learning outcomes
By the end of this chapter you will be able to:
LO1 Describe the field of investigation that
sociology studies
LO2 Explain how sociology’s concern with
inequality and power is linked to social
reproduction and social change
LO3 Describe the origins of the sociological
imagination and the different forms it has
taken
LO4 Explain how the methods employed by the
sociological imagination have political
implications
CHAPTER OUTLINE
This chapter introduces the central themes and problems that define sociology.
A preliminary sketch of the concept of ‘society’ is given in order to indicate the range of
areas that sociology is capable of addressing.
It considers what sociology studies and outlines the primary social ‘objects’ of the discipline,
which at their broadest include capitalism, modernity and patriarchy.
Forms of sociological imagination are described to demonstrate how sociology conducts
its investigation. The historical, anthropological and critical dimensions of the sociological
imagination are detailed.
The chapter also highlights the political nature of sociological knowledge. It explains how
sociology relates to the practical world and to our policies on social issues and society as a
whole.
Lastly, the importance of comparing the different perspectives offered by sociology is
stressed. By comparing available perspectives, students of sociology are able to decide for
themselves how to approach both large and small problems in social life.
CHAPTER 1
WHAT Is sOCIOLOgy?
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2 austraLian sOciOLOgy: a changing sOciEty
It is when the social world loses its character as a natural phenomenon that the
question of the natural or conventional character of social facts can be raised.
(Bourdieu 1987: 169)
When do we feel most at home? When do you feel most at home? The answers to
these questions invariably depend on your social position and your identity in society.
What is it about our environment that helps us feel secure? Sociology, the study of
society, is a hybrid term that combines the Greek word socius, ‘companionship’, with
the Latin ology, ‘the study of’. But companionship is only the smallest unit of a social
relationship. As we shall see in this book, social relationships can be very complex,
with many kinds of barriers and divisions within social life that prohibit or discourage
certain kinds of relationships. The layers of meaning we give to these relationships
also derive from our sense of belonging to them. Therefore, we may feel ‘at home’ in
a range of contexts—in an intimate relationship, with our family, with our neighbour-
hood, our suburb, our city, our nation; indeed, some may feel equally at home any-
where in the world. However, the latter sense of home, which globalisation has made
possible, is not nearly so common as our tendency to identify more locally or nation-
ally. For example, when we say we ‘live in a society’ this usually refers to the com-
monsense notion of living within the boundaries of a national territory. Within such
a sense of ‘society’, additional contexts of belonging are possible—our workplace, the
local shopping centre, the university, our household. Wherever we find attachment
and belonging, we are never removed from the principle of association represented
by the concept of ‘society’.
Throughout this book, we view the concept of society from ever more general per-
spectives of organised knowledge. In the process, new and unique understandings of
social realities, both large and small, will come into view. The variety of perspectives
that provide these new visibilities make up the discipline of sociology.
Sociology, as Berger (1976) observes, trains us for ‘seeing the general in the particu-
lar’. It provides a body of organised knowledge for understanding social collectivities
and the place of social activities within them. Of course, within sociology there are, in
turn, numerous perspectives for arriving at an interpretive understanding of social
reality, but what is common to each of these perspectives is that they somehow allow
us to ‘see through’ the everyday layers of meaning by which we most commonly under-
stand our world, and enable us to explain things that seemed inexplicable previously.
Part of the reason for this is that sociology not only gives everyday life new mean-
ings: it posits the existence of new kinds of social ‘furniture’ that might previously
have been invisible to us but which, once visible, may seem indispensable to a better
understanding of the social world.
Consider the example of class, a social reality explored in depth in Chapter 2. Most
of us have an understanding of belonging to a class—as a group or as a rank in a hier-
archy. We might even project assumptions about hierarchy on to other everyday
realities. When our favourite sportsperson does well, we might describe him or her as
society
In an everyday sense,
‘society’ describes the social
arrangements that take place
within national boundaries.
Sometimes, however, society is
used in ways that transcend the
nation-state, as in ‘Kurdish’
society. Sociologists employ an
even more general sense of
society as inclusive of all forms
of association. Society does not
have to have a homogeneous
unity, as in 19th-century
conceptions of ‘community’;
rather, it is often posited in
opposition to the idea of
‘community’ as a form of
association that is pluralistic,
multilayered, but nevertheless
structured according to a
particular ‘social formation’.
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3chaptEr 1 What is sOciOLOgy?
a ‘classy’ performer. Consciousness of class pervades much of our lives, our ambitions,
our sense of power and opportunity. But where do classes come from? Have there
always been classes? Are classes just social rankings that we are born into, or are they
forces of change? Investigating class further opens up new, unfamiliar layers of under-
standing the social world that often question our familiar, ‘commonsense’ outlook.
Gender is yet another example. Many of us think of gender as ‘natural’; that gender
is somehow a correlate of ‘sex’, of being male or female (see Chapter 4). Men are
attributed with a set of ‘masculine’ qualities and women ‘feminine’. Until quite
recently, sex and gender have been seen as inextricable. This situation began to
change in Australia and in many capitalist nations over the past 50 years, when the
match between gender—socially prescribed attributes—and ‘sexed’ individuals began
to decouple. Sex and gender have undergone a limited separation; some are anxious
about this, and others applaud it. Of course, advertisements on television and toys at
the supermarket continue to suggest stereotypes for men and women, boys and girls.
