When I was younger, in my primary formative years, I believed that when you found your career, and achieved goals that you set, eventually, you would find peace. When I say that, I do not mean just a passive sense of wellbeing, but a tranquil serenity, a bliss that can only come with a sense of earned accomplishment...then I became a sociologist*
Two of the classic works on this subject of Sociology are Peter L. Berger's Invitation to Sociology and C. Wright Mills' The Sociological Imagination. These two books are essential to understanding the Sociological Perspective. The former gives anyone license to become a Sociologist, as long as they are intellectually curious, are not swayed by simple answers, and whom are willing to look deeper into a subject. Whereas the latter breaks us of our blissful "private orbits" by placing our biography is a social context in such a way that we can not deny the impact of social forces upon our lives.
Because of this, studying Sociology is both a blessing and a curse. Why? Because ignorance [can be] bliss. The blessing is that Sociology takes the random chaos of society and organizes it into multi-faceted and layered systems of power, status, identity, and structure. From this organization comes understanding, but with it, anxiety. To paraphrase Mills, we "can't turn it off". Once we adopt the sociological perspective, we recognize social influences and its effects everywhere. Also, depending on what area (specialization) of Sociology you choose, this awareness (and the anxiety that comes with it) can be a mild annoyance to near debilitating. I am often reminded of a quote from Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back "Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny." This is especially true for me, as my focus is on Social Inequality.
Focusing on social inequality can leave someone cynical to the world (and I am). Immersing oneself in the awfulness of human behavior (rape, genocide, poverty, systems of privilege (aka "the isms" i.e. racism, sexism disablism ageism, etc.), can inevitably lead a person to have a low opinion of humans in general. That is, if you believe there is no hope. Sociology and the knowledge derived from its study, can be used as a weapon to combat these problems, that, through sociological research, knowledge, and teaching, can make the world a better place. To me, that makes my Sociological mindset, the greatest tool I have.
Unfortunately, a lot of the things that I study, and fight against, have become so normalized (become part of everyday practices, through the process of socialization and recreated through social participation) that they often go unnoticed by the general mainstream public (and even to others in the field that do not have the same emphasis). What exacerbates this problem is that sociologist live in the very thing that they study. Therefore, to the public, any social observation or experience (regardless of its origin) has equal weight. In fact, and Sociology teachers come up against this quite often, a person's experience, in their mind, trumps any sociological data that is presented. This becomes but one unique problem sociology has as a discipline.
Another problem that sociology faces is the dreaded "publish or perish" mentality of many universities, a place where the majority of sociologists have their careers. Sociologist Mark Carrigan has a great post about the problem with this mentality. Mr. Carrigan states:
the emergence of an audit culture incentivised academic over-production (ever more books, journals and papers being ever less read) while squeezing out reading that isn’t instrumentally attached to the exigencies of present work. In this way, the speeding up of intellectual culture tends to be self-reinforcing and it’s a hugely negative trend. The more that is published, the faster debates move on and, given the underlying mechanisms driving the over-production, the limited time and space this allows for reading will tend to be subjugated to the demands of keeping on top of an ever-growing literature in order to contribute to the debate thus intensifying the process which is causing the underlying problem!
Because of the abyss that traditional academic publications have become, many Sociologist (myself and Mr. Carrigan included) have turned to more alternative methods of publication to get our message out. Much of this is in the realm of Public Sociology. Yet, the more value is given to information culled from blogs and other sources ( as long as the authors are reputable) this could be the start of a shift in academic status. Maybe soon, the value of the research is not in the how you publish, or from which ivory tower university you hail from, but in the content, and how it contributes to the discipline. Perhaps then, sociology will be truly free to engage with the mainstream allowing for social research( especially research on social inequality) to move forward by leaps and bounds becoming a part of the collective consciousness. Then, even though I am constantly filled with anxiety because of my understanding of the sociological perspective, I will not have the added frustration of trying to both justify and defend the disciple I love so much, and the knowledge and power it gives me.
* In my interactions with people, (namely other academics or those with a similar degree or occupational equivalent) there is contention on whether or not I can call myself a Sociologist considering that I do not publish (unless this blog counts :)) I ONLY teach. Thus, to them, I am a Teacher who specializes in Sociology. Given that identity, especially self identity, is constructed based upon presentation, performance, and integration of various social scripts and its acceptance by individuals within a person's primary group and the public (in terms of the lack of negative social sanctions). I am a sociologist because it is the way that I understand the world....and how I wish Blogger could do footnotes. :)
