Pragmatism & Sociology

A Response to Clough, Denzin and Richardson

Dados Bibliográficos

ID11599752
AutoresSteven Seidman (State University of New York at Albany, autor correspondente)
Ano1996
Volume37
Fascículo4
Páginas753-759
Data de publicação1996-09-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoSociological Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0038-0253 • E-ISSN: 1533-8525
EditoraTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1533-8525.1996.tb01763.x
OpenAlexW2050234697
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas7
Referências citadas3

All is not well in sociology. I'm not at all sure that this discipline, in its brief, century-long history, has ever managed civic calm. Yet, according to the three respondents, the current cultural divide is so wide and deep that local skirmishes threaten to break out in disciplinary civil war. I don't see matters any differently. There are context-specific reasons for the current division. Among them, economic downsizing has put pressure on sociologists to justify their discipline as a matter of, at times, survival, but mostly as a matter of quality of life considerations. At the same time, the surfacing of a forceful Right and, in particular, a cultural left has disrupted a liberal-scientistic consensus that, as much as anything else, had previously given some kind of loose coherence and purpose to American sociology. One response has been to defend, at times in dogmatic terms, the project of a scientific sociology. In this regard, the three respondents point to the aggressive policing of the discipline aimed, in particular, at those of us (professors and, as Richardson poignantly observes, students as well) who are stretching, sometimes challenging, disciplinary boundaries. In particular, as Denzin comments, a new division is being constructed between an imaginary center that is defined as professional, respectable, rational, and scientific and a periphery in which all dissent is placed under the unitary sign of postmodernism. Dissenters are being figured as deviant others who threaten disciplinary order and legitimacy by their presumed advocacy of unreason and their politicization of both the discipline and the university.' The question I want to pose is this: Can a pragmatic approach to social knowledge and disciplinary politics allow us to displace and move beyond this emerging division? Can pragmatism provide a strong enough cultural basis with which to defend critical dissent against repressive marketing logics and disciplinary policing moves? Can pragmatism push sociology toward a critical discursive practice that all three respondents and I take as its promise? Richardson is doubtful, as she sees pragmatism too easily folding into a repressive institutional politic. She recommends strengthening nonuniversity sites of social knowledge, though this strategy does not sufficiently address the hegemonic status of universities and disciplines as producers and definers of knowledge. Although sympathetic to the Foucauldian resonances of pragmatism, Denzin seems doubtful of its capacity to provide a strong enough conceptual and normative basis for a critical theory. He favors a postpragmatic, public sociology anchored in a feminist communitarian perspective. This compelling vision would not only

Context (archaeology · Discipline · Dissent · Epistemology · Legitimacy · Political science · Politics · Postmodernism · Pragmatism · Psychoanalysis · Social science · Sociology · Sociology of knowledge · The Imaginary · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Law · Philosophy · Pragmatism in Philosophy and Education