Complexity and practical knowledge in the social sciences: a comment on Stehr and Grundmann

This paper takes issue with Stehr and Grundmann's argument in this journal that sociology's poor record of contribution to practical knowledge results from sociologists' misguided attachment to the idea that social phenomena are peculiarly complex, and so peculiarly resistant to efforts at practical knowledge formation. Stehr and Grundmann develop their thesis by contrasting sociology to economics, claiming the latter's superior methods and disciplinary cultures enable it to contribute more successfully to solving practical problems. We argue that Stehr and Grundmann's comparison of the relative success of economics and sociology as policy sciences underestimates the extent to which the complexity argument has been destructive of economics' capacity to contribute practical knowledge, and overestimates the importance of disciplinary methods and cultures in explaining the use of economics in policy making. Further, we argue that the 'complexity argument' can contribute to better policy making, by virtue of its capacity to highlight the dangers of simplistic or fundamentalist solutions to social problems with complex causes.     

Sur le langage et l’écriture en sociologie Brèves considérations théoriques et pratiques à partir de Bourdieu

After showing that language and writing are used as basic resources in sociology, this article seeks to identify issues raised by writing in sociology to produce the knowledge expected of this discipline as other social sciences. After considering the status of sociological knowledge and use of language that this knowledge requires, the article seeks to define the rules to be followed by sociologists in order to explain what it means in science. The arguments presented here differ from those developed in some post-modern theories, according to which sociology is after all only a matter of language, and sociologists are authors like novelists. The article is based on considerations developed in particular by Pierre Bourdieu.     

The sexual in Chinese sociology: homosexuality studies in contemporary China

Through a meta‐literature review, this paper examines the changing contours of Chinese sociology of homosexuality in contemporary China. It unfolds the different theoretical orientations and methodologies that construct the modern male homosexual subject under major socio‐economic and political changes. Chinese sociology of homosexuality started in the reform era and has been dominated by Western knowledge production and the political ideology of the communist party‐state. Fused with the bio‐medical model and the state's modernization project in the 1980s–1990s, the sociological study adopted a functionalist and positivistic approach with survey‐based methodology in the main which focused on the etiology of homosexuality. A new transnational knowledge production of sociology of homosexuality has formed since the 2000s which has shifted towards a constructivist/ post‐structuralist approach and reflexive qualitative methodology. The new sociological study examines the rise of male (as well as female) homosexual identity in China, questions the hetero/homosexual binary and discusses how an individual makes sense of homosexual identity to form same‐sex intimate relationships. By tracing the epistemology of homosexuality in contemporary China, this paper rethinks the dominance of the Western construction and the role of the state in shaping the knowledge of homosexuality and proposes alternative spaces for theorizing Chinese sexual identities, desires and practices.     

The City as a Sexual Laboratory: The Queer Heritage of the Chicago School

This article documents the pioneering—and largely overlooked—sociological studies of sexuality undertaken by scholars at the University of Chicago during the first decades of the twentieth century. Focusing primarily on their investigations of a wide range of non-normative sexualities, including prostitution, cross-racial sexuality and homosexuality, it argues that these studies provided the foundation for a radical new understanding of sexuality that emphasized the social context and meaning of sexual practices and types, rather than their biological or psychological determination. Finally, it demonstrates the forgotten centrality of these studies to the establishment of the field of urban sociology by explicating the sexual subtext of several key concepts from the so-called Chicago School, including natural areas, concentric zones of urban development, mobility, social personalities and the marginal man.     

On sources and narratives in historical social science: a realist critique of positivist and postmodernist epistemologies

Critics of the interdisciplinary enterprise of historical sociology commonly contend that the narrational accounts of past social phenomena provided by historians are inadequate to the task of theory-building and testing. In support of this negative assessment, opponents will adduce informational deficiencies in the available data (the standard positivist appraisal of historical evidence), or cite the interpretive anarchy that seemingly prevails at the narrative phase of emplotment (the skeptical, postmodernist contention that historiographic texts 'construct' rather than veridically represent the events they artfully contrive to signify). Both of these lines of criticism are unbalanced, and therefore seriously misleading as regards the epistemic foundations of historical-sociological inquiry. The 'social authenticity' and 'informational density' of historical evidence does allow for veridical reconstructions of the past, while the reflexive interpretive protocols of source criticism and the sociology of knowledge can be deployed to provide warrant for discriminating arbitrations between competing theories and narratives. The various epistemological deformations in the study of human affairs that have been encouraged by the old idiographic-nomothetic polarity - chronic ahistoricism within the social sciences, the atheoretical predilections of much conventional historiography - are rectifiable through the consolidation of a fully integrated sociological history, a unified and inclusive historical social science.     

