The process manifested itself as a pluralism of topics, theories, and methods of sociological studies. In a 1983 survey (Fuhrman and Kaukonen 1988), professional academic Finnish sociologists answered questions including the following one: What sociological authors or discussions have been of special interest to you during the past three years? The answers were Sociologists: (1) J. Hirsch, (2) J. Habermas, (3) M. Foucault, (4) E. Durkheim, (5) M. Kortteinen, (6) P. Bourdieu, (7) A. Eskola, and (8) N. Elias; Sociological discussions: (1) cultural studies, (2) women’s studies, (3) way of life, (4) new methods, (5) sociology of science, (6) crisis of the labor society, (7) new movements, and (8) sociology versus political economy. In the 1990s Finnish sociology is in a highly multiparadigmatic state. The important theoreticians and theories include, for instance, sociolin-guistic theories, theories of rational choice, J. Habermas and critical theory, and postmodern theoreticians such as N. Elias, P. Bourdieu, M. Foucault,
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Page 59 A. Giddens, Z. Baumann, J. Baudrillard, N. Luhmann, G. Schulze, M. Mann, and M. Maffesoli (Heiskala 1994; Rahkonen 1995). In addition to this diversity we can also spot a tendency to integrate various theoretical approaches to form a flexible synthesis of structural and cultural theories (Alapuro 1995). Today’s Finnish social research has some major topics such as welfare research, the sociology of work and occupations, population and health, classes and collective action, modernization, intellectuals and the study of science, social constructionism, and historical anthropology. In the annual meeting of the Finnish sociologists in 1997, the five most popular topics (measured by the number of presented papers) were (1) the sociology of health, (2) the sociology of work, (3) the sociology of family, (4) action research, and (5) the study of the life course (Abstracts of the Finnish sociological symposium in 1997). While the theoretical nature of Finnish sociology has fragmented, it has also become more reflexive and open to topical social issues outside the community of sociologists. In the 1990s social scientific study in Finland paid attention to the changes of work and working life, to the elderly people, to the welfare of citizens, and to new family types. During the past decade the qualitative turn has also become more prominent in Finnish social sciences. For instance, in the 1990s fourteen textbooks on the methodology of social sciences were published in Finland. Ten of them examine qualitative methods, two review both qualitative and quantitative methods, and only two concentrate on quantitative methodologies. The most fashionable methods used in graduate and postgraduate studies are discourse analysis, discussion analysis, biographical method, and thematic interviews. Qualitative methods have become accepted in applied social research and in the field of research and development too. Today’s social researchers are searching, through the help of qualitative methods, relevant cases and the best practices. Earlier in this chapter we described the ideological state of Finnish sociology in the 1960s through the notion of soft academic instrumentalism. The group of professional sociologists was rather small, homogeneous, and academic. The sociologists were state intellectuals who wanted to produce social scientific knowledge for the needs of governmental public policy. They were willing to provide decision makers with specific instruments and new conceptual tools. The ideology of Finnish sociology was connected with the ideas of rationalism and enlightenment. The mission of the Finnish social scientists was to develop Finland as another example of the Scandinavian welfare state by contributing relevant information on and interpretations of social issues. Today the situation of the social sciences is totally different. As the number of professional social scientists is much larger than in the 1960s, sociologists are also much more heterogeneous, making ideological consensus impossible. Yet many sociologists still believe in the old traditional values
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Page 60 of autonomous science and scholarship. They are still arguing for the view that social scientific knowledge can enlighten public officials and ordinary citizens alike. According to them, the ideological values of the sociological community are traditional: (1) scientific problems are set and solved in a context governed by the academic community, (2) scientific knowledge has a disciplinary structure, (3) the organizational division of scientific work is hierarchical, and (4) the goal of scientific knowledge is to gain new knowledge (Gibbons et al. 1994: 1–16; Robson 1993: 10–17). However, many social scientists, working mostly in the fields of applied and consultative research, think that an effective contribution to social policy and planning can result only from relying on and utilizing totally new principles and practices, some of which are that (1) scientific knowledge is carried out in the context of applications, (2) scientific knowledge has a multidisciplinary structure, (3) the organizational model of work is hetero-archial and transient, and (4) the goal of scientific research is to solve practical problems (Gibbons et al. 1994: 1–16; Robson 1993: 10–17). It is also possible to thematize a third type of professional ideology, a mixed model of the traditional and the pragmatic types. In this chapter we have attempted to illustrate two distinct ideological periods, “soft academic instrumentalism” and “fragmented reflexivity,” in Finnish professional sociology through the context of the welfare state. During the period of construction of the welfare state, universities were the main organizations where sociological knowledge was developed. Sociologists had a mission of promoting a centralized welfare state, which acted as their leading ideological framework. Academic sociologists represented mainly the ideals and practices of traditional, uniform, and objective science, which made it possible for them to produce both standard solutions and interpretations for the needs of political decision makers and national and local administrators. It was assumed that citizens become enlightened by academic sociological truths. Since the 1970s the sociological field has divided into numerous segments and theoretical approaches, a process parallel to the decentralization and deregulation of welfare services. Today’s sociologists are working as much as traditional researchers at the universities as they are as consultants and problem-solvers in public and private organizations. University researchers have been forced to search for partners across discipline boundaries. Indeed, one can outline an ideological mosaic consisting of the tradition of academic objectivism and many other trends extending from pragmatism to textualism. THE UNCERTAINTY OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES During the past four decades Finnish sociology has become fragmented, specialized, and diversified. The development described above follows a
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Page 61 more general international tendency. Today’s Western societies can be characterized as being complex, dynamic, and reflexive. While the role of the state has decreased, the importance of the markets has increased. Traditions are changing into fragmented narratives; traditional state authorities have been replaced with singular, often market-based, experts. We suggest that the current state of the social sciences can also be characterized by such attributes as complexity and reflexivity. Traditions are changing in the social sciences: The fragmented niche expert has replaced the academic intellectual. Earlier restrictions are in the process of vanishing because of international data communications networks, global mass media, and the increased mobility of researchers. As the dynamics of social change have become violent, social scientists also face continuous uncertainty; the individual social scientist is supposed to be flexible and reflexive. As a result, a new kind of design and ideology is emerging in the field of the social sciences. As Risto Alapuro (1995: 175) writes, “the feeling of ambiguity is shared by many sociologists, including a new recognition of uncertainties and complexities in their own role.” REFERENCES Abstracts of the Finnish sociological symposium in 1997. 1997. Publications of the Westermarck Society, Helsinki. Alapuro, Risto. 1995. ‘‘Structure and Culture: Finnish Sociology, 1990–1994.” Acta Sociologica 38: 113–214. Alasuutari, Pertti. 1996. Toinen Tasavalta [the second republic]. Tampere, Fin.: Vastapaino. Allardt, Erik. 1976. “Dimensions of Welfare in a Comparative Scandinavian Study.” Acta Sociologica 19: 227– 39. ———. 1993. “Scandinavian Sociology and Its European Roots and Elements.” Pp. 119–40 in Birgitta Nedelman and Pjotr Sztompka, eds., Sociology in Europe: In Search of Identity. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. ———. 1994. “The Development and Present State of Sociology in Finland.” Pp. 86–107 in Raj P. Mohan and Arthur S. Wilke, eds. International Handbook of Contemporary Developments in Sociology. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. ———. 1995. “The Formative Years of Scandinavian Sociology: Acta Sociologica 1955–1974.” Acta Sociologica 38: 339–47. ———. 1996. Hyvinvointitutkimus ja elämänpolitiikka [Welfare Research and Life Policy]. Forssa: Janus. Beck, Ulrich, Anthony Giddens, and Scott Lash, eds. 1994. Reflexive Modernization. Cambridge, Eng.: Polity Press. Erikson, Robert, and Hannu Uusitalo. 1987. “The Scandinavian Approach to Welfare Research.” Pp. 62–78 in Robert Erikson, Erik J. Hansen, Stein Ringen, and Hannu Uusitalo, eds., The Scandinavian Model: Welfare States and Welfare Research. New York: M. E. Sharpe.
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Page 62 Esping-Andersen, Göran. 1990. The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Cambridge, Eng.: Polity Press. Falk, Pasi. 1979. Social Scientific Research in Finlad [Sosiaalitieteellinen Tutkimus Suomessa]. Publications of the Academy of Finland 3/1979. Helsinki: Edita. Fuhrman, Ellsworth R., and Erkki Kaukonen. 1998. “On the Circulation and Le-gitimation of Social Science Knowledge: The Case of Finnish Sociology.” Social Epistemology 2: 43–59. Gibbons, Michael, Camille Limoges, Helga L. Nowothy, Simon Schwartzmana, Peter Scott, and Martin Trown. 1994. The New Production of Knowledge— The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies. London: Sage. Gurvitch, Georges. 1971. The Social Frameworks of Knowledge. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Habermas, Jürgen. 1981. Erkenntnis und Intresse. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Heiskala, Risto, ed. 1994. Sosiologian Teorian Nykysuuntauksia [trends in contemporary sociology]. Helsinki: Gaudeamus. Kuusi, Pekka. [1961] 1964. Social Policy for the Sixties. London: Macmillan. Rahkonen, Keijo, ed. 1995. Sosiologian Uusimmat Virtaukset [The Latest Trends in Sociology]. Helsinki: Gaudeamus. Robson, Colin. 1993. Real World Research: A Resource for Social Scientists and Practitioner-Researchers. Oxford: Blackwell. Sulkunen, Pekka. 1996. Johdatus Sosiologiaan [an introduction to sociology]. Juva, Fin.: WSOY. Scott, Peter. 1997. “The Changing Role of the University in the Production of New Knowledge.” Tertiary Education and Management 3(1): 5–14. “The State and Standard of Scientific Research in Finland: Humanities and Social Sciences.” 1997. Publications of the Academy of Finland 8/1997. Helsinki: Edita. Stehr, Nico. 1994. Knowledge Societies. London: Sage. Weiss, Caroll. 1979. “The Many Meanings of Research Utilization.” Public Ad-ministration Review:426–31.
