Study Skills for Social
Theory?
Study Skills
NB A more extended
discussion of this approach
appears in Arksey, H. and
Harris, D. (2007) How
to Succeed in Your Social
Science Degree.
London: Sage, and there is a
separate webpage of links on
study skills here
There is
no shortage of material offering
advice on study skills these days
in Britain. A sceptical analysis
might refer to the recent
expansion of higher education and
the need to accommodate
‘non-traditional students’. Such
expansions have always been
regarded with a certain anxiety,
it could be suggested, and a
common solution has been a
two-fold initiative: to persuade
academic staff to rethink their
pedagogic strategies (often in the
direction of simplification and
institutionalization as I have
used the term), and to provide
students with ‘study skills’. This
kind of interest in a quick
technical fix has sometimes been
assisted by an interesting paradox
that often seems to follow
expansion of places. There has
emerged what might be called a
‘social solution’ to solve the
problems produced by change --
both the substantial expansion
offered by the UK Open University
and the more recent attempts to
attract (female) mature students
have resulted in a form of
self-selection whereby those that
have come forward tended to be
pretty well-qualified and
experienced in education already
(we found this at the UKOU in 1970
– see Harris 1987)). In these
circumstances, the technical
benefits of study skills
programmes have never really been
fairly tested, of course – which
might explain their recurrent
appeal.
It is
necessary to summarize here, of
course, from a burgeoning
literature, but it might be
possible to classify the sorts of
advantages study skills approaches
seem to offer. Some seem to focus
on the immediate problems of
memorizing material in order to
pass unseen examinations, for
example, and offer techniques to
increase the powers of recall by
associating material to be
memorized with
exotic
mental images – one thinks of a
knight whose
shield
is covered with plus signs (+) as
a personal signifier for Marx’s
theory of surplus (‘Sir +’ =
‘sur-plus value’ perhaps).
Concepts can be metaphorically
embodied and placed in the rooms
of a building which one can
revisit in one’s mind, to cite
another classic technique.
Study
skills can consist of recommended
ways to approach the reading of
academic work, as in the
well-known SQR3 model (Rowntree
1976) which advocates a systematic
method of surveying
(or skimming) a text, thinking of
questions
you want answered, and then reading,
reviewing
and
revisiting
the text. More generally, advice
is often given on developing
effective study habits with time
management techniques, planned
revision timetables, or something
as practical as the need to lay
out a suitable space. Sometimes,
emphasis is placed on developing
relaxation techniques to overcome
‘exam nerves’. When combined
together, this sort of advice
offers a fascinating mixture of
bureaucratic self-management and
‘New Age’ themes.
We shall
discuss some assumptions buried in
study skills advice below, but
here we have a rather depressing
set straight away. The prospect
for any student seems to involve
punishing self-discipline, the
minute scrutiny of your own
behaviour to maximize personal
efficiency, endless reading,
reviewing and information
processing, with only the
occasional yoga exercise to
relieve the monotony. It’s almost
a perfect description of Foucault
on the obedient self-disciplining
subject! Even the frequent
exhortations to get motivated for
study can sound like a further
attempt to blame yourself if
anything goes wrong: failure means
you were simply not motivated
enough.
Other
popular techniques involve ways to
rearrange material when taking
notes or revising from books.
Here, ‘mind maps’ (see Buzan 1992)
or ‘spider diagrams’ are often
recommended as a way of grasping
the structure of arguments or the
connection between segments of an
argument or the necessary stages
of an assignment. These techniques
have either more or less formal
and logical rules and procedures
to guide the processes of mapping.
At the most informal level I have
seen them used to do
‘brainstorming’ where a group
attempts to list relevant aspects
of a problem or the views of all
the members present. At the most
formal level, mind-mapping turns
into ‘concept-mapping’, a course
design or teaching (see Burge in
Lockwood 1995) technique rather
like computer programming where
key concepts are identified and
then sequenced according to some
causal or logical principles.
These
techniques might well have some
useful insights to offer you,
especially if your problems are
associated with memorizing
material for unseen examinations
or in organizing your time, but
there are also clear problems. At
one level, there are the obvious
dangers of grasping a technique as
some all-purpose solution to study
problems, without adequate
understanding of the situation. I
have seen students using mind maps
almost as a kind of magic ritual,
for example, in the belief that
they are of universal value, and
that all one needs to do to solve
all problems is to produce one.
This can have unfortunate results
especially if one uses an informal
‘brainstorming’ mind-map to
approach a topic that requires a
more standard linear, analytical
or logical approach. Certainly,
one method almost certainly will
not cover even the range of tasks
required by modern assessment
schemes. Study skills designed to
help school students pass public
unseen examinations in the US
system, for example, probably will
not offer much help to
undergraduates in the UK, despite
the sometimes misleading
impression that study skills are
universal, based on some timeless
and context-free insights into how
people’s minds work.
At a more
abstract level, study skills
techniques clearly imply some sort
of priority for certain aspects of
the learning process. The emphasis
on memorizing reveals this quite
clearly, for example. Many
university academics would want to
say that memorising things is
probably a fairly minor part of
learning. To cite some recent work
on adult learning, and to refer
back to the section above, it
seems more important to focus on
the ‘deep’ principles behind
specific assessment tasks and not
on the ‘surface’ requirements of
individual items. These deep
principles can deliver a sounder
understanding and skills which can
be transferred from specific
contexts to new learning
situations: this is one aspect,
too, of ‘syllabus independence’.
We discuss this in more detail
below.
This
interest in principles is not
always explicit in courses you
might encounter, but it often
finds expression in advice to
‘critically discuss’ material or
to ‘(really) answer the question’,
or, as in my own institution’s
assessment criteria, to be able to
form ‘judgements’ about arguments
as well as being able to summarise
them. All these qualities imply a
move away from the specifics of
the assessment task towards some
more distanced (or ‘deeper’)
considerations. Although the usual
study skills advice often involves
reminders to ‘be critical’ or to
‘ask questions as you go along’,
they are not so helpful,
generally, with developing these
deeper principles.
The
‘deep learning’ approach
Let us
begin by summarizing some of the
main features of the ‘deep’
approach as exhibited in students’
approaches to their studies.
Figure 1
‘Surface’ and ‘Deep’
Approaches: 3
definitions
A: Morgan
1993:72—3
DEEP
APPROACH
Intention
to
understand
·
Focus on what ‘is
signified’ (e.g. the
author’s arguments)
·
Relate and
distinguish new ideas
and previous knowledge
·
Relate concepts
to everyday experience
·
Organize and
structure content
·
Internal
emphasis: ‘A window
through which aspects of
reality become visible
and more intelligible’
SURFACE
APPROACH
Intention
to
complete [learning]
task requirements
·
Focus on the
‘signs’ (e.g. the text
itself)
·
Focus on discrete
elements
·
Memorize
information and
procedures for
assessment
·
Unreflectively
associate concepts and
facts
·
Fail to
distinguish principles
from evidence, new
information from old
·
Treat [learning]
task as an external
imposition
·
External
emphasis: demands of
assessment, knowledge
cut off from everyday
reality.
B: Ramsden
(1992) (Table 4.1
p46)
Deep Approach
An
intention to understand.
The student maintains
the structure of the
task.
·
Focus on ‘what is
signified’ (e.g. the
author’s argument or the
concepts applicable to
solving the problem)
·
Relates previous
knowledge to new
knowledge
·
Relates knowledge
from different courses
·
Relates
theoretical ideas to
everyday experience
·
Relates and
distinguishes evidence
and argument
·
Organizes
and structures content
into a coherent whole
An internal
emphasis: ‘A window
through which aspects of
reality become visible
and more intelligible’
(Entwistle and Marton
1984).
Surface
Approach
An
intention only to
complete the task
requirements. The
student distorts the
structure of the task.
·
Focuses on ‘the
signs’ (e.g. the words
and sentences of the
text, or, unthinkingly,
on the formula needed to
solve the problem)
·
Focus on
unrelated parts of the
text
·
Memorizes
information for
assessments
·
Associates facts
and concepts
unreflexively
·
Fails to
distinguish principles
from examples
·
Treats the task
as an external
imposition
An
external
emphasis: the demands of
assessments, knowledge
cut off from everyday
reality
C:
Ramsden (1992)
(Table 4.2 p52)
Indicators of
‘ meaning orientation’
(deep approach)
·
I try to relate
ideas in one subject to
those in others whenever
possible
·
I usually set out
to understand thoroughly
the meaning of what I am
asked to read
·
In trying to
understand new ideas I
often try to relate them
to real-life situations
·
When I’m tackling
a new topic I often ask
myself questions about
it which the new
information should
answer
·
In reading new
material, I often find
that I’m continually
reminded of material I
know already and see the
latter in a new light
·
I spend a lot of
my free time finding out
more about interesting
topics which have been
discussed in classes
Indicators of
‘reproducing
orientation’ (surface
approach)
·
I find I have to
concentrate on
memorizing a good deal
of what we have to learn
·
I usually don’t
have time to think about
the implications of what
I have read
·
Although I
generally remember facts
and details, I find it
difficult to fit them
together into an overall
picture
·
I find I tend to
remember things best if
I concentrate on the
order in which the
lecturer presented them
·
I tend to choose
those subjects with a
lot of factual content
rather than theoretical
kinds of analysis
·
I find it best to
accept the statements
and ideas of my
lecturers and question
them only under special
circumstances.
|
What are
these ‘deep’ underlying principles
that seem so important? They might
be logical principles, governing
matters such as the logical
operations of the deduction or
induction of theoretical
generalizations from either
initial concepts or from empirical
data. Whether formal logic alone
would enable one to follow the
actual twists and turns of
argument in typical sociological
material is rather doubtful,
though. It would be more useful to
pursue slightly fuzzier procedures
such as inference or argumentation
(including the use of rhetoric to
persuade readers of a case), or
even more fuzzy conventions used
to form acceptable sociological
arguments. It is a grasp of these
working procedures that new
students seem to need in order
both to read existing sociological
work and to produce their own.
