Recently I asked the contributors to An und für sich to recommend some theology books to non-theologians that would give us an idea of what is going on in contemporary theology, why theology should matter to non-theologians, and how to make sense of the “theological turn” in contemporary social and political theory. (It seems to me that reactionary, anti-modernist, Christian fundamentalism from the U.S. and, to a lesser extent, Canada has managed to dominate the public perception of religion in North America.) Adam has kindly gotten the ball rolling. I’m returning the favour relative to sociology and social theory in this post. (Most works are given with their year of publication in English; “classic” texts are given in their year of original publication.) I should point out that I take sociology to be concerned with “the social” and sociology should follow “the social” wherever it goes: economics, political science, philosophy, history, biology, etc. This is not a mainstream view of sociology.
- Michel Foucault’s set of three lectures on politics – call it his “political turn,” if you will – where he moves from an analysis of discipline and the norm (presented in, for instance, Discipline and Punish and the lectures from the same year, Abnormal) to an analysis of government and population. These lectures introduce a new way of thinking about power (as a field of relations; as “the conduct of conduct”) and begin to develop a new conceptual vocabulary: biopower, biopolitics, governmentality, population. The lectures move from obscure debates regarding proto-nationalisms (Franks vs. Gauls; Anglo-Saxons vs. Normans) to modern neo-liberalism through a detour into reason of state doctrines and the Christian pastoral. Like the best sociology, it is at once theoretically sophisticated and historically grounded. ‘Society Must Be Defended’ (2003), Security, Territory, Population (2007), The Birth of Biopolitics (2008). An excellent guide to these works can be found in Mitchell Dean’s Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society (1999) and, to a lesser extent, in Nikolas Rose’s Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought (1999).
- A central antinomy in sociological thought is the distinction between “agency” and “structure.” Agency refers to the capacity or ability of individual humans to make their own decisions while structure refers to larger institutions such as class, race and gender that constrain the decisions of individuals. Hence, crude Marxists would posit a class determination such that agency is illusory while crude methodological individualists would posit pure agency such that institutions as illusory. Sociology – and the social sciences as a whole – have never quite gotten beyond this antinomy. The most promising attempt to do so is found in the work of Pierre Bourdieu and his concept of “habitus” which is first developed in An Outline of the Theory of Practice (1977). More accessible are his In Other Words: Essays Toward a Reflexive Sociology (1990) and An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (1992), co-authored with his student Loic Wacquant.
- In addition to the structure/agency antinomy, sociology has also been crippled by a lack of disciplinary confidence. Just what is sociology? What are we doing when we are doing sociology? And, most importantly, why is the only recognized definition of sociology tautological? (The ASA used to define sociology on its website as “the science [logos] of society [socius]“!) Worse than not even being able to define itself, is that sociology, in its nominal construction, is a barbarism as it joins a Latin and a Greek root word. Some recent works have attempted to account for this lack of disciplinary autonomy. Pierre Bourdieu Science of Science and Reflexivity (2004), George Steimetz (ed) The Politics of Method in the Human Sciences (2005), and Bent Flyvbjerg Making Social Science Matter: Why Social Inquiry Fails and How it Can Succeed Again (2001). From an institutional perspective that would see disciplinary boundaries destroyed, see Open the Social Sciences: Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences (1996) chaired by Immanuel Wallerstein. Also see occasional commentor Neil McLaughlin’s article, “Canada’s Impossible Science: Historical and Institutional Origins of the Coming Crisis in Anglo-Canadian Sociology” in the Canadian Journal of Sociology 30(1).
- Among the early concerns of the “founders” of sociology – Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber (only one of whom actually identified as a sociologist: something we rarely mention) – was the development of a modern, secular society. Hence, industrialization, capitalism, and the disappearance of religion from the public and its move into the private were key concerns. The following works take up these early constitutive debates: Karl Marx “On the Jewish Question” (1843), Capital, Volume 1 (1867); Emile Durkheim The Division of Labour in Society (1893), The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912); Max Weber The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904-5), and General Economic History (1923). Emile Durkheim’s nephew, Marcel Mauss, is also imporant on the relation between religion and economics: The Gift (1924). Friedrich Nietzsche is not often seen as contributing to sociology, but all sociologists should read his On the Genealogy of Morality (1887). More recent works in this vein are: Georges Bataille The Accursed Share, Volume 1 (1991), Theory of Religion (1989), Jean Baudrillard Symbolic Exchange and Death (1976) and Rene Girard Violence and the Sacred (1977). Charles Taylor’s Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (1987) and A Secular Age? (2007) are two of the most outstanding works in the Anglo-American tradition.
- Sociology claims to be the “science of the social.” That is, it claims the “social” as its own object and its terrain of investigation. However, what sociologists mean by the “social” is not entirely clear and it all too often results in a banal definition such as “two or more people doing something” or, worse, it gets identified with “society” as in “Canadian society” or “Ethiopian society.” Neither definition is particularly satisfying as it misses that aspect of the social that is most interesting: some level of reality that sits between the individual mind and the totality of human beings (infant mortality rates, for instance, do not reflect facts about individuals nor do they reflect facts about humans taken as a totality; rather, they reflect the relation between a set of individuals and a set of complex circumstances that those individuals have played a part in forming – some they can change and some they cannot change: this strange level of reality is “the social”). In terms of major foundational texts – those that lead to the “discovery of the social” – Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws (1748), Adam Smith Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Adam Ferguson’s An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), G.W.F. Hegel Philosophy of Right (1821), and Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1835, 1840) stand out. More recent works along this theme include Hannah Arendt The Human Condition (1958), Jurgen Habermas Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1989), Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato Civil Society and Political Theory (1992) and Carl Schmitt Concept of the Political (1996). The classic sociological statement on the centrality of the social (“socio-centrism”) is Emile Durkheim’s Rules of the Sociological Method (1895).
- Among the great traditions in Anglo-American sociology is historical sociology, especially of the state and the nation. The following (nowhere near complete!) stand out in this tradition: Hannah Arendt The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), Philip Corrigan and Derek Sayer The Great Arch: English State Formation as Cultural Revolution (1985), Bruce Curtis The Politics of Population: State Formation, Statistics and the Census of Canada, 1840-1875 (2001), Norbert Elias The Civilizing Process (1994), Peter Linebaugh The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in Eighteenth Century England (1991), Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (2001), Michael Mann The Sources of Social Power (1986, 1993), Barrington Moore Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (1966), Theda Skocpol States and Social Revolutions (1974), Charles Tilly Coercion, Capital and European States, AD 990-1990 (1992), E.P. Thompson The Making of the English Working Class (1963), Immanuel Wallerstein The Modern World System (1974, 1980, 1989). Important “theoretical” texts on the relation between sociology and history are: Philip Abrams Historical Sociology (1982), Charles Tilly As Sociology Meets History (1982), Why? (2006), Immanuel Wallerstein World Systems Analysis: An Introduction (2004). Sociologists doing historical sociology and social theory should also read the essays collected in Quentin Skinner Visions of Politics, Volume 1 (2001), Quentin Skinner (ed) The Return of Grand Theory in the Human Sciences (1985), and J.G.A. Pocock Virtue, Commerce, and History (1985).
Clearly, important aspects of sociology and social theory are missing; for instance, feminism, race, sex and gender, and class. Suggestions for inclusion are welcome. Animals are a topic for another day and another list.
