This is the first of three posts I’m going to present comparing sociology with its rival social sciences. I’m arguing that, just because sociologists can’t define society and don’t believe that generations are real, they shouldn’t feel inferior to other social sciences. It turns out that those fields are silent about key features of their own subjects. And they remain silent when related fields use obviously important ideas that should be in their expertise.
The issue here is why social sciences today are all so deeply flawed.
Let’s start with politics.
At this moment of writing the buzz of political reporting can be summarized as “all things Trump.” This was not so previously and it will not be so again pretty soon. Will we be any wiser when things calm down? Does academic political science posses any theory that explains why political fervor pops up and disappears? Seen over the decades, politics never could. And as time passes it appears to have less and less to tell us. Studies of class, race and religious voting which were popular fifty years ago, and studied by sociologists, have largely disappeared – all without political science explaining why or knowing how they occurred in the first place. Society appears to have moved on. But are we any wiser about where voting behavior or activism comes from? Pollers take surveys and report public opinion but it’s bereft of all theory. Political science doesn’t claim to understand anything from one election cycle to the next.
Other social sciences, and the public generally, believe that it is political parties that rally people and the efforts of one party or another wins or loses elections. But political science has never liked party campaigning or the idea of party itself. Political parties are not part of any founding constitution and they are barely touched by political law. What would it take for political science to have an actual theory of how people vote? Do political parties lead or follow public opinion? And, in the end, how much does politics really matter in modern society? Do we even know? Academic political science clearly doesn’t! So sociologists have no reason to feel inferior to this field.