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Page 63 6 Beneath the Veil of Market Rationality: Cognitive Lumping and Splitting in Narratives of Economic Development S. Wojciech Sokolowski Are large bureaucracies an efficient form of business organization? Are the markets? What is the proper role of government in modern economy and society? What is that of business? Does ownership form of business enterprise matter, and why? Do cultural norms, values, beliefs, and expectations? How much decision-making autonomy should the management have? How much should the workers? These and related questions occupy a central place in most public debates concerning the problem of economic development and modernization, as their answers have profound implications for the interests and well-being of a large number of people and entire nations. Consequently, numerous social scientists representing various schools of thought and political per-suasions contributed their vast knowledge and expertise to proposing different solutions to economic development problems. Recently, however, a different type of social and economic policy discourse gained prominence, especially in Europe and North America. This discourse, popularly referred to as neoliberalism, proposes a simplistic concept of ‘‘free market” as a panacea for all social and economic problems and calls for the massive cuts of functions performed by public agencies, especially the so-called welfare state. While the dominant position of neoliberalism in public discourse has been linked to the long-term influence peddling by conservative interest groups, it cannot be simply dismissed as a work of propaganda. The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1998: 30) explains that neoliberal dominance of public discourse by the process of “inculcation,” whereby conservative
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Page 64 ideology, dressed up in economic rationalizations and popular buzzwords laden with social values, such as progress, efficiency, or freedom, is constantly repeated in the media to the point that they are treated as selfevident by the public. A good example of the inculcation process is the program “Marketplace” broadcast daily on National Public Radio, which addresses a vast array of social, cultural, and political problems from a perspective that views them as embodiments of the institution of the market. This process is akin to Max Weber’s ([1904] 1958) explanation of the role of Protestant ethic in capitalist development. The key concept in that explanation is elective affinity between a belief or ideology and the interests of a group gaining political or economic prominence. Such was the case of various Protestant “heresies” that preached values that were conducive to the interests of the ascending capitalist class and thus were espoused by capitalists to legitimate their growing economic and political power. As the economic and political power of the followers propel the otherwise obscure doctrines to prominence, they become a taken-for-granted discourse or “stock knowledge’’ (Berger and Luckmann 1966) espoused by large segments of the population that do not necessarily share the economic or political interests of the group that initially promoted it. The inculcation process is not necessarily a Machiavellian conspiracy to indoctrinate the public, but also a largely unconscious process of reliance on “stock knowledge,” that is, people repeating in good faith conventional opinions and views that they take at face value, without critically examining their validity. “Stock knowledge” is a socially constructed cognitive mechanism that “makes sense” of everyday life experience by infusing a meaning or a seemingly coherent interpretation into what otherwise may appear as a series of disjointed and haphazard events. Knowledge does not come free; it requires considerable effort or “transaction cost” (Williamson 1975) that is needed to produce information necessary in making everyday life decisions. “Stock knowledge” cuts that transaction cost by providing ready-made, taken-for-granted beliefs and interpretative schemata that allow human actors to operate under the illusion of rationality without bearing the burden of finding the relevant information by themselves. That, in turn, explains the readiness of otherwise rational people in accepting conventional myths and narratives that help them interpret situations that are otherwise puzzling or defy rational explanation altogether. One of the biggest surprises of our times was the series of events commonly referred to as the “fall of Communism.” For the most of the twentieth century, the geopolitical division of the world into two major spheres of influence generated interpretative schemata that portrayed the compli-cated world of politics and economic development in rather simplistic terms of a struggle between “capitalism” and “communism.” It mattered little
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Page 65 whether these interpretations were empirically accurate. What really counted was the functionality of these interpretations to everyday understanding of “what was going on” in the world, identifying “friends” and “foes,” and explaining to the public unpopular political decisions, such as the limits on consumption and austerity measures imposed by the Soviet-style regimes, or the U.S. military spending and its involvement in military adventures across the globe (e.g., Korea and Vietnam). The sudden ‘‘fall of Communism” in Eastern Europe not only took most observers by surprise, but it also shattered the worldview based on the bipolar division of global politics into two major spheres of influence. This cognitive void created a sense of anomie that prompted a search for alternative explanations. That can explain the rapid popularity and growth of the neoliberal narratives, eagerly supplied by the warlocks of the conservative or anticommunist creed. This chapter examines the process of inculcation of the public policy discourse with the neoliberal ideology of the market by investigating the influences of popular stock knowledge on scholarly accounts of the economic development in Eastern Europe. These accounts are rooted in the so-called modernization theories of development. That framework treats social, political, and economic institutions of Western developed nations as the benchmark of economic rationality and evaluates the development of other countries by comparing it to that benchmark (Tipps 1973). I show how this style of explanation, influenced by opinions found in popular culture and political ideologies of the times, reproduces the stock knowledge instead of testing and challenging its validity. In this analysis, I employ analytical concepts proposed by Zerubavel (1991, 1996), who observed that popular perceptions of empirical reality are organized into perceptual chunks, which he called “islands of mean-ing.”“Islands of meaning” are a priori conceptual categories or social schemata (for a literature review, see Augoustinos and Innes 1990; Markus and Zajonc 1985) that help people coping with the ambiguities of everyday life by mentally organizing elements of that life into meaningful spatial or temporal wholes. Two cognitive operations are involved in the process of island formation: lumping together elements deemed to be similar, and splitting apart elements perceived as dissimilar. Stated differently, elements belonging to the same “island of meaning” are perceived as more similar and close, whereas elements belonging to two different islands as more dissimilar and distant than they actually might be. The end result is a “cognitive map”—a mental image portraying otherwise continuous reality in the form of discrete chunks and clusters surrounded by void creating a perception of a clear-cut distinction or a “quantum leap” that separates individual “islands.” That “cognitive map” helps human actors to interpret their everyday life
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Page 66 experiences by allocating them into respective “islands of meaning” and drawing ready-made inferences about their significance, moral value, underlying causes, or future implications. This chapter examines how cognitive lumping and splitting of various elements of social, political, and economic order into two dichotomous “islands of meaning” of popular imagery, socialism and capitalism, affect the production of knowledge on economic development in Eastern Europe. To be sure, this chapter does not attempt to refute or corroborate any particular body of research, nor does it intend to condemn or vindicate any particular political-economic regime. The subject of this investigation is limited to the influence of popular “stock knowledge” and professional beliefs and ideologies on scholarly work. The case I selected for this investigation involves an account of the economic development in Poland after World War II published during the political-economic transition that country underwent in 1989. The main controversy associated with that development is the introduction of central planning—which underwent numerous changes over time and was finally abandoned, at least as the official doctrine of the state. From the organizational point of view, the centrally planned system re-sembled a gigantic corporation, forming a hierarchical pyramid with the Planning Commission on the top, respective ministries as the second tier, industrial associations (cartels) as the third-ranking echelon, and the productive units (firms) as the base. The Central Planning Commission had the authority to design, direct, and oversee the execution of all tasks of the productive units forming the bulk of the nation’s economy (Chavance 1994; Feiwel 1965; Wilczynski 1982). The official goal of central planning was to rebuild the war-devastated economy and transform Poland from a backward, agricultural country to a modern industrial and rational society comparable to the developed countries of Western Europe. In reality, however, it was a set of more or less temporary solutions implemented over time to deal with the emerging social and economic problems created by rapid development. The initial phase, known as the Three-Year Plan (1947–1949), which led to a successful reconstruction of the war-devastated economy, was followed by an extreme centralization of the economy (the Six-Year Plan, 1950–1955) based on the Soviet model. Because the Six-Year Plan fell short of its targets, it came under harsh criticism from leading Polish economists calling for reforms (Chavance 1994; Feiwel 1965). In most general terms, the post-1956 period (consecutive five-year plans) was characterized by gradual, albeit partial, decentralization, experimentation with various forms of financial incentives directed at both firms and individuals, and a relative increase of managerial decision-making autonomy (Chavance 1994; Feiwel 1965). The post-1956 period also saw grow-
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Page 67 ing internal conflicts between the hard-line and the reformist factions of the ruling apparatus. Those internal struggles, resulting in frequent policy shifts, coupled with unpopularity of the austerity measures introduced by the planning authorities, created a prolonged political crisis resulting in sporadic outbursts of social protest (Kennedy 1991). In 1989 negotiations between government officials and informal opposition groups led to the election of a new government that officially renounced the principles of central planning and introduced a wide range of sweeping economic and political reforms. Given the controversial, comprehensive, and often ambiguous nature of those changes, it is virtually impossible to capture them in a single narrative without making more or less arbitrary choices and omissions. A certain degree of arbitrariness, either ideologically or analytically motivated, is indeed unavoidable in social science (Bourdieu 1984). Therefore, rather than chastising social scientists for the ‘‘lack of scientific objectivity,” a more fruitful approach is to examine how these subjective factors, brought a priori to the analysis, affect the conclusions reached by the researcher. This chapter accomplishes that task by exploring how the stylistic req-uisites of the narrative chosen to tell the story of Poland’s economic development affect the selection and interpretation of empirical evidence, the conclusions reached on that basis, and those conclusions’ theoretical implications for further research. THE MODERN MANICHAEAN NARRATIVE AND ITS STYLISTIC DICTATES As casual observation of popular culture can attest, the dramatic struggle of good and evil makes a good narrative for popular consumption. That narrative has its roots in the views of the third-century Persian philosopher Manes, whose writings had a profound influence on Christianity, especially its Protestant variety found in Western countries. In Manes’ cosmogony, the male Light and the female Darkness form two separate and antagonistic elements of the universe whose struggle for domination shape the world as we know it. The key rule of this genre is the exaggerated dichotomy of the dramatis personae. The good character must be super-good and amiable in every conceivable respect, while the bad character must be super-bad, a morally reprehensible monster without a trace of any redeeming quality. Any ambiguity here is incompatible with the rules of the genre (Barthes [1957] 1987: 15 ff.). The construction (and reconstruction by the audience) of the characters in such dramatic narratives involves cognitive lumping and splitting (Zerubavel 1991, 1996) of a real-life variety of personal traits into two ide-
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Page 68 alized, separate, and diametrically opposed entities, the protagonist and his antagonist, commonly known as the good guy and the bad guy. While real-life people represent a mixture of various character traits, some of them desirable, others undesirable, and still others neutral, in constructing the dramatis personae this mixture is cognitively “sorted” in such a way that all “good” and “bad” traits are lumped into respective characters who are then set apart as far as possible into two polar extremes. This process of constructing the dramatis personae reveals the first dictate of the modern Manichaean narrative, which I call the principle of absolute separation. That principle simply requires the key characters involved in the drama to remain unambiguously distinct and separate throughout the entire story, ideally one being a simple negation or the polar opposite of the other. Its purpose is to set the stage for the drama in such a way that the audience can easily anticipate the course the story is taking—which creates dramatic tension that grabs the audience’s attention. The second requisite of the modern Manichaean narrative goes beyond the rather static spatial imagery of two separate ‘‘islands” and transforms that imagery into interpretative schemata or expectations about the dynamics and outcome of the drama’s plot. I call it the principle of causal essentialism, which stipulates that the behavior of the dramatis personae must be a transparent consequence of the salient properties that define their characters. There could be only one explanation in the Manichaean genre of why the characters are doing what the story tells us: the bad guy does evil things because his character is evil, while the good guy does virtuous things because his nature is virtuous. Any other reason or motive can undermine the principle of absolute separation by stipulating that the difference between the characters is not as profound as the story tells us. The end product of these two principles is a highly stylized and simplistic image of human behavior in which unambiguously defined self-contained, self-motivated, and self-directed monads (individuals or organized groups, cf. the popular television series “Star Trek”) float in an abstract space that serves merely as a backdrop to reveal the character traits of the main actors. The drama develops when these monads find themselves on a collision course and end only when the “bad” monad is either destroyed or forced to change its character. While few people would seriously argue that this is a realistic representation of social life in the ordinary sense of the word, studies of the mass media impact have demonstrated that such highly dramatized and seemingly unrealistic portrayals cultivate and reinforce certain expectations of how society works, what is important and what is not, what is right and what is wrong (Gerbner and Gross 1976; see also Van Poecke 1980). In that capacity, the dramatic characters created in accord with the rules of the narrative act as “islands of meaning” or social schemata that influence the perception and interpretation of everyday life events.
