sociology is doing ok
Last week, sociologist Jonathan Imber wrote an article about The Forty Year Failure of American Sociology, which has been picked up by Pete Boettke, Josh McCabe, and others. The article is a response to the NY Times article on sociologists who are coming to grips with culture as an explanation of poverty.
A few comments:
1. Completely rejecting personal beliefs and attitudes as an explanation for persistent poverty was likely a bad idea. I am glad urban sociologists are now getting away from extremely structuralist explanations of poverty.
2. Urban poverty research is a really bad place on which to make a blanket judgment on sociology. In lots of areas, especially those with little ideological charge, there’s a lot of good research. Network analysis? Yup, that’s us. Institutional theory? Yup, that was us as well. The new cultural analysis? Once again, sociology is doing well. Even in politically touchy areas, there is more variance than you might expect. For example, there’s a lively debate over the effects of marriage and divorce, and some prominent sociologists are well known advocates of a traditional family values view, such as Chicago’s Linda Waite.
3. Almost any discipline can be seen as a permanent failure if you pick on its worst parts. Physics hasn’t yet come up with the “grand unified theory,” and macro-economics doesn’t make economics look pretty. Bogus sciences? Not at all. These are all tough problems. Same with sociology. Lot of hard and controversial problems.
4. There’s actually a lot of high quality urban poverty research written by folks who are liberal that anyone would be impressed with. Gerry Suttles’ Social Organization of the Slum remains a classic. There a lot to be impressed with in modern accounts as well, such as Guinier’s Sidewalk or Venkatesh’s Off the Books. Even if you don’t like how personal responsibility for poverty is addressed, you can’t get a better account of how life is organized in poor neighborhoods.
5. In the end, I am more impressed with real research than complaints and hand wringing. I look at James Coleman. As we’ve discussed before, Coleman came up with ideas that went against the grain in sociology, even though he was liberal himself. He could have just given up, but he didn’t he hung in there and was vindicated on the strength of the research findings. In the end, I am more impressed with that than worrying about how evil the mainstream of the profession is.
orgtheory.net 
I don’t disagree with much in the Imber piece, or with Fabio’s response, but I do note that the timing of this incipient “revival” of culture of poverty talk is downright delectable: Crash of 2008… Poverty rates up a couple of points… Child poverty once again over 20%… Obviously, the very first thing that sociologists should do is take a fresh and fearless look at Lewis and Moynihan. Post haste.
Sure, it’s nice to see see our kin in the NYT and all, but, every now and then, the best response really is no response.
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Henry
November 5, 2010 at 1:16 pm
” Almost any discipline can be seen as a permanent failure if you pick on its worst parts.”
One problem sociology has and the other two do not is that it can hardly be called a discipline.
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Guillermo
November 5, 2010 at 2:11 pm
Who the hell is Mitch Guinier?
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gabrielrossman
November 5, 2010 at 2:17 pm
I agree with the sentiments expressed by Fabio and I should qualify my previous statement. Sociology as a whole is indeed doing ok. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe it. Even though I’ve moved away from urban sociology as a research interest, it was the area which originally piqued my interest in sociology after reading Wilson, Venkatesh, Stack, Anderson, Abu-Lughod, Portes, and of course, Massey and Denton. I guess I was lucky to come across it when I did. One of the reason I’ve moved away from urban sociology as a research subject is that I think the literature is so damn good. I didn’t see myself adding anything substantive to it!
On the other hand, my two other favorite research interests are race/ethnicity and the sociology of labor. Friends outside the discipline thought I was crazy for this, but I assured them I would get along just fine. After a year, I’ve decided I was wrong. I just renewed my ASA membership and dropped out of both sections because of the hostility I felt toward my views. I’ve retreated into economic and political sociology where politics doesn’t get in the way (ironically in the latter case). So yes, much of the discipline is doing well. My original post was a disheartened response to my experience in two particular subfields. Evil? No. Annoying. A bit.
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Josh McCabe
November 5, 2010 at 3:27 pm
I agree with much that’s been written, though am perplexed as to Guillermo’s comment.
In fairness, though, it’s important to recognize that understanding culture as a mechanism is quite distinct from understanding it as an original cause. The original critique of e.g. Moynihan was of culture as the “unmoved mover”, i.e. as explaining poverty without itself being explained. While things remain far from unanimous, I think good contemporary cultural work would argue that culture mediates/moderates complicated chains of relationships between and among causes. (Though this concern is one of the many reasons I dislike the Alexandrovich
sillystrong program of cultural sociology.)LikeLike
andrewperrin
November 5, 2010 at 3:40 pm
It’s not my statement. Here’s what a former president of the ASS* said about the matter:
“…there appears to be no
present evidence of an overarching effort at theoretical synthesis… and little
reason to belief that such an effort is on the horizon… we have by
now gone too far down the road of specialization and diversification”
– Neil Smelser, 1988, Handbook of Sociology.
And another highly respected sociologist:
“We have
lost all coherence as a discipline; we are breaking up into a conglomerate of
specialties, each going its own way and with none too high regard for each
other”
– Randall Collins, ‘‘The Organizational Politics of the ASA.’’ American Sociologist 21.
311.
* Wot, you mean it’s changed its name already?
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Guillermo
November 5, 2010 at 4:45 pm
I don’t know anyone who would call Physics a failure. Applied Physics can get you to the moon.
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James
November 5, 2010 at 5:39 pm
But when you get there, Astrosociology is waiting for you.
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Kieran
November 5, 2010 at 5:53 pm
Smelser’s claim is that there is no “effort at theoretical synthesis” – this is quite distinct from “can’t be called a discipline.”
