content analysis

Over the past several months, I have heard (both directly and indirectly) several stories of manuscripts coming back from journals with the judgment that they are methodological sound and very interesting, but just not sociological enough. This criticism annoys the hell out of me. First, disciplinary turf defending is an unproductive intellectual practice. We all will give lip service to the importance of the disciplines having an open discourse and exchanging our various ideas. However, too many scholars are eager to distinguish between what counts as sociology and what doesn’t. It’s especially ironic given that this kind of “othering” is exactly the sort of thing that we’re supposed to be mindful of (it puts me in mind of the Antinomian Controversy of 1636 described in Kai Erikson’s Wayward Puritans).

Secondly, and perhaps more significantly, I’m not sure it’s fair to be calling work unsociological when nobody freakin’ knows what sociology is. And I’m not talking about Aunt Mildred who always needs you to explain it at Thanksgiving dinner. I mean that most sociologists don’t have a common definition. I’ve been conducting an informal poll over the past few days, asking various sociologists how they define sociology or what sociological means. Invariably, the first answer was “I don’t know, man. Leave me alone.” However, upon reflection, I received several different answers:

“the study of social life, focusing on behavior and interactions”
“the empirical study of human institutions and relationships”
“the systematic study of social structure and its impact on the individual”
“the study of the ways human behavior is shaped by seen or unseen social forces”

My own definition would be that to think sociologically is to consider context when examining people and institutions. After asking, I shared with my respondents that I’ve always felt an anxiety when trying to distinguish between anthropology and sociology or political sociology and political science for students. Nearly all of them agreed that disciplinary boundaries are porous and drawing distinctions is silly. Nonetheless, if forced to distinguish, I usually say something like, “Anthropology is closely tied to qualitative methodologies and tends to focus on the culture of specific society (sometimes comparing several societies), whereas sociologists do whatever the hell we feel like.” Okay, maybe I don’t say that last part. But I more or less think it’s true. As The Oxford Dictionary of Sociology notes, a common criticism of sociology is that it is “a hybrid discipline that can never aspire to the status of a social science or a coherent body of knowledge.”

The ODS goes on to define sociology as having three purposes (I paraphrase loosely here): a) to analyze social structure and the relationships that result from it, b) to understand “meanings” or ways of cognitively organizing the world, and c) to understand social action or agency (essentially, how the individual can change stuff). However, given this broad definition – allowing for massive flexibility in methods, theory, subject of study — sociology can either be seen as the “queen of the social sciences” or as cannibalizing all of the others.

Since we, as sociologists, have grabbed such a large space as our potential intellectual playground and many of us see our diversity as a strength, can’t we all agree to cut it out with this “not sociological enough” B.S.? If a manuscript is methodologically sound, interesting, and tells us something about people or human institutions, shouldn’t that be good enough?

What do you think, reader(s)? When is distinguishing between sociology and not sociology useful?

[DISCLAIMER: The following post in no way discourages the practice of social theory. In fact, we need more of it and it needs to be better. I teach social theory courses and much of my work is entirely theoretical. The following is strictly about the relationship between theory and empirical work.]

I’ll get right to the point here: sometimes social problems don’t need a theoretical framework. Sometimes it’s okay to simply conduct program/policy evaluation research and it need not require a discussion of an academic theoretical school of thought. And it should be published in sociology journals.

While sociology has a rich tradition of theorists, we also have a history of drawing social reformers and journalists into our ranks. These scholars were far more concerned with developing explanations for and solutions to contemporary social problems. The idea that an esoteric academic theory would have to be affixed to a straightforward study of inequality, for example, to legitimize it as sociology was non-existent. Today, we have an obsession with attaching theory to everything (although that almost always means mid-range theory). The term particularly in vogue is “sociological puzzle” — whatever that means.

To use a concrete example, I believe the question, “what were the consequences of the 1996 welfare reform for families and children?” is plainly sociological. It requires neither an explanation of why it is sociology nor does it need to be embedded in a larger theoretical discussion of the power of states. And yet, those very comments were recently directed at the paper of a student I know. Now, of course, it is essential to acknowledge prior research, but it need not be immensely theoretical stuff.

I suspect that some of these issues result from ongoing problem of calling empirical claims theory of the mid-range. Additionally, many journals oriented toward social problems seem to have an insecurity about being under-theorized. But those are different discussions.