But in other areas of culture, especially in the workplace and the home, gender roles
have shifted, and the previous correspondence between gender and sex has been
blurred. Women are moving into traditional ‘male’ jobs and men are conversely
undertaking many domestic tasks that society once ascribed to women. But how far
has this separation gone? Does gender remain central to self-identity? Do individuals
feel a need to be identified as ‘gendered’ because it gives them easy access to a secure
role? And is such a role as ‘easy’ and secure for women and/or for men? What forces
maintain this distribution of identity known as gender?
Both of these phenomena, class and gender, are on the one hand very familiar to
us, but they are also more than the social furniture of everyday life, as we shall see. For
example, most sociologists view ‘class’ as a global phenomenon. However, many of us
think of class in terms of status only, and compare ourselves to others in our own
street, or city or nation, through the category of class. Although we rarely compare
ourselves to people in other nations in class terms, most of the quality of life that is
enjoyed in a first-world nation such as Australia can be shown to derive from a glo-
bally divided class system.
Sociology provides us with theories, perspectives and a massive assembly of social
facts through which to understand the most universal realities such as globalisation,
down to the seemingly most personal realities, such as the act of suicide. In doing so,
sociology shares with philosophy two major concerns—ontology and epistemology.
Ontology is the study of ‘what exists’, whereas epistemology is the study of ‘how we
know what exists’. In Chapter 16, we shall see how the epistemology we use, how we
view and research the world, may alter our understanding of what exists. At the same
time, an appreciation that the world is changing, and therefore that ‘ontology’ is
changing regardless of the theories we have about it, is an equally important factor in
arriving at social explanations.
The relationship between what exists and the certainty of our theories about
social reality has been cause for many hundreds of volumes in sociology, so much
ontology
The study of ‘what exists’. In
sociology, many entities have
been advanced as being the
most important ‘ontologies’ for
developing a general theory of
society, including individuals,
classes, groups, discourses and
institutions.
epistemology
The study of ‘how we know’
what we are studying. This area
of sociology is concerned with
the ‘methodology’ of the social
sciences. Is sociology a ‘science’
in the same way as the natural
sciences are? How does
sociology overcome the
problem that the researcher is
part of the social world he or
she is examining? Can sociology
be value-free or theory-neutral?
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4 austraLian sOciOLOgy: a changing sOciEty
so that the ‘sociology of knowledge’ has become a branch of sociology in its own
right. This vexed and problematic relationship between theories and facts, descrip-
tion and explanation, is common to all areas of knowledge. For sociology, however,
the relationship is unique. It differs from other areas of knowledge in one very
important respect: it is about humans studying themselves. Sociologists are part of
the very object of study that they examine. For this reason, studying sociology
potentially entails what is called an ‘epistemological circle’: in other words, it is
impossible for a researcher of human affairs to be value-free, because his or her
personal values will distort or obscure the reality being investigated. Methodologically,
therefore, sociology has sought to overcome this dilemma of how a researcher can
strive for objectivity, or indeed whether such an aim is achievable at all, a matter to
which we shall return.
■ WHAT DOES SOCIOLOGY STUDY?
At its most ambitious, sociology attempts to understand human societies from a
wholistic point of view—what they are composed of, how they are reproduced over
time and how they might differ from other societies. From the point of view of this
more general understanding, sociology also looks at the way societies are divided
according to a range of types of individuality and group identities.
Fundamentally, this means examining the nature of inequality in society, the pat-
terned ways in which groups and individuals are not only differentiated but are
accorded different positions in the social hierarchy. Of course, as an academic exer-
cise it is possible to differentiate societies in all kinds of arbitrary ways. We can dis-
tinguish between those who walk to work and those who drive, between those who
wear denim and those who do not, between those who listen to radio and those who
prefer to read newspapers. What is important for sociologists is not classification as
an end in itself, but particular divisions that influence people’s access to social power
and social identity.
The most important markers in this regard are class, gender, race, ethnicity, age
and sexuality. Whereas the other ways of differentiating persons and groups strike
us as arbitrary, sociologists have been concerned to show how the patterning of
power and inequality in society at large is conditioned by systemic or structural
realities related to these particular markers. To the extent that some inequalities can
be shown to be systemic, sociology is able to reveal how such inequalities are repro-
duced over time, as well as the degree to which they exist beyond the control of
individuals.
Inequalities in class, for example, have been tied to the historical reproduction of
feudal and capitalist societies as systemic social formations. Inequalities in gender—
the way in which society assigns certain properties and rights to men and others to
women—have been linked to patriarchy, as the structural condition that maintains
this form of inequality. The uneven but persistent inequalities of race and ethnicity
are related to the legacy of colonial domination of much of the world by predominantly
LO1 Describe the field
of investigation that
sociology studies
inequality
The uneven distribution
of wealth and power in
society. Such distribution is
patterned according to the
division of definite groups and
classifications, including class,
gender, ethnicity and race.
power
The study of power has
become a centrepiece of
modern sociology. In some
perspectives it replaces concern
with the study of inequality.