The phrase from Collins actually refers to “a worry that had been expressed by a lot of sociologists” in the 1980s. The report by Collins himself says: “by the time our committee had come up with its report,
we had pretty much reversed this position.”
Fragmentation and diversity are not prima facie evidence of nondisciplinarity.
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andrewperrin
November 5, 2010 at 6:25 pm
I’d be very cautious in making comparisons between sociology on the one hand and economics and physics on the other. Compared to these two, especially physics, sociology is a mess (this is coming from a sociologist, btw). Sure, physics has their problems too, but at least they seem to agree on what the “hard and controversial problems” are. Ask 100 random sociologists and you would get wildly different answers. (Perhaps this would be a nice survey among orgtheory.net readers?)
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Rense
November 5, 2010 at 7:07 pm
“it’s important to recognize that understanding culture as a mechanism is quite distinct from understanding it as an original cause” <–This.
Thank you,andrewperrin.
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angela
November 5, 2010 at 8:32 pm
Please tell me that the Astrosociology comment was a witty follow up not only to my comment but to Collins “breaking up into a conglomerate of specialties” statement.
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James
November 6, 2010 at 6:14 am
I think it is important not to forget the wise words of Aristoteles:
“…it is a mark of the trained mind never to expect more precision in the treatment of any subject than the nature of that subject permits; for demanding logical demonstrations from a teacher of rhetoric is clearly about as reasonable as accepting mere plausibility from a mathematician (Aristotle, 1976: p. 65).”
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Bergies
November 6, 2010 at 10:33 am
Who the hell is Jonathan Imber?
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Omar
November 6, 2010 at 2:28 pm
[…] were NOT talking about the import of culture to poverty, inequality, or the other issues raised in this post. Rather, I think they were arguing that sociologists ought to have something to say about the merit […]
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assessing the value of culture « orgtheory.net
November 6, 2010 at 5:23 pm
Come now, Omar, he wears a bow tie, he must be a serious scholar. You’re starting to sound like me!
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sherkat
November 6, 2010 at 5:53 pm
Mocking someone because they are a) not of sufficient status or b) because of their fashion choices is hardly the best way to critique their position.
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Trey
November 6, 2010 at 6:42 pm
No, seriously can somebody tell me who the guy is?
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Omar
November 7, 2010 at 10:48 am
Omar, why not just check this new innovation called “google”? (In case that’s too difficult, he’s Chair of the sociology department at Wellesley). I’m with Trey on this one. While discussion of the merits of someone’s ideas is completely fair game, being a snob about one’s colleagues (senior colleagues, I might add) is pretty obnoxious.
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anon.
November 7, 2010 at 3:50 pm
I’m with Omar on this one. I’ve never even heard of this Wellesley place.
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cwalken
November 7, 2010 at 9:07 pm
Who the hell is anon?
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Omar
November 7, 2010 at 9:33 pm
Why oh why do you always go away like this? Stay for a while. Pretty please.
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apablo
November 7, 2010 at 11:36 pm
Thank you for all the terrific links and some explanation to a non-sociologist about what your profession has contributed to social science.
I have a question about structuralist explanations. Did the structuralist explanations of poverty become popularized from the developing attribution theory in social psychology?
I could see how culture of poverty explanations place an emphasis on dispositional attribution as opposed to the structuralist that seem to be in line with the situational attribution.
But, as an economist I may be completely lost here.
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Doug
November 10, 2010 at 9:12 pm
@ Doug: I am not an expert in urban studies, but my understanding is that structuralist explanations are based on socialization theories. In other words, there are exogenous factors that exacerbate poverty inducing behaviors, which are picked up by young people.
One structural argument is that as manufacturing left the cities in the 1970s, blacks had few job opportunities because they weren’t educated. On the margin, a few people shifted from paid labor to crime. Over time, this created a problem where neighborhoods became dominated by crime as unemployment lingered. Young people then pick up these criminal habits, which inhibits their ability to acquire skills and education. This is the argument of Wilson’s “When Work Disappears.”
The classic culture of poverty argument is that the poor possess a distinct attitude that focuses on helplessness. A broader argument is that persistent poverty is not due to structural factors, such as the state of the economy. The poor have a value system that makes it hard to move up. If people value short term benefit and despise schooling, then they will remain poor.
I am not sure how each theory relates to attribution theory. But maybe it has to do with how people frame success. The structuralist might say that the poor attribute success in the same way that wealthy people do – through hard work. But the culture of poverty person would say that poor people view success in different terms. For example, schooling is not a sign of success among the urban poor, it’s a sign of out-group privilege.
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fabiorojas
November 10, 2010 at 9:32 pm
“Fragmentation and diversity are not prima facie evidence of nondisciplinarity.”
I think what the articles reflect is that fragmentation for its own sake is not a desirable goal for a scientific discipline. Thus the comparations with physics and economics. If you visit those departments, you’ll see that scholars have a common language and a common set of concepts for analyzing and understanding many of the phenomena they study. This is what I mean by being a “discipline” in the sense of a coherent body of knowledge.
What happens in sociology is quite different. Not only are the concepts and approaches used in every specialty completely different to the point of being irreconcilable, but the same also happens within specialties. See economic sociology for instance: some schools rely on symbolic interactionism, others on methodological individualism, yet others on Marxism, etc. This wouldn’t be so much of a problem if it weren’t for the fact that what we call “our discipline” has resulted in the formation of myriad isolated cloisters of scholars, each convinced they possess the sole and absolute truth.
So, it’s not that I think diversity is a bad thing, but there ought to come a time when we can develop more of a common language and a common set of concepts that will allow us to develop a mature body of knowledge about our object of study.
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Guillermo
November 11, 2010 at 12:09 pm