The Crisis in Sociology—A Personal View

Make no mistake—I love sociology. It is my home discipline, and one from which I have learned numerous important lessons. Yet my relationship with this social science is ambivalent. As much as I love its extremely valuable insights and unparalleled potential, to that same degree am I troubled by its many distortions and deep-seated intransigence.
Just last week I was reminded of my tenuous position within the field. Having posted an op-ed piece published in the Marietta Daily Journal, I happened upon a colleague commenting upon it to a second colleague. She was chuckling quite loudly and proclaiming that I must be the most conservative sociologist in the entire country.
Indeed, relative to most sociologists I am conservative. In line with this, she further noted that I was evidently not fond of Barack Obama. In this too, she was correct. I then asked her if she didn’t agree he was an extremist. To this she replied that he definitely was not. As far as she was concerned, he was a moderate.
This is a judgment I had heard before. In fact, I have heard it many times from a wide range of academics. Given that studies show the ratio of sociologists on the left compared with those on the right is thirty-to-one, that our president is frequently judged from the left should not come as a surprise.
What is disconcerting, however, is how far to the left of Obama many of my colleagues are. He really does look moderate to people eager to promote a social revolution. Moreover, they tend to perceive themselves as moderate precisely because so many share similar views. For them, social democracy (and for some, socialism) is merely common sense. It is something any moral and well-informed human being would embrace.
Mind you, most of the people in my department at Kennesaw State University are reasonable people. But over-all sociologists are less so. As a consequence, few at the conferences I attend deign to dispute my views. Most do not even bother to point out that I am wrong. So uniform are opposing opinions that they can dismiss me with impunity.
In truth, this attitude is so deep seated that hardly any have agreed to debate me, despite explicit invitations to do so. A number of years ago a professor at a more prestigious sister institution refused on the explicit grounds that my views were not worth disputing. They were simply too “old-fashioned.”
A second consequence of this entrenched ideology is that it undermines sociology as a science. Science is supposed to be about the accumulation of new knowledge, whereas for many sociologists the central truths of social life are thought to be known. Being committed to neo-Marxism, they have no doubt that the single most important fact about social institutions is that they are profoundly unequal. As they never tire of pointing out, elites generally find ways to exploit the less powerful.
As a result, they are more committed to correcting injustices than expanding social knowledge. This too was driven home last week when another colleague shared her recent research. When questioned about the reliability of her data, most of which was quite sound, she vociferously opined that the truth was impossible to know. Furthermore, since opinions mattered more than facts, it was unnecessary to worry about the latter.
Nowadays many sociologists self-righteously proclaim that it makes no sense to be “value-neutral.” Yes, they admit to having biases, but so does everyone; hence they feel justified in wearing theirs as a badge of honor. They, after all, are good people who are merely dedicated to doing good.
But are they being first-rate scientists? Can investigators who do not believe in truth even describe themselves as scientific? I would argue that they are moralists who should confess as much. To do less, is essentially to fly under false colors.
As someone who believes in professionalism, which is to say, in a self-motivated expertise, it seems to me that people who are not motivated to pursue social truths can scarcely regard themselves as experts in these matters.
To repeat, I love sociology. It is the guardian of enormously important social information. Moreover, I understand that accurate knowledge about social realities is difficult to come by. Still, unless it is pursued for its own sake, only our prejudices are liable to survive.
As for me, I am old-fashioned enough to believe this would be a tragedy.
Melvyn L. Fein. Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University