The main debate about power
is that between ‘agency’ and
‘structure’—how much agency
individuals have, as opposed to
the constraints imposed by
larger social forces that they
must endure.
LO2 Explain how
sociology’s concern
with inequality and
power is linked to
social reproduction
and social change
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5chaptEr 1 What is sOciOLOgy?
European civilisation, and the establishment of empires of control. As discussed in
Chapter 5, the need for migration—itself a legacy of colonialism—is interwoven with
the systemic nature of ‘globalisation’.
As we shall see, while ‘system’ theory gives us a broad canvas on which to contex-
tualise so much of social life, often it can only partially explain individuals’ different
experiences of these ‘systems’. The gap between the macro and the micro is often
quite wide. To begin with, none of these systems occurs in isolation; rather, they are
overlaid and intersect to produce different social ‘shapes’. Second, the effect of these
systems on individuals may be uneven. While most people will accept the class posi-
tion they find themselves in, or adopt roles that conform to gender stereotypes, there
are also many exceptions. For example, some people refuse stereotypes, try to move
out of their class or, if they cannot do that, perhaps seek to challenge the class system
or join a social movement (such as the feminist movement).
This means that sociology cannot claim that all social phenomena are derived from
some system or other, but must also examine the more specific situations that form
persons and groups in the first place. Sociology looks at how a diversity of experience
goes into making up a society at large, not only at how social structures determine the
forms of experience and individuality that occur within it.
There is another crucial factor we have not yet mentioned—that of social change.
We can theorise the large picture, the individual picture and their interrelationship,
but we must also strive to understand how these realities change over time.
We live in an era in which it has become more challenging than ever to explain the
world. It is an era of unparalleled technical achievement, an incredibly vast and com-
plex global division of labour, and electronic assemblies on an unprecedented scale.
As discussed in Chapter 14, online social networking now connects over two billion
people, and mobile phones have outnumbered landlines as the preferred mode of
person-to-person connectivity.
The mobile phone has both shrunk and enlarged our world, from the very personal
settings in all of our smart apps and social media platforms, to allowing us to reach
out to a global stage of connection and ‘virtual travel’.
Through such media, our sense of connection is transforming our social setting
at a rate that is difficult to map. But at the same time, surrounding ourselves with
technological environments has led to a denaturing of the life-world. Cities have
become hothouses for this disconnection from nature as, in 2007, for the first time,
more of the world’s population had become residents of megacities than rural
areas.
What is perhaps the greatest challenge to arise from such change is few individuals
are aware of the way we are changing the earth’s climate at a rate 10 000 times natural
rates. While we live as creatures of technological micro-worlds and urban conven-
ience, the earth is hurtling towards dangerous climate change (see Chapter 15) that
may prove to be the ultimate limit to economic growth, to technological progress and
to human habitation of the planet itself.
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6 austraLian sOciOLOgy: a changing sOciEty
■ HOW DOES SOCIOLOGY STUDY? THE SOCIOLOGICAL ImAGInATIOn
Sociology has come a long way from the ideas of the 19th-century thinker Auguste
Comte. Comte founded the discipline as a science that would allow us to control his-
torical and social reality. His famous maxim Prevoir pour pouvoir, ‘To be able to
predict is to be able to control’, is the kind of view of knowledge that in many ways is
the antithesis of the sociological imagination as we know it today. Most importantly,
this is because sociologists today reject Comte’s habit of treating human beings as
though they were objects in the natural world (a view known as positivism). (For a
review, see Keat & Urry 1975.)
Sociology does not proceed with the analytical tools of the natural sciences but has
its own unique methodological approaches—what C. Wright Mills has called ‘the
sociological imagination’ (Mills 1983). The sociological imagination confronts the
fact that human societies and the individuals within them are transient, changing and
situational. The objects of study in sociology are not fixed, and their appearance
depends on the perspective of the observer. The latter feature of sociological inquiry
relates to the fact that sociologists are necessarily a part of the object that they study.
They necessarily interweave the significance of their own place within society with
their study of society in general. This is why, for Mills, a persistent reflexivity is
needed by sociologists in order to put into perspective the way they themselves have
been shaped by their society. To do this, sociologists must understand ‘what is hap-
pening in themselves as minute points of the intersections of biography and history
within society’ (Mills 1983: 14). This reflexivity requires the researcher to minimise
his or her own subjective ‘biases’, but it also provides an appreciation of history and
society at their most abstract. The sociological imagination ‘is the capacity to range
from the most impersonal and remote transformations to the most intimate features
of the human self—and to see the relations between these two’ (Mills 1983: 14).
Since Mills wrote his book, these local contexts of social life have been described
as the ‘life-world’ and the study of them as the ‘sociology of everyday life’. Alternatively,
the world of structural issues is often paired up with ‘systems theory’ or, more ambi-
tiously, ‘grand theory’. However, Mills’ persistent point is that to consider one with-
out the other amounts to a feeble avoidance of the sociological imagination.
