1. what is critique?

the “why” question

• ALL sciences are ultimately about finding answer to (particular) why-questions

• implies that

  • there is a reason why things are the way they are (things not random) → God vs science

  • this reason can be discovered using method of positive, empirical science (observation, experiment, survey, analysis, etc.)

• social sciences: part of reason of why things are the way they are should be located in the aprticular organization of human groups (social structure)

it’s only “natural”

• in modern Western societies appeals to God or religious forces are increasingly rare, more common to appeal to nature or biology

de-naturalization

• wore task of the social sciences = de-naturalization

• to show that what presents itself as “natural” in fact has clear social (man-made) causes

• natural in the double sense

  • self-evident, normal, manner-of-fact

  • biological, genetic, innate

how?

• history: uncover genealogy of our everyday practices, show what they looked like in the past (contrast in TIME)

• anthropology: compare “ou” everyday practices with those of other societies on the globe (contrast in SPACE)

denaturalization in history

• historicization is an important tool of denaturalization

• by uncovering (often repressed) history of certain practices and beliefs it becomes possible to show their socially constructed character

• anthropologists don’t rely on historicization, but use culturization

denaturalization in anthropology

• culturization tool of denaturalization

• by uncovering (often repressed) culture of certain practices and beliefs it becomes possible to show their socially constructed character

getting “outside”

• both history and anthropology can claim a position “outside” of their objects, both benefit from distance

• distance makes “exotic”

• sociology studies things in the here and now (= historiancs of the present/anthropologists of the familiar)

• OK when science studies the practices and opinions of the “others”, less OKw hen it studies our own

how?

• sociology: denaturalization through de-individualization

• compare different groups (income, level of education, gender, ethnicity, status, etc.) within one and the same society

• show that the unique, the subjective, the personal very often has general, objective and impersonal causes

• later this semester: the importance for social class

a bitter pil…

• runs counter to the dominant social philosophy of our society = individualism

• sociology provokes considerable resistance… especially (but not exclusively) among privileged social groups

difference social and life science

single hermeneutic

• life science

• view in 1 way

• relationship of knowing 1 way: science → object of study

double hermeneutic

• social science

• scientist → object of study

  • BUT people are also trying to make sense of reality between each other

  • AND people change science too

  • AND conepts social science are also ine veryday life

  • AND they try to make sense of science

• social science and sociology is the interpretation of interpreting beings

• Schütz: sociological theories are theories of the second-degree

• Garfinkel: sociology is an account of accounts

• sociologists are NOT the only ones producing theories about the social worrld

• they compete with both lay and professional (journalists, politicians, writers, commentators, celebrities etc.) producers of social theory

• sociology shapes society, society shapes sociology

a sociological syllogism

• Premise 1: the way that human beings perceive and judge the world is shaped by their (position in) society

• Premise 2: sociologists are human beings

• Hence: the way that sociologists perceive and judge the world is shaped by their (positon in) society

• BUT: how is objective knoledge possible? how can we produce knowledge claims that are universally valid?

(un)learning

• in the natural sciences: learning is discovering qualitatively “new” aspects of reality

• as sociologists: learning is often un-learning, ridding yourself of habitual ways of looking at things

• difficulty = gaining a novel perspective on the thoroughly familiar

• especially in the face of existing theories and concepts about the social world produced by (more powerful) others

“common sense”

• people have clear opinions and form their own theories about race, gender, the economy, education, inequality, poverty etc.

• prepositions in everyday life (= Durkheim’s prenotions, faulty way of making sense of life

importance of concepts and definitions

• tangled and obscured connotations to social concepts

• social science doesn’t have monopoly on theory and knowledge of the social world

  • does this matter? depends on your theoretical perspective

critique in western social thought

• 2 ways of dealing with common sense

critique in Kantian sense

• human consciousness !!

• consciousness not passive reception, but actively shapes the world around

• our consciousness not shaped by world of objects, our consciousness shapes the world of objects

• for Kant: categories of consciousness are a priori = innate, universal

• Hance: analysis must turn inwards, aim to clarify how the actor experiences her world

• interrogation into basic categories of human mind

• mind makes structure of the world

• mind was born with the ability to structure the world

critique in Marxian sense

• economic/material reproduction determines human relations, culture, beliefs, cosciousness

• our social being (sein) precedes our consciousness (bewusstsein)

• study the historical developments int eh way that humans have organized thair economic/material reproduction to understand human subjectivity

• hence: analysis must turn outwards, examine the material conditions that shape how social actors think, feel and perceive the world

• the objective world (economic conditions) shapes consciousness

subjectivism/constructivism vs objectivism/structuralism

• these 2 different conception of critique are at the base of a central division in social theory

• subjectivism and objectivism are at the basis of two quite distinct social epistemologies and two different social ontologies

• both have different conception of the task of professional sociologists. Both have different views of sociology as a tool of social critique

subjectivist/constructivist

• Kant → Husserl → Schütz → Garfinkel, Berger &Luckmann, Blumer, Latour

• relationship between social analyst and social actors = symmetrical

• sociology should not explain WHY people do what they do, it describes HOW they do it

• sociologists should study how actors actively create a common sense-world and the spontaneous sociologies they produce in the process

• actors are competent agents, little, qualitative difference between lay and professional social theory

