sociology – Holley Sociology

A Response to Abrutun’s ‘Why Not Affectivism?’

See sethabrutyn.com Why Not Affectivism? April 29, 2024

What does Abrutyn see as a key issue in sociology today? Interestingly, he argues that sociological explanations are derived rationally from inspirations of our field’s Founding Fathers, and that these are unrealistically rational and insufficiently affectual. I find this a very interesting statement as it addresses a central aspect of how we undertake sociological analysis.

This has made me think about what the sociological writing I do involves and how the profession rewards some kinds of writing with publication and recognition, while offering no interest in some other field. This makes us think, as Abrutyn already does, about other fields of natural and social science. For obvious, and selfish reasons, I start with my own work which is on people’s personal lives. People’s relationships, successive generations, and the influence of these on society is clearly sociological. Their families and private lives are obviously not politics or economics. As interpersonal relationships and as synchronized generational mobilizations, they are not psychology either. Incidentally, academic psychology departments typically see themselves as medical and biological scientists, and not as social science at all.

So how does the branch of sociology I am working in fit in with Abrutyn’s concerns? First, it is important to remind ourselves that the Founding Fathers of sociology had absolutely nothing to say about the family. Feminists know that Martineau wrote about private lives, and that Marianne Weber wrote about marriage, before organizing Max’s stuff. But there can be no argument that, in my field, an excessive rationality from the founding fathers influenced the current sociology of personal life. Indeed, the reverse is true; interpersonal relationships are not lacking in strong feelings or can be discussed without emotions of attraction and rejection (Moore 1998), desires (Hey 1997), or discussion of personal and group affect in courtship patterns (Grazian 2007, Bogle 2008).

But let’s look at the broad influence and status of this field. Sociology in North America generally seems not to be interested at all in this area. The ASA has no stream in Youth, Generations, and Life Course. It is as though people have nothing interesting sociologically going on as they grow up, or as different generations influence society. A quick look I made at sociologists’ careers in youth studies, particularly in research on girls, show that these, almost universally women, authors are very rarely able to continue an academic career in this. They leave academic sociology, or shift into fields such as education, culture, or ethnicity. Important theoretical studies appear to be forgotten (Patterson 1998).

All this tells me that personal life, growing up, and families is a very low status topic and not at all admired as a field within sociology. It tells me that American sociology doesn’t like feelings, nor the challenge it involves of conceptualizing affect as a source human action. A lot of this supports what Abrutyn is saying, but, in the case of personal life the absence of affect comes not from what the Founding Fathers said, but rather what they omitted.

A bigger challenge may involve why the sociological profession prefers ‘roles’ in formal organizations that use rules and rationality, rather than ‘relationships’ chosen by mutual attraction that rely on the affects of feelings and sustained commitment.

Best Writings on Girls’ Relationships: From Which Have I have Learned Most?

Recently I’ve been thinking back over the last 25 years about what has been most helpful to me in academic writing on girls’ relationships. Here are the most memorable and conceptual for me as a sociologist.

Valerie Hey (1997) This founding study of schoolgirls’ relationships never grows old. The dynamics of Erin’s clique are unforgettable. And we are give a conceptualization of girlhood as a social space.

Sarah Baker (2004) Fascinating look at different ages of girls as they learn, share and hide the ‘too grown up stuff’ from younger girls. ‘Performance’ as dancing on the tables is a most memorable moment.

Martha Einerson (1998) First to emphasize centrality of media objects to girls’ groups. In this case ‘New Kids of the Block’ fall from fan idolization as girls deploy their moral judgement. Memorable are the hold-out girls, torn between abandoning their stars and keeping up with their girl peers’ changes.

Monica Moore (1995, 2002) How tween girls learn body language and use it for attraction and rejection signaling. How teen and adult women use this ‘agentically’ as courtship signaling at dances and clubs.

Sharon Lamb (2001) Young girls’ first group activities start with the ‘dare game.’ Madeline’s girl friends visit her house – and surprise her dad! What happens is most memorably described in 133 words.

Today, twenty five years after Val Hey’s classic study of girls in cliques, the original cases and concepts remain great. But never would I have imagined, back then, how little of this good stuff has become familiar in mainstream sociological thinking.

