Can we at least agree on the question?

Sociology is a discipline beset by tensions as it struggles to define itself. Jeremy Gilling reports.

In the 1970s sociology was described as having “an identity crisis before it had an identity”. That’s a lot of baggage.

The tensions haven’t gone away. Even today, according to a leading researcher, the discipline is “characterised by theoretical disputes, fragmentation of subject matter and some contention over moral and political commitment”.

Dr Helen Marshall, who led an investigation of sociology teaching in Australia, is a researcher attached to RMIT University’s Centre for Applied Social Research. The report of her project, which was funded by the ALTC in 2007, was released late last year. Its findings are sobering.

From the outset, sociology in Australia was largely peripheral to the subject’s development in the European and US metropolises – described as recently as 2005 as a “data mine” for material on “the primitive”, “incorporating metropolitan methods and topics in order to address a local audience about local versions of social problems”.

High hopes were held for the subject in its early years during the mid-1800s – that it could be an all-embracing discipline, subsuming other fields like economics and history. At the least, it has succeeded in infusing other disciplines with its methods.

But this same process has seen it fragment, with a shrinking of its core, offset by the emergence of specialisations such as gender that have served, in some people’s view, to reinvigorate the subject.

Others believe it needs to renew its core through a reorganisation of the curriculum in sociology departments – to “once again define itself as the study of society”. Without this renewal, it is argued, sociology will be hard-pressed to survive and prosper in the current market-oriented, highly competitive, higher education environment.

“Sociologists seldom agree on the answers; in many cases, they can’t even agree on the questions,” says Marshall. “That may seem like a recipe for confusion, but it adds genuine enjoyment to teaching. Practitioners are by nature very thoughtful people. In my view, a broad church is very appealing in a disciplinary sense.

“Other disciplines can claim to have achieved a high degree of closure – something sociology certainly can’t claim. This is partly because sociology is a recent arrival to Australian universities. It does mean, for example, that there’s not even a consensus on who can call themselves a sociologist.”

There are other tensions within the field. One is between those who favour a public or activist sociology with a primarily extra-academic focus, and those who argue the need for sociologists to maintain an intellectual distance.

A related issue is whether sociology should be more relenting in its attitude to the democratic state “as the imperfect best arrangement we have”, and thus present itself as potentially more helpful to government. Students may be turned off by a discipline whose key message seems to be one of gloom.

Marshall says these arguments have been around for a while, but relatively little evidence emerged from the investigation to suggest that it was a widespread concern among teachers.

“Young people want the world to change, and we give them the tools to think about what changes are needed,” she says. “I think we’re striking the right balance between the gloomy and the Panglossian.”

A second tension relates to sociology as a service subject – the interaction within a highly commercialised university culture of teachers with students whose priority is acquiring the skills and credentials to gain professional employment. Teachers interviewed for the report spoke of challenges in engaging students whose primary interest is not sociology. Some, but not all, saw service teaching as “devalued” teaching.

“In today’s environment, these are issues for all general education disciplines,” Marshall says. “Students everywhere want to see a strong link between what they learn and what they need to succeed in a job.

“But sociology offers that. It teaches sophisticated hands-on research techniques – for example, the use, value and limitations of ABS and other statistical data. Our students also pick up a range of useful IT skills.”

There are other nuts and bolts issues facing sociology. The report finds that its efforts to identify itself as a discipline have been half-hearted; that, for example, many subjects that would seem to belong under the sociology umbrella are reluctant to use “the S-word” in their title. Teachers often flounder when asked to explain to new and would-be students what the word means and what the subject involves.

Has Australian sociology emerged from its peripheral status and established a distinctly Australian identity?

Although this issue is not covered in the report, Marshall is enthusiastic. “We’re producing vast amounts of data and research, and there are now several respected Australian sociology textbooks,” she says.

“Because we have always had to attend to the work of the larger Anglo-European knowledge producers, we have the possibility of breaking free from the once dominant Anglo-European view of sociology – for a start, we pay equal attention to European and US sources; we’re as interested in Talcott Parsons as we are in Foucault.”

Go to www.altc.edu.au/project-sociology-australia-scoping-study-rmit-2007