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Page 69 The post–World War II geopolitical division of the spheres of influence separated by the Iron Curtain set the stage for the latter-day cosmic drama of a mortal struggle between two elemental forces of modern politicaleconomic universe: the menacing bureaucratic juggernaut of the State, and the Free Market allowing the common folks to pursue their liberty and happiness. Needless to add that this Manichaean imagery was duly mir-rored on the “other side” of the Iron Curtain, where the forces of light under the fearless leadership of the Party battled the tyranny and decadence of the “black reaction.” Such imagery created a fertile ground for the myriad of dramatic accounts widely circulated in the media, in which the competing superpowers were represented in moral, almost biblical, terms of the struggle between good and evil. While the governments on both sides of the Iron Curtain often implemented quite similar solutions to social and economic problems, the propaganda machine spent considerable efforts to interpret these solutions as totally different from those employed on the other side of the Iron Curtain. For example, both Soviet Bloc and “capitalist” countries (especially in Asia) relied on substantial government involvement in setting economic policies and regulating the economy, and on the same organizational form (large-scale bureaucracy), to organize economic activities. Of course, the levels of government involvement and the centralization of bureaucratic authority varied among countries, but the principle remained the same. Yet the Manichaean mythology, following the principle of absolute separation, ignored these similarities and portrayed the former Soviet Bloc countries as government-driven command economies antithetical to anything existing in the “free market economies.” Second, following the principle of causal essentialism, the sole cause of economic success or failure is attributed to essential (and caricatured) properties of the respective political economic regimes. The “free world’’ economies succeeded, we are told, because their idealized essence is free market, free choice, and consensus; the Soviet-style economies failed because their idealized (or perhaps demonized) essence is government command of the economy, limiting free choice. Not only considerations of vast historical, geopolitical, or demographic differences between nation-states, but even a simple fact that the most successful economies of the world, such as Japan, Taiwan, or South Korea, rely on rather heavy-handed (by U.S. standards) government control are simply ignored by that sort of narrative. In the same vein, the political-economic reforms initiated in Eastern Europe in late 1980s are invariably interpreted within the narrow range of finales allowed by the Manichaean narrative. The “Evil Empire” ruled by a powerful centralized government bureaucracy was either defeated, its menacing military-industrial complex evaporating into thin air virtually overnight, or its character was fundamentally reformed when it passed a
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Page 70 declaration renouncing Communism and pledging allegiance to the free market. So the history thus ended and they all lived happily thereafter. The collapse of the Soviet empire in 1989 was hailed as the vindication of that popular mythology and as the victory of market efficiency and capitalism over government intervention and socialism. The triumphant conservative chest-thumping accompanied fervent denunciations from the left suggesting that the former USSR was never a socialist country—yet both sides seemingly agreed on the basic tenet of the modern political-economic Manichaeism: that the Soviet and Western ways of running the economy were two islands separated by a quantum leap, and thus having very little in common. A MANICHAEAN VIEW OF CENTRAL PLANNING I will now examine how the form of the narrative identified in the preceding section affects the focus, the interpretation of empirical material, and conclusions reached in the book by the Polish economist Bartlomiej Kaminski (1991) under the suggestive title The Collapse of State Socialism: The Case of Poland. The selection of this work is dictated primarily by two considerations. First, it is a scholarly publication rather than a journalistic account, which makes it fair to hold it to a somewhat higher standard of critical reasoning. Second, it deals with a wide spectrum of political and economic problems experienced throughout the postwar period in Poland in a manner that makes it fairly representative of the popular genre of narratives of Eastern European economic development under scrutiny. The principal argument offered by Professor Kaminski can be summarized as follows. The fall of central planning was caused by its faulty design, rather than ineptitude of key decision makers, as some writers seem to suggest. On the contrary, the decision makers showed remarkable skill in their attempts to overcome emerging contingencies, yet their efforts were doomed to fail because of the structural deficiencies of central planning. The root cause of these structural deficiencies was the fusion of the two spheres that in developed capitalist countries remain separate: the economy and the government. The institution of central planning created a single-sphere economy, where all key decisions were made at the central level and transmitted down the administrative hierarchy, leaving little discretion to the managers of individual firms. That curtailment of managerial autonomy by directives of central planning created insurmountable difficulties in efficient allocation of key economic resources and created their chronic shortages. That, in turn, diverted the efforts of the planners from economic development to dealing with the contingencies created by the system itself. The alleviation of those systemic problems could be achieved only by implementing market mechanisms, especially loosening the administrative
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Page 71 control exercised by central authorities and substantially increasing the firm management’s autonomy in setting the production goals, as well as pricing and selling the produced goods. However, political constraints —mainly the Soviet influence and the doctrinaire rigidity of the Party apparatus—prevented the implementation of those solutions. As a result, the problems continued to mount, causing widespread popular dissatisfaction marked by periodic outbursts of social protest and increasing alienation of the ruling elite from the society. At the end of the 1970s, these structural deficiencies of the system brought the country into a state of permanent legitimation crisis that eventually toppled the regime. The key element of this argument is its causal essentialism that rests on the analytic separation of two effects: the effect of the essential features of the system itself and the effect of the decision makers acting under the system. Without that analytic separation, the argument does not hold up under the standards of causal logic. Similar outcomes or problems can have many different causes, and so it is imperative to positively attribute a specific outcome or problem to a specific cause. A standard empirical investigation following the rules of inductive logic involves a comparison of two empirical conditions that, ceteris paribus, differ only in the presence or absence of the hypothesized causes. Thus, the differences in outcomes observed in these conditions can be attributed to the presence or absence of the causal factor in question. The ceteris paribus requirement is essential, because without it we cannot rule out factors other than the hypothesized causes leading to the observed effect. Yet the ceteris paribus condition is difficult to meet in the case of studying nation-states for a rather obvious reason: finding two nearly identical nation states that differ only in the presence or absence of the condition of interest borders the impossible. Of course, that problem can easily be avoided by changing the unit of analysis from nation-states as whole to its subcomponents, such as sectors of the economy, industries, fields, institutions, or even organizations. On that level of analysis, it is much more empirically feasible to find similar units or “conditions” and then assess the differences, if any, among them. Such a course of investigation seems to be an obvious solution to the ceteris paribus problem described above. The failure to employ that solution by an experienced researcher can be explained only by his a priori assumption that units or conditions comparable to those under investigation cannot be found. Thus we arrive at the constraint imposed on the research procedure by the other requisite of the Manichaean narrative—absolute separation of industrial economies into two totally separate, and thus incomparable, islands. To be sure, it is theoretically possible that a society under investigation is so unique that no even remotely comparable counterparts can be found elsewhere in the world. Arguably, the !Kung of the Kalahari desert,
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Page 72 the only known hunting and gathering society in modern times (Marshall Thomas 1959), is such a case. Yet an a priori belief that a relatively modern industrial country in the middle of Europe is such a maverick is simply untenable. The existence of cross-nationally comparable organizational structures in the centrally planned and market economies is not just a hypothetical possibility. There is a considerable body of literature, to which Professor Kaminski makes a few passing references (pp. 6, 17 ff.), arguing that at least structural (if not exact) equivalents in both types of economy exist. That implies, in turn, that valid comparisons of organizational forms on both sides of the Iron Curtain can be made. As I will momentarily show, such a theoretical framework not only naturally yields itself to analysis of the central planning system, but it also could have considerably strengthened the main argument presented in the book about the structural deficiencies of that system. Yet employing that theoretical framework implicitly violates the principle of absolute separation that governs Kaminski’s narrative. Without that principle, the entire argument would lose its allure to the neoliberal ideology, because it would imply that something other than the absence of the “free market”—the shibboleth separating centrally planned economies from the rest of the world—might be responsible for the economic problems discussed in the book. That formal requirement of the story line, I argue, prevented his analysis from moving beyond the stale imagery of cold war mythology toward a more fruitful discussion of some of the central questions of organizational theory listed in the opening paragraph of this chapter. A ROAD NOT TAKEN: ALTERNATIVE VIEW OF CENTRAL PLANNING In the mid-1970s, Williamson (1975) proposed a theoretical argument explaining the existence of large-scale corporations in what is supposed to be a market economy, such as the United States. Despite his rather dense prose, the argument is quite simple and consistent with the principal assumption of mainstream economic theories: rationality of the economic actors manifested in their efficiency-maximizing behavior. Large organizations exist, Williamson argues, because they are more efficient than free markets. Their efficiency comes from the fact that a complex economy requires an exponentially growing number of transactions. If these transactions were to be carried through contracts between independent parties in a free market environment, the overall cost of doing business, that is, the costs of constant monitoring of the markets, drafting contracts, monitoring their execution, and enforcing violations and noncompliance, would be very high indeed. If, on the other hand, the suppliers of various raw
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Page 73 materials, subcomponents, logistics, and so on are integrated into a single corporate entity under centralized management, the argument goes, most of those elaborate monitoring and legal procedures necessitated by the complexity of market transactions are replaced with administrative supervision, and that substantially cuts the cost of doing business. This approach provoked an immediate criticism by sociologists of organizations (Granovetter 1985; for a review see also Perrow 1986), who proposed two closely related counterarguments. First, the transaction cost approach misses the role of social ties, norms, and values in business transactions that act as informal social control mechanisms reducing the need for formal monitoring. Furthermore, even if the large organizations did eliminate some of the costs associated with market transactions, they would also add new costs of their own. It is a well-known fact that officers in large organizations use their positions to advance their own goals or personal careers, often at the expense of achieving the organization’s stated mission. Taking into account informal rules and networks that reduce the cost of transaction monitoring, and the cost resulting from opportunistic behavior of the organization’s officers, the supposed economic efficiency of large organizations is a non sequitur. If large organizations offer any advantages at all, argue the critics, these advantages stem not from their purported economic efficiency, but from their power to shape their environment to their advantage, undercut competition, and monopolize the markets. Three hypotheses can be drawn from these two competing theories. The first hypothesis is a straightforward logical consequence of Williamson’s transaction cost approach: the larger the organization, the more efficient its economic performance. The second hypothesis follows the argument about the importance of informal norms and social connections: the greater the role of informal norms and social networks, the lesser the influence of formal rules and procedures on the organization’s behavior. Third, the claim about the internal cost created by opportunistic behavior of organi-zation’s officers leads to the following hypothesis: the larger the organization, the greater its cost created by opportunistic behavior, and thus the less efficient the organization’s economic performance. The empirical content of Kaminski’s book allows, if not formal testing (for such would require gathering additional information), then at least some provisional evaluation of all three hypotheses, leading to conclusions that are consistent with the author’s own argument about deficient performance of the centrally planned system, as compared to firms operating in a more decentralized milieu. There is only one string attached: that line of inquiry would require the abandonment of the principle of absolute separation of the Eastern European “island” from the market economies. Yet Kaminski is unwilling to give up that a priori requirement of his narrative and dismisses this potentially useful lead in the very opening of the
