Abstract
Sociology has long been regarded as in crisis, with sociologists repeatedly agonizing over its status, nature and role. One of the main disputes has been over whether being a sociologist means that one is should aim to change social life rather than merely explain it. However, the role of academic is specifically to interpret the world, not to change it. Unfortunately, all too often sociologists have ignored their duty in this regard and engaged in either ideological advocacy or moralizing, thereby preventing the discipline from making progress. Although this has been a feature of UK sociology for 50 years, a disturbing recent trend has been for some sociologists to claim that re-dressing grievances justify rejecting the very idea of impartial scientific inquiry.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
See Robert Nisbet’s observation that, “From being primarily and essentially a university member whose field was, more or less incidentally, sociology, one is today, increasingly, a sociologist whose job is, more or less incidentally, held within the university. No single transition within the past quarter-century has been more fateful it seems to me, than this one” (1971, p. 107).
- 2.
Indeed, there are some not so young members of the profession who seem to think that sociology should be “an engine of moral progress”. See Oakley in Halsey (2004, p. 215).
- 3.
It has always seemed odd to me that it is easy to get people to accept that art or music is good in themselves and don’t need justifying in terms of their usefulness in promoting some further end, yet they have difficulty in seeing knowledge in the same way.
- 4.
This is one of two tendencies that Berger considers to be “severe deformations” currently plaguing the discipline. The other is “methodological fetishism” (2010).
- 5.
That this is predominately left wing is also a point stressed by Halsey. This does seem to be supported by Platt’s study of UK sociology textbooks, for she mentions that while there have been several “with a left-wing approach of one kind or another, whether intellectual Marxism or political feminism…none take a clearly right-wing approach” (Platt 2008). There has however been a counter-argument, one that has viewed the discipline of sociology as “an instrument of the ruling class”. See Shaw (1974).
- 6.
Irving Horowitz complained back in the 1990s that “sociology has been profoundly…politicized by its practitioners” (1995, p. 22).
- 7.
I take Weber’s words as implying that sociologists need to be more “disciplined” in the way that they conduct themselves within the discipline, that is, more careful in policing their behaviour and ways of thinking.
- 8.
Not that the tendency for sociologists to substitute moralizing for analysis and explanation is at all new. On the contrary, it has a long history in the discipline, as I came to realize when reading the works of Thorstein Veblen, as well as those who inherited his dislike of consumer practices, such as Riesman and Galbraith.
- 9.
Bibliography
Abrams, P. (1981). The Collapse of British Sociology? In P. Abrams, R. Deem, J. Finch, & P. Rock (Eds.), Practice and Progress: British Sociology 1950–1980 (pp. 53–69). London: Allen & Unwin.
Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology. (1983, July). Special Issue devoted to, Dialogue: Crisis in Sociology. 19(2).
Back, L. (2016). Academic Diary: Or Why Higher Education Still Matters. London: Goldsmiths Press.
Beer, D. (2014). Punk Sociology. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.
Berger, P. (1963). Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co.
Berger, P. (2002, October). Whatever Happened to Sociology? First Things. https://www.firstthings.com/article/2002/10/whatever-happened-to-sociology. Accessed 12 December 2018.
Black, D. (2000). The Purification of Sociology. Contemporary Sociology, 29(5), 704–709.
Boudon, R. (1971). The Crisis in Sociology: Problems of Sociological Epistemology. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.
Burrows, R., & Gane, N. (2006). Geodemographics, Software and Class. Sociology, 40(5), 793–812.
Burrows, R., & Savage, M. (2014, April 1). After the Crisis? Big Data and the Methodological Challenges of Empirical Sociology. Big Data and Society, 1(1).
Delbanco, A. (1999, November 4). The Decline and Fall of Literature. New York Review of Books.
Ellis, J. M. (1999). Literature Lost: Social Agendas and the Corruption of the Humanities. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Fish, S. (2004, May 21). Why We Built the Ivory Tower. New York Times.
Gouldner, A. W. (1970). Coming Crisis of Western Sociology. New York: Basic Books.
Halsey, A. H. (2004). A History of Sociology in Britain: Science, Literature, and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Horowitz, I. L. (1995). The Decomposition of Sociology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lindsay, J. A., Boghossian, P., & Pluckrose, H. (2018, October 2). Academic Grievance Studies and the Corruption of Scholarship. Areo Magazine. https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-grievance-studies-and-the-corruption-of-scholarship/. Accessed 20 December 2018.
Lopreato, J., & Crippin, T. (2002). Crisis in Sociology: The Need for Darwin. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
Nisbet, R. (1971). The Degradation of the Academic Dogma: The University in America 1945–1970. London: Heinemann.
Oakley, A. (2004). Epilogue in Eight Essays. In A. H. Halsey (Ed.), A History of Sociology in Britain: Science, Literature, and Society (pp. 214–217). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Osborne, T., Rose, N., & Savage, M. (2008). Editors’ Introduction: Reinscribing British Sociology: Some Critical Reflections. Sociological Review, 56(4), 519–534.
Platt, J. (2008). British Sociology Textbooks from 1949. Current Sociology, 56, 165–182.
Savage, M., & Burrows, R. (2007). The Coming Crisis of Empirical Sociology. Sociology, 41(5), 885–899.
Savage, M., & Burrows, R. (2009). Some Further Reflections on the Coming Crisis of Empirical Sociology. Sociology, 43(4), 762–772.
Shaw, M. (1974). Marxism Versus Sociology: A Guide to Reading. London: Pluto Press.
Skirbekk, S. (2008). ‘Crisis of Sociology’—And the Consequences for an Adequate Understanding of Contemporary Cultural Conflicts. Journal of Sociology (Sosiologisk Tidsskrift) (3), 281–291.
Sociological Forum. (1994). Issue Devoted to the Topic, What’s Wrong with Sociology? 9(2).
Szelenyi, I. (2015). The Triple Crisis of Sociology. Guest Post, Contexts (2017, Summer). https://contexts.org/blog/the-triple-crisis-of-sociology/. Accessed 12 October 2018.
Thiele, S. (2005, October). The Problem with Sociology. Quadrant, 49(10), 11–19.
Travers, M. (1997). The Decomposition of Sociology. Sociological Research Online. http://www.socresonline.org.uk/2/4/travers.html. Accessed 10 December 2018.
van der Vossen, B. (2015). In Defence of the Ivory Tower: Why Philosophers Should Stay Out of Politics. Philosophical Psychology, 28(7), 1045–1063.
Weber, M. (2004 [1919]). The Vocation Lectures: ‘Science as a Vocation’; ‘Politics as a Vocation’. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Campbell, C. (2019). Sociology as “Just an Academic Pursuit”. In: Has Sociology Progressed?. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19978-4_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19978-4_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-19977-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-19978-4
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)