27 Comments
Hi Craig
Regarding the “founders” of sociology, what do you think of Robert Nisbet’s ‘The Sociological Tradition’? I think he makes a convincing argument interpreting the sociological tradition as having a strong “conservative” streak or at least influence. Do you agree? After all Nisbet himself is a conservativ (he refers to Daniel Bell and thanks Irving Kristol in his preface) and I wonder if this personal “preference” is influencing his reading of the classics too much.
Nonetheless, as I am studying the History of Ideas, I enjoy reading the book, as he takes a Lovejoy-inspired approach to the tradition, the two parts of the book are called “Ideas and Contexts” and “The Unit-Ideas of Sociology”.
Also, I like your definition of Sociology. I am taking some courses in Sociology next year, and I hope the department of sociology where I’m going to study takes more or less the same approach.
I haven’t read Nisbet’s book, but from my own reading of the history of sociology he has, at least, a plausible case – if not especially airtight. Sticking to the recognized founders, there were certainly conservative streaks in Weber and Durkheim. These conservative streaks come out most forcefully in the more positivistic strands of twentieth century sociology. I think, for instance, structural-functionalism was an inherently conservative position insofar as proper integration and socialization requires the maintenance of the status quo. Or, at least, slow, deliberate change. At the same time, early sociology had a strong relation to community activism (Dubois, feminism, Hull House, etc) and sociology necessarily distinguishes between society as natural/traditional and society as constructed and active. C. Wright Mills was likely the first significant American sociologist to draw upon Marx (compare, for instance, Parsons’ use of Marx). Ultimately, reducing sociology to radical, liberal, conservative or reactionary is misleading – there is no coherent political project or foundational political position in sociology or any other discipline. If you’re interested in a contemporary attempt to understand sociology as an emancipatory science, see Roy Bhaskar’s work, especially Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation (1986) and Reclaiming Reality (1989). From a different perspective, I’d recommend Cornelius Castoriadis’ work on individual and collective emancipation. For him, I’d start with either The Imaginary Institution of Society or one of the collections.
And, as I mentioned in my post, my view of sociology is not especially mainstream. Where are you studying?
Hi Craig – this is all very useful! I can’t say that I’m familiar with all of the texts, but there are some notable absences (I think encyclopedic entries like these really highlight exclusions as much as that which is included). Under the structure/agency section, perhaps Judith Butler’s early work would be useful, Gender Trouble (1990) and Bodies that Matter (1993). I know it was key to my introduction to the debate.
Flyvbjerg’s book is a waste of time- there are many better intro’s to social constructionism, including Hacking’s book ‘The Social Construction of What?’ (1999).
Laclau and Mouffe’s work should be included under what has come to be known as ‘political sociology’ (after the Merton, Lipset, etc American tradition). There are others too, such as Wendy Brown, Morgenthau (more classical, I admit).
For the most part I agree with the rest. I’m glad to see that you included Arendt under the question of the ‘the social’. She isn’t usually understood as a sociologist, but her critique of the social is so insightful.
And lastly, what about cultural sociology? – Raymond Williams, Jameson, Althusser (loosely speaking), perhaps even Benjamin, Freud, Adorno, Austin, Spivak (and all the post colonial literature), ..
Just some thoughts. Thanks for putting your thoughts online… I know this is a precarious task!
Generally I like Hacking’s work, but I found The Social Construction of What? to be rather disappointing. What I found useful in Flyvbjerg’s book was the idea of phronesis.
To a large extent, I think the list as a whole is a very “political sociology” list, with the exception, perhaps, of the disciplinary works. I had considered another bullet on more Marxist contributions to political sociology – Poulantzas, Althusser, Castoriadis, Lefort, Laclau, Mouffe, Butler, Zizek, etc. But I also figured you’d be happy to fill in much of that list!
I’m comparatively ignorant of cultural sociology other than Alexander and his group’s work. Happy to take recommendations. (Although I am having my first years read Civilization and its Discontents.)
On Arendt as sociologist or Arendt and sociology, see Philip Walsh’s article in the current issue of the Journal of Classical Sociology. Philip is on my committee – he’s a good scholar.
I left Flyvberg’s book thinking that my time would have been better spent reading Aristotle, and in contemporary theory on phronesis, Ernesto Laclau.
In terms of cultural sociology, there is the entire literature associated with the Theory, Culture and Society journal – Shields, Venn, Kemple, Gardiner, Taussig, Thrift, Urry, Turner, Haraway, to name only a few.
Other than the title of his series published by Verso, has Laclau explicitly thematized phronesis? I haven’t read Laclau in quite some time and, of his works, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (and the ensuing debate) remains close to my heart at the expense of his more recent work.
Not that I know of. But his contention that a distinction between theory and praxis has become meaningless today has me believe that he is working implicitly with something like the idea of ‘phronesis’. It is definitely something worth looking for in Laclau’s work, which includes in book form:
Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory (NLB, 1977); Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (with Chantal Mouffe) (Verso, 1985); New Reflections on the Revolution of our Time (Verso, 1990); The Making of Political Identities (editor) (Verso, 1994); Emancipation(s) (Verso, 1996); Contingency, Hegemony, Universality (with Judith Butler and Slavoj Žižek Verso, 2000); On Populist Reason (Verso, 2005); Elusive Universality (Routledge, forthcoming 2007).
(As you can see, Verso likes his work and vice versa)
I can’t wait to get the new book on universality when it finally comes out.
Craig,
Nisbet’s books, in my view, are indispensible even if dated relative to contemporary research.
I agree with you that it is misleading to see sociology as representing a political project. There are conservative strains in sociology, as well as liberal, socialist and libertarian left strains. This is, as it should be.
But I wonder why you see positivism linked to conservatism?
Nisbet was a political conservative, who was anti-statist, anti-individualistic and anti-positivist. His was not a positivist view of what sociology should be. Certainly not.
And certainly there were conservative elements to the Parsonian approach, as it developed, and took root in the US and then elsewhere.
But the truth is, positivism is an over-used and very vague term, and the politics of scholars who use statistical or “scientific” approaches (not the same thing, of course) in sociology vary greatly, again, from the liberal to left perspective, with some conservatives.
My sense though, is that conservative today in sociology (there are a few, though not many!) tend to be far less quantitative than the mainstream…
So I think we should be careful about the positivism rhetoric.
Overall, I think the list presented here is a little narrow, in its sociology of culture offerings.
Too dependend on a small number of Canadian and British sociologists of culture, with a highly philosophical bent…
For a useful introduction to empirically oriented sociology of culture, try the sampler…
Griswold, Wendy. 2004. Cultures and Societies in a Changing World. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.
This would lead to literature too large to list here.
But this is a good place to start, for students…
Neil McLaughlin
I assume the reference to a narrow list for cultural sociology is aimed at NotOften. So, I will let him respond to that. (Could be a few days – he’s moving right now.)
I’ll take a look at the Griswold book you recommend.
I take your point re: positivism and will return to it at a later time. I think two things hold true: (1) under nearly any definition of positivism, Parsons and most structural functionalist sociology fits (2) under the definition of conservatism as “conserving” (an unpopular definition in the present – but I’ve always maintained that there is nothing conservative about ostensibly conservative politics of the past twenty to thirty years: Thatcher, Regan, Mulroney, Harper, Klein, Harris), Parsons and most structural functionalist sociology fits. This comes through quite clearly in Parsons’ theoretical essays collected in, for instance, Essays in Sociological Theory.