At this
point, a bonus awaits the student
of social theory. There is a
particular reason, perhaps, for
sociologists to try and grasp
these procedures, since major
sociologists have themselves
contributed to our general
knowledge of how arguments
actually proceed and how they have
been affected by conventions. To
take two examples, the work of
both Bourdieu and Habermas seem to
me to cast an interesting light on
the whole study skills debate I
have been outlining. Let us pursue
this point a little further.
The
social context of study skills
It is
clear to me, for example, that
advocates of the ‘deep’ approach
have made a strong case for the
technical superiority of stressing
underlying ‘deep’ principles: to
be brief, they think of this
approach as simply a better and
more effective way of learning,
and can point to some empirical
evidence that seems to suggest
that ‘deep’ learners actually do
achieve good grades (see Entwistle
and Ramsden 1983), and more
positive feelings about themselves
and their abilities (Morgan 1993).
However, it is also clear that
good grades can be achieved by the
sort of instrumental approach we
discussed above
(the
‘strategic’ approach as Entwistle
and Ramsden call
it), by the simple technique of
rather cynically finding out what
is required, and amassing enough
information and street wisdom
(about the preferences of
teachers, for example) to
manufacture an assignment. This
may have no relation at all to
underlying principles or any
significant learning: as soon as
the assignment is completed, the
material is promptly forgotten.
At this
point, advocates of the ‘deep’
approach tend to suggest other
reasons for choosing
their preferred stance, against
the equally successful (in terms
of passing tests) ‘strategic’ one.
We move from the area of
demonstrable and measurable
academic success to the issue of
positive values as we have seen
above, for example. I am myself an
advocate of the ‘deep’ approach,
and I wish it well, but a classic
sociological question arises
immediately from this shift to
values – whose values are they,
and how are these values actually
distributed socially (are they
universal, or are they held by
particular social groups,
including our favourites class,
‘race’ and gender)?
Here we
are on classic sociological
ground, of course, and we can turn
to our major theorists. Bourdieu
(1986) has done some fascinating
work on the resources upon which
people draw to make judgements in
the field of arts and leisure.
Basically, there are principles or
procedures in making such
judgements -- in evaluating the
merits of films, operas, or
sporting pastimes, say – which are
quite definitely socially
distributed. A ‘popular aesthetic’
values qualities in films such as
the viewer’s ability to become
immediately involved in the
action, a content that reflects
‘real life’, and the use of
conventional stories and
narratives (as in ‘realism’). The
‘high aesthetic’ develops in
opposition, as a deliberate way to
form a distinctive space in
cultural matters ‘against the
popular’: it values qualities like
the experimental, non-realist
elements in films, the stress on
forms rather than content, the
intellectualized or
‘academic’
aspects of films (such as the
genres in which they fall, or the
characteristics of the directors
who made them), and the ability by
viewers to take a distanced, cool,
non-involved stance. Of course,
these are systematized
generalizations, of which the
actual participants need not be
conscious: most of us acquire
these structures of judgement from
the family, in early life, and we
deploy them merely as ‘common
sense’ (as an ‘habitus’ in
Bourdieu’s terms). Bourdieu wants
to go on to explain the
differences sociologically, of
course, in terms of notions like
‘cultural capital’ or the social
processes of ‘distinction’ (the
struggle for prestige and power
between social groups and the ways
in which this leads to social and
cultural barriers of various
kinds).
Bourdieu
has also analyzed the ‘structures
of judgement’ in areas even closer
to home, in academic life itself.
Here, teachers judge people such
as their colleagues, or, of
course, their students, in ways
that demonstrate the academic
version of the ‘high aesthetic’
described above. Students are
judged, as well as technically
assessed, by reference to matters
such as style, physical appearance
and demeanour, family background
and so on (see Fig. 2). Several
other studies have also picked up
this kind of social
judgement-making, of course,
usually with reference to school
teaching.
Figure 2
Academic discourse
and its levels --
Bourdieu
LEVEL ONE
(the surface appearances
in colleges)
·
Specific arguments
in lectures, seminars or
texts
·
Specific procedures,
especially in assessment
(e.g. criteria for
‘critical’ arguments) or
pedagogy (e.g. the
structure of lectures)
LEVEL TWO
(the ‘deeper’ social and
cultural structures)
·
The ‘high
aesthetic’ (distanced,
uninvolved,
experimental, formalist etc)
(see Bourdieu 1986)
·
The academic
‘structures of
judgement’ (‘disparate
criteria, never
clarified, hierarchized
or
systematized…[but]…including
handwriting, appearance,
style, general
culture…accent,
elocution and
diction…and finally and
above all the bodily hexis
[which includes]
manners and behaviour’
--
Bourdieu 1988:
200).
|
I
hope it might be clear to you that
some connection could now be made
between Bourdieu’s work and the
‘deep’ approach. There is the
non-involved emphasis on form in
the ‘high aesthetic’, and the
requirement to be cool and
analytic, to focus on the
principles, and not to get too
involved in the specifics in the
‘deep approach’. . However,
one implication that arises is
whether the qualities required by
the ‘deep’ approach are as
socially distributed as those of
the more general ‘high aesthetic’,
whether, for example, those groups
identified by Bourdieu as rich in
‘cultural capital’ also favour the
‘deep’ approach. Perhaps the
students who deploy the ‘deep’
approach to their studies are also
those who apply the ‘high
aesthetic’ to their cultural
judgements? If
Bourdieu is correct, the 'deep'
approaches in education, like the
'high' approaches in culture more
generally, will just be
naturalised and seen as
disembodied 'knowledge',
'philosophy' and the like (see
file)
There is
a rather depressing implication
here too, of course. There may
well be a social class and gender
dimension to the different
approaches to learning, just as
there is in the cultural field
more generally. At the very least,
this could mean that study skills
and course design approaches
aiming at encouraging the ‘deep’
approach will be received quite
differently by students. Those
from backgrounds with large
amounts of cultural capital
(roughly, wealthy, middle-class,
male and cosmopolitan) will
respond to such initiatives as if
they were second nature, while
those from different backgrounds
will still find the whole process
as culturally remote as ever. I am
offering a very speculative
analysis here, of course, based on
the pursuit of some initial
analogies and implications – much
more systematic work would be
needed to proceed much further.
Of
course, schools and universities
can transmit cultural capital
themselves, although for Bourdieu
cultural capital is as hard to
accumulate as economic capital.
This leads him to a discussion on
the self-taught academic (the
‘autodidact’) who is forced to use
a ‘primitive accumulation’
approach, to scrimp and save, deny
and police the self in order to
acquire, painfully and gradually,
the knowledge and techniques of
the accomplished ‘high aesthete’.
This seems quite a good
description of the hard route
offered by many study skills
approaches, as I have suggested
above. In Bourdieu’s work, the
point is a different one –
specific combinations of cultural
and economic capital are used to
explain the emergence of modern
class fractions -- but we can bear
in mind Bourdieu’s interest in
social distinction to produce yet
another pessimistic implication.
Even if study skills approaches
succeed in enabling students to
accumulate enough (academicised)
cultural capital, there will still
be social barriers between the
self-taught and those who
unconsciously and apparently
effortlessly bring to bear the
‘high aesthetic’ (read ‘deep
approach’?) since they have been
literally born to it.
Thinking
of Habermas at this point leads to
more cheerful possibilities,
perhaps. Habermas might seem to be
rather a strange person to turn to
here, in fact, since his work is
massive, theoretically dense and
not normally associated with study
skills at all. I am trivializing
it, perhaps, to cite it in this
context at all. Yet he
offers another example of the
possibilities of using social
theory itself to understand the
problems of studying social
theory.
Habermas
is famous for his work on human
communication which develops out
of a substantial research
programme aiming to achieve a
number of rather specialist goals
(including developing a way to
classify social sciences, to
overcome a number of technical
problems with earlier theoretical
schemes, and to justify in a
strong sense the practice of
social and political criticism)
(see, for example Habermas 1972 --
and file).