Sources

Hey, Valerie 1997 The Company She Keeps

Baker, Sarah 2004 “It’s Not about Candy” International Journal of Cultural Studies

Einerson, Martha J. “Fame, Fortune and Failure: Young Girls’ Moral Language Surrounding Popular Culture’ Youth and Society 30:2 (1998): 241-257

Moore, Monica M. 1995. “Courtship Signaling and Adolescents: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” Journal of Sex Research 32(4):319-328 and 2002 “Courtship Communication and Perception” Perceptual and Motor Skills

Lamb, Sharon 2001 The Secret Lives of Girls

Why Can’t I See Society?

Here’s how I think people see things. We can see people as individuals but we can’t see ‘society in these people.’ I can see myself; I’m a person and the individual aspects of myself are clear to me. But I cannot see any society within me or showing up in my actions – whatever is going on kinda looks like it’s me as an individual. So, if society exists, why can’t I see it?

Let’s ask a parallel question, one that is about another feature of modern life – the economy. Can you, or anyone else, really ‘see the economy?’ We buy things; everybody buys stuff. But does all the buying by people and the selling by businesses really add up to something we can call ‘an economy’?

Most people today do believe that something called an economy really exists. This contrasts with the widespread doubt felt whether our society is any more than a nominal term – a shorthand for certain trends but which doesn’t actually exist as one, coherent thing.

In the past, the economy was not recognized as existing either. Back then, it wasn’t as highly developed as it is today and that didn’t help. But it, in the past, it was also true that people didn’t know where to look for what was economic. Where can you see the economy? What subsequently changed to make it believable?

The answer is that the economy has been given indicators that show how it is alive. Great effort has gone into data collection and this has resulted in well recognized indicators that measure revealing summaries of many recurring economic activities. We hear about prices, learn about its growth, and watch its sectors expand or contract. All these facts are revealed to us as trends because the measures are made repeatedly – again and again, at great expense, and with wide agreement about what they are studying. The result is that ordinary people can see the economy; we learn about its aggregate behavior in inflation, growth, and the rise or decline of whole industries.

Over time we discover whether the economy is growing, shrinking, or failing. The relevant measures are constructed repeatedly, a fact that involves a big commitment from social science. It is this which lets us see trends over time. Despite having no center – you cannot walk up to the economy’s castle, see its temple, or learn its commandments – but thanks to publicly available measurements, we see the evidence of the economy as a living entity in our country.

Social scientific measuring has given visibility to the economy. We can now see the living, breathing presence of this amorphous thing in our lives. We all believe the economy is real. But what about society? Is that doomed to be be forever invisible and unbelieved? Could society be real too?

My contention is simple. I have come to the conclusion that when we get around to collecting the equivalent data for society, people will see it too as a living reality around us. Being composed of small actions, being large and amorphous – these are not insurmountable obstacles to becoming visible. Someday we will be able to visualize our society; I am sure this can be done. In future, we will recognize society at work in our own lives and see its effects in the people around us. When that day comes, we will thank a new generation of social scientists for putting so much effort into finding and publicizing the data that is most informative and revealing.

Kylie Jenner and Society 2020

When I’m asked where to start a sociological analysis, I think of how I began, in 2020, to introduce my students to society. I started with this statement; ‘Kylie Jenner is the youngest self-made billionaire.’ Then I asked students to say what they thought about this. Student responses are very revealing. What they understand turns out to provide a perfect starting point for thinking about society.

Some students doubt the claim that Kylie Jenner is truly self-made; they point to the Kardashian family’s earlier fame and success. Some also guess that, in reality, her cosmetics business is worth less than a billion. But what students do all agree on is that she is famous and has a business. These universally known facts are profoundly important. As a sociologist, I see this knowledge as anchoring young people into society in ways that have previously been overlooked.

What is it that students know and how does this tell them about society?

