Notes on:
Bauman, Z. (1976) Towards a Critical
Sociology. London: Routledge.
Dave Harris
Chapter one
Social life can appear as natural as a necessity,
and this is developed in a number of positivist
traditions, especially Durkheim, where social
facts are treated as things [but see the actual
Durkheim here].
Ideas or values can also be seen as things, which
enables a social science by giving them a natural
status. What happens is that this functional
argument leads to understanding actual present
society itself as naturalist, via a
'slippage'. Thus for example Shils produces
the idea of different sets of values, core and
peripheral, and describes a whole range of social
practices which ensure conformity to them.
Parsons also has a
series of idealised management mechanisms,
although he does allow for possible tensions
between them [Merton even more so]. In
Parsons there is again a range of norms from the
mundane to the central: central values and social
goals can only be grasped by sociologists.
Patterns are simply imposed usually through
interactions in groups [the example is drawn from
WI Thomas, and the pressures of gossip and so
on]. This approach provides a solution to
the fears of lack of constraint, again prominent
in Durkheim who argues there are no other natural
constraints to regulate human beings. There
is no alternative, and social coercion is
necessary for functionalists: the only freedom is
seen as leading to market anarchy. There can
be a choice of coercion, and values are preferred
to force, even in the communist East: Durkheim is
a softer option than Stalin! (23).
The whole approach is been ridiculed by Goffman
who sees a whole stress on values and social order
as the result of the experience of McCarthyism,
when moral zeal was mocked. On the rebound,
moral pressures were generalized into a social
theory again. Goffman stresses the
possibilities of playing the system, however, and
his sociology is critical in the sense that it
shows that the emphasis on central values is not
really genuinely moral, but phony, and that
beliefs do not actually govern social life, more
the impression of conforming to them.
However, central values are still necessary to
avoid radical doubt, and there must be pretence in
social life . Nevertheless, social
conformism present a hostile environment for the
individual.
An early crisis for functionalist sociology took
the shape of the emergence of the
subjective. The problem is that sociology
must also be grounded in common sense, in
experience, and this led to the problems of
defining freedom and constraint at the level of
experience. Again social science can claim a
superiority here as the only discipline which
grasps the 'real' laws and limits behind
experience. The fear of freedom is still
present, and sociology offers a scientific
authority to complement religious authority:
sociology has a new role to explain the inevitable
limits of social life, as a kind of theodicy.
There are other religious underpinnings to
functionalism as well [Gouldner is good on
this]. Thus it is possible to see deviancy
as irrationality, to connect with Weber's
insistence on rationality as the best form for
modern societies, or as something which reconciles
the individual and the social.
In these ways, sociology is closed to the
possibilities of [political] freedom. It is
rooted in the common sense fear of freedom, and it
claims to be superior technically and
cognitively. It is powerful because it is
rational, scientific rather than metaphysical or
ideological. There is something in this
argument, but sociology is wrong to stay at this
level. It does so because it's responding to
technical developments and convergences, which it
sees as more important than mere ideological
differences, like those between East and West [in
the dear dead days of the Cold War]..
Sociology can positively investigate social
responses, analysing cultures and identifying
structural limits. This is what produces the
interest in 'inevitability': sociology works at
the level of cultural and structural possibilities
rather than engaging in direct behaviourism [in
policy terms].
[Political?] knowledge is never seen as emerging
from any sort of dialogue with social sciences,
which means functionalist sociology inevitably
takes the side of those who see others as
objects. If it does have an enlightening
impact at all, this will be to encourage the
manipulators [of the Goffman kind]. There is
no discourse of emancipation or enlightenment.
Chapter two
The roots of sociology in common sense experience
is never really examined. It is clear that
common sense provides the categories crucial to
analysis, for example in defining objects.
This has led to Husserl's
critique of empiricism, establishing how thought
develops into certainty, and criticizing Descartes
for being too eager to assume a knowledge of
objects. Husserl attempted to end the splits
between epistemology and ontology, through
categories of noesis and noema
[roughly the qualities of thoughts and of things,
both treated as phenomena and connected
together]. Similarly, both subject and
object were seen as abstractions, both were common
in the 'natural attitude'. The critique was
able to show that individual consciousness also
involve reductions of reality.