The latter project especially
interests us here, since it has
led Habermas, after substantial
theoretical labour, to produce a
number of points pertinent to the
much more specific issue of the
problems posed by the nature of
academic argument and how to begin
to grasp it.
We have,
for example, extended commentaries
on ‘strategic’ and ‘distorted’
forms of communication, which
(briefly) are designed to persuade
us to act in the interests of
others (Habermas 1976) ( and see file) . The commentaries are
designed to critique political
communications especially, but
they could be used equally well to
grasp the strategic and distorted
elements in pedagogic
communications too. We have
mentioned strategic orientations
before in our discussion.
Distorted communication in
Habermas is slightly different –
here powerful groups launch a form
of communication that tries to
persuade us that their specific
interests are in fact universal.
Both of these categories could
help us pursue a very rich
critique of forms of communication
used in teaching, in my view.
The
commentaries turned out to be
located in a broader discussion of
argumentation (Habermas 1984)
which, I have already suggested,
would also be an excellent
addition to any purely logical
analysis of characteristic
academic procedures and
conventions. Finally, at the
broadest level, Habermas is famed
for developing a notion of some
ideal form of fully open and
critical communication – the
‘ideal speech act’ (or ‘ideal
speech situation’). This notion
provides us with a set of critical
procedures with genuinely
universal applicability, inherent
in any speech act: to summarize
rather bluntly, any native speaker
is always in a position, in
principle, to question the
validity of any utterance (spoken
or written). To be slightly more
precise, a question can be placed
against any statement in terms of
its intelligibility, validity,
sincerity and/or social
appropriateness.
In the
specific area of our discussion
here, I hope it is possible to see
some implications for ‘deep’
approaches again, rather more
optimistic ones, perhaps, than
before. Language itself provides
any speaker with a critical
potential, so to speak,
irrespective of social differences
like class and gender. Some sort
of universal and fairly simple
procedures seem to be universally
available, so that anyone can
critically discuss and evaluate
even academic speech and writing.
I have
summarised the points in Fig. 3,
but as a quick clue to what I am
driving at, examine the following
example. Anyone reading it would
be impressed by the constant
references to surfaces and depths
in McCarthy’s (1984) well-known
account of Habermas’s work,
especially of his general theory
of communication. In the course of
this account, incidentally,
McCarthy (1984: 340) summarizes
Habermas on the third stage in the
acquisition of communicative
competence, in a way which leads
to further connections with the
discussion of the ‘deep approach’
that we have summarized in Fig 1:
‘The
child now “differentiates between
perceptible and manipulable
things… intelligible subjects and
their utterances…and it no longer
confuses linguistic signs and
their references and meanings”
[this confusion looks just like
the characteristics of the
'surface' approach]. It becomes
aware of the perspectival nature
of its own viewpoint [one of the
witty consequences displayed
beautifully in the 'deep'
approach]’
Figure 3
Academic discourse
and its levels --
Habermas
LEVEL
ONE
(the surface appearances
in colleges)
·
Specific arguments
in lectures, seminars or
texts
·
Specific procedures,
especially in assessment
(e.g. criteria for
‘critical’ arguments) or
pedagogy (e.g. the
structure of lectures)
LEVEL
TWO
(the structure of
‘practical’
argumentation in general
-- ‘empirical
pragmatics’)
·
‘speech acts’
(not just formal
linguistic operations)
·
types of
communication: (a)
‘interactionist’
(designed to reach
consensual understanding
with others) (b)
strategic, including
‘distorted’ and
‘blocked’
·
discourses to
remove blocks and
distortions
LEVEL
THREE
( ‘universal pragmatics’
-- the basic human
competencies)
·
realising the
‘ideal speech act’ and
its relation to the
‘four worlds’ :
language, external
reality, social reality,
inner states of
consciousness.
·
forming the
‘happy utterance’ which
relates well to each
‘world’ and is therefore
intelligible, true,
‘moral’ (socially
appropriate), sincere.
·
raising ‘validity
claims’ about
comprehensibility,
truth, morality and
sincerity etc. in the
utterances of others
·
launching
theoretical discourses
to discuss without
constraint the validity
claims of disputed
utterances, and
metatheoretical claims
to discuss the rules for
assessing validity
(truth, morality etc)
|
Before we
cheerfully reduce Habermas’s work
to a series of study skills
checklists, we would still need to
be sensitive to specifics and to
contexts, though. Habermas’s work
is at a very general level, and he
knows very well the problems of
addressing specific social
situations like encounters in
colleges or universities. Extra
conventions and rules apply in
those contexts, so to speak, which
may have to be followed in the
very process of releasing these
universal critical potentials. As
all students know (some more
explicitly than others, perhaps),
there are acceptable and
unacceptable ways of asking
questions, confessing to
ignorance, disagreeing with other
students, reconciling different
‘readings’ and so on, and, once
more, those conventions are
supported in colleges and schools
by assessment and grading
practices. The implications from
Bourdieu’s work seem to crop up
again. Of course, we have a
critical edge with Habermas’s work
too – we can use his notion of the
ideal speech act to contrast with
the actual types of communication
that go on in colleges, to expose
the distorting or strategic
effects of conventions, to realise
that university communication is
not simply ‘natural’, and perhaps
not even innocent of manipulative
undertones.
What have
we learned from this brief detour
into some high-powered social
theory? Even if we cannot apply
Bourdieu or Habermas immediately
to our task, some critical
insights might have been gained.
At least we now are in a position
to think about academic
communication at different levels.
At a general level, there are
universal argumentational devices,
universal critical potentials that
enable any one of us to critique
arguments, and at the specific
level sets of conventions or
‘judgements’ that influence the
specific operations of academic
work in organizations like
colleges or schools (which might
include types of communication
such as ‘strategic’ and
‘distorted’).
To become
an effective student of social
theory, in the specific context of
a university or college (rather
than in the ‘idealised’ context we
discussed above) requires social
and cultural skills to operate at
these different levels which exist
‘beneath’ or ‘behind’ the
specifics of the syllabus. If we
can think of these different
levels, it becomes easier to
recognise, operate with, and
critique forms of communication
encountered in syllabi in the
specific location of the college.
Let us now pursue the notion of
‘levels’ in another, more
abstract, direction.
Levels of theorizing
Let us
begin this section with some
implications following on from our
analysis of the production of
social theory (see earlier file)
. I hope one general implication
is clear already -- that
conventional study skills can
offer only a partial solution to
the problems of studying social
theory. Those that focus on the
immediate problems of coping with
specific materials in order to
complete specific assignments will
offer only a limited insight into
the many levels at which social
theory operates. The same comment
applies, obviously, to the
semi-deviant and unofficial ‘study
skills’ of the hidden curriculum –
the short cuts, and the ‘cheats’
of student rumour and legend.
These techniques might serve to
help you cope with pressing
demands on your time, but they can
never lead to sufficient
understandings of the contexts and
dynamics of social theory. There
is a good chance that you will
fail to demonstrate your grasp of
‘deep’ principles that leads to
the really high grades awarded for
students who can deliver
‘understanding’ or ‘critical
analysis’. Finally, you risk
longer-term problems as you become
‘syllabus-dependent’: simply
following blindly a syllabus
designed by pedagogic experts will
always leave you feeling mystified
and alienated, and this will work
away at your confidence and
motivation.
There are
levels of social theory, what we
have called ‘residuals’, from the
other stages which operate
‘before’ or ‘outside of’ the
institutionalized syllabus, and
different sorts of dynamics which
drive theory forward and explain
the changes and differences in it.
It seems necessary as a result to
pursue other sorts of ‘study
skills’ to acquire different sorts
of understandings. I have been
arguing throughout that social
sciences offer their own
techniques to understand ideas and
theories. As a result, students of
social sciences are in an
excellent position to apply these
techniques to the understanding of
social theory itself.
The earlier file
argued that social theory could be
seen as going through three
(simplified) stages, for example.
The first phase involved a
relatively informal way of
thinking about ‘real’ problems
found routinely in the social
world. The second phase involved
an attempt to systematize and
formalize this knowledge, to
develop more specialist concepts
and problems – even specialist
‘objects’. The third phase we
called ‘institutionalization’,
where social theory gets
transformed into actual syllabi,
teaching sequences and assignments
for you to encounter specifically
as students. Let us follow through
some implications for the problems
of grasping social theory.
Understanding
social
theory in its first phase requires
the skill of trying to trace in
social theory the signs of the
real-world problems that
interested the writer in the first
place, as it were. Those problems
probably will be influenced by
your own contemporary interests,
of course. At the first stage, the
biographies or biographical
sketches in many textbooks can
help (e.g. Ritzer 1994, Waters
1994), as can the interviews or
letters, the historical accounts
of the development of various
‘schools’ (Ritzer 1994 again on
the ‘Chicago School’, or the more
‘difficult’ pieces like Held 1980
on the ‘Frankfurt School’, or the
‘key thinkers’ in Lechte 1994).
