Traditions of Sociology: Three Works Compared

[Originally the asignment essay submitted for the module "Researching Society" in Wariwick, 11/2006. Task specified below. ]

Task: Compare and contrast a study of your choice drawn from any one tradition of social research with a study selected from another tradition of social research.


Preliminary Methodological Notes

This assignment, in the very way it is phrased, presupposes that the existence of different traditions of sociological research from which we can “draw” or “select” specific studies for comparison. Such presumptions conceals two debatable issues about the sociological research traditions, namely (1) the ontological question of whether these traditions are objectively existing currents of research that emerged in the history of sociological studies, or should they be seen as conceptual frameworks that are observer-dependent, and (2) the methodological question of how a specific study can be meaningfully placed into any research tradition. The two issues shall be addressed later.

There are, however, some straightforward ways to get around these issues to accomplish the assignment－for instance, by choosing two classic works that in a generally agreed sense definite different research traditions (e.g., Weber’s Protestant Ethic and Durkeim’s Suicide) or by using two contemporary works of which the authors explicitly identify his/her research with specific traditions[1]. By taking these strategies, a respondent can have substantial points to make while “externalizing” the troublesome issues to the instruction of the assignment, to our common knowledge, or to the statement given by the author of the selected works.

These strategies are certainly legitimate and have their merits. For one thing, in an assignment at this length, these approaches enable respondent to focus on the core material covered in this lecture, namely the principal differences among different research traditions. However, they also have some major drawbacks. First, by comparing two researches deliberately selected to represent different traditions, it would be easy to produce a report that reflects more the a priori selection criteria than the genuine observation obtained from their critical reviews. Second, it also excludes the chance to appreciate how a more general, less-typical research could be discussed in terms of those “traditions.”

In this essay, I took an alternative approach. Instead of selecting two studies according to some given categories, I just take a recent read, The Sociology of Sociology edited by Reynolds in 1970, and pick the first three articles from its “empirical” section. I am aware that the choice is risky since studies sampled this way may well be too similar (given the fact that they were all written around the same time and included in the same collection[2]) to draw any substantial contrasts, but I consider this risk compensated by the two issues I discussed in the previous section.

About the Selected Studies

The articles I chose are:
Crane, D., Social Structure in a Group of Scientist: A Test of the “Invisible College”
In this article, Crane sought to test the hypothesis of “invisible college[3]” by demonstrating the structure of the social ties among a group of rural sociologist. Empirical data of their informal communication, collaboration and citation were collected for socio-metric analysis, which indicated more loosely structured patterns than previously supposed.

Vaughan T. and L. Reynolds, The Sociology of Symbolic Interactionism
Vaughan and Reynolds departed from an attempt to report the diversity of symbolic interactionists’ attitude regarding the applicability of symbolic interactionism in the explanation of macro-social changes. They then classified the respondents into supporting/ challenging groups according to their responses, and sought to examine whether the respondent allocated into same group are associated by some sociological factors (e.g., interconnection during postgraduate training and academic appointments, obtained from the subjects’ biographical data). They also tried to offer some theoretical interpretation of the observed pattern (p 324).

Horowitz, I., Mainliners and Marginals: The Human Shape of Sociological Theory
This piece of work started from the controversial issue whether sociology should concern itself with its disciplinary history or better flush the historical memories away as “humanistic hubris” (p 340). Horowitz took the diverse attitudes among sociologists as different “responses to the emergence of the field of sociology as an organizational framework and…as a human enterprise (p 341),” and sought to overcome the theoretical dichotomy by (1) proposing four attitude-types[4] based on two pairs of sociological styles, and (2) placing a functional role to each category.