As previously mentioned, the sociological imagination is distinguished from other
modes of inquiry because it studies individuals and the organisation of human expe-
rience, and not objects in the natural world. All manner of implications arise from
this, some of which we will cover throughout this book, including the dilemma of
whether or not it is appropriate to study human action independently of the mean-
ings that are attached to it.
This brings us to a second feature of sociological inquiry: the fact that it is interpre-
tive—or ‘hermeneutic’—and not instrumental. It does not study meaning and action in
order to regulate or control it. That is, sociological inquiry is not constrained by instru-
mental goals. The idea of instrumental knowledge or rationality comes from another key
figure in sociological thought, Max Weber. He was the first to emphasise the distinction
LO3 Describe
the origins of
the sociological
imagination and
the different forms
it has taken
sociological
imagination
A kind of interpretive
imagination that does not
treat its subject matter like
objects in the natural world.
The sociological imagination
is anthropological, historical
and critical.
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Copyright © Pearson Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) 2015 – 9781486003310 - Holmes/Australian Sociology 4e
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7chaptEr 1 What is sOciOLOgy?
between instrumental and interpretive reason. Instrumental reason is anti-philosophical
in that it is preoccupied with achieving an objective according to an extremely tightly
defined set of criteria. When provided with a ‘given’, instrumental rationality will find
the best technical means of coming up with a solution. But do not ask instrumental
rationality to interpret anything. The sociological imagination, on the other hand, is not
guided by an end to knowledge. It addresses a world without constraint.
To say that the sociological imagination is interpretive is also to point out how it
tries to investigate beyond the outward appearance of social life. In doing so, most
sociology is wary of taking events and discourses at ‘face value’. Indeed, some soci-
ologists have aptly been described as ‘hermeneuts of suspicion’ who study the inner
systems within society.
From here the theses and questions about society begin rapidly to multiply. Where
does one society end and another begin? Where are the boundaries of these societies?
Are there any boundaries at all? In dividing societies into depth and surface, essence
and appearance, are we describing the actual form of society (‘ontology’—that socie-
ties just are that way), or is this an epistemological move designed to allow us to think
we better understand the social world? On the other hand, what if there are inner laws
of social organisation determining everything we do, our life chances, how others
think of us and so on? Is it not then important to question what these laws are?
And what is the status of ‘essence’ and appearance? Does the familiar ‘appearance
of things’ hide the less familiar essence—the inner logics and laws of society?
Alternatively, does the essence of that society (for example, ‘rationality’, economics,
discourse) ‘produce’ the appearance? And finally, aren’t appearances convincing?
(Indeed, advertisers claim that appearances are everything.) And, if they are convinc-
ing, are they not as real as, or more real than, the presumed inner laws that lie at the
base of social organisation?
The idea that central organising ontologies are responsible for the diversity of
experience we encounter and live is difficult to prove. To investigate such structures,
sociology has recourse to a number of kinds of research. In the early 1980s, the British
sociologist Anthony Giddens proposed three kinds of sociological imagination that
enrich our understanding of social structure—historical, cultural and critical
(Giddens 1988).
K i n d s o f s o c i o l o g i c a l i m a g i n a t i o n
As we have seen, modern sociology seldom engages in social forecasting. Karl Marx,
another key figure in the founding of sociology, provides a model case of this. For
example, despite the thousands of pages commentators have devoted to Marx’s
remarks prophesying the coming of a ‘communist’ society, the truth remains that of
the 61 volumes he authored (or co-authored with Engels), only 15 pages are devoted
to the possibility of a future communist state. Most of these pages were in political
pamphlets, written as journalism rather than social analysis. Marx’s Capital, for
example, merely analyses hundreds of years of European human history. However,
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8 austraLian sOciOLOgy: a changing sOciEty
while predicting social futures may be neither possible nor desirable, it is nevertheless
possible and desirable to seek to understand the present.
The object of most sociological analysis is present-day society, the understanding
of what is going on around us. In assuming such a focus, sociology does, however,
share some commonalities with history and anthropology. The simplest way to
understand the society in which we live is to contrast it either in time or in kind.
History can teach us how what we take for granted today has not always been the case,
whereas anthropology can show us societies different from our own as a way of dem-
onstrating the contingency and idiosyncrasy of all societies.
For the sociological imagination to be reflexive, it is not enough to examine our
own society; we must try to look at other societies from radically different times and
places. It is only through defining what our own society is not that we can truly begin
to describe its character.
A good example of this we can take from Michel Foucault, one of the thinkers we
will be studying in this book. His methodological approach of a ‘history of the present’
serves as an excellent illustration (and has been taken up by historians, sociologists
and cultural analysts alike). Foucault proposed that the purpose of history is to study
the past not as an end in itself, but as a way of reflecting on the present. That is to say,
traditional history imagines it is speaking about the past, but for Foucault, and in the
majority of cases, it is really superimposing the ‘discourses’ (ways of thinking and
speaking) of the present on the past. Foucault aims to reverse this logic. He says in his
book on disciplinary power, Discipline and Punish (1979: 26): ‘I would like to write a
history of [the] prison, with all the political investments of the body that it gathers
together in its closed architecture. Why? Simply because I am interested in the past?
No, if one means by that writing the history of the past in terms of the present. Yes,
if one means writing the history of the present.’