I think it is an uncontroversial point that sociology has no political mission or is inherently of a particular political bend. I am glad we agree on this. I think it should also be the case that sociology has no “disciplinary essence” (and I would hold the same for any other discipline), but this isn’t as uncontroversial (quite sadly). Attaching sociology to “the social” clearly means that sociology is tied to an awareness of “the social.” Hence, before the early eighteenth century, sociology was impossible and, accordingly, it is conceivable that at some point sociology will once again become impossible. (Much economics is certainly aimed at doing just that.) We saw an emergence of this problematic in the early to mid-eighties around the theme of the “death of the social” or the “impossibility of society.” It is less pronounced now, but it is clearly visible in some forms of sociology taking inspiration from science studies, represented in works such as Urry’s Sociology Beyond Societies – a work I find to be generally unhelpful.
I think the most conservative strands in sociology are largely found in “criminology,” especially insofar as many (not all, of course! the Center of Criminology is not representative of this) criminologists see their mission as “stopping crime.” This is especially evident in undergraduate criminology programs which are often overwhelmingly taught by “expert” sessionals drawn from law enforcement, government, and law firms.
Craig,
You may be right about the source what I see as a narrow version of the sociology of culture. I just read through the posts this morning, and responded to the broad pattern that I saw in general, with a note to you.
But yes, I will for a response from NotOften.
It always strikes me that the “critical” scholars who feel their views are ignored by mainstream work are actually far more narrow than those they oppose. I have been quite active in American style sociology of culture, and scholars in this broad tendency read and use Butler, Foucault, the Frankfurt School and the like. This is non-controversial.
But as it was posted: “In terms of cultural sociology, there is the entire literature associated with the Theory, Culture and Society journal – Shields, Venn, Kemple, Gardiner, Taussig, Thrift, Urry, Turner, Haraway, to name only a few.”
Well, Haraway is quite famous, as is Urry. And I don’t doubt the rest do decent work.
But the work of Gary Alan Fine, Michele Lamont, Wendy Griswold, Ann Swindler, Robert Wuthnow? At UofT, there is Bonnie Erikson, and the emerging work of S. Bauman and J. Johnston.
There is a big interesting world out there, beyond the pages of a little network around Theory, Culture and Society.
I like your listing of Bourdieu and the various political theories and historical-comparative sociology.
All important stuff.
But Althusser, and the sociology of culture.
Personally, I think young scholars could by-pass this discredited blast from the past….
But that, perhaps, is another issue.
More to say on positivism, of course, but I would say that Parsons was basically a liberal, who had a left-wing youth, and whose ideas had conservative implications on various levels in the 1950s..
Real conservatives? Nisbet yes!
Not my cup of political tea, but worth reading!
I personally do not believe in essenses, in disciplines or otherwise.
Check out Stephan Fuchs Against Essentialism sometime.
My argument was never that there is an essense to sociology, in some timeless way.
Certainly discipines come and go. We will see how sociology does, over the decades and (well, i won’t see this!) and beyond.
In practical terms, however, I believe one needs to freeze reality, to some extent, to move forward and do anything in the world beyond talking abstractions.
So the socially and historically situated discipline of sociology works for me, in lots of different positive ways.
I think it could work, for some of you…
It is an interesting question the extent to which “stopping crime” is inherently conservative.
Again, in contemporary terms this is often associated with the expansion of a liberal state – something Nisbet as real conservative generally opposed.
In contemporary terms, of course, politically conservative dynamics are related, of course, to standard criminology programs.
No question.
I do hope Canadian sociology stays away from the crimonology temptation.
We shall see, again.
Neil McLaughlin
Neil, I think your dismissal on Althusser is misguided and premature. Althusser’s “Ideology and the Ideological State Apparatuses” essay (really a series of passages from his notes connected together – the archive has the full manuscript, as of yet unpublished) remains an essential moment in the development of a materialist theory of culture and – obviously – ideology. It is also essential insofar as it shatters the traditional marxist and liberal distinction between consent and violence – most prominent in Gramsci and his followers. Likewise, Althusser’s late work on “aleatory materialism” is essential in moving beyond the “postmodern” impasse, both in terms of epistemology and in terms of a theory of change or transition.
Additionally, the more “classical” texts of Althusser and his followers – for instance, Hirst and Hindess – were instrumental in developing a comprehensive critique and rejection of what they termed the “empiricist conception of science,” of which positivism is a variant.
Put another way, if you are going to read Butler and Foucault, then you better also read Althusser because Butler and Foucault are largely working on top of Althusser’s positions. See, for instance, Warren Montag’s “The Soul is the Prison of the Body” in Yale French Studies and the monograph of R. Paul Datta’s dissertation when it is finally in print.
As for “talking abstractions,” I’m not sure what that is referring to aside from being a general point. Just as I reject positivism/empiricism, I also reject theoreticism. (Another Althusserian point!) Scanning my least (at least), there is little that is pure “abstraction.” In fact, nearly all of the works I list are of a theoretico-empirical bend – which is precisely the materialist/Foucauldian approach that I advocate.
Hi Craig,
The reference to abstractions was not about your list (although come to think about it! :) ) but about talking about sociology as a discipline.
I do not see the point about talking about sociology, or any “discipline” in the abstract, as if it has an essence. Or not.
Best, for me, to start with particular networks and organizations, called disciplines and organized around certain principles, theories and methods.
In different times and places.
Sometimes those disciplines survive and grow, and create interesting (interesting to who of course, is a good question, but answering it has nothing to do with essences!), and new ideas. Other times, the networks and organizations that try to call themselves disciplines do not survive organizationally, or do not create useful ideas (they stagnate).
For me, a particular combination of ideas and ways of organizing knowledge will work, for sociology, in the early years of the 21st century in modern research universities. Other possibilities seem less viable, institutionally.
And seem less compelling, intellectually. I am open to debate about this.
None of this has to do with essences, and would have to be discussed more concretely.
This was what I was saying, regarding abstractions.
The actual list you suggest has lots I agree on, actually.
As I said.
Althusser, I don’t agree on.
This may be misguided, but it is hardly premature. I have been reading and talking about Althusser, since I was introduced to Marx, in a serious way, in the early 80s. 25 years, I guess, nearly 30.
What I reject, is the circular reasoning in your argument.
As well as the fact that Althusser never did any serious research, and has really bad politics.
But back to the circular reasoning…
One needs to read Althusser, to understand Butler or Foucault.
Or get out of a post-modern impasse.
Or understand his followers.
You say Althusser “remains an essential moment in the development of a materialist theory of culture and – obviously – ideology.”
I see him as a 30 year distraction from taking the best insights out of Marxism, rejecting the Stalinist elements, and using Marx’s work to do good empirically oriented social science and sociology.
For me, I need not worry about getting out of the post-modern impasse, cause I never got myself into it.
Post-modern insights? sure.
But impasse. Nope. Missed that one.
I draw on Butler insights into gender and sexuality and Foucault’s best work (when he gets historical and empirical, for me, a brilliantly original way of thinking, even if flawed) when appropriate.
There is a history to be written, of course, regarding Althusser’s intellectual influence, but that is another debate and discussion.