Comparison and Discussions

Positivism vs. Interpretivism
The three researches, while all devoted to the understanding of sociologists’ professional communities, employ methodologies that have distinctive features. The methodologically rigorous research[5] by Crane took an explicitly positivist approach in the sense that every claim she made about the sociological structure was demonstrated by concrete, quantitative evidence collected empirically. In contrast, Horowitz’s rich text was mainly an interpretive project in which the heuristic device (the typology of attitude) he developed bears great resemblance with Max Weber’s Ideal type. In between them, Vaughan and Reynolds’s paper can be best described as a multi-strategy project that brought both positive and interpretative components together. In an earlier stage, they converted the respondents’ subjective feedbacks, by means of their interpretative mind, into categories that enable the positivistic testing of the association between attitudes and certain social factors. Later they took the way around and interpret the empirically obtained results to obtain theoretically relevant conclusion.

Individualism, Functionalism, and Middle-Range Theory
Despite these methodological differences, however, there exist great similarities among the three studies. First of all, they all assumed a “methodological individualistic” perspective, namely the approach to understand ‘the sociological’ by accumulating our knowledge of ’the individuals’ (O'Neill 1973). While Crane talked about ‘structure,’ Vaughan examined ‘social factors,’ both of notions are actually conceptualized as an aggregated form of the social interactions in individual level. Second, scale-wise, whether it’s an empirical verification a theoretical notion, an attempted association between attitudes and social connection, or the proposal of a set of ideal types, all these projects fall within the spectrum of “middle range theory” (Merton 1949). Third, while two of the projects are inspired by some theoretical disputes (social interactionism’s capability in explaining social change, and the disciplinary history of sociology), they either sought to “explain” the factors affecting the dispute or to “interpret” the differences, and their obvious reluctance in making critical comments presented a vivid posture of “value neutrality.”

These similarities clearly reflect the intellectual background of 1960s American sociology, which was dominated by the focus on social action (symbolic interactions) with a functionalist’s view[6]. These characteristics are of special importance since the purpose of the whole collection was to inspire sociologists’ “self-consciousness” of their own discipline by seeking to “explain sociology sociologically” (see its preface, pp. v-vi). Its underlying calling was to resist the prevailing doctrine of positivism in 1960s American sociology[7]. Yet now, after thirty six years, a careful reading of these works that were explicitly written to reflect the discipline and paradigms of sociology, you will find plenty signs of the influence (or conditioning) of the very tradition they sought to challenge. This is understandable, since it was the very tradition that had provided them with available conceptual toolkits. And they were simply restricted by the lack of other theoretical tools then. A comparison with later works enlightened by critical theories, Foucault’s theory, Feminism or postmodernism can make this point clear.

Theory, Problem and Methods

The above review of these works revealed several aspects of the relations between theory[8], problem, and research. First, the restrictions resulted from the lack of certain theoretical tools, as shown in those old-time studies, in a way suggest how theory as conceptual tool enlightens the framing of new research questions and methods. In the other hand, both the first two works yielded empirical finding that can’t be accounted in original theoretical frames, which can (e.g., Vaughan) led the researcher to revise their theories.

Furthermore, in the meta-theoretical level, much of the comparison and discussion are carried out not by citing the authors’ own accounts, but by measuring these researches with a “conceptual map of traditions” in my mind. This is not only because these papers devoted little paragraph on their philosophical position. Even if they did, the conceptual frame I imposed will still be necessary because it incorporated elements (here, theories about sociology traditions) that were unknown to these writers, and would therefore provide appreciation of their works in a way unknown to them. This is actually an application of my first argument in the meta-theoretical level.

To conclude this essay, I would like to address the two issues laid in the opening paragraph based on the analysis demonstrated above. While it is not my intention reject the existence of objective currents of sociological research, I would still argue, the notion of sociological traditions ONLY matters to me as a conceptual map of the ideal types of different traditions, which (1) helps me to contrast various conceptual dimensions, ontological, epistemological, or methodological, (2) is observer- dependent, and (3) would change as new concept is incorporated, and therefore won’t remain identical across time. Any specific study should be measured by the conceptual dimensions laid out in this map for a closer appreciation, and whether is belongs to one specific tradition or not is less relevant.