Foucault captures, in a trice, the import of the historical domain of the sociological
imagination. His studies proceed by showing how strange and different past societies
and cultural formations have been, and in doing so disturb all that is comfortable in
categories by which we ‘live’ present-day social conditions. This is not to propose that
historical reality can be known ‘exactly as it was’; it is to avoid merely reinstating the
orthodoxies of contemporary thinking by applying them to other times and places.
Historical analysis is an indispensable aid in the task of explaining the present
conditions of contemporary society. Indeed, it was a method used by the founders
of sociology in the 19th century, whose strengths lie in contrasting traditional and
modern society.
In the 20th century the discipline of anthropology emerged as a way of exploring
the contrasts between different cultures. Anthropology is a discipline that is often
partnered with sociology in a university department, and it provides most of the
methodological basis for what is called ‘comparative sociology’. Comparative sociol-
ogy allows us to understand ‘other’ cultures in organised ways. Other places, other
ethnicities, other nations and other identities become conduits through which we can
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9chaptEr 1 What is sOciOLOgy?
understand ‘ourselves’. Of course, here a great number of challenges and tensions are
introduced. Understanding difference can result in a worldly appreciation of culture,
but it can also be cause for insecurity in our identity. In a globalising world such a
confrontation may grow more acute, leading to xenophobic forms of nationalism
which appeal to an ethnocentric, one-dimensional world of homogeneous identity.
At the same time, the concern that some members of society may have about ‘others’
and otherness can dissipate as tourism, migration, commodity exchange and global
media conspire in the creation of what has been called a ‘global fugue state’ (Ostwald
2001). In such a period the behaviour of an ever-increasing proportion of the world’s
population becomes in a sense ‘touristic’, without even the need for travel. The global
in-mixing of culture may become generalised to the point where it becomes more
difficult to find an Other at all, as all culture is engaged by a law of the Same.
In the current period of cultural globalisation, therefore, the concept of culture is
a fraught one. As analysed in Chapter 13, the commonsense notion of culture as tied
exclusively to ethnicity is problematised. As capitalism spreads over the globe it tends
to destroy most senses of ethnic culture in its wake, and to replace these with the cul-
ture of capitalism itself. Industrialisation, informationalisation, consumerism and
McDonaldisation are each ‘cultures’ of their own kind. They uproot so many of the
traditions necessary for many ethnic cultures to survive.
Capitalism first emerged in Europe and expanded in the waves of imperialism that
came out of Europe over hundreds of years. It is only in the 20th century that one of
the former colonies of Europe, the United States itself, assumed the centre of imperi-
alist power. The dominance of the US economy and political apparatus, as well as its
military and media imperialism in world affairs, has had a dramatic impact on every
region of the world. As discussed in Chapter 14, American serial dramas and soap
operas are played throughout Europe, Asia and the third world. At the same time,
approximately 75 per cent of World Wide Web traffic is sourced in the United States.
The influence of such concentrations of media dominance can be seen in the rapid
evaporation of the world’s languages. There are currently 6000 languages in the
world, which are disappearing at the rate of over 100 per year. It is estimated that by
2040 only 600 languages will remain, the most dominant of which will be English.
These trends in cultural globalisation compel us to reconsider the distinctiveness
of Australian culture, itself a legacy of European imperialism but at the same time
such a relatively young colony that its white population has barely developed an iden-
tity significant enough to justify feeling threatened by globalisation. If there are any
Australians who have been displaced, dislocated and uprooted from their traditional
identity, it is Australia’s Indigenous peoples (see Chapter 3). The confrontation
between black and white Australians, between a culture 40 000 years old and a colony
of Europeans and Asians who came to a New World, is much more profound than
that between 21st-century Australia and the rest of the globe.
The contrast between the colonised and colonisers is so wide as to make recon-
ciliation a seemingly unachievable task. For black and white to understand each other
culture
The learned ideas, values,
knowledge, rules and customs
shared by members of a
collectivity (such as those based
on ethnicity, gender, sexuality,
indigeneity, age, disability).
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10 austraLian sOciOLOgy: a changing sOciEty
requires an appreciation of cultural relativity—an attempt to understand the ‘other’
culture from the point of view of its own norms and values. Of course, such an exer-
cise is necessarily limited by the fact that ‘we’ (a ‘we’ that might be black or white) can
never quite ‘live’ what it means to belong to another culture; but at least we can be
sensitive to our differences and avoid imposing judgements that have no place in the
social world of others.
Perhaps the greatest insight that is arrived at in comparing one’s culture with that
of another is a realisation that social reality is not given, but is constructed in fragile
contingent and inessential ways. To recognise that other cultures might organise and
differentiate their societies in radically different ways is to perceive equally how the
content and structure of one’s own culture is arbitrary. It could be organised in an
infinite number of other ways. Usually, however, this sense of culture derives from
intersocietal comparison. Also we need to mention how cultural difference operates
within the same society.
In almost every society it is possible to discern dominant cultures and minority
cultures or ‘subcultures’. The dominant culture is usually identifiable by a dominant
ideology through which definitions of social reality are produced and naturalised. On
the other hand, by their mere existence, minority cultures often present a challenge to
the right of the dominant culture to dominate.