There are implications for sociology: subjectivity
is now established as a topic for research; the
notion of intentionality provides an active role
for the subject, and a move towards
deobjectification; hermeneutics is now grounded in
normal human activity; meaning is considered as
transcendental rather than as a matter of
individual consciousness, which escapes the
relativism of concrete subjectivity. There
are problems with using Husserl although, since
sociology clearly works at a more concrete level
[and there are always problems connecting the
concrete and the transcendental!]. Sociology
focuses on interactions rather than transcendental
essences. Husserl's analysis of the life
world was never very detailed, since the intention
was to demonstrate philosophically the existence
of others and so on: there is an assumption that
the other can be understood in a relation of
reciprocity. This raises problems with
otherness: if people act as a genuine other, we
cannot really understand them; we can assume there
is reciprocity, but it is hard to actually
establish this (50). Reciprocity is
conventionally assumed, but this leads to
unfortunate consequences—consensus is also
assumed, the existence of a conscience
collective in the life world, even the
notion of society as some collective
personality. Phenomenology stands as either
a devastating and total critique of sociology
altogether, or as an awful apology for
functionalism.
Existentialism is another input. Being is
simply assumed again, rather than something to be
studied, so existence must precede essence.
For Heidegger, Being became Dasein, being
for other humans, the only source of genuine
being, but also the greatest threat to it in the
form of the crowd, das Man, the hellish
others for Sartre. What we have here is an
argument about reification which takes place as
the result of such collective interventions, and
this prevents individual decision-making.
However, there is some possibility of dereifying
events by establishing some notion of authentic
being. But authentic being is itself a
reduction to a nonsocial level, a pure self, and
reification is explained only as some deviation
from this pure self: there is no history, no
social dimension, there is only the self.
Further, thinking of relations between concrete
and authentic selves produces all sorts of
individual doubts moral crises and relativism, not
a critical discourse.
Such existentialism has influenced social
phenomenology, which is really existentialist as
in Schutz, focused on
individual member rather than transcendental
subjectivity, and assuming shared relevancies
'from the outset'. There is no account of a
critical historical development, only an analysis
of formal or universal types rather than
specifics, cognitive rules rather than social
divisions. Social divisions are seen formally, as
zones around an individual, those within reach and
so on. The content of individual
subjectivity, so to speak, is often very
different, leading to a kind of relativism.
There are biological determinations. There
are multiple realities, but there are also finite
provinces of meaning, as syntheses produced by
consciousness, 'frames' to make meaning finite, to
limit it. Individuals have a choice between
finite provinces [not very satisfactorily
explained, in my view, seen in terms of a
'leap'—and every day life is the 'paramount
reality']. Individuality is therefore
inevitably reproduced, as a kind of converse of
Durkheim: in Schutz it takes a particular 'monadic
form', or at best seems to be based on
anthropological universals, although Schutz is
vague. A shared stock of knowledge is an a
priori assumption, and that stock includes
agreed definitions of objects, or reciprocity of
perspectives, congruence of perspectives, all as a
priori conditions for being with
others. These theoretical prerequisites are
as powerful as the pattern variables for Parsons!
Schutz does talk about simultaneity, but he mostly
describes degrees of anonymity expressed in
different ideal types, hypothetical only.
Social aggregates are seen as aggregates of these
personal types. Society is merely a
sediment, something out of our immediate
control. Social relations only exist as
concepts and they can be criticized as concepts or
typifications, but they are also necessary to
reification as compared with simultaneity.
Overall, concepts are hypostasized, whereas the
real processes are uninvestigated.
Overall, social phenomenology demystifies society,
but sees reification of some kind as inevitable
and as universal, leaving only a kind of practical
freedom. This is of course an abstraction
from the current situation. It can serve as
a criticism of sociology rather than the object of
sociology. Proper critical sociology would
investigate common sense to unravel 'collective
objectivations'. It is an attempt to move
back to the conceptual roots of sociology rather
than to criticize its objects. All
constraints operate through typifications in the
same way for Schutz.