I would rather start with the best empirically oriented sociology of culture today, and then go from there…
Just the stuff that is missing from the lists on your web-site…
Starting with Althusser, for young students is, for me, a major waste of time and good intellectual energy…
But that is just one major element in our various intellectual disagreements…
Neil
Given your non-reference to Althusser’s later works – I’m thinking of his short piece on Machiavelli, the volume published as Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists, The Humanist Controversy And Other Texts and, finally, Philosophy of the Encounter. All of these are essential – in my view, of course – for developing a materialist (as opposed to idealist) sociology. By materialist in opposition to idealist I mean the theoretical privileging of actual bodies, practices, and the practical organization of institutions. Althusser’s late work is extremely “Foucauldian” just as Foucault’s middle and late work is extremely “Althusserian.” From my perspective, if you reject Althusser, then you must also reject Foucault. Given that you aren’t willing to reject Foucault (for good reasons), then you have a problem with Althusser that is potentially groundless.
Sure, Althusser was a member of the PCF – not an especially influential or important member, but a member nonetheless – however we don’t routinely reject substantive contributions on the basis of poor political judgment (c.f., say Sartre or Foucault or Heidegger or Schmitt) nor do we reject substantive contributions on the basis of the political beliefs and actions of their followers (e.g., Leo Strauss). It is certainly legitimate to question the relation of the substantive contributions to political decisions, but an absolute reduction of one to the other is complete nonsense. Put another way, it is a legitimate question to ask if Reading Capital or For Marx are Stalinist texts because Althusser was a member of the PCF. It is also legitimate to ask if Being and Time is Nazi philosophy on the basis of Heidegger’s membership in the part. However, we must remain open to the possibility that not only are they Nazi or Stalinist texts, but that they are also correct – as Zizek has put it recently, “right turns in the wrong direction.”
The Essays in Self-Criticism are an important document in Althusser’s auto-critique of his earlier positions found in, for instance, For Marx and Reading Capital – however, I think Althusser is correct in the spirit and details of his attack on the empiricist conception of science in Reading Capital, on the materialist dialectic and on contradiction and overdetermination in For Marx. It’s my intuition that you haven’t followed the post-humous publications (but do correct me if I am wrong!).
I’m not sure what you mean by a lack of “serious research” on the part of Althusser. This is absolutely false – unless by “serious research” you mean something like the vulgar empirical (I don’t think you do) gathering of “data” by means of survey and counting responses. Or if your point means that Althusser didn’t do any sociological research then this is true, but absolutely banal: he wasn’t a sociologist; he was a philosopher. However, he was a philosopher who had (and still has) important lessons to teach social scientists.
I didn’t say that if you are going to read Butler or Foucault then you must first read Althusser. This is ridiculous. What I did say, however, is that if you are going to read Butler or Foucault, then you have no reason not to also read Althusser – especially seeing as how many of the points they develop are in clear and explicit engagement with Althusser. Consequently, there is no “circle.”
Foucault’s work through the seventies is in clear and explicit dialogue with Althusser (I wrote my M.A. on this point, although I would fine-tune many of the points) and Butler derives her concepts of performativity in large part from Althusser, as well as her concept of “the psychic life of power.” If you agree that Butler and Foucault are important (you seem to), then would you not take their claim seriously that Althusser is also important? An ageist reference to having read Althusser for “twenty some years” is not grounds upon which to reject Althusser – nor are his politics.
My post, by the way, was not aimed at young students, but, rather, at graduate students who have not studied sociology, but are interested in it. It is the sociological supplement to the theological list I asked my theologian friends to write for me. (The link to that list is in the original post above.)
Have to go to take the dogs to the training. More later.
Given your non-reference to Althusser’s later works – I’m thinking of his short piece on Machiavelli, the volume published as Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists, The Humanist Controversy And Other Texts and, finally, Philosophy of the Encounter. All of these are essential – in my view, of course – for developing a materialist (as opposed to idealist) sociology. By materialist in opposition to idealist I mean the theoretical privileging of actual bodies, practices, and the practical organization of institutions. Althusser’s late work is extremely “Foucauldian” just as Foucault’s middle and late work is extremely “Althusserian.” From my perspective, if you reject Althusser, then you must also reject Foucault. Given that you aren’t willing to reject Foucault (for good reasons), then you have a problem with Althusser that is potentially groundless.
Craig,
You are right I have not followed the Althusser industry, with recent texts.
I don’t see things quite so neatly as you do.
I can reject Althusser, and find Foucault useful if I choose. that is really quite simple.
For me, I don’t need Althusser at all for the “the theoretical privileging of actual bodies, practices, and the practical organization of institutions.”
Lots of ways to get to that…
Sure, Althusser was a member of the PCF – not an especially influential or important member, but a member nonetheless – however we don’t routinely reject substantive contributions on the basis of poor political judgment (c.f., say Sartre or Foucault or Heidegger or Schmitt) nor do we reject substantive contributions on the basis of the political beliefs and actions of their followers (e.g., Leo Strauss). It is certainly legitimate to question the relation of the substantive contributions to political decisions, but an absolute reduction of one to the other is complete nonsense. Put another way, it is a legitimate question to ask if Reading Capital or For Marx are Stalinist texts because Althusser was a member of the PCF. It is also legitimate to ask if Being and Time is Nazi philosophy on the basis of Heidegger’s membership in the part. However, we must remain open to the possibility that not only are they Nazi or Stalinist texts, but that they are also correct – as Zizek has put it recently, “right turns in the wrong direction.”
Theoretically it surely is possible that the texts are correct, despite the terrible politics.
No-one has ever made a strong case that I have found convincing however, and that is the key point.
Lots of assertions.
Appeals to authority.
And since Althusser’s major claim to fame is precisely his reading of Marx, his politics become highly relevant.
Heidegger is a different although complex case.
But those that argue for Heidegger’s brilliance do not do so based on his writings on the Nazis…
The Essays in Self-Criticism are an important document in Althusser’s auto-critique of his earlier positions found in, for instance, For Marx and Reading Capital – however, I think Althusser is correct in the spirit and details of his attack on the empiricist conception of science in Reading Capital, on the materialist dialectic and on contradiction and overdetermination in For Marx. It’s my intuition that you haven’t followed the post-humous publications (but do correct me if I am wrong!).
There is some homework I am not going to be doing!
Knock yourself out! :)
I’m not sure what you mean by a lack of “serious research” on the part of Althusser. This is absolutely false – unless by “serious research” you mean something like the vulgar empirical (I don’t think you do) gathering of “data” by means of survey and counting responses. Or if your point means that Althusser didn’t do any sociological research then this is true, but absolutely banal: he wasn’t a sociologist; he was a philosopher. However, he was a philosopher who had (and still has) important lessons to teach social scientists.
Serious sociological research. This could include surveys, ethnography, historical-comparative research.
True he is a philosopher not a sociologist.
But I thought the list was of key sociological texts.
Of course sociologists can learn much from philosophers.
I am skeptical about this particular philosopher.
Partly because for me, sociologists should be primarily concerned with empirical research.
And Althusser never did any, as far as I can tell.
Perhaps you could correct me.
I didn’t say that if you are going to read Butler or Foucault then you must first read Althusser. This is ridiculous. What I did say, however, is that if you are going to read Butler or Foucault, then you have no reason not to also read Althusser – especially seeing as how many of the points they develop are in clear and explicit engagement with Althusser. Consequently, there is no “circle.”
Basically you have a textual circle.
I would rather start with studies of the world outside your texts…
Of course we need philosophy to do this.
I have good enough reasons to not read more Althusser.
And there is SO MUCH to read.
I need reasons TO read something – the default position is not to read something…
And no-one has made a compelling argument to me…
Including your posts now..