Studying minority cultures and subcultures is an extremely revealing exercise for
sociologists to undertake, because in the process the nature of the dominant culture
becomes ever more visible. This is particularly true in times of social conflict, when a
dominant order is threatened. Never is a structure more visible than when it is under
threat—whether we are speaking of a political, economic or social structure. New
trends in art, music and street culture implicitly comment on ‘mainstream’ culture
and its orthodoxy. Likewise, protests, strikes and demonstrations nearly always point
out injustices that reverse the way in which dominant ideologies naturalise inequality.
At the same time, as discussed in Chapter 9, mainstream culture often tries to label
different groups as deviant in order to reaffirm its power. The important point in both
these processes of differentiation, by minority or majority groups, is that the socio-
logical imagination cannot be content to make intersocietal or historical comparisons
only. The actions and attitudes of individuals are shaped also by interaction within
and between groups in the same society. For this reason, it is necessary to understand
the internal structure and composition of our own society.
The turn inward to our own social formation gives us the critical dimension of the
sociological imagination. In conducting critical analysis, sociologists must constantly
question their own assumptions and justify the relationship they establish between
evidence and conclusion. Here the question of the value of freedom comes up again.
When sociologists attempt to get at the ‘facts’, to what extent do their own value
judgements determine which ‘facts’ are selected and which are ignored? And what is
a fact in the first place? Do facts simply wait to be uncovered prior to our investigation
of them? What is the relationship between theories and facts?
ideology
A set of socially determined
beliefs, values and opinions
that Marxists have suggested
function towards maintaining
and ‘naturalising’ the ‘status
quo’. Together with education,
legal and political apparatuses,
the media is one of the most
central institutions with a role
in the circulation of ‘dominant’
ideologies. In relation to media,
John B. Thompson (1990: 6)
has usefully defined ideology
as ‘meaning in the service
of power’.
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11chaptEr 1 What is sOciOLOgy?
Recent work in the methodology of the social sciences has questioned the idea that
facts exist independently of theories, that there can be a theory-neutral experience of
the world. This view relies on a separation of ‘theories’, as the invention of thinking,
and facts, which are deemed to exist objectively. This latter view is a commonsense
one most of us hold, and is known as empiricism. Empiricism is a theoretical approach
and should be distinguished from ‘empirical’, which refers to the practice of research-
ing the world of social objects, common to all species of sociology. Empiricism often
entails a correspondence theory of truth, the idea that an investigation aims to mirror
the ‘real’ world with accurate description.
Paradoxically, empiricism is so prevalent in Western societies that it is rarely even
thought of as a theory. For this reason, ‘collecting facts’ seems to be a quite innocent
pre-theoretical exercise. However, critics of empiricism point out that the selection
and conceptualisation of facts is made possible only by a pre-theoretical understand-
ing that makes certain facts significant in the first place. Moreover, it is the theory—
an abstract way of differentiating the social world into elements and the relations
deemed to exist between these elements—that makes facts visible as facts.
This criticism of empiricism as the dominant ‘Western metaphysic’ has enormous
implications for studying social relationships. To the extent that such a criticism
holds sway, it is not valid for sociologists to propose that they have an ‘objective’
method. This is because, before any investigation begins, all sociologists employ some
kind of theoretical framework, explicitly or implicitly, whether or not they are aware
of it. Even if they reject the idea of using a theoretical perspective, they are ipso facto
subscribing to an empiricist approach.
This is not to say that there is no point in doing research any more because it will
always be ‘biased’ by a theory. Rather, it is important that the coherence of the theory
and the object it investigates be checked continuously. Theories may rapidly become
irrelevant as the field of investigation changes. Alternatively, what used to be regarded
as immutable ‘facts’ may be replaced, or disappear, as the theory itself becomes refined.
This does not mean that we ought to switch our theories continuously. Usually
they need to be modified, but a theory may hold up over a very long period of time.
For example, insofar as it can be demonstrated that Australia is a capitalist society, it
is entirely appropriate to engage theories of capitalism (Marx and Weber) that main-
tain a relevance long after their authors have died. If, however, Australia ceased to be
characterised by the central features of capitalism that were theorised over 100 years
ago, it would be dogmatic to seek to apply such a theory to that society.
Thus, the critical domain of the sociological imagination calls on us to maintain
this labour of checking, or checking back and forth, between the theories we are using
and the meanings, events, processes and structures in the social world.
The politics of the sociological imagination
To the above three kinds of imagination—the historical, the comparative and the
critical—we can add a fourth domain—politics. If it is impossible to be theory-
LO4 Explain how the
methods employed
by the sociological
imagination have
political implications
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12 austraLian sOciOLOgy: a changing sOciEty
independent in one’s observation of the world, it goes without saying that every
sociological statement, no matter how modest, also involves a commitment to a cer-
tain world-view and serves a definite interest of individuals and groups within its field
of view. Consequently, sociology is a key discipline with an influence in practical
policy formulation and social reform.
A number of ways to conceptualise this convergence between ‘theory’ and ‘prac-
tice’ are outlined below.