Given this philosophical reduction of the
approach, alternatives might be found in the work
of Mead. Here, there is a relation between
the social and individual, a dialectical process
of interaction, although this is still
existential, says Bauman, still rooted in mundane
subjectivity. Thus Mead's 'I' is best seen
as a 'sediment of all previous acts', while the
'me' depicts 'social reality as… an external
factor' (66). The same constraints lie
behind the notions of the 'definition' and the
'situation' respectively. Both are seen in
dialectical tension in an actual act. There
are only really separate stages when one act is
considered, and the two aspects merge during a
process, for example in a biography, where today's
definitions become tomorrow's situations
(67). Critical sociology is interested in
the reverse process.
Mead never tackles critical analysis in this way
because he's interested in the problems of the
given existence, about the origins rather than the
intelligibility of the present. He does
stress the dynamics of the self against the fixity
of society, but the approach developed by Berger and Luckman is
better because it looks of the construction both
of society and the self. They develop
processes like 'habituation' to account for
regularities in social life and how actions become
taken for granted. They also describe
'realization' as a process of becoming real as
well as people becoming aware. Their
approach is generally emancipatory because it is
about reification [see Berger
and Pullberg], and shows how selective
knowledge is, how alternatives are suppressed, and
how groups support their definition of
reality. Nevertheless, it is still
conceptual, cognitive and epistemological.
It is equivocal in terms of the different types of
sedimentation. It is still about knowledge
rather than reality, and there is still some
belief that institution somehow reflect universal
interests. It is very good as a starting
point at least.
Chapter three
Both kinds of sociology are too descriptive of
things as they are as a foundation for action, and
this produces a drift to positivism. Values
[and politics] are seen as distortions of the
values and attitudes of science. Sociology
was emancipatory, but it now binds human beings to
a world of facts, and has reverted back to
prejudice [I note the clear undertones of
critical theory here, as in Dialectic of Enlightenment
]. Sociology lacks a critical edge [because
it has been positivized] and sees reason as both
moral and empirical: it has been keen to pursue
great success with the latter emphasis at the
expense of the critical edge developed better in
the former. This has led to an abdication
from the world of politics and values, and is the
source of the current problems of finding grounds
for critique.
Critique must confront common sense which is
inherently conservative, but this opens sociology
to ridicule. Sociology seems contrived
rather than intuitively obvious, and critique
seems to deny rather than build on common sense:
instead of trying to accept, understand or
systematize common sense, critical sociology
wishes to transcend it. It is bound to be
resisted, because commonsense comforts and
regulates not challenges and questions our
very experience. Experience very often
fights back with the charge that sociology is
'unrealistic', 'utopian' and so on.
Sociology tries to be emancipatory about the ends
of social action, but commonsense operates with
'decisionistic nods'. Nevertheless, an
emancipatory approach must attack common sense and
the reality which it reflects, more radically than
did Durkheim or Schutz. An emancipatory
programme must be anti naturalistic, and focus on
the historical instead. It must span the
apparent separate poles of situation/definition,
or actor/system, which constitute each other
historically. We should understand history
as providing sedimented past actions and choices,
not cognitive processes.
The best example of a suitable historical analysis
is found in Marx, especially in the critique of
political economy as abstractive, naturalizing
historical events. In his analysis, social
relations look both objective and material because
they are no longer face to face, no longer part of
life world. The network of dependencies
which result have to be ideologized as 'reality',
as 'second nature'. It is this process that
provides the current opposition between the public
and private, and accounts for the opacity of
social relations between actors, especially those
between producers and consumers which are seen in
terms of social distributions of value and
money. Simple calculations of interest
replace the attempts at understanding [purposive
rationality seems more 'natural' than any attempt
to understand in an emancipatory way]. The
economy seems all powerful because it was the
first to be and is still the most abstracted:
economic relations seem to be the model for all
subsequent power relations [with reference to the
Marxist notion of superstructure, 83].
Freedom is reserved only for those spheres where
there is no immediate economic dependency—the face
to face, interpersonal relations [which means that
interactionists are quite wrong to celebrate these
residual spheres as essential].
The aim of analysis is to show that economic
relations are social, but not in the sense meant
by Durkheim or Schutz. These are too
uncritical of common sense notions of social
reality, and do not question distinctions like the
ones between public and private. A critical
sociology must not depend on an arbitrary
choice. It must be chosen because the other
approaches are unable to grasp social
totality. That totality appears as something
anonymous, objective and natural, and it seems
only reasonable to obey it in the interests of
particular individuals. Historical analysis
must overcome these conceptions, presenting not
just a succession of types or stages, which
conventionally accept distinctions like the
private and public [the examples here are the
couples mechanical/organic, Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft],
and which offer a society in the past as the only
alternative to the present.