As you
pursue your studies in social
sciences, you will probably
encounter specialized approaches
that attempt to explore
systematically the impact of
existing social problems on the
formulations of specific texts in
social theory. These approaches
might be given names like
‘hermeneutic analysis’ or the
‘sociology of knowledge’, and
there are major investigations of
these issues in marxism or in the
work of writers like Foucault. It
would be inappropriate to pursue
these specialist approaches at
present, but the questions they
ask are not that far removed from
your interests as a student, I
believe, and, as a very quick
first hint of what might be
possible when you do encounter
these specialisms, I have listed a
few possible initial questions in
Figure 4.
Figure 4
Types of
Analytical
Questions for
Phase 1
1.
‘Hermeneutic’
questions (see Palmer?
Thompson?):
·
I am assuming
that this text is
meaningful to the person
who wrote it -- how can
I read this text so as
to release those
meanings?
·
What personal
meanings are at work in
this text for the
typical academic of the
time and the context?
·
What theoretical
(religious, political,
academic) traditions can
be traced in this text?
2.
‘Sociological’
questions (see
Mannheim? Marxism?):
·
What assumptions
(values, concerns,
problems) can be found
in this text and whose
are they?
·
How do these
assumptions etc. relate
to what we know of the
social problems,
structures, political
struggles and dilemmas
of the time?
·
What social
groups did the author(s)
belong to or identify
with, and what sort of
influence emanating from
these groups might be
detected in their work?
3.
‘Archaeological’
questions (see
Foucault 1974):
·
How does this
text relate to others I
know in terms of both
the similarities and
differences of its
concepts, problems,
procedures, or methods?
·
How does this
text relate to the
broader field of
knowledge about this
topic available now or
at the time it was
written (e.g. that
knowledge displayed in
newspapers, social
comments,
other academic or
popular accounts, my
personal knowledge and
experience) – e.g. what
is going to be needed to
‘update’ this text?
·
Does this text
claim to be more
‘scientific’ than other
texts and if so, on what
is this claim based, and
how is it actually
demonstrated?
|
Of
course, this sort of analysis must
be careful not to miss the effects
of the other phases: social
theories are never simply
determined by their social origins
(and Foucault (1974) in particular
insists on the relative
independence from context of what
he calls ‘discourse’). Once we
enter the systematic phase,
theories can develop a momentum of
their own, we argued. It is
necessary to remember this to
avoid the occasional dismissive
summary of uncongenial approaches
as somehow hopelessly bound to
their time. The most notorious
case in my experience concerns
those attempts by British
activists to persuade generations
of students that ‘critical theory’
derives its characteristic
pessimism from its unfortunate
early life in Nazi-dominated
Germany – in fact critical theory
has a number of excellent
theoretical reasons for its
pessimism, of course, as Held
argues.
There is
no shortage of analytical
techniques to explore the
development of social
theory at this second phase.
The sociology of (natural) science
offers many parallels to pursue
here – the role of ‘paradigms’ or
‘research programmes’ in governing
actual work, the interplay of
logical, social and linguistic
factors, the institutional
connections between research and
commerce or government, for
example.
More
recently, the whole
‘post-structuralist’ movement has
featured expert analyses of what
might be termed the strategies of
classical (or ‘modernist’) social
theory, the practices by which
meanings are prematurely
stabilized in concepts; the ways
ambiguities or incoherence are
masked by tactical deployments of
metaphor, or dogmatism, political
interests, ill-thought out
ideological assumptions, or other
forms of premature closure; the
ways literary techniques are used
to make convincing or involving
stories out of research findings.
To take
one quick example, Hindess (1977)
offers a wonderfully terse and
thoroughly critical analyses of
trends in modern sociology ( see
file). His chapter on Weber
sets out very effectively to
expose the assumptions in the
great man’s work, starting with
the famous distinction between
‘action’ and ‘behaviour’: this
distinction is not based on any
sociological observations or any
very clear discussion, but
reflects Weber’s allegiance to
some rather dubious philosophical
premises about the ‘essences’ of
humanity and the old dualist idea
about ‘Man’ having a body (which
merely 'behaves') and a soul or
mind (which is capable of action),
says Hindess. Weber goes on to
develop a confusing ‘sociology of
action’, weaving together claims
that (a) we can never fully
understand the meanings of others;
(b) that we can work only with
meanings we have ‘imputed’ for
typical actors; (c) we should
select concepts and construct
types according to
‘value-relevance’; and yet (d)
that we can test types against
some ‘objective’ criterion of
‘causal adequacy’. In fact, says
Hindess, the first three points
make any sort of rational testing
of ideal types completely
arbitrary: there are always good
reasons for the skilled Weberian
to explain why ideal types never
correspond to the real.
'Causal
adequacy’ is a case in point,
according to Hindess. Weber says
we can test the causal adequacy of
our concepts and constructs
against ‘established
generalizations from experience’,
but he does not tell us how to
establish these generalizations,
and supplies only his own ‘vague
analog[ies]’ (Hindess 1977: 43).
Overall ‘there is no reason why
the social scientist should not
let his imagination run wild. He
has nothing to lose but the chains
of reason’ (Hindess 1977:38).
I am not
suggesting that we have to go
along entirely with Hindess at
this point, of course. His views
depend upon his own rather narrow
and strange notion of what a
proper social science should look
like, and this is open to
criticism too (see Crook 1991 for
an excellent discussion). Yet the
questions he raises are powerful
and interesting, and reopened for
me many doubts I felt when reading
Weber for the first time as a
student: the approach seemed to me
then to be rather contradictory
and odd, although I was inclined
to blame myself for not perceiving
the subtleties (no doubt,
Weberians still would want to
insist that their man had it
right, of course). Questions like
Hindess’s can still be raised
though, and should be in any
critical discussion (and we shall
raise something like them
ourselves when we consider
‘action’ approaches later -- in
the actual book I mean).
These
sceptical techniques of the ‘post’
phases (Hindess is sometimes
described as a
‘post-Althusserian’) extend into
‘postmodernism’ too, of course,
as, say, Lyotard (1984) exposes
the ‘foundational claims’ of
sociology, or Baudrillard (1987)
gives us convincing reasons why we
should ‘forget Foucault’ (and
Habermas, and several others). The
style is contagious, and I have
even been inspired by some of
these writings myself to examine
critically major approaches in
British cultural studies – again,
we shall rehearse some points in
later chapters (in the book).
There is a satisfying further
stage of reflexive application of
these critical insights – to
include postmodernism itself. As a
number of commentaries have
pointed out (Dews 1992 is perhaps
the most developed), it is
impossible to exempt one’s own
analyses from powerful critiques
aimed at all analysis, so that
'postmodernism' becomes as
illogically 'foundational and just
as 'forgettable' as its rivals!
At the
third phase, where
theory gets institutionalized into
a university or college course or
option, we have already explored
some possibilities. The trick is
to refuse to see the specific
syllabus as a ‘natural’ one,
as an obvious option, requiring no
further explanation, or as a
completely meaningless
construction that just happens to
put topics in sequences for no
apparent reason. Syllabi are
social constructs, structured to a
large extent by the conventions
and the micropolitics of the
academy, we have been arguing, and
as such they can be understood,
using the insights of some of the
works in the sociology of
education (in its broadest sense),
as we have suggested here,
perhaps.
There is
some insightful work on higher
education in particular which
explores the links between
academies, their political and
social contexts, and other forms
of organization. I have already
mentioned my own work on distance
education, and more recent
approaches enable analysts to
grasp the latest changes in terms
of more general models –
‘postfordism’, or
‘Macdonaldisation’(see, for
example, Parker and Jary 1995 --
there is now a substantial
debate on Macdonaldisation).
This sort
of work might seem
‘unprofessional’, or it might run
the risk of debunking the very
institutions in which students are
struggling to survive. However, it
should also help students to begin
to decide how they want to
participate in the syllabus, how
much they want to devote to
learning the conventions of
academic life, for example, as
well as following the ‘surface’
requirements.
Figure 5
Questions for the
Institutionalised
Phase
1.
‘Sociological’
Questions:
·
What sorts of
social backgrounds do
academics come from and
how might this affect
their work?
·
What wider social
forces are likely to
affect colleges and
universities – e.g. what
are their social
functions? What changes
to work patterns might
have an impact – e.g.
rationalization?
advanced capitalism?
modernity?
Macdonaldisation?
2.
‘Anthropological’
Questions:
·
Are there aspects
of university life which
look like ‘tribal’
behaviour or like
‘witch-hunting’?
·
To what extent do
university professionals
act like the
professionals studied by
Goffman – e.g. is there
a ‘back-stage’ region?
'role-distance’?,
‘presentation of self’?
3.
‘Media
Studies’ Questions:
·
What are the main
narrative strategies
used in academic
presentations – e.g. is
‘academic realism’ still
dominant?
·
What positions
are offered to the
audience in these
presentations – e.g.
what are the modes of
address? what are the
strategies to involve
the audience?