C o n v e r g e n c e b e t w e e n t h e o r y a n d p r a c t i c e
Sociology as an instrumental discipline
Some sociologists, particularly those coming out of the American tradition of
‘ functionalism’, argue that sociology should not be an analysis of society but an analy-
sis for society. (For an appraisal, see Fay 1975.) Which is to say that sociology should
be used as a tool for repairing society’s problems, to assist the state in the better regula-
tion of social functions and guarantee the smooth running of society (see Chapter 16).
Of course, what the ‘problems’ are varies within this tradition. Some argue that social
policies should tackle overcoming the deep inequalities that exist in so many nations
around the world, while others see these inequalities as immutable and think sociology
should focus on making the best of managing them, including their pathologies.
For example, in the United States, in the management of the most deprived mem-
bers of society, such as the 2.1 million persons incarcerated in prisons, there has lately
been a turn away from interpretive sociology to criminology as the most important
focus of sociology. At the same time the sociology of work, the family, health and devi-
ance are each at the forefront of the instrumental approach to ‘managing’ society.
Every year these disciplines are studied by over one million Americans at university.
Developed by the sociology of family tradition in the United States, some of the termi-
nology has even passed into everyday use, such as ‘dysfunctional’ (‘the dysfunctional
family’), a direct offspring of functionalist sociology. In Australia, the instrumental
approach to sociology has been historically more progressive, and has aimed at mend-
ing social ills and inequalities. In the late 1990s, however, government departments in
Australia became selective about using particular sociological policy formulations, in
policies such as ‘work for the dole’ and ‘mutual obligation’. Approaches such as ‘action
research’, a composite of networking, researching and educating organisations, have
been used and continue to be used by government departments to improve their qual-
ity and performance. However, this latter kind of research, credentialled as ‘sensitive
social science’ in the United States and used widely within the Australian state, attends
to the internal dynamics of an organisational culture, not to how that organisation
relates to society in general or to wider inequalities and changes.
Sociology as permanent critique
Partly as a reaction to the excessive instrumentalisation of sociology during the 20th
century, a recent addition to sociological critique is postmodern sociology. It seeks to
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13chaptEr 1 What is sOciOLOgy?
preserve a sense of the ‘critique of society’ and has been very critical of any attempts
to appropriate sociology as a handbook for ‘engineering’ society. Postmodern sociol-
ogy, which has been influenced most profoundly by 20th-century continental intel-
lectual traditions (especially the French traditions, which have been imported as
‘postmodern’ in the United States and elsewhere, although French sociologists often
reject the term being applied to them: see Chapter 16), has expressed immense indig-
nity and contempt for any form of knowledge that proposes to ‘speak for others’
(Foucault & Deleuze 1977: 209).
Such contempt is understandable in the context of French society, which is par-
ticularly afflicted by technocratic procedures. But in nearly all Western societies,
sociologists have tried to grapple with instrumental and ‘governmental’ forms of dis-
ciplinary power. For many postmodernists the critique has extended to education
(J.F. Lyotard), the media (J. Baudrillard), the family (J. Donzelot), and psychology and
sociology itself as ‘normalising’ disciplines (M. Foucault). For Foucault, the human
sciences and European ‘humanism’—a particular style of subjectivity in which indi-
viduals police their own behaviour—have colluded in the normalisation, surveillance
and discipline of populations in Western societies for over a century.
Against such a movement, Foucault advances what he has called an ‘ethos of perma-
nent critique’ (Foucault 1984: 42). Foucault’s method is never aimed at yielding fixed
truths but ‘demands relentless erudition’ (Foucault 1977: 140). Foucault views this
ethos as a valuable legacy of the Enlightenment (which is in tension with other elements
that propose triumphal kinds of knowledge). Foucault argues that any critique of
present-day societies is necessarily limited: ‘The critique of what we are is at one and
the same time the historical analysis of the limits that are imposed on us and an exper-
iment with the possibility of going beyond them’ (1984: 50). We must constantly ques-
tion historical limits in order to separate ‘what is given to us as universal, necessary,
obligatory’ in a particular period from ‘what place is occupied by whatever is singular,
contingent and the product of arbitrary constraints’ (Foucault 1984: 50). It is then pos-
sible to assess ‘what limits knowledge has to renounce transgressing’, not in order to
develop an instrumental theory as a tool of control but to resist that which confronts us
as obligatory. There is no point in resisting what is arbitrary, but it may easily be con-
fused with the universal unless we permanently question our historical situation.
Sociology and social reproduction
All sociologists have affinities with postmodern sociological views about the role of
criticism, to some degree. Many sociologists see their role as providing critique and
reflection. Given how few areas of capitalist culture provide for such an activity, it is
important that sociology and its collegial disciplines in the social sciences maintain
the practice of criticism. At the same time, some sociologists view ‘postmodern’ soci-
ology as an overreaction to the contemporary state and organisational bureaucracies.