Foucault’s work through the seventies is in clear and explicit dialogue with Althusser (I wrote my M.A. on this point, although I would fine-tune many of the points) and Butler derives her concepts of performativity in large part from Althusser, as well as her concept of “the psychic life of power.” If you agree that Butler and Foucault are important (you seem to), then would you not take their claim seriously that Althusser is also important? An ageist reference to having read Althusser for “twenty some years” is not grounds upon which to reject Althusser – nor are his politics.
The fact that I have read Althusser and talked about him for many years is a pretty good argument for why my choice of not dialoguing with Althusserian is not premature…
And I really don’t care what Butler and Foucault think about Althusser.
As clear a case of an appeal to authority as I can imagine….
My post, by the way, was not aimed at young students, but, rather, at graduate students who have not studied sociology, but are interested in it. It is the sociological supplement to the theological list I asked my theologian friends to write for me. (The link to that list is in the original post above.)
Thanks for the clarification on the grad student point.
Fair enough. I did not read through the theologian point closely…
But again, if grad students who have not studied sociology, and want to know more about it, don’t you think they should start with sociologists not Althusser who you yourself say is not a sociologist but a philosopher!
Well, maybe that is too essentialist for you.. :)
but it makes sense to me..
Neil
Have to go to take the dogs to the training. More later.
A last few comments on the Althusser issue – I don’t think we are going to find much middle ground!
(1) I am not privileging the Althusser of Reading Capital – which is the only Althusser you seem to be willing to admit. You’ve flat out said you haven’t followed Althusser’s work post-Essays in Self-Criticism. Consequently, you aren’t in any position other than to question the essays collected in For Marx and his contribution to Reading Capital. For my part, I find the following useful in Reading Capital: (i) the concept of symptomatic reading – this a major contribution to the theory of reading and interpretation; a contribution of comparable importance to that of Strauss’ or Lefort’s [note: this is not a sociological question, although it is relevant insofar as we are working social theorists working texts of social theory, especially "historical texts"]; (ii) the criticism of the “empiricist conception of science,” most fully developed in Barry Hindess’ Philosophy and Methodology of the Social Sciences [I'd add, Althusser is a major point of departure for the only presently viable realist epistemology; i.e., Bhaskar's critical realism - although I'm not a critical realist myself]; (iii) the elaboration of “social formation” in opposition to “mode of production” (most fully done in Balibar’s contribution to Reading Capital). These three points are important both within Marxian social theory and for the social sciences in general. In terms of For Marx, I think the essays “On the Materialist Dialectic” and “Contradiction and Overdetermination” are important contributions to both marxology and epistemology in general.
(2) I privilege the “late” Althusser: Machiavelli and Us, The Philosophy of the Encounter, and Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists and I would argue there is a significant break between Reading Capital and these works signaled in Essays in Self-Criticism. That is, I find his “aleatory materialism” useful.
(3) Careful reading of “Ideology and the Ideology State Apparatuses” (his first publication post-68) reveals a major critique of the PCF and of most Marxian social theory, especially insofar as it unproblematically took the split between “state” and “civil society” as being united in “hegemony.” Althusser’s essay – largely Durkheimian/Maussian in inspiration, I’d add – destroys these concepts (or at least how they were then being used).
(4) Althusser’s political loyalties were clearly Leninist and not Stalinist, hence his fragile relation to the PCF.
(5) Regardless of what Althusser is most well-known for, that doesn’t change the points I am raising – and it certainly isn’t an argument on your part.
(6) More generally, your point of entry into a thinker will determine (in part) your reception of that thinker; so will the particular historical circumstances. You started Marx and Althusser in the early eighties (rough guess based upon previous comments). This is in the context of unprecedented triumphs by neo-liberals in Britain, Canada and the US; of the widespread death of the Eurocommunist dream; of increasing information of what was actually going on in the USSR. No wonder your view of Althusser is of an unrepentent party functionary! And, let’s not forget, in the early eighties Althusser was repeatedly in and out of psychiatric hospitals being treated for extreme depression and anxiety that led to the murder of his wife. Hardly a great time to be Althusser! Just as you approached Althusser in this conjecture, you also approached Heidegger more than forty years after the end of the Second World War and you most likely approached him through Being and Time, a pre-Nazi text. What if you had read Being and Time in 1937? What if you had read the Rektoratsrede instead? You division between Heidegger the Nazi and Althusser the Stalinist is all too simple – you are willing (in these comments at least) to grant Heidegger far more consideration than you are Althusser.
(7) Years reading: the possibility exists – and there is ample evidence displayed for far in our discussion – that althoughyou may have been reading Althusser for thirty years, your haven’t done so without much seriousness or charity and are far too willing to ascribe any such reading to a youthful indiscretion. One year of good reading is far better than a hundred years of bad reading. I’ve been breathing for thirty years: I’m hardly an expert on oxygen or lungs!
(8) Finally, you are misconstruing my point relative to Butler and Foucault. If, as a non-Marxist sociologist, you are going to criticize Marxist sociology, it is helpful – indeed expected – to have done your homework: this includes reading foundational texts, being aware of contemporary debates and their emergence relative to older debates, and the like. Althusser is a key figure in the debates Foucault and Butler are engaged in. Indeed, both explicitly make use of Althusserian concepts and both are explicitly engaged in debates about Marxism.
Hi Craig,
You are right, there is no middle ground here! That is ok, there are other times when this was true – in your comments about voting, for example.
And lots of times when, while we disagree, there is middle ground.
And there will be other times in the future, I am sure, where there will be middle ground.
For me, there are three big issues.
If you want to introduce scholars to sociology, I personally would start with the scholarship that sociologists do today. Few sociologists use Althusser today, and Althusser did no real sociological research.
I think he is a bad choice. You don’t agree for the reasons stated above.
You can try to sociologically and historically re-construct my reading and political history, but you know very little about me and that history, other than that Reading Capital and For Marx are my major entries into Althusser, along with various debates about him, his politics and Marxism over many years… Best to say we simply disagree.
One of the key ways we disagree, is how we approach theory.
I start from debates in the field about the world, and then use the theorists and theorists when appropriate when I theorize, and other times I write intellectual history. From my perspective you always write about theorists and their texts, and the debates about those texts,
and I find these discussions often wrapped up in almost cult-like and very circular and insular internal debates. This time it is Althusser.
Other times it is Foucault. It is very similar to the ways people have written about Marx and Freud, especially in Althusser’s time.
It is really not the way forward for me. Clearly it is for you. We disagree about this, in fundamental ways.
As an example: I have written about Erich Fromm a fair amount, and when I make the case for his ideas, I have to come out of the world of his texts, and argue with people who have not read everything he has written. And convince them.
If I don’t people will not read more Fromm. Simple.
Nothing you have written makes me want to go back to Althusser, thinking I will learn something about the world by doing so.
So I don’t.
I think that is the way things work, and should work.
On politics, I have convinced by some writers that Heidegger made contributions to philosophy.
My guess is you would be hard stretched to find many practicing academic philosophers today that would make this case for Althusser.
A few, for sure. Butler obviously.
But I would be surprised if Althusser’s influence had much staying power in philosophy proper..
I know you don’t like this kind of “disciplinary policing.”
And this is not even my discipline!
I don’t call it policing, or see it that way, but just see it as relying on expert knowledge.
My investment in both Althusser and Heidegger is extremely low. I don’t see them relevant to my work as a sociologist, or a theorist.