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Page 74 first chapter of his book, where he lays down the key assumption on which his entire argument rests. His strategy follows the logic of lumping and splitting. Central planning is not like the rest of the world, we are told, because the state and the economy are fused together to the point that they cannot be separated. Cognitive lumping is particularly visible in a single metaphor the author uses to buttress his point. In that metaphor he literally compares central planning to different kinds of vegetables put into a blender and pulped into an indistinguishable mass. What needs to be underscored here is that the principle of absolute separation between two dramatis personae of Kamin-ski’s narrative determines the direction of his entire argument, yet it is assumed a priori based on a single metaphor, without a shred of empirical evidence. His entire analysis of empirical reality under the scrutiny hinges on the conceptualization derived from the structure of the Manichaean drama that requires absolute separation of its dramatic characters. A different and more plausible interpretation, in my view, of central planning emerges when we abandon the straitjacket of the Manichaean narrative and look at the Polish case in a broader perspective of belated economic development (Gerschenkron [1952] 1992). From that perspective, the central planning system introduced in Poland in 1945 was simply a strategy of “taking shortcuts” to “catch up’’ with more advanced countries by emulating organizational solutions perceived as “successful.” Before World War II, Poland was an underdeveloped country with over 70 percent of the population living in rural areas (GUS) with a backward agrarian economy. Any backward agrarian country attempting rapid industrialization faces a twofold problem: the implementation of an adequate banking system to finance the industrial project (which Poland also lacked), and the transformation of the preindustrial agricultural labor into skilled industrial labor (Gerschenkron [1952] 1992). In the Polish case, both problems, the lack of an adequate financing system and shortages of skilled industrial labor, were further exacerbated by the enormous losses the country suffered during World War II. Nearly 40 percent of national wealth (as compared to the 1939 level) was destroyed, including a 50 percent loss of the communication infrastructure, 60 percent of schools, over 60 percent of trade, and 60 percent of public administration (Feiwel 1971), and over 11 million lives had been lost (one-third of the country’s population), including 40 percent of its teachers, 50 percent of its physicians, and over 30 percent of its engineers (Alton 1955; Halecki 1957). The implementation of central planning in Poland solved all these problems simultaneously by establishing a central, state-owned bank and creating an administrative authority capable of allocating both human and material resources to where they were most needed and at the same time regulating the price system by linking it primarily to the planned cost of
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Page 75 production rather than market demand for goods (Feiwel 1965). From that perspective, central planning can be conceptualized as replacing markets with an organizational hierarchy that, following Williamson’s (1975) argument, integrated most sectors of the national economy under centralized corporate management to reduce the cost of economic development. In fact, this centralized organizational structure closely followed the Soviet model, which, in turn, was patterned on the organization of German industry at the end of the nineteenth century with one notable exception. Due to the gross inadequacy of the domestic private banking system, the role of banks in German cartels was replaced by the centralized state that, like the German bankers, provided both investment funds and tight control mechanisms curbing the between-firm competition (Gerschenkron [1952] 1992). Absent a priori assumptions about the great mental gap that is supposed to separate central planning from the free-market world, it seems reason-able that the structural features of a centrally planned economy, while markedly different from the organization of highly developed market economies, show remarkable similarities to the organizational features of market economies at their earlier stages of development. While the structural equivalence of the Soviet-style state and German banks is a moot proposition, the organization of the industry into centralized cartellike associations shows sufficient similarities to warrant at least comparisons. Most important, such a comparison approximates the ceteris paribus requirement described in the preceding section. “Everything else being (more or less) equal,” the two cases differed in one important aspect of interest—the level and scope of centralization resulting from state control of the economy. Thus, the difference in economic performance, if any, could be attributed to that difference and scope of centralization, had this approach to studying central planning been taken. TWO NARRATIVES COMPARED Thus far I showed that the story of Poland’s postwar development can fit two different narratives with two different theoretical and political implications. One is the narrative of relative backwardness (Gerschenkron [1952] 1992) and the more-or-less successful attempts to overcome it by replacing markets with organizational structures (Williamson 1975). Following Schluchter (1981), I call that narrative historical comparativism. The other one is the Manichaean narrative of a dark and obtuse system, severely punished for straying from the course illuminated by the beam of market rationality radiating from the West (Kaminski 1991). I will now demonstrate that the historical comparative view offers a theoretically superior analysis of central planning that allows addressing questions concerning the relationship between economic organization and
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Page 76 society that the other account cannot. Assuming crossnational compara-bility of large-scale formal bureaucracies throws the Polish case against Williamson’s argument that “bigger is better,” and confirms Granovetter’s proposition claiming the importance of informal networks in organizational behavior. The Manichaean narrative, on the other hand, treats the Polish case as largely sui generis without any direct relevance to Western countries other than providing ammunition for political propaganda. It is important to underscore that taking the historical comparativism route would lead to conclusions essentially similar to those reached by Kaminski in his work under investigation, but it would require changing some ideologically tainted notions about the nature of centrally planned economies. Consequently, I interpret the author’s failure to take that more advantageous alternative route as an indicator of limitations imposed on scholarly work by popular perceptions and dominant ideologies. In the historical comparativism approach, the main problem to be explained is the observed deviation of the state socialist system from the efficiency level predicted by the theory—in this case, Williamson’s argument claiming greater efficiency of large-scale organizations. Following Popper’s ([1935] 1959) logic of scientific discovery, the crucial proof of a theory comes not from the evidence that is consistent with the theory’s claim (for such evidence can almost always be mustered), but from bona fide attempts to find one that is inconsistent. Thus, citing examples of efficient large-scale organizations (such as those operating in the developed economies) is not as important for a critical examination of Williamson’s hypothesis as examining evidence that could disprove that hypothesis. In that light, treating a centrally planned economy as a special case of a large-scale “hierarchy’’ or corporation has the potential of a tremendous theoretical payoff—providing the counterfactual to test the transaction-cost theory of complex organizations. Moreover, empirical evidence cited by Kaminski (1991) can clearly be interpreted as contradicting the claim that large-scale hierarchies offer any transaction costs savings. The failures of the centrally planned economies to achieve its advertised goal of sustainable growth are well known. In fact, the growth rates show a rather steady long-term decline between 1951 and 1989 in all centrally planned Eastern European economies (Chavance 1994), which resulted in an almost permanent state of economic crisis. Possible explanations of those failures can range from external factors, such as unfavorable terms of foreign trade and Poland’s position in the world market, to the behavior of human actors within the system itself. In fact, Kaminski as well as other writers (Feiwel 1965; Firlit and Chlopecki 1992; Kawalec 1992; Marody 1992; Nowak 1992; Pawlik 1992; Sarapata 1992) concentrate on the latter, documenting behavioral factors that effectively derailed the planning mechanisms in Poland. Such factors fall into two broadly defined and inter-
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Page 77 related categories: opportunistic behavior of firm managers and the widespread existence of informal ties and networks, both creating substantial transaction costs of doing business in a centralized, hierarchical environment. Managerial opportunism involved a wide range of activities calculated to personally benefit individual officers’ careers or income, but which were detrimental to the efficient functioning of the planned economy. Examples include falsifying official records to conceal true productive output of the enterprise from planning authorities and hoarding the “surplus,” illegal barter in scarce resources, price gouging, lowering quality standards of manufactured goods, various forms of bribery and kickbacks, and ordinary theft. The falsification of official records was particularly detrimental, because it led to setting grossly inadequate production goals, known as “taut planning” (Kaminski 1991: 68; see also Chavance 1994). The proliferation of informal social ties and unwritten rules of conduct aiming to circumvent the formal national structures of central planning was one of the most pervasive and paradoxical features of Polish postwar so ciety. Studies of the informal networks among workers of state enterprises in Poland, initiated during the 1970s (Firlit and Chlopecki 1992; Kawalec 1992; Marody 1992; Nowak 1992; Pawlik 1992; Sarapata 1992) found widely spread informal solidarity networks controlling the pace of work, encouraging and regulating the mutual exchange of favors, diverting public resources to private use, circumventing formal authority relations, and generally disrupting work discipline and substantially lowering productivity. The widespread existence of managerial opportunism and informal networks under central planning provide rather strong evidence contradicting Williamson’s (1975) hypothesis claiming superior efficiency of administrative hierarchies. Instead of reducing the “transaction cost” of surveying the market, these practices rendered the planning process severely crippled, if not altogether useless, and created the need for substantial manpower employed solely to ‘‘scout” the market for scarce supplies, replacement parts, and buyers of hoarded goods (Kawalec 1992). In effect, a centrally planned economy had to bear three types of transaction costs—(1) those normally found in more decentralized market economies (i.e., “scouting” the market), (2) the loss of performance due to informal networks and the “gray economy”—which according to some estimates (Bednarski and Kokoszczynski 1990) reached about 12 percent of the GDP—and (3) the cost of the planning apparatus itself. Moreover, the cited examples support the alternative hypotheses of organizational sociologists claiming the importance of informal social ties for the economic performance of formal organizations. First, the large scale of the planning “hierarchy” created ample opportunity for “under the table” deals based on informal networks, which formal planning procedures could
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Page 78 not effectively overcome. Second, the lack of effective oversight created a fertile ground for opportunistic behavior and corruption among both the managerial staff and nonmanagerial employees. However, the causes of both factors can hardly be attributed to the effects of formal rationality underlying bureaucratic organization, state-controlled or otherwise. They can be traced to the traditional social solidarity characteristic of agrarian society (Weber [1904], 1958; Thomas and Znaniecki [1918–1920] 1984; see also Fukuyama 1995), and its prev-alence in Poland can be explained by large-scale migration of a rural population seeking industrial employment. Between 1946 and 1990, the urban population in Poland grew threefold, from 8 million to nearly 24 million. The net population influx from the countryside, that is, including only the people who permanently settled in towns, accounted for over 40 percent of that growth (author’s calculations based on GUS data). These figures underestimate the actual country-to-town migration because they do not include those migrants who, due to stringent regulations, could not obtain a permanent urban residence permit. Although the negative impact of informal social networks and opportunism on the economic performance of central planning can provide a crucial test of the two alternative theories of complex organizations in question, it has a certain string attached to it. The informal social ties and opportunism they facilitate are factors that are external to the formal-rational rules of central planning, which in turn implies that central planning perished not because of inherently faulty design, but because of an adverse social environment. Such a conclusion, however, runs against the principle of causal essentialism that attributes all observable effects to the essential features of central planning conceived as a unique blend of political and economic institutions incomparable to other developing economies. That might explain why Kaminski did not find that explanation of his own empirical data very appealing. In contrast to the historical comparativist approach, the Manichaean narrative, favored by Kaminski, claims that the system was faulty by design. Therefore, the empirical problem it must explain is not why the system failed, but why it persisted for so long and even performed as advertised on some occasions. There are only two such instances that Kaminski acknowledges (pp. 95 ff.), one in 1949 and the other in 1971 (see also Chavance 1994, especially his chart on p. 4). Following Popper’s logic of falsification, those instances provide a serious challenge to Kaminski’s claim that central planning was fundamentally flawed. The reason is obvious: if the system was essentially incapable of overcoming its structural deficiencies, how can we explain the fact that sometimes it did function as advertised? The problem of contradicting empirical evidence can typically be solved in two ways: by either limiting the empirical scope of the theory, or by