References
Craib, Ian. 1984. Modern social theory : From parsons to habermas. Brighton: Harvester.
Crane, Diana. 1970. Social structure in a group of scientist: A test of the "invisible college" hypothesis. In The sociology of sociology: Analysis and criticism of the thought, research, and ethical folkways of sociology and its practitioners., eds. Larry Thomas Reynolds, Janice McKenna Reynolds, 295-323. New York: David McKay Co.
Friedrichs, Robert W. 1970. A sociology of sociology. New York; London: Free Press; Collier-Macmillan.
Horowitz, Irving Louis. 1970. Mainliners and marginals: The human shape of sociological theory. In The sociology of sociology: Analysis and criticism of the thought, research, and ethical folkways of sociology and its practitioners., eds. Larry Thomas Reynolds, Janice McKenna Reynolds, 340-370. New York: David McKay Co.
Kuhn, Thomas S. 1962. The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago ; London: University of Chicago Press.
Merton, Robert King. 1949. Social theory and social structure; toward the codification of theory and research. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press.
Mouzelis, Nicos P. 1995. Sociological theory : What went wrong? : Diagnosis and remedies. London: Routledge.
O'Neill, John. 1973. Modes of individualism and collectivism. London: Heinemann Educational.
Price, D. J., and D. Beaver. 1966. Collaboration in an invisible college. American Psychologist 21, : 1011-1018.
Reynolds, Larry Thomas, and Janice McKenna Reynolds, eds. 1970. The sociology of sociology: Analysis and criticism of the thought, research, and ethical folkways of sociology and its practitioners. New York: David McKay Co.
Vaughan, Ted R., and Larry Thomas Reynolds. 1970. The sociology of symbolic interactionism. In The sociology of sociology: Analysis and criticism of the thought, research, and ethical folkways of sociology and its practitioners., eds. Larry Thomas Reynolds, Janice McKenna Reynolds, 324-339. New York: David McKay Co.

Endnotes
[1] The two strategies are deliberately presented in parallel to contrast the methodological issue (which will be explored in p. 6) of labeling a study by a posteriori reading or by sticking to author’s own statement. In many actual studies, we may well find conflicts between the two ways of labeling.
[2] In fact, the decision to include three pieces instead of two is aimed to reduce such risk.
[3] The concept of ‘invisible college’ is defined here (p 314) as “an elite of mutually interacting and productive scientists within a research area.” This term was earlier used by Merton and publicized by Price (1966, 1011-1018). Its concept was inspired by Kuhn’s description of scientist working under the same ‘paradigm’ (1962, 187).
[4] Horowitz first made the division between organizational ‘mainliner’ and ‘marginal’ and then he further divided the former, according to their ideologies, into professionalist and occupationalist, and the later, antisociologist and unsociologist.
[5] Crane actually showed more commitment to the development of research methodology than the “substantial content” of the research. In the closing paragraphs, the three suggestions for further investigation she made are all related to the development of research method (pp 316-318).
[6] The two characteristics can be traced back to Max Weber and Durkheim, two major source Parson drawn from as theoretical ground for his ‘social system’ thesis. Parsons is believed to be responsible for popularity (as well as some mis-reading) of Weber and Durkheim among American sociologist in mid-20th century, see Craib, 1984, Ch 3.
[7] American sociology during late-1960s to early-1970s was characterized a sense of orientation due to the mounting discontent of the prevailing Parsonian sociology. Partially inspired by Kuhn’s (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolution and the later development of American sociology of knowledge, sociologist started to apply the methods of sociology to sociology itself. The year 1970 alone witnessed two books published under the identical title Sociology of Sociology (Friedrichs & Reynolds and Reynolds), followed by A Gouldner’s The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology and the new journal Insurgent Sociologist, both published in the next year.
[8] The scope of this assignment prevented a detailed discussion for different types of theoy and their implication. Nonetheless reader shall be reminded that the notion ‘theory’ has multiple ways to define. For instance, see Mouzelis’s (1995 1-2)distinction between theory as tools and end-products.