I do think both of them had appallingly bad politics, Heidegger even more so than Althusser. I think Althusser was complicit with Stalinism. A big deal in my books…
Not so much a big deal in yours.
A big difference.
Anyway, thanks for replying with such care.
Sorry the last post I did was confusing – I am used to replying on emails, to people’s comments, and that clearly does not work on your site.
Take care for now.
And hope your dog feels well trained..
Neil
Short points in order – and then, perhaps, we should close this particular discussion (the right of reply remains open, of course):
(1) I am a social theorist. That means that I work, in large part, on social theory. More to the point, my interests in social theory are largely historical. I am presently writing on early modern philosophy and the separation of the social from the political in both thought and action. This separation only occurs in early modern philosophy and it forms the ground upon which the social sciences or human sciences were founded. Prior to that we had philosophy (of which “natural philosophy” or science was a variant or subset) and theology. The possibility of a radically new mode of thought – economics, psychology, political science, sociology, etc – is significant and we do not yet have an adequate understanding of how this came about. My particular entry point – and this isn’t the only way in – is through philosophical anthropology: “Man” and his “others.” However, this isn’t to say that I work exclusively on major texts. This is most certainly not the case. I am just as interested in “minor discourses” – ways of thinking and approaching the world – that we’ve lost or forgotten. Hence, for instance, the chapter in my dissertation is as much on Hobbes as it is on early modern perceptions of animals, especially wolves and bees. To the best of my knowledge – and I’ve read widely in the Hobbes literature – no one approaches the question in this way. Indeed, the question itself was only made possible in recent years: in large part because of Derrida (who I gather you are not a fan of based upon your response to Melanie White).
A subsidiary point to this is that as a social theorist it is my job to make sure that when people talk about social theory, they do so correctly. This is most obviously not say that there is only one way into a given text, but, rather, that particular texts have a range of possible interpretations – some better than others. It is my job to make sure that “correct” interpretations prevail over “incorrect” interpretations and that within the set of “correct” interpretations that the “better” rather than the “worse” prevail. (Yes! This is a form of policing!)
Obviously, I – nor can anyone else – master the entire range of thought and texts out there. We are, therefore, forced to select from what is out there. Some of it is what we were educated into and through (my orientation clearly reflects having done a B.A. and M.A. at Carleton and doing a Ph.D. at York). Some of it we stumble into while researching other things. And some of it we come to through persuasion. There is a history to why you read Fromm and others do not; there is a reason why I read Althusser, Foucault and Lefort and others do not.
As for the “cult” accusation: let’s remain with Foucault because it is easy. I’ve written at length at problems with both Foucault and with the use of Foucault in the social sciences on this site. Were I to uncritically take Foucault as a “master” then these writings would be impossible. With respect to Althusser, I’ve indicated points I find useful (the critique of the empiricist conception of science, symptomatic reading, the dialectic, and, with Balibar, the development of the concept of the social formation). Through non-reference, I’ve indicated points that I don’t find particularly useful (the big one being the epistemic break in Marx). Hardly the relationship of disciple to master!
Clearly, our respective approaches to social theory differ significantly. For one, my first interest is in social theory such that I am a social theorist; your interest in social theory – use of it in research and teaching of it in class – does not necessarily lead you to becoming a social theorist as such. Both approaches are fine. However, what worries me from what you’ve you said to me, is that your approach to social theory resembles eclecticism and seems to be rather close to the following method in cooking: chocolate is really good, asparagus is also really good, and salt and vinegar potato chips are also really good; what would be the best, however, would be chocolate-asparagus-salt-and-vinegar chips! This makes no sense in the kitchen and it makes no sense in research either. (Once again, I’ll refer to your comments here and – because it is rather explicit – your reply to Melanie White. I refer to her because our interests and approach are somewhat similar.)
(2) Heidegger, Althusser and philosophy. Heidegger is, at best, a marginal figure in Anglo-American philosophy. This has a lot to do with the so-called division between “Analytic” and “Continental” philosophy. There are no “Continental” departments in Anglo-America. (Although there are a few interdisciplinary programs – revealing the control “Analytic” philosophy has over philosophy departments – such as SPT at York, the “Theory Centre” at UWO, or Rhetoric at Berkeley. This sort of work also has a strong presence in a number of seminaries and theology/divinity schools.) Consequently, work in this “tradition” is not usually done through the ASA but through SPEP. That is, it does not fall under the rubric of professional philosophy. So, yes, you are right in that regard that Heidegger, at least, has a stronger presence than Althusser. This, however, does not necessarily speak to Althusser’s lack of importance (many people are overlooked in their own lives – take Kant, for instance), but rather to sociological conditions governing Anglo-American philosophy. This is very much an issue for the “sociology of philosophies.”
(3) As for any influence Althusser may have, I’d invite you to read some respectable journals such as Theory, Culture and Society, Economy and Society and – perhaps most importantly insofar as it involves debates with marxian thought – Rethinking Marxism. These are hardly marginal, obscure journals! Of course, if you limit your analysis to Social Forces, you aren’t going to find much Althusser. And any Althusser you do find will likely be citation and bibliography padding.
(4) There’s no real point in continuing this particular argument, but Althusser was quite clearly a Leninist and not a Stalinist – despite his membership in the PCF. (Lukacs on the other hand…) Further, Althusser wrote very little that is explicitly “political theory.” Indeed, no significant text – with the exception of “Ideology and the Ideological State Apparatuses” (his most explicitly anti-Stalinist text) – comes to mind as a work of “political theory.” His work was, largely, in epistemology and metaphysics. (And epistemology, I’d claim, that is important to sociologists.) Finally, relative to politics as such, Althusser was extremely naive. The pages of his autobiography overflow with naivity and self-doubt. Although Heidegger was not a political theorist or a political philosopher, I think his work has far more political relevance than Althusser’s, especially insofar as Heidegger saw (at least originally) the realization of his philosophy in Nazism. This, obviously, is quite troubling. It does seem, however, that Heidegger was just as naive as Althusser.
(5) Lastly, Althusser is not on my list. Althusser’s “Ideology and the Ideological State Apparatuses” essay was proposed by NotOften. I merely took up the defence of Althusser in NotOften’s absence.
Hi Craig,
Time to wind down this discussion, no doubt.
I think your work on Hobbes sounds fascinating, and to the extent that more scholars in sociology do compelling work that uses Derrida, or other thinkers, more sociologists might read this kind of theory.
One needs to convince people, with good empirical work, is my view of how it works.
It is obvious you do not have a problem with “policing” social theory, and only do not like it when sociologists or philosopher “police” their forms of discourse in ways that limit your publishing and job opportunities and intellectual status…..
That is the way of the world…
You are right, of course, that Randall Collin’s Sociology of Philosophy (1998) is helpful here, and I think your account of trends and dynamics in organized philosophy is interesting.
To me, a sociological and historical account of the influence and non-influence of various social theorists in the organizations and networks of philosophy in Europe and/or North America would capture my attention.
You laid out some thoughts on how that might be done, in your thoughtful post.
Doing that in a detailed and scholarly way, would be a major scholarly contribution to the sociology of ideas.
I hope you, or others go in the direction..
Your range of knowledge and historical orientation is impressive, even if I have to say your cooking analogy is downright silly.
Melanie White is a very good scholar but my response to her response to my essay still holds, as far as I am concerned.
