researchsociety

MINUTES FROM GROUP WORK IN ‘RESEARCHING SOCIETY’ 16.10.02

Transcribed by Tullia Rispo (with additions by Prof. Fuller)

Question for the Groups: How do you justify your research topic?

Industrial Relations and Labour Studies

field evolved from collective bargaining in a distinctly British context, because of open-ended labour-management relations (unlike more strictly regulated continental European context)

rooted in sociology, but as a relatively new field it is also open to interdisciplinary influences from anthropology, economics, psychology

this in turn is leading the field to break from its British roots and to be more international in its intellectual orientation

this reflexively represents the actual trends toward labour mobility and globalization of capitalism

what is the relation to similar research occurring in the business school, especially management studies, which covers many of the same issues but from the management side?

Literature search may reveal that the same research topics are covered by different methods in different fields. This is a general phenomenon in the social sciences, and sometimes quite blatant, e.g. ‘social psychology’ as a subject in both sociology and psychology

IR and LS is also covered by human resources, communications quality management, education, economics

Suggests an interdisciplinary treatment is inevitable, especially when it comes to combining methods: in-depth case studies and interviews. However, business-oriented studies, because they are often client-driven, end up cutting corners methodologically, e.g. focus groups.

Sociology of science and technology

field is concerned with whether the natural sciences exhibit a distinctive (superior) form of rationality. Scientists think so, but sociologists show otherwise. Consequently, scientists have been upset by recent sociology of science.

General problem: What if subjects are not satisfied with your treatment – even after you’ve abided by the British Sociological Association ethical guidelines?

Science is a particular flashpoints because the subjects are supposed to be ‘smarter’ than the sociologists, and indeed sociologists normally aspire to the intellectual standing of natural scientists.

This point reminds us that much of the preoccupation with the sociologists’ accountability to subjects comes from the perception that they hold some superior status or power over the subjects (and hence must be careful not to abuse that status/power). However, the case of natural scientists complicates the power because the status/power differences are arguably reversed.

However, this is much more than an ethical issue. It is also epistemological: Did you really understand your subjects, if your account of them deviates so sharply from their self-understanding that they are angry with what you have written?

Does this mean that subjects should veto or correct your account? Sociologists answer this question in various ways, though most probably believe that if they’ve met the ethical guidelines, then they are free to write what they want. In the end, the sociologists’ academic peers determine whether their account is any good, not the subjects.

While this position defends the academic autonomy of the researcher, it has been also the view of Marxists who believe that part of their job is to disabuse the subjects of their false consciousness. So, they actually expect resistance to their accounts from the subjects.

However, this stance of academic autonomy can also go hand-in-glove with explicit political goals. The classic case in point is the history of anthropology as a colonial science that gains the natives’ confidence to reveal their secrets to the colonial authorities, who can then govern them more effectively.

However, subjects learn from their experience with researchers, and so now often make their own demands on researchers who would study them.

This has especially arisen in cases of ‘bioprospecting’ where medical anthropologists are involved in doing in-depth studies of remote natives to see how their distinct genetic makeup enables them to resist various ailments from which the rest of humanity suffers. This is usually for commercial purposes. While there is no global regulation of this matter (a big problem according to the UN), particular native communities organize to demand, e.g. a cut of the profits of any drugs/treatments that come from these often quite invasive studies.

Race and Ethnic Studies

This is a new field that is a direct response to increase racial and ethnic awareness, often related to immigration.

Hard to establish the field’s ‘founding fathers’ because the policy and academic origins are strongly intertwined, and the basic terms ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ remain highly contested.

However, academics are trying to steer the field from such an explicit ‘problem’ focus to more normatively neutral or even positive ground. But this may have effects for funding, which is still primarily policy-driven because politicians see race and ethnicity as a ‘problem’.

The field is interdisciplinary, with a moral agenda superimposed on the academic one that may coincide with specific political aims, e.g. resolving race-related problems

The field has resisted the more general turn to biology in the social sciences because of the ‘dangerous past’ of biological determinism and racism.

Giddens himself has said that evolution is irrelevant to sociology, and biology appears in his work – and most sociologists’ – purely as ideology that has political effects but no scientific basis

However, there are pressures to reverse this because of increasing funding from the biomedical sciences, into which sociologists are increasingly ‘sucked in’.

Some social scientists have noted, however, that the traffic between sociology and biology is not just one way: biologists have become somewhat sociologized, at least so claims the anthropologist Paul Rabinow in his concept of ‘biosociality’.

However, this point does not eliminate the uneven power relations that exist between biologists and sociologists in any joint ventures.

It is worth noting that biology is increasingly flexing its muscles into social scientific terrain. See the ‘Ten Year Vision’ statement for the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (the name itself is revealing!) called ‘Towards a more predictive biology’, which is available on the web. It promises to become the all-purpose policy-oriented science for all forms of lives in all environments, including humans.

Sports, Politics and Society

New field that arose only this year

Giddens did his own original empirical research on sport, but the field has changed considerably since then.

What is the field’s context, considering the changing nature of sport, especially through professionalization? Sports can no longer be assimilated to leisure studies, since sport has become a form of work, not something done instead of, or after, work.

The fact that the field is interdisciplinary (politics, sociology, social policy, social history, economics) only adds to the problem of defining the field.

Social Policy

As with sociology of science and technology, researchers run into problems dealing with subjects.

There are drives by local communities and politically sensitive groups to draft contracts that involve ‘joint ownership’ of the research between the researchers and subjects. Many researchers accept these contracts because they want to help the subjects.

However, there are many hidden problems that need to be worked out: e.g. can the subjects restrict the researcher’s use of her material, will the researcher be liable for any bad effects of policies taken on the back of her research? Should the researcher help the subjects capitalize on their research?

Social researchers must realize that they are often dealing in a highly conflicted, and perhaps even hostile, social environment, where they are not the most powerful party. This means that the researcher must be especially clear about whom they are trying to satisfy and how does that contribute to any future research they might want to do.