There is no way forward by personalizing either:
it is impersonal relations that are personified in
individualistic ideas for Marx [in Grundrisse].
Impersonal relations operate through 'an illusion
of personal freedom' as something that can master
constraints (88), including those that appear to
constrain everyone else, the mass. This is
how experience confirms the system, and leaves
freedom only as an intellectual or epistemological
matter. This idea is based on 'reality',
sometimes on anthropology, but these terms are
never criticized. We need to open them up to
critique instead of seeing them as immutable, and
consider the production of new needs: the future
should not be seen as bound to the past as in
common sense, religious or social obsessions with
order. We need to consider social life as
possessing an unlimited potentiality—how this is
constrained is the task of empirical sociology.
Can and should a critical society be a
science? Truth is a matter of process, a
practical question, in science and in positivism,
but the type of practice is the relevant
issue. We can not just reproduce the
practices of existing science [as in those
elements of social science where human subjects
are not told the purposes of the research].
Results from a process would be as alienated as
common sense, and equally unable to break through
to alternatives.
Some sociologists have made some interesting
attempts to develop alternatives. One
concerns the 'sociology of the present' developed
by E Morin (94), which studies the irregular and
unique event, such as a sudden crisis, which
breaks taken for granted perceptions [sounds a bit
like Badiou].
The danger is that this approach will be
routinized, however, just like 'conflict
sociology'. Nevertheless, this approach was
good for criticizing system builders like Althusser.
Nevertheless, problems were still seen as
epistemological ones, a matter of self critique
for sociology alone. Another approach was
pursued by Kariel, who developed a sociology of
the absurd, which was relativist and was aimed at
exposing ideology. It emphasized the playful
nature of social life rather than social routines,
and offered a deliberate shift to consider
alternatives, to enlarge understandings, to enjoy
all truths. It was 'mere intellectualism',
however. Stanley pursued a project of
delegitimation, examining instances of disorder
prompted by scarcity—useful but still about
meanings only. Bloch developed the notion of
hope as telos, focusing on the future to
be anticipated rather than bothering to critique
the present. All these approaches still
operated within the viewpoint and control of
social science, however (102).
Habermas developed the notion of quasi - transcendental human
interests that can be understood as a matter
of discourse [which seems to have anticipated the
later linguistic turn]. Discourse is
genuinely universal and immanent when it engenders
communication. Historically, however, it
becomes distorted, and Habermas wants to restore
the emancipatory interest in recovering this
history. This is to take place through
rational reconstructions, as in science, but it is
more than science: Habermas aims at a more
universal authentication, as in Freudian
psychotherapy, where authentication is required by
the actor, and is to be developed into practice,
seen as a correction of self deception, a personal
move towards undistorted communication. This
is Habermas's novelty [and it does lead to
activism, for Bauman, 105]. Social praxis is
not just therapeutic, the same as the relationship
between doctors and patients, however. An emphasis
on praxis is still the distinguishing mark of a
critical sociology rather than focusing on
inherent consistencies or particular intellectual
qualities.
The issue is whether we end with dialogue, or
whether it all just stays as academic
discourse. Emancipatory dialogue is very
rare. There is no need to consider it solely
in terms of the working class [and Habermas seems
to support a general dialogue—this is what he
means by saying there is no longer a clear link
between Marxist theory and politics, says Bauman,
107]. Dialogue like this involves persuasion
and argumentation, and these are not just confined
to social sciences, but are universal
capacities. As a result, the argument can
not be as rigorous as in scientific truth
testing. Further, there are lots of excuses
to say that the public are unaware or uninterested
in such dialogue: but critical theory cannot
accept this. [We now know, thanks to Rancière, that
authoritarian hectoring, lecturing, patronising
and badgering, or hierarchy between experts and
plebs can also ensue].
There can be no guarantees of development between
the stages of critical analysis, between
scientific tests, dialectic and practice. We
need to begin though. We can operate
heuristically, aiming to remove blocks to
emancipatory conversation gradually, to be open,
to be prepared to enlighten our partners, and to
tolerate a lot of accountability. This might
sound 'vague', but 'freedom means uncertainty'
(112).
More social theory
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