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Page 79 adding auxiliary hypotheses to its core tenets (Lakatos 1978). In the case at hand, the first solution would imply limiting Kaminski’s theory of structural deficiencies of central planning by excluding certain independently defined conditions under which the system can perform as advertised. One such possibility is favorable political climate. A wave of reforms spread throughout Eastern Europe in the 1960s, temporarily boosting growth rates in virtually all centrally planned economies of the region. In Poland, however, reforms were stymied by political reaction to the reforms of 1956, and the economic performance continued to decline throughout the 1960s. An eruption of social unrest in 1968 and 1970 brought about sweeping changes in the political apparatus and a wave of reforms, followed by a sharp increase in growth rates (Chavance 1994; Kennedy 1991). It is thus quite plausible that had the favorable political climate persisted throughout the entire post–World War II period, the economic performance of the planned system would have improved. That explanation does not contra-dict the theory of the system’sdeficiencies; it merely limits its scope to less-than-favorable political conditions, which, I may add, is still a powerful critique of the system because it is unreasonable to expect such favorable conditions to prevail all the time. The second solution calls for identification of some external factors that, while not an essential or necessary part of centrally planned system, nonetheless exerts a strong influence on that system’s performance. An example of such an external factor is the already mentioned proliferation of informal networks and opportunism that virtually paralyzed the functioning of formal-rational mechanisms of planning. Yet both solutions run against the imperative of causal essentialism. It is so, because both solutions admit a possibility that some features observed within an a priori constructed “island” of central planning are not, or perhaps not always, caused by the essential properties of that island. To save the principle of causal essentialism, Kaminski had little choice in solving the problem of contradicting evidence other than explaining that evidence away as historical accidents, which is tantamount to declaring the inconvenient facts irrelevant. His explanation hinges on the fact that Poland’s boundaries changed considerably at the end of World War II and included an industrialized strip of land east of the Oder-Neisse line, previously under German jurisdiction. That industrial potential developed by the Germans explains, we are told (pp. 95 ff.), the initial success of central planning. The second performance increase, he argues, occurred in 1971 as a result of the combined effect of baby boomers hitting the job market and the influx of foreign credits. An obvious shortcoming of that argument is that it cannot be empirically proved or disproved due to the lack of a valid reference point, or counterfactual, allowing the separation of the effects of the “outside influx” of
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Page 80 resources from the country’s economic performance without that influx. But despite that shortcoming, his explanation saves the principle of causal essentialism by stipulating that ‘‘the system” consumed the resources it ser-endipitously acquired rather than producing them on its own. Following the same logic, a shaman facing the failure of his divination to produce the advertised results claims an outside disturbance that interfered with his spells. Having explained away contradicting evidence, Kaminski proceeds with his narrative to account for the salient features of everyday life in Poland, managerial opportunism and the persistence of informal networks and “gray economy,” by linking them to the effects of central planning’s defi-ance of market rationality. Of course, Kaminski is not alone, as many of his compatriots provide similar explanations (Sokolowski 1995), and in that sense, his story is “credible,” that is, consistent with common beliefs and stock knowledge. However, this narrative misses an opportunity to explore an interesting sociological phenomenon: the effects of migration of traditionally agricultural labor to urban centers and industrial employment (Kwasniewicz 1991). This problem was identified and explored in the now classical work by Thomas and Znaniecki ([1918– 1920] 1984), who argued that changes in traditional forms of social solidarity prevalent among Polish peasants, and characterized by familialism and extended informal networks, are in-dicative of the adaptation process to the urban industrial environment. In a nutshell, the dissolution of these traditional forms of solidarity is indic-ative of successful adaptation, whereas their persistence suggests an unsuc-cessful adaptation process. More recently, the problem is discussed in a crossnational perspective by Fukuyama (1995), who views the persistence of familialism and informal networks as a factor that inhibits the development of trust and entrepreneurship, two necessary ingredients of a successful national economic development. The imperatives of Kaminski’s narrative, especially its causal essentialism, do not even allow asking questions that can shed light on the vicissi-tudes of traditional rural solidarity ties during the process of urbanization and industrialization, let alone generating testable hypotheses. Again, the problem lies not in the interpretation of evidence that confirms preconceived conclusions. The persistence of informal, traditional solidarity networks could provide a valid corroboration of the author’s main thesis claiming the failure of central planning, although that failure would be attributed to the inability to overcome traditional familialism (Thomas and Znaniecki [1918–1920] 1984; Fukuyama 1995) rather than to renouncing the mantra of the free market. The problem lies in choosing a narrative that precludes the consideration of alternative explanations suggested by relevant theories of organization and economic development, thus missing
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Page 81 an opportunity to move research beyond a priori beliefs and popular opinions embedded in stock knowledge. CONCLUSIONS In this chapter I examined how the cognitive processes of lumping and splitting and their application to create dramatic tensions in popular narratives influence the construction and definition of the object of inquiry and the outcome of scientific research. Using a published account of Poland’s economic development under central planning, I demonstrated how the logic of the narrative preconceived by the author shaped the direction of his investigation and affected its implications for the existing theories and further research. I showed how the portrayal of economic development and the relationships between government, economy, and society in a highly simplified, dramatized, and, one may add, journalistic fashion led to a failure to examine the available evidence in an innovative manner that could cast a new light on the current theoretical controversies in social sciences and move the research beyond popular opinions. The main object of my critique is to highlight the unavoidable influence of social and cultural constraints and influences on the producers of knowledge and their intellectual products. As a result of a particular combination of these influences, the text under scrutiny took advantage, so it seems, by the publicity generated by the “end-of-communism” genre of popular mythology and its immediate ideological payoffs, while failing to establish its implicit relevance to the vast body of literature discussing the relationship between administrative hierarchies, economy, and society. The end result was a book that lost the dollars that could have been generated as a theoretical payoff, while chasing after the pennies of a popular fad. Despite their theoretical and methodological sophistication and the vast volume of empirical research they produced, social sciences are nowadays being hijacked by the popular discourse often driven by propagandistic efforts of special-interest groups. The inculcation of the public discourse with neoliberal ideology extolling the virtues of the market has created a climate in which research is guided by simplistic analogies and catchy phrases rather than theoretically grounded and empirically testable hypotheses. Consequently, as this chapter has shown, the Eastern European experience has been trivialized to serve as ammunition in a propaganda war waged against the public sector, while its potential for providing the counterfactual for testing various organizational theories originating in the experience of Western developed countries has been overlooked, if not altogether lost. If there is a positive lesson to be learned from this analysis, it is that suggested by Bourdieu (1988). Social science will find it impossible to break
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Page 82 with ideology-influenced criteria, classifications, and beliefs until it explicitly acknowledges the influence they exert on the process of knowledge production and makes them an explicit object of inquiry. Without selfreflection, popular myths and ideological expediency will continue to dictate what passes for social science. This chapter, I hope, is a small step toward that trend reducing social sciences into mere cultural texts or political propaganda. REFERENCES Alton, Thad Paul. 1955. Polish Postwar Economy. New York: Columbia University Press. Augoustinos, Martha, and John Michael Innes. 1990. “Towards an Integration of Social Representations and Social Schema Theory.” British Journal of Social Psychology 29: 213–31. Barthes, Roland. [1957] 1987. Mythologies. New York: Hill and Wang. Bednarski, M., and R. Kokoszczynski. 1990. ‘‘Drugi Obieg a Dochod Narodowy [second economy and national product].” Pp. 295–316 in Kazimierz Sowa, ed., Gospodarka Nieformalna: Uwarunkowania Lokalne i Systemowe [informal economy: local and systemic influences]. Rzeszow, Pol.: Towarzystwo Naukowe Organizacji i Kierownictwa. Berger, Peter L., and Thomas Luckman. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Anchor. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Homo Academious. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ———. 1998. Acts of Resistance Against the Tyranny of the Market. New York: New Press. Chavance, Bernard. 1994. The Transformation of the Communist System: Economic Reforms Since the 1950s. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Feiwel, George R. 1965. The Economics of a Socialist Enterprise: A Case Study of the Polish Firm. New York: Praeger. ———. 1971. Industrialization and Planning Under Polish Socialism, vol. 1. New York: Praeger. Firlit, Elzbieta, and Jerzy Chlopecki. 1992. “When Theft Is Not Theft.” Pp. 95– 109 in Janine Wedel, ed., The Unplanned Society: Poland During and After Communism. New York: Columbia University Press. Fukuyama, Francis. 1995. Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity. New York: Free Press. Gerbner, George, and Lary Gross. 1976. “Living with Television: The Violence Profile.” Journal of Communication 26(2): 173–99. Gerschenkron, Alexander. [1952] 1992. “Economic Backwardness in a Historical Perspective.” Pp. 111–30 in Mark Granovetter and Richard Swedberg, eds., The Sociology of Economic Life. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Granovetter, Mark. 1985. “Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness.” American Journal of Sociology 91: 481–510. GUS. (various years). Statistical Yearbook of Poland. Warsaw: Central Statistical Office.
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Page 83 Halecki, Oscar, ed. 1957. Poland. New York: Mid European Studies Center of the Free Europe Committee and Praeger. Kaminski, Bartlomiej. 1991. The Collapse of State Socialism: The Case of Poland. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kawalec, Stefan. 1992. “The Dictatorial Supplier.” Pp. 129–43 in Janine Wedel, ed., The Unplanned Society: Poland During and After Communism. New York: Columbia University Press. Kennedy, Michael D. 1991. Professionals, Power and Solidarity in Poland. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press. Kwasniewicz, Wladyslaw. 1991. “Zmiany Makrostrukturalne Spoleczenstwa Pol-skiego, 1939–1989 [macrostructural changes in Polish society, 1939– 1989).” Pp. 95–122 in Jerzy B. Sobczak, ed., Spoleczenstwo Polskie: Wy-zwania i Dylematy Rozwojowe [Polish society: challenges and dilemmas of development]. Krakow, Pol.: Uniwersytet Jagiellonski. Lakatos, Imre. 1978. The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press. Marcus, Hazel, and R. B. Zajonc. 1985. “The Cognitive Perspective in Social Psychology.” Pp. 137–230 in Gardner Lindzey and Elliot Aronson, Handbook of Social Psychology,vol.1:Theory and Method. New York: Random House. Marody, Miroslawa. 1992. “The Political Attitudes of Polish Society in the Period of Systemic Transition.” Pp. 255–68 in Walter D. Connor and Piotr Ploszajski, eds., The Polish Road from Socialism. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Marshall Thomas, Elizabeth. 1959. The Harmless People. New York: Vintage Books. Nowak, Krzysztof. 1992. ‘‘Public Opinion, Values and Economic Transformation.” Pp. 127–45 in Walter D. Connor and Piotr Ploszajski, eds., The Polish Road from Socialism. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Pawlik, Wojciech. 1992. “Intimate Commerce.” Pp. 78–94 in Janine Wedel, ed., The Unplanned Society: Poland During and After Communism, New York: Columbia University Press. Perrow, Charles. 1986. Complex Organizations: A Critical Essay. New York: McGraw-Hill. Popper, Karl. [1935] 1959. The Logic of Scientific Discovery. New York: Basic Books. Sarapata, Adam. 1992. “Society and Bureaucracy.” Pp. 97–114 in Walter D. Connor and Piotr Ploszajski, eds., The Polish Road from Socialism. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Schluchter, Wolfgang. 1981. The Rise of Western Rationalism: Max Weber’sDe-velopmental History. Berkeley: University of California Press. Sokolowski, S. Wojciech. 1995. “Review of ‘The Polish Road from Socialism.’” Contemporary Sociology (Jan.): 26–28. Thomas, William I., and Florian Znaniecki. [1918–1920] 1984. The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. Edited by Eli Zaretsky. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Tipps, Dean C. 1973. “Modernization Theory and the Comparative Study of Societies: A Critical Perspective.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 15(2): 199–226.
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Page 84 Van Poecke, Luc. 1980. “Gerbner’s Cultural Indicators: The System Is the Message.” Pp. 27–31 in Luc Wilhoit and Luc de Bock, eds., Mass Communication Review Yearbook, vol. 1. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications. Weber, Max. [1904] 1958. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Wilczynski, Jozef. 1982. The Economics of Socialism. London: George Allen and Unwin. Williamson, Oliver. 1975. Markets and Hierarchies: Analysis and Antitrust Implications: A Study in the Economics of Internal Organizations. New York: Free Press. Zerubavel, Eviatar. 1991. The Fine Line. New York: Free Press. ———. 1996. “Lumping and Splitting: Notes on Social Classification.” SociologicalForum 11(3): 421–33.