My piece was about the institutional dynamics of sociology in the world, and she responded with very little about that and a lot about an analysis of rhetoric…
For me, sociologists should draw from a range of theoretical approaches and ideas to try to EXPLAIN the world we live in today most effectively and compellingly using data and empirical research.
While you have critical things to say about Althusser and Foucault and the like, the structure of how you write about these things, in my view, has a cult like structure. That is because it is organized around the names and texts of “great” thinkers, and tends towards a insular defense of thinkers (even sects have criticisms of the master – that is why they tend to break up into smaller and smaller units!) without adequate account of what scholars in the world outside little networks and journals say about the world not about the texts. More mainstream sociologists do some of this also, as in Marx, Weber and Durkheim, but this issue is at the core of where we disagree.
The journals Theory, Culture and Society and Economy and Society are respectable journals but hardly at the core of sociology.
There is a place for explicitly left journals, as in Rethinking Marxism, but again it is hardly a major sociology journal.
And one day they may rethink Althusser, although I am not holding my breath!
I meant by your list, the list on your website. Apologies if I was not clear enough on that.
As I said earlier, I liked a lot on your list, particularly the classics and the historical-comparative sociology.
Perhaps NotOften will rise to defend Althusser. Perhaps not
Please note that I said that Althusser was complicit in Stalinism.
I think he was, and he certainly had a very sloppy approach to reading texts along the lines of what you like to police, something we know from his memoirs, both issues discussed below by Tony Judt…
http://www.hereinstead.com/sys-tmpl/miserablealthusser/
Take care,
Neil
The primary virtue of Judt’s essay – unlike Thompson’s excessively long screed – is that it is short. His knowledge of the subject is superficial and banal; e.g., his “discussion” of symptomatic reading. And it is also clear that Judt has never known someone suffering from severe chronic clinical depression, thus having no appreciation of what that entails. Judt’s piece is a smear; not scholarship. (On the other hand, Thompson’s screed was scholarship – just poor scholarship; which is a shame as Thompson is, in my view, the premier English-language historian of the twentieth century; someone I enjoy reading and teaching.)
Because Judt brings it up – and it never came up in our discussion – I neglected to mention that I find Althusser’s anti-humanism helpful. However, like other anti-humanists, he doesn’t go far enough from anti-humanism to anti-anthropomorphism. Anti-humanism rejects “Man” (correctly), but it does not reject the centrality of the “human.” We are only recently seeing this move in science studies (e.g., Latour) and animal studies (e.g., Haraway).
As always, it has been a pleasure talking with you, Neil.
Neil McLaughlin: “In practical terms, however, I believe one needs to freeze reality, to some extent, to move forward and do anything in the world beyond talking abstractions.”
“Serious sociological research. This could include surveys, ethnography, historical-comparative research.
True he is a philosopher not a sociologist.
But I thought the list was of key sociological texts.
Of course sociologists can learn much from philosophers.
I am skeptical about this particular philosopher.
Partly because for me, sociologists should be primarily concerned with empirical research.
And Althusser never did any, as far as I can tell.
Perhaps you could correct me.”
To be honest, I’m not sure how this whole conversation relates to what I stated. I simply mentioned that Althusser would be a key reference point to think about the concept of culture understood in a quite broad and, dare I even say, ‘theoretical’ sense. After that, Neil seemed to make some subjective judgments about (again) what he sees as a proper place of sociology, one of his favourite hobby-horses, not one concerned with an essence, but a sociology that starts with facts and what really matters in the world and proceeds from there. Then he challenged me to write the defense of Althusser, shortly after claiming that he has been reading him his whole life. Obviously, no one could provide that defense since it is very clear that Neil’s mind is made up: Althusser is useless, his work was a seriously misguided detour in the real work of ‘sociology’ (no essence here! just a social construct!), which is defined above, it seems to me, as that which ‘freezes reality’ and moves ahead without abstractions. The problem with this definition is precise: it does not advance one bit beyond the late nineteenth century debates for which it seem Neil holds a good amount of nostalgia. We know how this one goes: if it wasn’t for damn Marxism and psychoanalysis our precious Durkhemian oriented sociology that simply wants to start from the facts and not abstractions would have been given its proper due. This would understand the transcendental reduction not in a sophisticated theoretical sense – something that it truly deserves – but a rather naive ‘let’s leave the theoretical issues to the philosophers and us sociologists will just measure things as they are’. This would totally ignore the deep relationship between colonialism and sociology, between science and domination.
The underlying pre-miss, quite ironically, is positivism. Although Neil wants to argue that positivism is basically beyond definition, that is, because of its complexity, this is only a part of the historicist project that wishes justify the inherent truth of liberalism, without taking the time to develop it in a philosophical sense of course (because, we are told, philosophy isn’t empirical and therefore has no worth). Liberalism doesn’t need to be developed philosophically because it is apriori true, a fact, i.e. the only real game in town. But this ‘justification’ is possible only if philosophy is understood as something that ‘anti establishment’ grad students do, or, as Neil put it in a characteristic belittlization of the enemy (part of liberalism too): ‘it always strikes me that the “critical” scholars who feel their views are ignored by mainstream work are actually far more narrow than those they oppose.’ (Of course, this implies that the writer, Neil, isn’t narrow. It’s those other bad guys who don’t see the real picture of reality like he does (I’ll return to this below)). In any case, philosophy is done only by non-serious persons who don’t really care about the world, and only wish to destroy it by denying the primacy of the empirical or tangible.
And about the deferral to authority that Neil mentioned above: isn’t it ironic that it is Neil himself who is constantly telling ‘students’, ‘young scholars’, the ‘young’ what they should or should not be reading, doing, and then proceeds to develop a reading list and normative framework for sociology based on his own subjective judgements about what is important (for example. we read above that Neil reads Althusser all the time, and has for years, but then warns his readers that it is a complete waste of time). If this isn’t a deferral to authority I don’t know what is; my justification for not reading Athusser from this perspective would be: I don’t read Althusser [and we could insert a whole series of enemies here] because Neil McLaughlin doesn’t. In this sense, I agree with Zizek: could we please return to differance ? The moralizing tone of positivism, historicism, normativism and liberalism all linked together is killing me.
NotOften, as often is the case, lacks basic intellectual honesty.
To imply that I am against Marxism and psychoanalysis as intellectual approaches, wanting to return to 19th century Durkheim is just plain silly.
The newest issue of Dialogues (the journal of the Canadian Philosophical Association, from what I understand) has a piece of mine where I defend a certain version of psychoanalytic social theory.
And I am deeply influenced by Marxism, seeing it as an indispensable if certainly flawed intellectual approach.
And on colonialism? I have written on Edward Said, who actually did something about colonialism and related issues, as opposed to just blathering on about the issues in purely philosophical language.
Has NotOften actually done anything political? Not very often, indeed, would be my guess..
I certainly do not think that philosophy is a waste of time.
It is silly and dishonest to suggest I think that, or said that.
I do think philosophy has more to offer when done by scholars who are well trained in it, as opposed to being done by sociology grad students who are badly trained in both forms of scholarly activity.
But that perhaps, is another issue…
For now, I will leave people with suggests for good introductions to the sociology of culture.
Philip Smith takes Althusser far more seriously than I do, and I reviewed the book somewhere…
But taken together these texts would give graduate students outside of sociology a good general overview of the sociology of culture, from a diversity or perhaps including those with which I disagree.
It would probably help a few sociology grad students as well, come to think of it!