• get in between the people

objectivist/structuralist

• Marx & Engels → Gramsci → Bourdieu →…

• relationship between social analyst and social actors = asymmatrical

• sociology should break with spontaneous sociology of actors

• social theory is qualitatively better, than lay theory, which is often partial, biased, false

• sociology should explain WHY people do what they do, reveal the reasons behind their actions and thoughts

• sociology has a strong emancipatory function, should be a tool of social critique

let’s rewind

• contra to other social sciences, sociology can’t claim position outside of its research object

• sociology is part and parcel of its object of study (we’re shaped by society and we in turn shape society)

• social world is populated with conepts and theories that lay actors have developed to interpret and judge this world (double hermeneutic)

“common sense”

• the host of theories and concepts that social actors spontaneously develop to nevigate the social world

how to deal with “common sense”

• Kantian critique → subjectivist sociology

• Marxian critique → objectivist sociology

• objectivist sociology sees common sense as obstacle to the development of scientific knowledge of the socila

  • people’s beliefs, opinions, attitudes can’t be used as an instrument of explanation, they get int he way of a decent scientific explanation

  • people’s thoughts and actions are determined by factors that elude their consciousness, factors that relate to social structure

  • sociology = systematic attempt to uncover this structure

2. Emile Durkheim and sociology against prenotions

Emile Durkheim

• founding father (French) sociology

• established sociology as academic discipline and as empirical science

• science of societies should not consist of mere paraphrase of traditional prejudices, but should cause us to see things in different way from the ordinary man, for purpose of any science is to make discoveries and all such discoveries more or less upset accepted opinions

idola fori

• Francis Bacon, coined the terms prenotions, Durkheim used it

• prenotions: idols of the market place = everyday gossip and terms for stuff

prénotions

• sociology’s objects of study often can’t be empirically observes in their totality

• religions, nations, states, classes, societies, etc. onyl directly reveal themselves by their constitutive elements (artefacts, symbols, institutions, buildings etc.)

• this makes it all the more dangerous to confuse the terms we have for these entities with their actual reality

• Durkheim warns against risk of ideological analysis, the study of concepts, rather than things

• partial, schematic, incorrect epresenatations of the social world embedded in everyday words and expressions

• developed for practical action and judgment, not scientific understanding

the “categories” of everyday life

• everyday terms that are developed to denounce, criticize,attack…

• category = Greek for charge, accusation or for to accuse publicly, to denounce

• prenotions can isolate, hemogenize, blow up problems or draw boundaries where there are none

• methodological problem: pure experimentation not possible

  • we can compare, BUT where you cut reality is important

a negative rule

• mistrust any definition or classification you haven’t made yourself

• beware of the pre-defined objects that common sense provides you with

a positive rule

• ignoring existing terminology and classifications is an entirely negative rule

• what shoudl we do to avo!id reproducing common sense?

• adequate defintions? sure, BUT: still run the risk of mistaking the name for the thing itself

• the most decisive step is to decide what counts as data for our research

social facts as things

• first and most basic rule

• subject matter of research must only include a group of phenomena defined beforehand by certain common external characteristics and all phenomena which correspond to this defenition must be so included

• define phenomena independent of the subjective perception/opinions that both social actors and social analysts have of them

how to determine social facts

• how to determine for example what counts as criminal behaviour?

• Durkheim: NOT by

  • asking what poeple judge to be immoral, unethical or deviant

  • using our own (Western) definitons of ciminality

• BUT: look at external, objective act that all types of criminal behaviour inevitably produce → punishment

being objective in our definition of data seems important, but why is Durkheim so paranoid about subjective attitudes, perceptions, beliefs?

sociology vs anti-psychology

• Durkheim is critical of common sense for epistemological reasons: it stands in the way of objective social science

• BUT: also a more provincial reason why Durkheim discredits subjective attitude and perceptions = the dud was mad at the success of psychology

• success of sociology depends on demarcating it from psychology

suicide

• study suicide without refering to individuals’ psychological or subjective state

• not just genetics or individual personality that determine the odds of killing oneself

• suicide not just indicator of individual wellbeing, it’s and index of the wellbeing of society

• comparison affords explanation: he compared different cases of suicude

• suicide: applied to all cases of death resulting directly or indirectly from a positive or negative act of the victim himself, which he knows will produce this result

  • positive act: doing something you know will kill you

  • negative act: not doing something so you die

psychological causes

• depression?

• but what about: suicide bombers, soldiers who sacrifice themselves for their comrades, lottery-winners?

• also, what causes depression?

• suicide is a too intimate thing to be more than approximately interpreted by another, it even escapes self-observation

suicide and statistics

• solution: compare suicide rates of groups defined on the basis of external, objective characteristics like gender, religious identity, marital status

• suicide is innovative forn its use of statistical comparison as a tool of sociological analysis

• conclusions: suicide more among men, single people, childless couples, protestants, economic crisis and boom

• conclusions: suicide rates determined by variations in degree of social integration and social regulation

  • social integration: degree to which people are part of a society

  • social regulation: degree to which a person’s actions and desires are controlled by the society

sociological causality

sociological factors → (psychological factors) → suicide rates

↳social integration and regulation

• question is not: should sociology not take into account genetic or psychological factors in its explanations of suicide?

• rather: purely psychological or biological explanations of suicide fall short, since they fail to take into account the role of social principles of variation in suicide rates

• the causes of this purely individual act transcend the individual, to include patterns of social organisation