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Page 85 IV THE ACADEMIC CONTEXT OF IDEOLOGY
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Page 87 7 The New Theories of Postmodernity and Hypermodernity: Social/Ideological Context and Implications for Inequality Eva Etzioni-Halevy The following is an analysis of some recent trends in the social theories1 of postmodernity and hypermodernity within their changing social and ideological context. The chapter presents these trends by means of three in-terrelated theses and explicates them against the background of Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social fields and social classes. It then draws out the implications of the said trends for inequalities in Western societies at the beginning of the twenty-first century. THE THREE THESES The first thesis holds that developments in social theories occur in a field that is embedded in a changing social and ideological context and is beset by changing struggles; and these have an impact on the insights the theories offer or fail to offer. Recent changes in the context and struggles in the field of social theory have generated a proliferation of both paradigms and participants. These, in turn, have led to a partial shift away from some core problems of contemporary society, as specified below. The second thesis is that issues of socioeconomic, or class,2 inequalities no longer assume a central place on the theoretical agenda of the most eminent theories of postmodernity and hypermodernity today. This is so in spite of the fact that the postmodern, hypermodern, Western, or capitalist societies—to the analysis of which these theories are devoted—continue to be riddled by formidable inequalities in recent years. The class bases of these inequalities are not as they were, say, a century ago. But
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Page 88 modified bases of inequalities have emerged and, moreover, such inequalities have recently been increasing.3 Yet the main focus of attention of most of today’s prominent theories has moved away from these problems to other areas of analysis. The third thesis holds that social theories carry implicit ideological messages, which spill over into the broader field of class relations and inequalities. They have significant, albeit indirect, ramifications for the struggles over the redistribution of socioeconomic resources occurring (or failing to occur) in it. There may be no way of eliminating inequalities altogether, and struggles aimed at doing so must necessarily remain a futile endeavor. This does not, however, hold for struggles aiming to decrease inequalities. Hence, ideological messages enfolded in social theories that indirectly either encourage or discourage such struggles thereby have an effect for the social construction of reality, in either a more egalitarian or an inegalitarian direction. So the recently eminent theories’ relative neglect of the issues of class inequalities—and the struggles surrounding them—carries its own implicit message that spills over into the field of class relations. Through their neglect, such theories—even if only inadvertently and by default—encourage the recent quiescence in this field. For its part, this quiescence lends tacit legitimation to the growth of inequalities in the societies that are the subject of the theories’ analysis. THE GENERAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE ANALYSIS These theses may be explicated in the framework of the theory of fields as formulated by Bourdieu. This theory analyzes social fields in their contexts, in themselves, and also from the viewpoint of their implications for class inequalities. It differs from most other eminent social theories today in that it does make such class inequalities one of its most central concerns. According to Bourdieu ([1979] 1984; 1990, 1993; see Calhoun, LiPuma, and Postone 1995), fields are embedded in social contexts, although they may have lesser or greater degrees of autonomy from them. The fields themselves are sites of social and symbolic struggles. Participants in these fields include actors or players, as well as consumers, or spectators, to the players’ activities. Players are endowed with capital, that is, resources, including economic, social, cultural, and symbolic capital (a form assumed by the different types of capital when they are perceived and recognized as legitimate). Players also develop strategies designed to maximize their capital and to convince consumers and rivals of its legitimacy and value. Their chances for victory in their struggles within a field depend on their capital and on the success of their strategies. The fruit of victory is symbolic supremacy, which also implies supremacy of power and status. It thus entails
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Page 89 the ability to impose one’s symbols and cultural capital on the others in the field and willingness of those others to accept this imposition. Capital accumulated in one field may be transferred into another field; and each field is located in, and has implications for, the broader field of power and class relations. The capital that individuals are able to accumulate in the various fields defines their position in the class structure, and thereby also structures class distinctions. Thus, strategies of capital accu-mulation are linked to class distinctions and structures of class domination. Class distinctions revolve around an interplay between social, cultural, and economic capital and are structured by a differential distribution of them. In this interplay, economic capital can be converted into cultural capital more easily than the other way around. But although economic capital is thus a determining factor, it must be mediated by symbolic capital, which lends it recognition. Classes exist on two levels: as objective categories they exist on the basis of the above distinctions. But as concerted groups, they exist only insofar as they are produced by leaders in a political enterprise, and inasmuch as they have recognized organs of representation. In the case of the working class, for instance, those are inter alia social movements and trade unions and their leaders. In these political enterprises the leaders socially construct not only their own classes, but other classes—their rivals—as well. When this occurs, the class arena becomes a field in which struggles over cultural, power, and material resources occur. These are also symbolic struggles, that is, struggles over the legitimacy and recognized superiority of a class’s cultural capital. Despite class struggles, the class structure and class distinctions are reproduced, and this occurs chiefly through the dominant class’s ability to have its own cultural capital symbolically recognized as superior to that of other classes and through its ability to pass this capital on to the next generation. It is therefore cultural and symbolic capital that legitimizes and reproduces the dominance of the dominant class. This framework will now be used to explicate this chapter’s theses. EXPLICATION OF THE FIRST THESIS Bourdieu’s analysis pertains inter alia to the struggles in the various ac-ademic/scientific fields, including the social sciences. Accordingly, social theory constitutes one of those fields that are located in wider contexts, and in which struggles for symbolic supremacy—which are also struggles for ascendancy of power and status —occur. In this field, the wider so-cial/ideological context includes inter alia socioeconomic resources, classes, and the distribution of resources among them, the intellectual climate, and the social movements that germinate from the intellectual climate. In the struggles in the field, the theoretical paradigms that the players—
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Page 90 the theorists—propound form their cultural capital, and the theoretical analyses they offer constitute strategies in their mutual jockeying for position and symbolic ascendancy. Other theorists, students, intellectuals, policymakers, leaders of social movements, and the public in general are the spectators of their strategies and the consumers of their intellectual products. The contexts and conflict in the field of theory—I argue—have changed over the years in several ways. First, there has been a change in the broader social setting and a transformation in the intellectual/ideological climate in the societies in which the theorists act, accompanied by changes in the character of those societies’ social movements. Second, and in connection with this, there has been a proliferation of theoretical paradigms, which also involves a shift in the theories’ concerns. Third, there has been a substantial increase in the numbers of players in the field, resulting in increasingly fierce competition in it, and this, too, has led to a shift in the theories’ concerns. The Change in the Social and Ideological Context and the Shift of Paradigms In the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, when social theory came into being, the iniquities of capitalism, continuing industrialization and urbanization, expanding resources—juxtaposed with the dismal conditions under which the working class was forced to subsist—created an intellectual backlash and focused moral and intellectual concern on its plight. Consequently, socialist and syndicalist ideologies and movements arose and flourished. In the same context, and under the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche, there were also growing intellectual anxieties over the loss of freedom and individual sovereignty through the medium of rationali-zation and regimentation (Antonio 1995). Concomitantly, there also arose the intellectual specter of the loss, or breakup, of the traditional community and of human atomization (Nisbet 1966). In this context, each of the founding fathers of social theory promulgated a theoretical paradigm that, in one way or another, gave vent to these concerns. Karl Marx’s paradigm of historical materialism purported to lay bare the laws of the motion of history, but his moral concern was with class exploitation and struggles, particularly as pertaining to the working class under capitalism. Max Weber’s multifaceted paradigm dealt inter alia with the ramification of ideas for the rise of capitalism and with rational-ization but was morally most concerned with bureaucratic domination, with regimentation and subjugation of individuality, and with the manner in which these latter could be countervailed by parliamentary democracy. And Émile Durkheim’s functional paradigm epitomized the affirmation of
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Page 91 moral consensus, community, and solidarity, versus the fear of disintegration and anomie in the modern world. At the beginning of the postwar era, in the 1950s, with growing affluence, virtually full employment, the seeming end of ideological ferment, theory came to be unified under the quiescent umbrella of structuralfunctionalism. As befitted the spirit of that era, this paradigm put major emphasis on seeming social integration and equilibrium, at the expense of power, class inequalities, and struggles for change. There were critics, such as Herbert Blumer, Ralf Dahrendorf, and C. Wright Mills, but their voice did not carry major weight until later on (Turner 1989). All this was transformed in the 1960s, with the rise of the new left, the civil rights movement in the United States, the student revolt, and the development of the feminist movement in various parts of the West. These events refocused intellectual attention on social and economic inequities and inequalities and on struggles to redress them. The shift in intellectual climate was reflected in the field of social theory in the unraveling of the theoretical unity under the hegemony of structural-functionalism, which had characterized the previous decade (Turner 1989). In the 1960s, then, Marxian-Weberian conflict and power theories, Marxist and Neo-Marxist critical theories, as well as various forms of symbolic interactionism and phenomenology, all came to form serious paradigmatical alternatives to structural-functionalism. Some important elements of social theory thus came to be tuned in to the analysis of power and class inequalities and of struggles over the redistribution of resources. By the 1970s and 1980s, despite periodic economic downturns and growing unemployment, for most members of Western societies prosperity continued to grow. In this context, wider intellectual interest in economic inequalities seemed, once more, to be partly depleted. Hence, these years also saw the decline of the “old” social movements concerned most prominently with the redistribution of resources and the rise of the “new’’ social movements (Offe 1985), concerned most prominently with postmaterialist, quality of life, antinuclear, and, eventually, construction-of-identity issues. This shift in intellectual climate found its counterpart in the field of social theory in a further proliferation of schools of thought, several of which reflected these new interests. This did not entail the discarding of the previous paradigms of neoMarxism and critical theory, but the coming to the fore of new variants (e.g., Immanuel Wallerstein’s [1979, 1996] world system theory) and new players (e.g., Bourdieu and Jürgen Habermas) within them. As will be shown, however, even some of these neglected the previously prominent issues of socioeconomic inequalities. The process also entailed the appearance of additional paradigms, such as post-Marxism (represented for instance by Alan Touraine, Anthony Gid-
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Page 92 dens, and Ulrich Beck) as well as that reflecting the revival of a Nietzchean influence (represented for instance by Jean-François Lyotard, Jacques Derrida, and Jean Baudrillard) (Antonio 1995) and that reflecting a combination of these (by Michel Foucault). Such paradigms now rivaled not only those that had appeared in the 1960s, but vied with born-again, neostructural-functionalism (as represented for instance by Jeffrey Alexander 1985) as well. Like the multiplication of paradigms in the 1960s, this further differentiation of paradigms also involved a change in the themes that served as foci of theoretical concern. However, the change was now in a different direction. For the appearance of post-Marxism attested to a diminution of interest in class domination, in favor of other types of domination (such as that over the body, or over identity), or even of entirely different topics (such as those of risk, trust, and reflexivity). And the appearance of the Nietzchean influence entailed a move of the center of gravity of theoretical concern to the areas of cultural theory, the entwinement of knowledge and power and the ills of regimentation and rationalism, interspersed with an emphasis on sovereign individuality (Antonio 1995). By contrast with what happened in the 1960s, in recent years, then, the multiplication of paradigms entailed at least a partial shift of the theoretical agenda away from the problematics of the redistribution of resources to no less legitimate, but alternative, areas of theoretical concern. The Proliferation of Players, Increasing Competition, and Premium on Novelty Possibly of less importance, but not entirely negligible, was the fact that this proliferation of paradigms was accompanied by a proliferation of players in the field. I argue that—for different reasons—this had a similar result. In recent decades there has been a considerable increase in the number of universities and of faculties and departments in the social sciences and humanities (as well as in the numbers of their students) virtually all over the Western world. Many of these now incorporate programs or faculty members specializing in social theory or social thought. These latter, like their colleagues in other fields, are eager to publish so as to disseminate their ideas and further their careers. Concomitantly, there has been a growing number of publishers producing a growing number of books and journals, testifying to the vast expansion of the field. Hence, those who manage to gain a victory in the struggle for symbolic supremacy in this field are necessarily a chosen few out of the many who participate in the competition. Hence, too, participants must meet more stringent criteria of success than did their predecessors. In previous years, the well-known motto of academic life in the social sciences was “publish or perish.” Today, this is still so at the lower levels of the competition, at
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Page 93 the margins of the field, so to speak. But close to the top, or the center, this dictum no longer holds: one may both publish and perish. To avoid this fate, one needs to do much more than merely publish: one must gain widespread recognition for one’s symbolic capital—one’s theoretical paradigm—and become widely acclaimed by the consumers in the field, as over the many others who vie for that same acclaim. This increasing competition has heralded an effervescence of high-quality ideas in the field. It may well have been a motor that prevented its ossifi-cation and propelled it forward. But it has also caused an oversupply in the marketplace of theoretical ideas that has further exacerbated the struggles in which more and more participants now fall at the wayside. In this context, as Bourdieu (1993: 11) sees it, the sociologist has an interest in being innovative. Or, to put it differently: in this fiercely competitive context, one of the theorists’ strategies is that of putting a premium on novelty for its own sake. Thus, indeed, the theories of postmodernity and hypermodernity are all brilliantly novel and original. But the necessity for players in the field to stand at the forefront of innovation at all costs in order to survive at the top also generates a problem. For in the deluge of what is now considered the avant garde discourse on postmodernity versus hypermodernity, the more pedestrian analysis of problems that (having been dealt with extensively before) lack the aura of novelty tend to be relatively neglected. EXPLICATION OF THE SECOND THESIS This brings us to the explication of the second thesis. Still following Bourdieu’s framework of analysis, this thesis holds that, while the theories of postmodernity and hypermodernity have not abandoned the previously central topics of inequality and redistribution of resources between classes, they are not centrally concerned with them, and their foremost efforts are vested in other areas. In what follows, I present a brief testimony of those efforts, as encap-sulated in some of their central ideas. Since these are all well known, the following should be regarded as a brief reminder rather than as an exposition. I then show how—despite some qualifications—the main thrust of these ideas lends support to the second thesis. Central Ideas of the Theories of Postmodernity and Hypermodernity: A Brief Reminder The central ideas at issue include, most prominently, the following: •
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Page 94 Jürgen Habermas’s (e.g., 1982, 1984, 1987, 1989) critical conception of late modernity, as based on two related distinctions. The first of these is that between the system and the lifeworld, in which the system is the locus of the economy, administration, and technocracy (where considerations of power and money prevail) and the lifeworld is the realm of culture, solidarity, and values (where considerations of identity formation and meanings prevail). The second distinction is that between instrumental rationality, expressed in the effective adaptation of means to ends, and communicative rationality, expressed in critical reasoning, free discourse, and intersubjective understanding. While instrumental rationality is characteristic of the system, communicative rationality dwells in the lifeworld. In the framework of these two distinctions, Habermas views late modernity as characterized by the excessive uncoupling of the system from the lifeworld, but also by the excessive colonization of the lifeworld by the system. Late modernity thus entails rationality, but also its pathological deformation by the unwarranted ascendancy of controloriented functional rationality over emancipatory communicative rationality. In this situation, social movements arise on the fault line between the two types of rationality and between the system and the lifeworld, and focus on issues of quality of life, community, and identity in an endeavor to emancipate the lifeworld from the encroachment of the system. • Michel Foucault’s (e.g., 1977, 1984, 1997) critical analysis of contemporary Western society as one in which a grid of micro-power and control is being applied to subjects via its alliance with reason, truth, knowledge, and discourse. In this society, reason shows its dark side, as epitomized by its connection with power and control. Such control is exerted inter alia through the imposition of discipline on the body and through the ostensibly scientific cataloging of people. In the twentieth century this is accomplished most prominently by means of en-ticement to introspection and discourse about sexuality. Ostensibly, this is done in order to facilitate sexual liberation; but actually it has the effect of setting the boundaries of the normal and the acceptable, and of consequently regulating individual identity. Foucault regards this micropower that turns subjects into objects as unacceptable and calls upon people to rebel against it. • Zygmunt Bauman’s (e.g., 1992), David Harvey’s (1989), and like-minded thinkers’ view of postmodern society as characterized by pluralism, fragmentation, rapid change, and, consequently, a profuse multiplicity of contingent social patterns that border on the random and the ephemeral. In this situation, there is a bazaar of unstructured possibilities for self-realization and subjects are able, and indeed forced, to fashion their own identities autonomously. As there are no generally accepted standards for their success in doing so, they must themselves accept responsibility over the identities they have constructed. In this situation, too, protest has been decentralized and focuses on demands for even greater freedom and autonomy for identity construction.