Neil McLaughlin
Lamont, Michèle (editor). The Cultural Territories of Race: Black and White Boundaries. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) xxii, 414 p. 1999.
Elizabeth Long (Editor). From Sociology to Cultural Studies : New Perspectives
Blackwell Pub;(October 1997)
Diana Crane (Editor).The Sociology of Culture : Emerging Theoretical Perspectives. Blackwell Pub (June 1994)
Philip Smith, Cultural Theory: An Introduction Blackwell, 2001.
Neil – thanks for the reading suggestions.
In all honesty, notwithstanding personality conflicts, NotOften does raise the important point regarding the position you defend in relation to “the facts.” I wasn’t going to get into it (the Althusser angle was taking up a lot of time!), but on my first and second reading of your comment, it sounded an awful lot like vulgar empiricism of the “grounded theory” (which is neither grounded nor theory) sort or, if you will, of the CSI “the facts speak for themselves” approach. This is worrisome. Of course, we are all typing quickly here and this leads to, at best, half-positions and half-thoughts.
Not sure what you mean Craig.
Spell it out.. :)
I certainly do not think empirical research speaks for itself, without theory.
My position on these things would be spelled out most clearly in Robert Alford’s book The Craft of Inquiry.
So try me again….
Putting Althusser aside (which i think is a great idea!), what are saying exactly…
Neil
I haven’t read your CV, Neil, so thanks for the update. My points, again, were based not on where and what you have published, but on your statements in this blog discussion and the past one. You can call me intellectually dishonest if you like (I think you have done it before), but at least I cited actual text that you wrote. You might want to think about doing such things when dismissing wholesale certain philosophers and others that don’t fit with your criteria of what counts and what doesn’t (same goes for departments, fields of study, individuals, certain graduate students). I’d say there are parts of Althusser that aren’t useless – ie. his stubborn effort to found a new politics after Stalin, for example. You would have to be much more careful, and go more slowly – is Althusser’s critique of essence a problem? According to your comments regarding historicist sociology, it doesn’t seem so. There are other aspects in Althusser too that I’m sure you would agree with. But your wholesale dismissals of others based on moralisms and suspect evidence and reasoning is dishonest. You probably have very little real insight into my scholarly training, competency, or experience in politics (all deeply personal and disrespectful comments, I might add), but that doesn’t stop you from making insinuations claiming that I am both dishonest and foolish. What evidence do you have to make those claims about my person? Why not address texts and arguments and leave the (supposed) identity of the other out of the question? I followed your argument and came to some conclusions – you called me on in a discussion I was not really apart of (it’s not controversial to say that Althusser is useful to read in sociology courses), demanded a response, and then personally attacked my training and practices. I’d rethink the whole ‘I just want to have a conversation’ while passively hacking on others bit. Leave me out of your friend-enemy game.
For the sake of simplicity and ease, I’ll stick with comments you made in our discussion this past weekend – although comments to this effect are found (at least) in your articles on anglo-Canadian sociology. Allow me to string together some things you’ve written above.
First, an immediate almost instinctive or reactive (not reactionary!) impulse to oppose the “empirical” to the “theoretical.” For instance, in response to Not Often, you write the following two consecutive sentences:
In your next comment – continuing this line of thought – you write:
The rest, in this case, are – and this is NotOften’s words – “Shields, Venn, Kemple, Gardiner, Taussig, Thrift, Urry, Turner, Haraway.” The line “I don’t doubt…” suggests a lack of familiarity with the work (which is fine), but then you go on to immediately suggest work that is better (=empirical!) without having established any basis – beyond assertion and reference to your own preference and expertise – for that determination. This is not an especially helpful mode of argumentation and it is not particularly scholarly or charitable.
Further, you seem to maintain an all too easy separation between “the empirical” and “the theoretical.” I myself have argued repeatedly in our discussions that this distinction does not hold up especially well – “in theory or in practice.” The simple distinction you have constant recourse acts as though there is purely “empirical” work that makes no reference to the “theoretical” and that there is purely “theoretical” work that makes no reference to the “empirical.” (And, as indicated above, you value the “empirical” above the “theoretical” without ever attempting – or, indeed, most likely without even being able – to make recourse to anything but subjective preference. With the possible exception of Baudrillard’s “theory fiction” phase (e.g., America), I am aware of absolutely no work of social theory – or any other form of theory – that makes no reference to the “empirical.” Hence, theoretical analysis always implies empirical analysis. Likewise, empirical analysis always implies theoretical analysis – it’s not as though the categories of statistical analysis, or interview data compilation, or observation, or discourse analysis exist already formed! What’s worse – and this does not necessarily apply to you, but it does apply to much of what falls under the rubric of “qualitative sociology” – people engaged in “empirical” research act as though their categories are constructed in the data itself; that the “facts speak for themselves;” that modes of analysis “emerges” unproblematically from the data. This is complete nonsense.
A few last choice quotations to hammer the point home:
Second, you act as though facts are given unproblematically to which theory is “applied.” As I’ve argued a number of times, this is epistemologically relativist and – worse – absolutely incoherent. It is the worst form of eclecticism – which you shrugged off as “downright silly.”
For instance,
This particular quote is wonderful because it presupposes the simple distinction between the theoretical and the empirical, but it also prioritizes the empirical over the theoretical without any grounds to make such a prioritization, but it is also incoherent and relativist – a perfect trifecta!
Or, again:
And again,
Third, language. You seem to have given little consideration to how social theorists approach their subject matter. (This would also relate to your relatively naive understanding of epistemology that appears to border on the completely incoherent and relativist.) We do so only through language – there is no other way for us to do our work. (I’d point out that “empirical” work is also only done through language which immediately implies interpretation insofar as it is engaged in description – the application of a word to an event is an act of interpretation: the event or occurrence is being labeled one thing and not another.) Consequently, we pay extraordinary attention to the use of language. Melanie, by paying attention to your use of language, engaged with your argument through the methods of social theory. Unfortunately, you dismiss this as an “analysis of rhetoric” (such a low valuation of your own words!).
Certainly, to the non-theorist or one with only a weak background in social theory (or, indeed, any other form of of theory), this no doubt appears painful and obscurantist – in the same way that much “quantitative sociology” appears as technocratic and scientistic (note: not scientific!) to the social theorist.
Fourth and finally, condescension.
I’ll leave this uncommented upon for two reasons (1) I’ve typed enough tonight that does not relate to my dissertation and (2) that your comments can appear offensive is likely more apparent if I don’t spell it out.
Craig,
Definitely time to sign off!
Clearly theory is linked to research, but in the above discussion we are also clearly talking past each other.
For me, discussion of sociology of culture today should start with the large body of empirically oriented and obviously theoretical informed research on the world. We can agree to disagree about Althusser, about the specific relationship of theory to research and the best examples of sociology of culture today….
For me, however, for someone to claim that I oppose Marxism and psychoanalysis, and think philosophy is a waste of time is an example of a dishonest argument made up from nothing.
Where is the evidence for claims of this nature?
A dishonest argument that has implications for thinking about the training the individual is recieving (or not)…
Getting back to your dissertation sounds like a good idea, and I will get back to my research…
Take car,
Neil
This all makes think that Henry Giroux is correct: perhaps we should do away with the whole discourse of ‘training’ so that we can actually focus on things that matter: pedagogy, research, learning and so on. Otherwise, all we get is regime and more institutional exclusion.
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