·
What forms of
audience ‘resistance’ or
‘recontextualisation’
are available?
|
The
danger arises at this point that
you might be already experiencing
some sort of vertigo or
demoralization as you come to see
first that there are no simple
‘technical fixes’, and second that
there are multiple levels of
theory and corresponding multiple
levels of understanding. It is
necessary to live with this sort
of anxiety, though, to be aware of
the limitless scope of the task
while still being able to cope, by
following particular skills for
particular purposes, by accepting
that there are other ways to
understand and to learn while not
feeling overwhelmed. It is still
better to think of your tasks in
this way rather than to entertain
illusions that it is possible to
quickly grasp the essential
meanings of the texts you will be
reading, or to rely on being able
simply to reproduce the summaries
of others with little personal
engagement. However, my belief is
that it does get easier: as I have
suggested, sociological expertise
enables this reflexive grasp of
social theory itself, once you can
use it to generalize.
Active theorizing
I have
already suggested some ways in
which you might develop some sort
of active approach of your own,
asking your own questions of the
texts you encounter – where they
came from, what their social
context might be and what
influence this might have – and so
on. Let us see what more might be
done, as confidence and expertise
grows. It is necessary to clear
some ground first, of course.
We
referred to an Althusserian notion
of theorizing in the first file.
Other writers have seen much more
connection between theorizing as
an activity undertaken by
specialist intellectuals and the
processes of ‘normal’ thinking.
There is still a specialist level,
in this sort of work, but the
boundaries between it and the sort
of thinking that goes on in
everyday life are much more
permeable. Social theory becomes a
matter of systematizing or
(critically) ‘reconstructing’
everyday thinking, and the
characteristics of social theory
are located on a continuum with those of
everyday thought, rather than
being separated by a substantial
‘break’ into science. Ironically,
this is the conclusion that the
‘post-Althusserians’ came to, more
or less, after seriously testing
to destruction the
science/ideology division (see
Benton 1977). For other thinkers,
like Habermas, or in a different
way Giddens or Foucault, the two
had always been connected.
Let us
follow some arguments from
Habermas again at this point. We
have already introduced the work
on the ‘ideal speech act’ and
referred to notions of ‘universal
pragmatics’. This implies that the
essential critical capacities of
all thinking are universally
available. The potential to raise
‘validity claims’ is a universal
one. In practice there may well be
constraints on the ability to
think critically
– social constraints where others
are ‘deaf to argument’, as
Habermas puts it, and are content
to use some form of strategy or
even force to support their views,
or even inner constraints where
thinkers are ‘blocked’ and do not
know their own minds. Theoretical
discourse occurs where these
constraints are removed, where
participants are free to pursue
arguments wherever they might
lead, and where the aim of the
exercise is to achieve some
genuine consensus about the
various validity claims.
It is not
simply that specialist
organizations – university
seminars on theory-- go
through a number of stages of
production. You might have already
become alerted to one implication
of the Althusserian notion:
thinking of ‘ordinary ideas’ as
‘raw materials’ for some
particular production process
carried a notion of a hierarchy,
of course. One implication is that
only specialist theoretical
producers can carry out the
transformations between (mere)
ideas and (cognitively superior)
theory. In the case of Althusser
specifically, intellectuals of the
Communist Party were to be the
ones who actually did the
production of theory, using the
special concepts of (suitably
theorized) marxism. There was
little room for much active
theorizing by anyone else. Such
elitism might have been
well-intentioned, in that it would
provide theory to guide the
process of social change on behalf
of the ‘ordinary’ members of the
party, but it was still elitism.
In Althusserian marxism the whole
process was underpinned with a
strong belief that there were
clear differences between
‘ideology’ and ‘science’, so that
the one had to be definitely
transformed into the other.
Becoming an active theorist seemed
to require a good deal of long and
specialist labour. For other
traditions too, theorizing remains
an elitist activity, possible only
after lengthy induction into
theoretical traditions.
No
teacher would want to deny that
active theorizing comes best after
a long period of exposure to other
specialist theorists, but is there
no other way of conceiving of
theorising so as to offer a more
accessible route in?
We have
already discussed this point in
describing some of the
peculiarities of ‘educational’
talk and how this can provide
difficulties for newcomers
required to switch between
different sorts of communication.
Sometimes teachers ask genuinely
open questions, for example,
inviting a genuine answer, while
at other times they ask special
pedagogic questions designed to
get students to arrive at an
answer teachers have in mind
already. This can baffle small
children (who do not see the point
of telling the teacher what colour
a toy is, for example – see
Brice-Heath (1987) -- but
students are not always sure
either what is required. Other
exchanges are clearly rhetorical,
designed to persuade students to
see the world in a particular
light, or provocative rather than
sincere, designed to challenge
student perceptions and to help
them reflect on their own
subjective experiences. Some of
this activity might be described
as deliberately ‘therapeutic’ or
‘aesthetic’ in Habermas’s terms,
while some elements of discussion
might be seen as ‘practical’
discourse serving to test out or
justify people’s sincerity or
their grasp
of the norms and values at work in
academic intercourse. It would be
fascinating to take Habermas’s
list of types of communication and
use it to analyze in detail actual
lectures, seminars or other
teaching materials., perhaps along
lines suggested by some famous
work on talk in school classrooms
(Hammersley 1988): we might be
able even to quantify the time
taken up by the different types.
We would certainly find mixtures
of all these types of
communication, as well as more
specialist theroretical discourse,
I believe.
And on
the other hand, normal thinking is
also capable of displaying all the
potentials and competencies,
Habermas would
argue, if only given the
right circumstances. This point
brings us back to the issue of
whether current universities or
colleges do offer the right
circumstances for the critical
potential of student thinking to
develop. At the very least, there
seems to be a paradox which we
have identified already: students
do need specialist concepts with
which to extend their existing
capacities for theoretical
communicative activity, but
existing institutions often also
teach them to become strategic, in
the very process of trying to pass
on these specialist concepts. The
concepts become alien, to be kept
entirely separate from any
personal thinking. Once again, we
seem to need several sorts of
inputs, some related to
institutions and their syllabi and
teaching methods, and some
completely independent of those
institutions and their activities.
At this
point, we can follow the links
between study skills and social
theory back the other way, so to
speak, to discover another bonus
for the ‘deep’
student of social theory.
To put it at its simplest,
managing deep and surface levels
of a syllabus or task is actually
a form of theorising in its own
right. Social theory is actually
riddled with notions of surfaces
and depths, as we have already
indicated, and we have already
seen the deployment of a ‘deep’
level of analysis in the quick
summaries of the work of Bourdieu
and Habermas, of course. If you
can take a ‘deep’ stance towards
learning, you are doing something
like theorising for yourself, at a
preliminary stage, of course. You
are looking for principles
‘beneath the surface', you are
exploring ways to become
independent of a syllabus, and to
exercise the potential for
theoretical discourse. It goes
without saying that such an
approach can deliver both sorts of
the benefits we have been
outlining – a genuinely
independent and personal sense of
learning social theory which will
help you to grasp some of the
principles of social theory, and,
in a more strategic mode, an
ability to supply the ‘critical
discussions’, ‘understandings’ and
‘originality’ that is required to
gain the best grades in most
assessment schemes.
Beginning
to
Theorize
Let us
sketch in some activities as
examples of how to exercise this
capacity to begin to theorize, to
explore the ‘deep’ levels of
social experience. Specialist
social sciences have their own
concepts to refer to ‘depths’, as
we have just seen (‘functions’,
‘mode of production’, ‘virtual’
levels and so on), but, to repeat
the argument, the assumption here
is that social theory begins at
least as simply a more systematic
procedure than the procedures of
ordinary ‘know-how’. In what
follows, I discuss some basic
procedures that actually require
very little in the way of
specialist concepts, but which
turn far more on developing an
interest in wanting to stand back
from arguments, context them,
begin to see connections between
them, and begin to criticize them.
Theory
as Analysis
Here, the
point is to explain what is on the
surface as combinations of smaller
more fundamental units. The
classic examples in systematic
theory are found in
‘structuralism’, where actual
social practices are explained as
combinations of underlying
structural relations. Thus Levi
Strauss offers an analysis of
kinship systems using
a
minimal set of relationships and
emotional orientations (Leach 1970
and see file).
There are other examples of the
technique in, say reducing the
complexities of actual identities
in modern life to combinations of
the three ‘core identities’ of
sex, class, and ‘race’ (as was
common once in British cultural
studies). Or try Poulantzas (1975)
( and see
file) on the middle classes
as determined by combinations of
only three underlying social
levels.
This sort
of analytic procedure parallels
the successful practices of
natural sciences in reducing
complex compounds to more
fundamental elements, or elements
to atoms, and then to subatomic
particles and so on.
Theory
as Classification
Here,
existing events or practices are
subsumed under larger categories.
This sort of general
classificatory activity leads to
actual industrial disputes or the
concrete fights between pupils and
teachers over classroom
‘discipline’ being recognized as
‘class struggle’, for example.