Has protest increased since the 1970s? How a survey question can construct a spurious trend

The literature on political participation asserts that protest has increased over the last four decades, all over the world. This trend is derived from surveys asking questions about participation in various forms of protest, including demonstrations, boycotts, and unofficial strikes. The latter question made sense in the context in which it was formulated, Britain in the early 1970s, and with regard to the original methodological aim, measuring ‘protest potential’. The absence of a generic question on strikes, however, distorts our understanding of protest. Two sources of data on Britain in the 1980s and 1990s – a population survey and an event catalogue – comprehensively measure strikes. They show that strikes greatly outnumbered demonstrations and other forms of protest. Another claim in the literature, that protesters are highly educated, no longer holds once strikes are properly counted. Strikes in Britain, as in many countries, have dramatically declined since the 1980s. This decline more than offsets any increase in demonstrations and boycotts, meaning that the total volume of protest has decreased. The episode illustrates how survey questions, when replicated without scrutiny, can misconstrue social trends.     

Friendships with benefits? Examining the role of friendship in semi-structured interviews within music research

This article explores the ‘methodology of friendship’ and its wider potential within music research. Drawing on two research examples that made use of ‘friendship’ in distinct fashions – one that explores music listening practices in everyday life and the other, music as a site for racialisation – the article discusses how friendship can be incorporated within semi-structured interviews. The case studies act as examples of how to negotiate alterity in music research and how friendship represents a potential for gathering more detailed data. The notion of ‘alterity’, at the core of research relationships is critical to shift the conversation to an informal tone and improve the depth of the discourses gathered from informants. Consequently, this article addresses debates within qualitative (music) sociology by reconsidering friendship as an axis of power and examines the nature of the data gathered in semi-structured interviews through the methodology of friendship.     

The Success of the Battered Woman Syndrome: An Analysis of How Cultural Arguments Succeed

This paper examines how certain cultural arguments gain the authority necessary to explain the social problem of domestic violence. I begin by demonstrating the existence of competing explanations for the question of why abusive relationships continue. I find that a certain kind of explanation, multiple victimization arguments that emphasize the numerous ways battered women are victimized, are most common. Through an analysis of social science citations, news papers, and legislative and judicial decisions, I conclude that one multiple victimization argument in particular, Lenore Walker's battered woman syndrome (Walker, 1979, The Battered Woman. New York: Harper & Row; Walker, 1984, The Battered Woman Syndrome. New York: Springer), has become the most recognized explanation for why abusive relationships continue. The syndrome was best able to meet the criteria necessary for gaining cultural authority put forth by Schudson (1989, Theory and Society 18:153–180): retrievability, rhetorical force, resonance, resolution, and institutional retention. In recent years, however, this authority has been threatened as social and cultural conditions have changed, leaving competing understandings of the domestic violence issue to challenge Walker's claims.     

Information is power? Transparency and fetishism in international relations

International actors, state and non-state, have embraced transparency as a solution to all manner of political problems. Theoretical analyses of these processes present transparency in a fetishtic manner, in which the social relations that generate transparency are misrecognized as the product of information itself. This paper will outline the theoretical problems that arise when transparency promotion is fetishized in International Relations theory. Examining the fetishism of transparency, we will note the problematic conceptions of politics, the public sphere, and rationality they generate. Confusing the relationship between data, information and knowledge, fetishized treatments of transparency obscure the historical dynamics responsible for the emergence of transparency as a political practice. This alters our understanding of the relationship between global governance institutions, their constituents, and the nature of knowledge production itself. Realizing the normative promise of transparency requires a reorientation of theory towards sociologically and historically sensitive approaches to the politics of knowledge.