Complex societies are capable of all kinds of crises and obviously need to be admin-
istered and governed in order to avoid social disorder. Postmodern sociologists have
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14 austraLian sOciOLOgy: a changing sOciEty
been accused of equating a particular characteristic of modernity—state control—
with society in general. In this they develop post-social accounts of the world that
refuse to be reduced to any kind of program that might lend itself to large-scale social
reform. Often this is expressed as theoretical individualism—what has been described
as ‘an ethic of constant disengagement from constituted forms of experience’
(Rajchman 1985: 37). It is well to have ‘indignity for speaking for others’ in the face
of bureaucratic intellectuals prescribing for others their social needs, but the question
of whether it is only bureaucrats and their peculiar kind of rationalism who are doing
this ‘speaking’ remains.
Then there is the question of structure, and of the fact that structures may also
prescribe for us our identity, our opportunities and our value systems. How do we
know what these structures are unless we inquire into them? And if we do not know
what they are, how do we know what needs to be changed and how these changes can
be achieved? These questions are all endemic to what has become known in sociology
as the structure versus agency debate, where ‘structure’ refers to the social determina-
tions that antedate the individual and ‘agency’ denotes the power individuals have in
structured contexts.
More important even than structure, however, is how such structures are repro-
duced over time. How is it that the positions that individuals occupy in a structure
might change, yet the structure itself retains the same form from day to day, year to
year, decade to decade? One argument that emerges here is that to understand how a
structure is reproduced (for example, a class structure or patriarchal structure) is to
understand its innermost workings.
This has led some sociologists, such as Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002), to focus on
practice as a starting point for understanding social life (see Bourdieu 1987: 1–30).
Bourdieu argues that sociologists cannot understand structures merely theoretically.
Rather, in understanding the social practices that both reproduce and threaten social
structures we can begin to unravel them. To go back to our discussion of ontology, it
is not enough to understand ‘what exists’ in isolation; we have to understand what is
possible as a path to what exists. Any theory that provides this account is, ipso facto,
an adequate theory of the reproduction of these practices and, more importantly, of
their non-reproduction. When it is known by experience which practices threaten
prevailing social structures to the point where they would cease to be structures, then
those structures become more tangible. The theory that results is valid to an extent: if
it guides our actions towards social change, it succeeds in practically transforming
the social reality it addresses.
The focus of social and cultural reproduction that characterises Bourdieu’s per-
spective is an attempt to overcome the distinction between subjective and objective
kinds of knowledge. Both are important forms of knowledge in unravelling the prob-
lem of social reproduction. Theories need to be generated from empirical research,
but they also need to be tested in practice for us to be reassured of their validity. The
direction of that practice becomes a key question here. Whether this practice should
social change
The process of historical
transformation of societies.
Such change may range from
‘incremental’ and gradual to
revolutionary and abrupt.
The most important areas of
change relating to Australia that
have been named by recent
sociologists are from industrial
to ‘post-industrial’ society, from
modern to postmodern, and
from ‘middle’ to ‘late’ capitalism.
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15chaptEr 1 What is sOciOLOgy?
be oriented towards organisation reform, policy formulation, social reform, political
protest or an entire social revolution is a matter for social actors to determine.
T h e i m p o r t a n c e o f c o m p a r i n g p e r s p e c t i v e s
Questions about the society in which we live—its future, our roles and responsibilities
in it, the way it functions and changes—are questions that we confront in our public
and inner lives. As the world becomes integrated through the expanding communica-
tion revolution, we live in an increasingly multicultural and multidimensional envi-
ronment. Understanding this complexification of the life-world has become an
urgent task. Sociology gives us powerful perspectives through which to view the
present and to examine critically so-called commonsense explanations of social inter-
action and social structures.
Whether we are concerned with social change (no matter how modest) or merely
understanding the society we live in, sociology offers a vast range of perspectives by
which to achieve these aims. Just as we can compare different societies to gain knowl-
edge of our own, it is important that we learn to compare the different perspectives
available to sociology, as a way of establishing the coherence of our analysis of the
field we are investigating.
Throughout this book you will be introduced to a range of sociological perspectives, and encounter systems
of thought ranging from the 19th-century ‘founders’ of the discipline to recent contemporary theoretical
movements, such as post-structuralism, postmodernity and deconstruction. To ‘know thy perspectives’ and be
able to ground any given text in one or more of the perspectives that sociology employs is the most valuable
aid in steering your way through this very broad discipline. For example, to be able to link a particular thinker
to one or more perspectives helps clarify why that thinker presents his or her field of inquiry in a certain way.
It also enables the scholar to make informed judgements of whether the approach employed is appropriate or
instructive. Matching up a field of inquiry with a sociological perspective that can engage with it is a difficult
task, and in doing so as researchers we invariably modify our own theoretical positions and premises.
CONCLUSION
1. What is the link between ontology and epistemology in defining the field of
sociology? (LO1)
2. is ‘inequality’ necessary? how is it linked to social reproduction and social change? (LO2)
3. Which of the different kinds of sociological imagination are useful in the 21st century? (LO3)
4. What are the main topics of social change that have altered the nature of sociological
inquiry? (LO4)
CrITICAL THInkInG QUESTIOnS
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Copyright © Pearson Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) 2015 – 9781486003310 - Holmes/Australian Sociology 4e
Holmes, David, et al. Australian Sociology : A Changing Society, Pearson Education Australia, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/usyd/detail.action?docID=5215271.
Created from usyd on 2024-03-26 02:01:16.
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