Classic examples apart from
Marxist ones include Weber and
types of authority, or ,best of
all, perhaps Parsons and the AGIL
model ( see Rocher 1974) (and file)
At an
individual level, this sort of
classification can produce the
‘perspectival’ effect noted above,
when you come to see that what you
took to be a unique viewpoint
turns out to be simply a typical
one for people of the same age,
sex and social background as
yourself (it is usually easier to
recognize this in others).
Sometimes, social theorists
positively reconstruct specific
views in terms of some larger and
more embracing scheme, not only
classifying a perspective as part
of some larger set, but also
explaining why it appears to be
unique and self-sufficient or
adequate for the time. Postmodern
social theory, on the other hand,
seems to head back into
perspectivalism, with its denial
of the supremacy of the grand
theoretical narratives and their
mission to order and rank the
others.
Theory
as making comparisons
Here, we
operate between events at the same
level, so to speak. This act of
making comparisons is widespread
in ‘everyday knowhow’, as people
try to make sense of new
situations by comparing them to
the ones they already know about.
Social interactionist or social
phenomenological approaches
describe these ‘ordinary’
subjective processes very well, as
people establish shared forms of
understanding, and then gradually
work outwards towards the
ambiguities.
We can
develop an argument connected
specifically with study skills
again here. A famous text (Polya
1990) identifies the process of
drawing analogies as crucial in
understanding mathematics (and as
a routine competence available to
any thinker). Stewart’s
Introduction to the 1990 edition
significantly points out that
‘Polya’s strategies relate to a
much deeper level than the
operational surface [of
mathematics]’ (xvi), and goes on
to outline the approach as a
matter of following four phases.
The first one involves trying to
understand the problem, and
Stewart says that ‘Polya places a
great deal of emphasis on the
consideration of related problems
whose solution is already known,
and on reasoning by analogy’
(xviii).
An
analogy, of course, exhibits
relations of similarity between
two objects (not identity), which
invites a creative exploration of
similarities and differences
between the two. This requires a
certain ‘know-how’ as well, as
Stewart points out, and, as is
always the case with academic
subjects, there are tried and
tested analogies which the student
needs to learn (and Polya goes on
to develop some teaching
strategies to help students to
learn to both formulate analogies
and then test them in the rather
specific area of mathematical
problem solving). Things are
rather less formalized in social
theory, but the same processes of
analogical comparisons and
subsequent exploration or test are
identifiable in just about all the
classic theorising, from Weber’s
survey of organizational forms in
different countries and at
different times (leading to the
ideal type bureaucracy) to
Giddens’s sustained efforts
throughout the 1970s and 1980s to
compare and then synthesise whole
tracts of European social theory
leading to the work on
'structuration' (see file),
or to Habermas’s reconstructions
of different traditions in
sociology and philosophy (leading
to the theory of communicative
action, which we have already
examined).
In these
cases, comparisons are
systematized, leading to
deliberate theorizing at a level
which lies behind or beneath the
specific examples in the
comparisons. Here,
theory acts as a deliberate
‘third term’ to help us to
generalize, and analogies can be
pursued explicitly and
systematically with this
theory-generating aim in mind.
There is also a meta-theoretical
level, of course, where theorists
debate different possibilities for
these analogical processes:
briefly, ‘good’ analogizing should
produce theory that is
non-contradictory, and
non-arbitrary (to paraphrase
Foucault 1974). In the pursuit of
these goals, great arguments have
raged about whether or not it is
possible to generate rules to join
the various levels logically and
consistently: you will encounter
some of these debates when you
discuss the options available to
social science to become a
‘rigorous’ or a ‘positive’
science.
However,
a good deal of profitable
theorizing can be undertaken
simply by considering comparisons
much more speculatively. Students
are often asked specifically to
engage in such speculative
theorizing, most specifically of
all, perhaps,
in those assignments that
actually invite you to ‘compare
and contrast…’. Less explicitly,
speculative comparisons can be
involved in the simple invitation
to ‘discuss’ something, or in the
teaching strategies used
(especially where, say, a range of
different examples is offered, and
you are invited to make sense of
them).
Using
analogies in different
teaching situations
In my own
teaching recently, in Media
Studies this time, I covered some
work on analyzing the conventions
of the promotional video, and we
examined music videos as specific
examples. Then we went on in
subsequent weeks to consider the
conventions of those promotional
videos that try to persuade
students to enrol for various
universities and colleges. Looking
back over the work, I invited
students to consider what those
two types of videos had in common
and where they differed. It wasn’t
that I had some specific work in
mind which I wanted my students to
mention in discussion (which, I
suspect, is what some of them
thought). Instead, I wanted them
to speculate for a bit about some
possible issues which unite and
divide the actual examples and to
ask critical questions like:
·
Why are
educational videos so ‘serious’
compared to music videos?
·
Why do
educational videos offer a
‘realist’ account of campus life,
while so
many music videos have broken with
‘realism’?
·
What
strategies to engage the audience
are found in both types, and are
they the same or fundamentally
different ones?
·
What are
the similarities and
differences between these
two types and other types of
‘persuasive’ materials (including
some ‘propaganda’ films we had
seen on another section of the
course)?
Speculations
about
these links and connections
between topics are always
possible. The more social science
you do, the more it becomes
possible to think of similarities
and differences between the topics
you cover. If there is an
educational advantage to
modularised degree schemes it is
that students cover a much wider
range of topics than ever before,
leading to more and more raw
materials for analogical thinking.
Specific social theory courses
(and textbooks) should enable that
thinking to become more and more
explicit and systematized.
I think
students are often put off by an
inability to perform this sort of
speculation in a suitable
language, one that does not look
too pompous or over-confident.
Local conditions vary, but it is
usually possible to establish with
teachers (and assessors) suitable
ways to express your own attempts
at theorizing. In my college, it
seems safest to adopt a cautious
and rather impersonal speculative
style using phrases like ‘It could
be argued that…’ or ‘It is
possible to see some connections
between…’, or ‘If we compare X to
Y, we find that…’ or whatever.
Another
problem is that students find the
pursuit of ambiguity or
speculation an insecure process
(especially for ‘surface
learners’, of course). We have
already suggested that a
substantial amount of cultural
capital, or the willingness to
acquire some, might be crucial. It
is also important to realize that
social theory is ambiguous,
imprecise, open to
reinterpretation. I hope I have
begun to indicate this already,
when pursuing some implications of
possible similarities between
concepts of ‘depth’ in Morgan, Bourdieu and
Habermas.
To take
another personal example, recently
I read with interest Ritzer’s
(1994) account of the development
of interactionist accounts of
professional work undertaken by
people like Hughes. That work was
based on analyses of certain
professional groups (like doctors)
in the USA nearly 50 years ago.
However, I also came across it in
a course concerning the current
state of professionalism among
teachers in the UK. The authors of
that course had taken concepts
like ‘(subjective) career’ or
‘segmentation’ or debates like
whether ‘professional’ is a
subjective or objective term, and
had tried to use them to theorize
about UK teachers: did the same
concepts work with the new group?
In this way, theory gets extended,
and, since new cases almost
invariably offer challenges,
theory gets developed as well.
Two
points arise from this discussion.
The first is that social theory
gets easier as you learn more of
it: theory enables us to pursue
operations on arguments, to
classify events or to analyze them
in particular ways. And theory
enables ‘its own’ comparisons to
be made. Specialist theoretical
concepts are the ‘third terms’ in
our analogies, as we have deployed
the term above, and when we
develop them, we move away from
the first steps into theory
proper.
The
second main point is that none of
the operations described above
should be seen as finalized or as
unproblematic. New students often
misunderstand this point, in my
experience, and expect a ‘proper
theory’ to deliver some sort of
perfect fit between concepts and
actual examples: failing to find
one, they can often think they
have made some sort of mistake.
Describing specific events in
terms of more general categories
always involves a loss of some
specific aspects, however, and it
might be necessary to return to
those lost aspects later to reopen
the issue. The best example, for
me, concerns gender, and the
tendency for theorists to ignore
its specific effects when
classifying wage disputes, say, as
‘class struggles’, but there are,
of course, many
others
Indeed,
concepts never go over into
reality without some loss or
remainder, to paraphrase Adorno
(1973) (see
file), and this is what
makes ‘applying’
theory both problematic and
creative. To take the case of the
work on the professional, for
example, it became clear when
applying American theory to
British teachers that the role of
the State was far more important
here in the UK, in regulating
claims to professional status in
various ways, for example, and
that gender became more important
too.
Growth of
understanding took place in two
directions, as a result. First
‘professionalism’ as British
teachers knew it could be seen as
not unique but as offering one set
of possibilities based on specific
British circumstances. And
secondly, Hughes’s original work
could be seen as requiring
additional dimensions to include
the effects of the State and of
gender.
This kind
of cycling between theory and
specific cases (or between
theoretical concepts and empirical
data) is sometimes called
‘abduction’, to contrast it with
the more formal and more limited
procedures of deduction or
induction, and it is an active and
creative process in extending
understanding. Indeed, strictly
speaking it is the only creative
process. After some years of
operating with models of ‘proper
theory’ or ‘science’ as some sort
of automatic and ‘objective’
procedure following strict rules
of logic, we now know that the
creative bits are inherent in
theorizing, even if they have to
be tidied up and rationalized
afterwards.
