Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2002 12:43:48 -0500
From: Cliff Staples <Clifford_staples-AT-und.nodak.edu>
Subject: Re: AUT: Academia....



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Okay, I can't resist jumping in here.  I have undergraduate degrees in 
Sociology and Philosophy and a Ph.D. in Sociology (Washington State 
University, 1985).  I have been on the faculty here at the University of 
North Dakota for 15 years.

Back in the Dark Ages there once was something called "Political Economy" 
which, either in its Marxist or non-Marxist variation, made some 
sense.  Now (at least in U.S. universities) "political economy" is long 
gone (certainly at the undergraduate level), and we now have "Political 
Science" on the one hand, and "Economics" on the other.  The former act 
like they can talk about power without talking about money while the latter 
want to talk about money without talking about power.  They're both nearly 
useless (a few radical freaks aside) for any critical understanding of 
society.

That task has largely been left to sociologists and philosophers, though 
even some literary types have gotten into the act.  But, as was mentioned, 
sociology has plenty of mainstream, bourgeois practioners.   The American 
Sociological Association is mostly liberal number-crunchers (almost all 
wonderfully nice people, careerism aside), and if amongst these there are 
those who have serious doubts about capitalism they tend to keep it to 
themselves.  There ARE plenty of radicals, however, and you can find a few 
hundred of them in the Marxist Section, and elsewhere.

The extent to which a discipline is bourgeois seems to reflect-- as does 
much else--  its usefulness to capital, no?   Hence Economics is right up 
there, as are the political science policy wonks.  In this regard 
sociologists are not to be trusted-- at least since the rollback of the 
welfare state in the early 1970s.

One more thing.  Most of the time I'll take the postmodernists and 
post-structuralists over the liberal number crunchers.  The former come 
bearing radical epistemology, if not always radical left politics, and the 
empirical work that at least some of them do can be useful to disrupting 
convention.  Indeed, I consider myself a "postmodern Marxist" after the 
fashion of the neo-Althusserians associated with the journal Rethinking 
Marxism.  Michael might be interested to have a look at Resnick and Wolff's 
Knowledge and Class (Chicago, 1987) as well as their Economics: Marxian 
Versus Neoclassical (Johns Hopkins, 1987).  I happen to think that 
"deconstruction," is a useful way to approach ideology critique (see Brian 
Fay's Critical Social Science: Liberation and Its Limits), and that we can 
get along just fine without essentialism (a la Rorty).

It occurs to me that maybe my primary motivation for responding to this was 
that it was so nice to hear my discipline mentioned, for a change, in a 
relatively positive light!

best,

Cliff







At 07:25 AM 10/13/02 -0700, you wrote:
>I would certainly think that the social viewpoint has
>something to do with the relative lefty-ness of
>sociologists. However, we shouldn't overestimate the
>effectiveness of their resistance, as I have known
>many sociologists, particularly of the postmodern
>mold, who fall into a sort of ivory tower mentality
>that seems to declaw any left-wing tendencies that
>they might have.
>
>geo
>
>--- Michael Handelman <mhandelman1-AT-yahoo.com> wrote:
> > This may be overly idealist of me, but do you think
> > one of the reason for sociology seems to be to the
> > left of Poli Sci and Economics, has something to do
> > with the fact that because sociology deals with the
> > study of groups and society, it tends to be
> > *somewhat*
> > innoculated to Bourgeois ideology regarding the
> > individual (Thatcher's "There is no such thing as
> > society" seems to be about as pure Bourgeois
> > ideology
> > as one can get, and this ideology seems extremely
> > antithetical to sociology).
> >
>
>====>"Look for me in the whirlwind - dare to struggle, dare to win"
>========================>George J. Ciccariello Maher IV
>St. John's College
>Cambridge
>CB2 1TP
>United Kingdom
>
>__________________________________________________
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>
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