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Page 95 • Jean-François Lyotard’s (e.g., 1979) skepticism with regard to what he refers to as the grand metanarratives, which, as is becoming increasingly clear, can no longer furnish a convincing explanation of the contemporary world. Lyotard’s skepticism concerns particularly the metanarrative of the Enlightenment, of modernism or of rationalism. According to this narrative, reason, rationality—as embedded in science and technology—was expected to lead to freedom and progress, instead of which it has brought in its wake repressiveness and genocide. Consequently, Lyotard envisions the replacement of such grand narratives by the frag-mentation of discourse, and the replacement of the belief in reason with different spheres of what he refers to as pragmatic language games, in which one conception is no more or less valid than any other. • Jean Baudrillard’s (e.g., 1983, 1986, 1996) proposition, in which contemporary society figures as but a kaleidoscope of strong, albeit superficial and temporary, signs and images, as a world of simulation, in which there is no clear distinction between the signifier and the signified, between image and reality, in which any independent reality behind the images has virtually disappeared, and where, therefore, a plethora of symbols chiefly symbolize themselves. In this situation, the subject, rather than being a participant in reality, has become mainly a con-sumer of symbols and images. • Jacques Derrida’s (e.g., 1978, 1981; see also Magliola 1984) poststructuralist conception of deconstruction, according to which the text—and the philosophical heritage, structure, society, history, or the self, as a text —is subject to a variety of interpretations and reinterpretations. Deconstruction thus involves the possible demolition of established interpretations, in the course of which are elaborated other interpretations, where an element of undecidability in understanding pre-vails, and no interpretation is superior to any other. In this situation, interpretation of the text (or of social reality) and the text (or reality) itself cannot be clearly distinguished from each other; indeed, there is no reality apart from, and transcending, its interpretation. In this situation, too, the multiplicity of interpretations becomes part of the complexity of reality itself. • Alain Touraine’s (1995) notion of hypermodern society as one in which ration-alization is juxtaposed with the appearance of the subject. Here the active, conscience-imbued, autonomous individual assumes responsibility for the shaping of his/her own life and destiny and for the shaping of the world. The subject — who takes shape through and within social movements—rebels against technocracy, namely against the integration of establishment power and universalist rationality, just as that subject rebels against overrepressive communitarian particularism. In this rebellion, the subject-social movement demands the right to freedom to shape his or her own identity. • Ulrich Beck’s (1992) and Anthony Giddens’s (1990; see also Beck, Giddens, and Lash 1994) perception of the society of late modernity as a risk society. In this society—in contrast to previous societies—risks (such as those flowing from modern weapons of mass destruction or environmental pollution) are the unforeseen consequences of socially generated knowledge and its application. The risk society concomitantly also constitutes the trust society, in which subjects deliberately entrust their lives to (personally unknown) experts and expert systems. The same risk society is also a reflexive society, in which knowledge of social processes has an impact on these processes, which in turn shape the knowledge of those processes, and vice versa. This reflexivity makes it virtually impossible to forecast and plan the future, since the very forecast of certain occurrences may prevent their realization. Thus, the attempt to predict and control the unforeseeable creates more of that unforeseeable and uncontrollable.
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Page 96 • Bryan Turner’s (1996) idea of the postmodern society as a somatic society, in which central emphasis is placed on the body, its symbolic significance, and the metaphors connected with it. In this society, too, sociopolitical problems find expression through the body, which also becomes the object of political struggles. From having been a disciplined working body in the modern society, the body has turned into a hedonistically consuming body and into a social project, an object of social construction, in the postmodern society. • Scott Lash and John Urry’s (1987) depiction of postmodern society as one that has witnessed the end of organized capitalism, the increasing contradiction between capitalism and the state, and the advent of more flexible forms of the labor process. Also, their (1994) depiction of the postmodern world economy as one of the rapid movement of signs (knowledge, communication), subjects (migrants, workers, tourists), and objects (products, capital) in space. This is also an economy in which the center dominates the periphery inter alia via the dissemination of signs or symbols. How the Thrust of These Ideas Lends Support to the Second Thesis It must be remembered that these conceptions have been presented by their authors in a variety of nuances, and they are open to a variety of interpretations. Nonetheless, their main thrusts are sufficiently clear, so that we may see that they have at least one element in common: they are not chiefly concerned with socioeconomic or class inequalities. As will be seen below, some of the theories under discussion are not totally silent on such issues. But—as can be seen from the preceding brief overview of their central conceptions—whatever analyses of such topics their authors may have offered, they do not form part of these central conceptions. And it is these conceptions on which their theoretical discourse is chiefly focused, and on which their eminence is primarily based. Moreover, the very fact that the main thrusts of their theories—focusing on what they present as the most noteworthy features of contemporary society—lies in other areas serves to justify their relative neglect of the theoretical discourse of socioeconomic inequalities. Thus if, as Habermas, Beck, Giddens, and Turner argue respectively, the colonization of the lifeworld by the system, risk, trust, reflexivity, and the body as a social project constitute the features of contemporary society that are most worthy of scholarly attention, then it is indeed intellectually justifiable that classes, and class inequalities, recede into the nether regions of such attention. Some Qualifications: On Inequalities in Recent Theories In qualification, it must be added that the theorists under discussion do not entirely disregard the topic of inequalities. Certainly this is true for Bourdieu, whose forceful ideas on inequalities form the framework for the present analysis.