To borrow
a specifically
‘post-structuralist’ or
‘postmodernist’ formulation of
this point, one benefit
specifically arises for the
beginner in social theory – there
is a much greater justification
for an opportunity for new
participants to form their own
‘little narratives’, even if only
as critical asides in the most
tightly structured university
assignments. It becomes possible
to consider the revolutionary
programme offered by people like
Game (1991) that theorizing might
become personally significant,
pleasurable, empowering (to use a
rather overworked term), and even
disrespectful.
However,
let us not run before we walk. I
am still assuming that most
students will want to know first
about the ways in which drawing
analogies is going to help them
understand the syllabus and
prepare for the examinations. In
principle, one can draw analogies
between any two terms in the
pursuit of any goal (or, if you
prefer, any desires), but in the
practice of the modern university,
it is likely
that the options are going to be
rather limited by the sorts of
constraints we were discussing in
the first chapter. There are
constraints set by the actual
syllabus (and assessment scheme),
and, more broadly, by the
conventions of the academic
subject and by academic life
itself. Not all of these
constraints are ‘bad’, of course:
there is sometimes a tendency with
work like Game’s to see any
constraint as a part of a deep
male conspiracy aimed at world
domination, but sometimes
‘mastery’ (of the academic
subject) is a necessary stage to
achieve for the budding theorist.
Thus, to
provide another example from my
own teaching, it is sometimes
useful to offer guided or
structured forms of analogising in
order to secure some understanding
before opening things up to
free-flowing critique. I teach a
course on (largely British)
popular culture, for example, and
it becomes important to
demonstrate the key theoretical
concepts that inform many of the
concrete studies. I do this by
asking students to think what
these concrete studies (work on
youth cultures, studies of school
life, specific work criticising
the ‘health craze’ of the 1980s
and so on) have in common. I want
my students to pursue a specific
analogy at this point, and be able
to notice that all these studies
have been inspired by some general
theoretical work associated with a
particular ‘school’, and that all
represent some sort of attempt to
‘apply’ some of the key concepts
associated with that ‘school’
(‘hegemony’, ‘articulation’,
‘struggle’ and so on, in this
case). I tend to call this
‘school’ the ‘gramscians’ (others
refer to ‘ classic British
Cultural Studies’, the Birmingham
Centre for Contemporary Cultural
Studies’ – usually abbreviated to
CCCS)
Once
having recognized that there is a
theoretical ‘third term’ to the
analogies between such studies,
students can proceed to undertake
the next stage in critical
thinking. Remembering the general
discussions of ‘gramscianism’ they
have had (or more usually, having
had it pointed it out to them that
they should remember these
discussions), they can begin to
connect general and specific
levels and ask critical questions
like these:
·
Are the
concepts ‘hegemony’ or
‘articulation’
used consistently in the
different studies?
·
How is
gender treated?
·
Is there
a consistent stance on the use of
empirical data?
I am
fully aware that I have to police
students’ thought processes at
this point, to get them to focus
on what I take to be a significant
and important specialist analogy,
and to persuade them to delay
(‘defer’ would be even better)
their own ‘spontaneous’ analogies,
based, perhaps on their own
experiences of these areas. When
this policing is skilfully done,
it can seem relatively painless,
and even pleasurable for students,
almost as if they had ‘discovered’
these theoretical and specialist
analogies for themselves, without
any pressure from me.
Yet I
have been engaging in strategic
communication here, and I think it
can be justified as long as it
does genuinely produce a later
stage of more sophisticated
independent thinking. This more
sophisticated independent thinking
is what experts do (like Game, or
like the ‘postmodernists), after
having received a solidly
conventional and structured
education, no doubt. It is much
easier to play with ideas, to
pursue your own goals, act out
your desires, and open up ‘poetic’
and playful readings of classic
works once you are knowledgeable,
well-qualified, and both
culturally and economically
secure. Few students are in that
position, of course, and it would
be a very abstract academic
approach that suggested that their
(relatively untutored) independent
thinking is of the same kind as
Game’s or Baudrillard’s. It would
be an error, it could be argued,
to equate postmodernist thinking
with pre-modernist thinking
(thinking that has not yet even
encountered the classic modernist
works), even though there are
continuities and they can look
rather similar at first blush.
Students
seem required to pursue the
conventional analogies of their
institutions and their subject
disciplines, at least initially,
but we also have to guard against
the slide over into formulaic
thinking. There is a chronic
tendency for this to occur, we
have already suggested, driven
largely, I believe, by the
pressures of the assessment system
felt by both students and staff.
In the case of textbooks,
commercial pressures probably have
the same effect. Tired old stock
forms of argument and discussion
appear. Every theoretical work can
be criticized as lacking empirical
evidence, while empirical studies
lack theoretical sophistication. In
sociology, everyone soon learns
that interactionist approaches
lack an adequate account of social
structure (and vice versa), that
Marx’s work on social class can be
criticized by Weber, and
Durkheim’s on suicide by
ethnomethodological work (but
never the other way round, or
never criticizing Marx using
ethnomethodological work, or
Durkheim by Weber, or any of the
other possibilities). In Media
Studies, debates circulate
endlessly between emphases on text
and context, the effects of
narratives and the readings of
‘active audiences’: the one
emphasis can always be ‘corrected’
by adding the other. In British
Cultural Studies, analyses always
and already overemphasize either
the constraints upon, or the
capacities to resist held by, the
viewer, the consumer, the
sportsman, the school student, the
shopper, the tourist and so on, in
an endless cycling.
New
students might well be delighted
to discover these fairly simple
rules and procedures. Faculty
might be delighted to be able to
solve awkward problems of what we
have called the ‘domestication’ of
social theory by relying on the
tried and trusted formulae for ‘organizing
a debate’, ‘covering a syllabus’
and so on. Both groups might even
experience those rather dubious
deeper pleasures of ‘mastery’
where you gain a sense of yourself
an active and creative subject by
being able to dominate, subdue and
domesticate knowledge in this way,
and deny its ‘otherness’ (I read
this argument first in Adorno
1976, but it is clearly stated in
different terms in the invaluable
Game 1991).
In those
circumstances of institutionalized
stagnation, however, fresh
analogies which break through the
stale terms of the debates are
essential, for the students,
seeking to maintain motivation, we
have already argued: social
science soon becomes boring if it
gets reduced to simple formulae
like this, and it has been known
for students to drop out in
disgust at the triviality of it
all (‘moral dropouts’ they have
been called, or ‘rebels’ – see
Elton (1996)).
Institutionalization
threatens the academic community
too, of course, but luckily there
are the tensions we have already
described at the different
‘levels’. Undomesticated types of
social science thrive, and are
easily available in the
environments which surround
colleges and universities. There
is a constant temptation to move
away from the institutional
demands back towards the wilder
zones of theory. Indeed this sort
of tension has been identified in
the whole process of theory growth
in Bourdieu again (Lash 1990 has
an excellent summary).
Bourdieu
captures the tension between the
domestic and the wild by referring
to ‘priests’ and ‘prophets’ in
social theory, for example. Like
religious thinkers, both groups
can lay claim to a tradition:
social theory has been both
clearly located in central
institutions like universities and
associated with cultural and
political revolutionary movements
and upheavals. The former location
immediately opens a space for an
institutional dimension to the
apparently ‘pure’ arguments about
theory, of course. Bourdieu
analyses the institutional
dimension in some detail, but we
can rapidly summarize the basics:
both priests and prophets engage
in struggles for dominance, and
this struggle is clearly affected
by and expressed in the
traditional competitions,
rivalries and distinctions between
different educational institutions
and departments. The
recent emphasis on research
activity in British universities
helps us to see much of this
struggle taking place over the
claims of rival ‘research
programmes’, just as in Lakatos’s
account of struggles in natural
science (Lakatos and Musgrave
1979).
For the
winners, there is a chance to
consolidate their position, backed
by a classic academic form of
distorted communciation: they
speak of their work in the
language of science instead of the
language of politics as Bourdieu
puts it (Lash 1990: 244). There is
always a chance of a return to the
wild, however, and we can think of
cycles of innovation and
routinisation. Finally, there is a
complicating factor in the
emergence of a less
institutionalised
academic/cultural field outside of
universities altogether,
characteristically among the
well-educated ‘new petit
bourgeoisie’ (although this too is
a mixed blessing).
To
conclude this section, then, there
are ‘wild’ and domestic’ forms of
active theorizing available much
more locally for you, the student.
