I teach in an interdisciplinary social science department. It includes anthropology, political science, and sociology. The department offers only a social science major. We do offer minors in the individual disciplines but our majors cannot take them (too much overlap). While we have topical courses in each discipline, our introductory, methods, theory, and capstone courses are interdisciplinary in nature.
I teach SSci 501 “Great Ideas: Classics of Social Science.” The anthropologists and political scientists in the department see this course as merely my sociological version of social theory. They argue that the course could as well be taught from an anthropological or political science foundation. This short e-mail is my attempt to disabuse my colleagues of that misconception and to distinguish between social theory and disciplinary theories.
Colleagues,
I realize I have not done a very good job of explaining how social theory, as I teach it, differs from individual disciplinary theory courses. While you may have interpreted my arguments during our discussions as merely an ethnocentric claim that sociological theory is what social theory ought to be, that is not my belief or intent. In this course, I am really focusing on the philosophy of social science.
Let me appropriate Simmel’s quintessential distinction between “form and content” as a metaphor for what I am up to in “Great Ideas: Classics of Social Science.” Here is a gloss of Simmel’s differentiation:
“Form and content. Simmel distinguished form and content as a way of explaining the ‘underlying forms of human association’ (Plummer in Turner, p. 199). Just as Durkheim was not concerned with theological doctrines but with social aspects when studying religion, so Simmel is not so concerned with the content of social interaction. Rather he notices similarities in forms of interaction in different places, times, societies, situations, and institutions.”
While the content of the eight social theorists (Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Simmel, Benedict, Freud, Fanon and Arendt) receives substantial attention in the course, content is only the “second order” objective of my learning outcomes. The “first order” objective of my learning outcomes is the forms (there are others that might be used as well) that are the categorical foundations of the philosophy of social science.
The following is the students’ first short writing assignment, using the theoretical parameters of the course. As you can see, in this assignment I am less concerned with Blumer’s “content” than I am with the “forms” that fit his social theory:
“You have read Campbell’s ‘Comparing and Assessing Theories’ [Seven Theories of Human Society]. He explicates five parameters of social theory. You have also read ‘Society as Symbolic Interaction’ by Hubert Blumer.
I want you to write a mini-essay in which you interpret Blumer’s positioning on the following parameters:
- Idealist-Materialist
- Individualist-Holist
- Conflict-Consensus
- Positivist-Interpretative
- Descriptive-Normative”
I hope this helps clarify why I see social theory, grounded in the philosophy of social science, as quite a different critter from any of the individual disciplinary theories.
Monte
Comments 3
Miranda — June 9, 2014
Social scientists of all persuasions strive to understand their chosen culture of study through the analysis of human patterns of behavior and belief.
Biological scientists attempt to go about a similar process in a lab. But fortunately (or unfortunately, if you’re a follower of Skinner), human interactions don’t take place in a beaker or a petri dish. And thus, the social scientist’s “laboratory” must be an invisible one: a mental space furnished with self-made, virtual measuring equipment. The microscopes here are prone to work only at certain magnifications, and fail in others. The Bunsen burners don’t hold a steady flame. The calculators work, of course, but are only as useful as the number collector proves to be. Because it is only people who can understand other people. No physical machine can calculate or predict human action or reaction.
But, if we are to be the instrument of measurement, we must keep ourselves in good working order.
And that’s where social theory education comes in. Knowing how to conduct a research study is important, but it isn’t enough. Because even if all our numbers are “correct,” even if the double blind is really and truly blind, even if all the participants are kept “free from external influence,” that data will end up filtered through the human computer. Through a social scientist’s personal perspective. The ultimate external influence.
We can’t avoid that. Only the human computer can find meaning in a numerical pattern. And the human computer is always subject to the quirks of its own social imprint.
A social theory course can’t/shouldn’t attempt to explain or predict the most likely outcome of human interactions. (That sounds like a teacher’s nightmare, anyway.) But it should strive to explain and predict the results of common “measurement devices” or "form" [in Monte's words] used to extract meaning from those interactions: social theories. These theories are really just the sum total of measuring devices left in academia’s closet and handed down through the generations. They might not work as well as they did when they were first built. They might be tucked away in a dusty corner for good reason. Or, they might be new and shiny and popular. But they have this in common: that they were once necessary, despite their flaws; and that they are still relevant, even just to use as an instrument of hindsight, as long as those flaws are acknowledged.
The best social theory course will turn its harshest lens on its itself, on its own subculture. One might call it "Philosophy of Social Science," but it is, effectively, the social science OF social science. Because until social scientists get comfortable looking at our own discipline in the mirror, we will always be walking around with spinach in our teeth.
I'm quite grateful that my undergrad included such a course. [Now to go check for that pesky spinach.]
~Miranda
Onyango Eddy Sam — January 20, 2021
can you help me differentiate appropriately between social theory and sociological theory?