Yesterday, a blog post came to my attention on Twitter. Written by ‘Angry Sociologist’, the post argues that sociology, rather than being the progressive force of popular and professional imagination, is instead a self-serving discipline pursuing its own set of interests under the guise of ‘talking truth to power’ (I paraphrase but I think that’s fairly accurate). As an indication of the content, here’s a quote from the text:
Sociology maintains its cyclical qualities; each year a new group of (non-)thinkers are recruited to the various competing degrees offered up and down the country and will likely develop to become nothing more than the puppets of the future that will help to provide the various competing degrees up and down the country maintaining the myth of sociology.
This understandably received some responses, and I’ve compiled some of them below. It’s an important discussion and still continuing – if you’re interested read the original post What does sociology do? and feel free to get involved. You may even be able to tweet from this page – will check this, Mark
antisociologysociologist.wordpress.com— AngrySociologist (@AngrySociologis) May 31, 2013
‘Sociology maintains sociology’ by @angrysociologis. Get the popcorn in @soc_imagination @phdforum @bsatheoryantisociologysociologist.wordpress.com
— Mark Murphy (@socialtheoryapp) May 31, 2013
@socialtheoryapp @soc_imagination @phdforum @bsatheory Otherwise,you are quite right @angrysociologis-we are merely ‘maintaining sociology’— Ballistic Melissa(@ballisticmeliss) May 31, 2013
@ballisticmeliss @socialtheoryapp @soc_imagination @phdforum @bsatheory fair, but is that sociological BS? and what happens when called out?
— AngrySociologist (@AngrySociologis) May 31, 2013
@socialtheoryapp @angrysociologis @soc_imagination @phdforum good sociology improves quality of dialogue, policy & practice in ‘real world’
— Huw Davies (@huwcdavies) May 31, 2013
@huwcdavies @socialtheoryapp @soc_imagination @phdforum surely Sociology isn’t blameless
— AngrySociologist (@AngrySociologis) June 1, 2013
“@angrysociologis: @socphd antisociologysociologist.wordpress.com” my kind of rant this,interesting, atleast in ‘opening up discussions’ (cliche intended)
— Remi Salisbury (@RemiSalisbury) May 31, 2013
“@angrysociologis: antisociologysociologist.wordpress.com @britsoci @bsatheory @socprof @sociologylens” Sociology, much like humanity, seeks a teleology.
— Tom Brock (@TGJBrock) June 1, 2013
@huwcdavies @socialtheoryapp @soc_imagination @phdforum indeed but it does have dominant hegemonies and …
— AngrySociologist (@AngrySociologis) June 1, 2013
@huwcdavies @socialtheoryapp @soc_imagination @phdforum see class race gender
— AngrySociologist (@AngrySociologis) June 1, 2013
@angrysociologis @socialtheoryapp @soc_imagination you’re clearly reading a simplified version of sociology that never questions these
— Huw Davies (@huwcdavies) June 1, 2013
I didn’t bother to finish the original article. It’s clearly written by someone who didn’t like their particular course or got passed over for a job. More importantly this is someone who has some unconvincing notions of what a sociologist would say if asked what they do. Does anyone know a sociologist who would actually say ‘I advance theory’? I’ve never met one, and I do know a lot of sociologists. Then he says that they ‘coerce’ you to ‘think objectively’. Now that’s just uniformed, since the first thing taught in any sociology course in the past decade that I have encountered (which is several in two countries) is that there is no objectivity.
Sorry, but I just can’t take this unreferenced rant seriously at all.
I notice I presumed a gender for the author above, without any evidence to do so. Bad me, apologies for that.