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Page 97 To some extent this is also true of Derrida who in his book Spectres of Marx (1994) presents an—albeit belated—critique of inequalities in the new world order. Derrida now sees the liberal-democratic-capitalist world as distorted by socioeconomic mechanisms (including appropriation) and as beset by hegemony exerted by means of a selective and hierarchical production of information. He also sees it as plagued by a new type of mastered unemployment, by the massive exclusion of the homeless, and the exploitation of cheap, unprotected, especially foreign labor. Some concern with inequality is also shown by Beck, who believes that in the risk society the allocation of risks is inversely related to the allocation of goods. But in the end, even the rich and mighty are not exempt from global risks, which therefore have an “equalizing effect” on society (1992: 36). Socioeconomic inequalities remain, but classes lose their separate collective identities and subcultures, and inequalities consequently undergo individualization. Indeed, because of the openings for social mobility, individuals themselves construct their niches in the structures of inequality. Therefore, argues Beck, socioeconomic inequalities are no longer centrally located on the public agenda. Political struggles take place most prominently outside the institutionalized arena and are no longer focused predominantly on the distribution of goods, but rather on “bads,’’ that is, on risks: on how to prevent, distribute, and legitimize them. In addition, struggles focus chiefly on ascriptive inequalities, such as those by race, gender, and ethnicity and on people’s demands to be allowed to construct their own biographies and identities. In the view of Lash and Urry, the economy of signs and space is also a knowledge and service economy, in which capitalism, class relations, and class exploitation persist. In fact, the numerical growth of knowledge and service providers enhances inequalities, since this category includes the drawers of both the highest salaries (the providers of knowledge and financial services) and the lowest salaries (the providers of personal services). Yet the working class is shrinking, and inequalities are more prominently based on education and mobility. This discourages the politics of class and encourages the development of the “new” social movements, concerned with quality of life issues, rather than with the redistribution of resources. In Spite of the Qualifications: The Theoretical Lacunae with Respect to Inequalities It can be seen that most of the eminent theorists’ ideas in the areas of inequality have certain elements in common. First, setting aside Bourdieu, who has been dealt with separately, and for whom the analysis of struggles over power and class inequality constitutes the very hub of his theory, most other eminent theorists refer to these issues not as part of the chief arguments of their theories, but rather as sidelines or afterthoughts. Also, both
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Page 98 in quantity and in quality, in extensiveness and in brilliance, their analyses of these issues are by far inferior to their analyses of the system versus the lifeworld, of fragmentation and multiplicity, of language games, deconstruction, and so forth. We are indebted to the theorists under discussion for some of the finest ideas the social sciences have to offer today, but their sterling contributions do not lie in the areas of socioeconomic inequalities. Further, most of these theorists fall short of offering convincing explanations of important aspects of inequality phenomena and their present trends of development. Derrida’s recent (1994) critique of inequalities is sparce and vague, as he is more concerned with sifting through the possible legacies of Marx than he is with the actual working of the new social world order he criticizes. Beck fails to offer a satisfactory explanation for the classes losing their collective identities. Lash and Urry fail to explain why the providers of knowledge and services should be so unequally rewarded, and why those at the lower end of this salary gap should do so little in terms of pushing for its change. Foucault, who so brilliantly interprets control over the body/identity/sexuality, contributes little to the explanation of control over economic resources to the benefit of the controllers. Also, most of these theorists depict the displacement of the political struggles and movements over class inequalities by those over identity construction, but they have little to say in explanation of that shift. And even Bourdieu, who so convincingly analyzes class distinctions in general, does not pay sufficient attention to the question of how the system of such distinctions has been transformed and how it works in recent years. Even though he gives a brilliant account of the reproduction of classes as mediated by cultural and symbolic capital, he does not satisfactorily explain the recent metamorphoses in the patterns of class reproduction. Finally, these theorists leave us with a dearth of explanations for the fact that in our reflexive society, so little reflexivity is expended on the explanation of recent socioeconomic inequalities, particularly by some of the chief bearers of that reflexivity: the theorists themselves. This dearth in convincing theoretical explanations of recent inequalities may be viewed in the context of the previously reviewed changes in the general social/ intellectual climate and the consequent shift in the general focus of recent theories. Since, in consequence of these changes, the bulk of theoretical reflexivity is being vested in other areas, and relatively little theoretical energy is left over for the issues of recent socioeconomic inequalities, it is not surprising that the explanations of such inequalities have also been neglected. EXPLICATION OF THE THIRD THESIS Further applying Bourdieu’s analysis, this chapter’s third thesis holds that theories have ideological messages enfolded in them. At one time, to be
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Page 99 sure, many social scientists believed that the social sciences should be value-neutral in their analyses. Today, however, most scholars realize that, whether or not the theories that form part of the social sciences should be value-neutral, the fact is that they are not. Their very essence lies in the fact that they interpret the past and the present in light of certain world-views; and these interpretations necessarily have ideological connotations. Moreover, whether their authors wish it or not, their interpretations of the past and present furnish implicit guidelines for action or inaction in the future. And these spill over from the field of theory into the field of class relations and struggles, as conducted for instance by social movements. Thereby they have implications for the construction of reality, in either an egalitarian or an inegalitarian manner. Even when theories refrain from presenting ideological messages, this very act of abstention carries its own message: no message is a message. And where theories fail to furnish guidelines for action, this carries its own implicit guideline, namely that of lend-ing tacit legitimation to inaction. The Ideological Messages Enfolded in Theories of Postmodernity and Hypermodernity The legitimation of inaction, in fact, is what tends to happen with respect to the theories of postmodernity and hypermodernity. For, in the first place, when scholarly attention is distracted from inequalities, and these appear as a sideline of the analysis only, this inadvertently also distracts critical attention from these issues. And where there is but little critique, there can also be but little motivation to act for change. Second, some of the previously presented central tenets of the said theories contain messages that in one way or another imply the futility of struggling for change. For instance, if—as Bauman, Harvey, and others claim—postmodern society presents a bazaar of fragmented options and possibilities, and change is rapid but devoid of clear cause and direction, there is little to struggle against, and even less to struggle for. Or if, as Lyotard claims, in postmodernity there is no place for grand narratives and in particular for the rationalist narrative wherein reason may lead to progress, it follows that there is also no place for reasoned action against injustice or inequality. Where there is no room for grand narratives, there is also no room for grand ideals. Old myths are debunked as repressive, but no space is opened for the spawning of new, emancipatory ones. If all that may be sanctioned is a variety of language games, none of which is inherently and rationally superior to any other, such relativism supplies but a tame intellectual tool of working for change. As for Derrida and Baudrillard, their conceptions contain critical and even radical elements; certainly they do not lead one to assume that present reality is inevitable. But neither does their latent agenda subsume encour-
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Page 100 agement of change. For if, as Derrida argues, reality does not outweigh its interpretation, and if, as Baudrillard argues, reality no longer takes precedence over images, this inadvertently justifies focusing on the changing of interpretations and images, a feat that is easier to accomplish than the changing of reality. Creative hermeneutics may then replace the intellectuals’ spearheading of action for progress. It is true that Foucault, for one, does call upon individuals to reject the grid of power imposed on them in contemporary society. But, inasmuch as his call for emancipatory action focuses on the rejection of oppressive micro-power over identity, rather than on that which generates inequalities in the distribution of economic resources, his theory, too, fits the pattern of implied acquiesence with these inequalities. The Spillover into the Field of Class Relations and Struggles All this shows that the borderlines between theoretical conceptualization, interpretation, ideology, and implied guidelines for action or inaction are not as impermeable as was once believed to be the case. This being so, the implications of insights offered or failing to be offered in the field of social theory also spill over into other areas, especially those of the construction of class inequalities and the struggles surrounding them. As noted before, Bourdieu holds that classes, as organized entities engaged in struggles, must be constructed by a political enterprise undertaken by leaders. Such leaders may include intellectuals, who may devise ideologies that legitimize one or the other of the classes’ interests in these struggles. The intellectuals in question include, among others, social theorists. As Bourdieu (1993: 10) points out, these, too, then, play a role in the class struggle. They may do so by taking up the cause of the disadvantaged classes, in which case their theories offer critiques of inequalities by which these classes are disadvantaged. Thereby they add symbolic legitimacy to those classes’ interests. Conversely, theorists may play a role in the class struggle by taking up the cause of the more advantaged classes, or even by refraining from taking up the cause of classes altogether. I argue that this latter, in fact, is what has happened with respect to the recently eminent theorists of postmodernity and hypermodernity. These theorists develop ideas, large parts of which are seemingly of little relevance for classes. But their partial neglect of topics that are of relevance to classes—unintentionally, to be sure—works in the interests of the privileged, who gain from having their privileges disregarded. Finally, several of the theorists under discussion not only focus their conceptual framework on the variegated, identity-seeking, contemporary postmodern or hypermodern society. Some of them also—perhaps justly— perceive it as an improvement over the more rigidly patterned, standard-
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Page 101 ized, and conformity-imposing society that preceded it. Thus, they implicitly celebrate it. This could be applauded, were it not for the fact that thereby some of them also celebrate a society in which (as noted), because of variegation, growing inequalities become less visible; in which, therefore, there has recently been a dearth of struggles over such inequalities (see Etzioni-Halevy 1997). And when redistributive struggles are weakened, this facilitates the implementation of government policies that have the effect of increasing inequalities even further. The Spillover into the Field of Social Movements—Its Implications for Classes The enfeeblement in struggles over the redistribution of resources, and their partial replacement by intellectual concern over quality of life and the quest for identity, has been expressed, among other ways, in a shift from “old” social movements concerned with the former to “new” social movements concerned with the latter issues. As noted, this, in fact, is part of the social/ideological context in which the new theories of postmodernity and hypermodernity have evolved. These theories, in turn, have implications for such movements. The authors of these theories are not necessarily leaders or ideologues of the “new” social movements, nor are they necessarily personally connected with them. But as part of their intellectual endeavor, they do more than merely analyze them: they also pay tribute to them. Given that several “new’’ movements concerned with quality of life and personal identity (with the possible exception of the feminist movement) represent the mentality of the new middle class—rather than the interests of the disadvantaged classes for lessening their disadvantages, as did several social movements in the past—the theories that affirm them also further that mentality. Thus, the postmodern or hypermodern society characterized by fragmentation, the quest for identity, and the seeming dissipation of classes, the social movements for which struggles for identity take precedence over struggles for the redistribution of resources, and the social theorists who implicitly celebrate this reality, all join together in—inadvertently and by default—legitimizing the present trend toward growing inequalities. DISCUSSION: DOES ALL THIS REALLY MATTER? Once upon a time, structural-functional theory was forcefully criticized and labeled as conservative, because of its inadvertent bolstering up of the status quo. Yet no similar forceful and widespread critique seems to be forthcoming with respect to the newly eminent theories of postmodernity
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Page 102 and hypermodernity. These theories fulfill a similar latent “function” in favor of the status quo; yet they continue to figure as standing at the avant-garde of progress. Does all this really matter? Does it have a real impact on class relations and on struggles that do or do not occur in actual reality? I say that it does. This is so because (unlike their image in the eyes of students and the public) social theories are not divorced from reality, but quite the contrary. In fact, as this chapter has shown, theories emerge out of certain so-cial/ideological contexts and realities. And their authors—or at least the most eminent among them—as outstanding intellectuals, for their part, exert a substantial though indirect influence on those same realities. It would be naïve to suggest that those who are active in shaping the sociopolitical arena, or the field of class relations, take out the time to peruse the writings of social theorists before they set out to devise social policies or to engage in political action. It would be equally naïve, however, to deny that the ideas contained in prominent social theories—while influenced by the intellectual climate of their societies—also seep through into the same intellectual climate. And this, in turn, exerts an influence, even if watered down, on the beliefs of policymakers, on those of the leaders and activists of social movements, and on the media, as well as on public opinion in general. In this manner, these theories also exert an indirect influence on struggles—or the lack thereof—over policies, over programs, or, more broadly, over the forces that shape the construction of social and political reality. Thus, just as feminist theories have been intertwined with the feminist movement and encourage feminism, so the new theories of hypermodernity and postmodernity, extolling the sovereignty of the subject and the self-creation and consequent fragmentation of identities, have been ideologically intertwined with the presentday movements and politics of identity. Thereby they encourage an intellectual climate of diversity in identities and in the ensuing cultural patterns, as well as legislation and policies that protect such diversity. But by the same token, the new theories’ relative neglect of socioeconomic inequalities is intellectually intertwined with the neglect of such inequalities by social movements and with an intellectual and political climate in which such inequalities are similarly neglected. This, in turn, makes it easier for governments to implement policies that further increase inequalities. This being the case, it is time that social theorists develop a fuller awareness of the close three-way connection between social theory, ideology, and social reality, particularly with respect to inequality, a connection that, like recent inequalities themselves, has been swept under the carpet. Perhaps such increased awareness would also lead theorists toward greater awareness of their social responsibility and would result in their paying greater attention to the issues in question.
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Page 103 All this is not to say that the old social theories, the grand narratives of the past, some of which had more egalitarian connotations, ought to be revived and served up again for intellectual consumption. But it may be time for new narratives (whether grand or not) that could take up some of their concerns. These would be theories that focus on the paradoxical fact that in our increasingly affluent society, in which class boundaries are becoming blurred, in which the importance of class is seemingly decreasing, and some analysts even speak of the death of class (Pakulski 1995), we witness a growing gap between the exceedingly rich and the exceedingly poor. These would be theories that bring into relief the fact that the apparent dissipation of classes—by making it more difficult for the disadvantaged to organize for the promotion of their interests—may itself be a cause for such growing socioeconomic cleavages. These would also be theories that offer explanatory schemes for the fact that in our hyper- or postmodern society, variegation, pluralism, and identity seeking by no means decrease inequalities, but rather camouflage them. These theories would draw out the manner in which the resulting partial invisibility of inequalities forms yet another cause for their growth. Such theories would not disregard the insights of the recent theories of postmodernity and hypermodernity, but would rather build on them, in order to bring socioeconomic inequalities back to the center stage of scholarly attention, with all the egalitarian potential thereto appertaining. NOTES I am greatly indebted to Dr. Gitta Tulea and to Prof. Ernest Krausz of Bar-Ilan University, and to Dr. Abraham Cordova of Tel-Aviv University, for their most helpful comments. 1. Following Antonio (1995: 3), I distinguish between social theory and sociological theory. The theories dealt with in this chapter are social theories, even though important segments of them have also been incorporated into sociological theories. 2. Social classes are hereby defined as categories of people distinguished from each other primarily by their members’ ownership and control of material/economic resources. 3. The growth of inequalities in most Western societies in recent years has been documented elsewhere (see Etzioni-Halevy 1997). Therefore, it will not be documented here but will rather be used as a point of departure for the analysis. REFERENCES Alexander,