Again you may feel this is an
excessive amount of choice, but I
have argued that both types are
necessary. As always, much depends
on your circumstances as well as
your interests. You might be
located in an institution which
favours one kind or the other (and
institutional support, and the
encouragement of your tutors and
friends is crucial: students need
a ‘research culture’ as much as
Faculty). Your career (both
objectively and subjectively)
might be just beginning and you
might feel you need to find your
way into that necessary level of
security first, before becoming
too adventurous. In those
circumstances, your theoretical
practices will be linked closely
to the conventional and you will
need to spend some
time finding out just what
the conventions are
(especially
if you were not ‘born to it’) –
but even here, remember that the
conventions can be paradoxical and
usually still expect some kind of
critical grasp, some limited
independent thinking, some sort of
demonstration of an ability to
comment and to speculate (there is
a requirement for an ‘optimal
level of challenge’ in one formulation).
On the
other hand, you might have located
space for a bit of wildness, and
have begun to formulate interests
of your own which you want to
pursue with your own theorizing
practices, to push out from the
narrow syllabus, perhaps, to begin
to consider links with other
disciplines and courses, and with
your own experiences, pleasures
and desires. However remote it
might seem at the moment, that
stage too is possible for any
student of social theory, in my
view.
Writing
a social theory text
The
problems and choices I have
outlined above apply just as much
to my task in writing this book.
There are already many excellent
books which are clearly linked to
existing syllabi and which offer
detailed summaries of the key
authors and issues which you are
expected to cover on those
syllabi. To mention the most
obvious cases, the close
connections between the series of
texts produced by Haralambos
and Holborn (1995), Bilton
et al (1996), Giddens (2001) or
Selfe (1993) and the British
A-level Sociology syllabus is a
major factor in the commercial
successes of these pieces. For
undergraduates with different
syllabi, there are the famous
books by Turner (1996) Waters
(1994) or Ritzer (1994, 1996). It
would be impossible to do better
than those authors in assembling
expert arguments directly covering
social theory as it is usually
structured in college or
university syllabi.
However,
that is not the only ‘level’ at
which theory operates, we have
argued above, and there are
problems when students rely
excessively on those texts, as any
teacher will confirm. We have all
met students who can apparently
effortlessly summarise some
complex arguments about marxism
and its critics in their
assignments, for example, yet who
cannot answer the simplest
questions about central concepts
in marxism in seminars, nor apply
any sort of marxist analysis to an
area in another discipline. These
people have kept within the laws
banning plagiarism, but have
become heavily dependent on their
favourite texts, sometimes even to
the extent that the very agenda of
the author seemingly cannot be
amended. Even where the precise
course or assignment calls for a
different emphasis, a new
‘application’, or a different
level or ‘depth’ we find the same
sequences, same summaries, same
structures of argument, often in
that formulaic manner we discussed
above.
Of
course, this is not necessarily
the fault of the texts themselves,
which often urge students not to
follow them blindly or to pursue
alternative approaches. The
‘wilder’ aspects of social theory
are often referred to, and key
texts (on postmodernism or
postructuralism) mentioned quite
properly in the bibliographies for
further study – it is the ‘filing
cabinet’ design together with the
institutional constraints,
especially of assessment, which
produces the features of
dependency. In my book, I am
interested in encouraging a ‘deep’
approach, one which focuses on
underlying principles, and one
which does not lead to a tight
dependency on any actual syllabi,
although I aim to ground my
discussion firmly in the areas
covered by the more focused texts.
It is a
commonplace that texts of this
kind should focus tightly on the
audience, but the audience too is
problematic. The modular scheme in
my own institution, for example,
reminds me that students will have
come to actual courses with a wide
variety of different experiences.
Under the old scheme, students
were channelled much more
definitely into subject
disciplines so that one could be
sure that by the second year they
would have done a fair bit of
introductory (often ‘applied’)
sociology or media studies. In
those circumstances, it is
possible to introduce themes from
social theory inductively, to
tease out what applied studies
might have in common, say, or to
begin to consider specific
problems of actual studies or
research findings in a more
abstract way. That sort of common
starting point can no longer be
assumed, however, in a modular
scheme. The task is to think of
some other sort of common interest
or starting point.
As we
noted above there is also an
audience for social theory outside
the academy
altogether (especially for the
wilder variants, perhaps).
Addressing this audience and
emulating the success of the great
bestsellers (Giddens 1998, Hutton
1995, Hebdige 1979) would be a
tempting option – I have largely
heroically resisted it and kept to
my task of addressing students.
Clues to
my approach lie in the discussions
we have had already. Theory itself
often went through an initial
non-specialized, non systematized
phase, it was suggested, which led
on to a more formalized, and
eventually an institutionalized
phase. If most existing textbook
focus primarily on the last
stages, perhaps it would be
possible to write a text which
reconstructs all the phases? Of
course, this would be a definitely
pedagogic form
of reconstruction – it would not
need to be one which traces
actual, real, historical developments,
but one designed to help people
attain the necessary ‘deep’ grasp
of some underlying principles. An
admiration for books like Morgan’s
(1993), or insights derived from
the recent work of Martin (in
Francis 1999) leads to the idea
that the book should consider the
‘root metaphors’ of social theory,
and show how these have developed
from ‘normal knowhow’ sorts of
thinking about social life to the
specialized and
organized work of social
theorists.
The ‘root
metaphors’ are routinely used in
everyday life, I believe, in
journalism and social commentaries
of all kinds as well as in social
theory as such. It is not just
sociology students who use them to
think with , and, sociology
students probably used them before
they did sociology (and perhaps
still do so in their normal lives
outside the academy).
The
notion of social life as ‘external
reality’, for example, to take the
theme of the first section, is
easy to grasp by any competent
thinker, even if it might be
counterintuitive at first. Tracing
that metaphor through into the
works of Marx, Durkheim and their
critics and disciples should help
reveal some of the principles upon
which social theory works, and
provide another level of
understanding behind the expert
summaries of other texts. With any
luck, students should be able to
combine my book and those famous
commentaries mentioned above, to
operate both at the ‘surface’
level of the requirements of the
university or college syllabus and
at a deeper level of understanding
contributed more by themselves and
their relatively
syllabus-independent pursuits of
‘root metaphors’.
Of
course, we have suggested that the
practice of doing social theory is
deeply intertwined with matters
like managing course organization
and assessment. I consider that I
have a kind of ‘contract’ with
students when I teach them, to
offer material in the style and at
the level they require as well as
offering some sort of further
explorations, and the same applies
to readers of my books. It follows
that I am expecting readers to
skip sections of this book if they
are reading it under the sorts of
institutional pressures I have
outlined (and I hope they return
to it when the pressures are off).
I have followed a similar
structure in each chapter (at the
risk of staleness and
predictability) to permit this
kind of skipping. In each chapter
I offer sections aimed at both
grasping existing syllabi and
opening up ‘wilder’ areas of
debate:
·
a
discussion of ‘root metaphors’
·
a more
focused discussion to show how
these metaphors could be seen as
developing into more systematic
theory
·
a more
specific critical
reading on a chosen central
text
·
some
critical discussion and
controversies, current debates,
possible ‘applications’ and so on,
some well-known and others
suggested by analogies I have
drawn (as examples of the ones you
can draw).
References
Adorno, T. (1973)
Negative Dialectics, London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Baudrillard, J. (1983) Simulations,
London: Semiotext(e).
Baudrillard, J. and Lotringer, S.
(1987) Forget Foucault and Forget
Baudrillard, New York:
Semiotext(e).
Benton, T. (1977) Philosophical
Foundations of the Three Sociologies,
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Bilton, T., Bonnett, K., Jones, P.,
Skinner, D., Stanworth, M. and
Webster, A. (1996) Introductory
Sociology, 3rd edn, London:
Macmillan Press Ltd.
Bourdieu, P. (1988) Homo
Academicus, Cambridge: Polity
Press.
Brice-Heath, S. (1986) Questioning at
Home and School: a Comparative Study,
in Hammersley, M (ed.) Case
Studies in Classroom Research,
Milton Keynes: Open University Press
Collins, R. (1994) Four
Sociological Traditions,
Oxford: Oxford University Press
Dumont , R. and Wax, M (1971)
Cherokee school society and the
intercultural classroom, in Cosin, B.,
Dale, I., Esland, G. and Swift, D.
(eds.) School and Society: a
sociological reader,
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Elton, L. (1996) ‘Strategies to
Enhance Student Motivation: a
conceptual analysis’, Studies in
Higher Education, Vol. 21, No.
1: 31—42.
Entwistle, N. and Ramsden, P. (1983) Understanding
Student Learning, London: Croom
Helm.
Francis, L (1999) (ed) Sociology,
Theology and the Curriculum,
Mowbray: Continuum International
Publishing Group
Game, A. (1991) Undoing the
Social: towards a deconstructive
sociology, Milton Keynes: Open
University Press.
Gane, M. (1992) (ed.) The Radical
Sociology of Durkheim and Mauss,
London: Routledge
Giddens, A. (2001) Sociology,
4th edn., Cambridge: Polity Press.
Giddens, A. (1998) The Third Way:
the renewal of social democracy,
Cambridge: Polity Press.
Gouldner A (1979) The Future
of Intellectuals and the Rise of a
New Class, London: The Macmillan
Press.
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