Students learn through objects that express what Kylie is. Items of her cosmetics business are bought, worn, and displayed in photographs. Through these objects, the essence of ‘Kylieness’ is possessed and displayed.
Kylie’s objects are attached to the performance of the feminine.
As a person and as a designer, her objects anchor students’ experience in one particular year on the calendar. Kylie things will be understood and associated with the year 2020 when she was popular.
Kylie’s product-based fame constitutes her ‘price’ or ‘worth.’ This is a valuation of the behavior and activities associated with her objects. This is simultaneously both sociological and economic.
Kylie’s name and products will lose their ‘value of the moment’ as time elapses. In a year or two, these particular objects will no longer signify the exciting features of the feminine. New objects will be needed – which Kylie herself may be able to evolve into and create its replacements.

Taken together, we can see that meaningful objects root people into society in a variety of ways. You don’t yourself have to be feminine or interested in cosmetics for these objects to connect you; being in your age group and knowing your generational peers is enough to involve you in society. Everybody your age will know Kylie Jenner, what her family does, and what Kylie’s personality and brand stand for. The sociological lesson this gives my students is that generational objects connect the entire age group with their society.

Unfortunately for social science, Kylie Jenner and popular culture is absent from current explanations. Serious political and sociological thinking steers away from today’s material objects. Instead, theory directs social scientists toward institutions and word-based explanations. Political theory, of the ‘problem of order’ in Hobbes and Locke, looks to government and economic property to explain people’s behavior. Objects don’t get a look in here; they are not considered capable of influencing people. Sociological theory hasn’t done any better. Durkheim’s ‘anomie’ and Marx’s ‘alienation’ both claim that people are disconnected from society or alienated by harsh money economics. Weber emphasized rational action in the institutions of government and business. But celebrities, meaningful objects, and how we dress to express ourselves in our own generation is totally missing from official social science. This makes it impossible to see how buying and sharing meaningful objects integrates people into society.

Student understanding of Kylie Jenner reveals that seeing, possessing and performing with key objects connects an entire generation with its society. This is a great way to start thinking about sociology. People’s choice of stars and merchandise gives each generation shared bonds. If a celebrity like Kylie can be known and admired through her image and her products, the way is opened up to discover what else binds generations to their society – which is the purpose of studying sociology.

After a Crisis – What Can We Expect?

Here is a list of things we know about crises that have been observed in the past.

The events of crisis reverse our collective life back to conditions in the past. We start having to live like our ancestors in various stressful, primitive, and diminished ways.
- What gets sacrificed are the higher level needs we love as our quality of life.
- The reported news, expressed by government officials and reported by mainstream media, if it starts out in denial, typically ends up stressing the bad, demanding that people observe rules, deny themselves, and subordinate how they live to the need for getting through the crisis, preventing deaths, etc.
- All this personal sacrifice leads some leaders to demand that a better society should emerge after the crisis. Others expect a return to the old normality just like it was before.
- What does not appear to happen is a permanent collapse; recovery usually happens fast, some of it expressed by exuberance of the survivors.

Why do sudden ‘events,’ however fast happening, violent and dangerous, rarely inflict long term damage? Do we have an explanation for this? Natural disasters and disease are not expressions of society. When these external tragedies pop up, they make society fail. But society comes back as soon as its steady, continuous processes restart; these pick up and revive individuals and quickly aggregate into generating processes within society.

After the worst of the crisis is over, people start rethinking about it more calmly. What do we personally, and social collectively, want to prioritized next? Is there a take away lesson to be learnt from the crisis? At such a moment in time, people will bring to mind their varied experiences. Many will have things to grieve, the crisis having forced some people to suffer loss and others to be denied things that couldn’t happen. During the crisis, the immediate stress raised antagonisms: those who wanted lockdown demanded everyone conform as a matter of continuing to breathe, as a issue of life and death; those who bore the loss of higher level need for relationships met in contravention of some these official rules. The details of which public policies were efficacious, by how much, and whether something entirely different can be done next time, will be debated as long as this particular crisis is discussed.

After a disaster, Rosling’s advice is helpful; we should keep two contrasting ideas in our minds at the same time. People didn’t all suffer the same way, but all real experiences should be recognized and validated. Multiple ways of looking at what went on will continue to be needed. At the same time, around us, we will see societies rebuilding themselves. Modern countries don’t depend on the political. Society is resilient; the pop-ups of crisis are event driven and disappear fast. As a crisis ends, our sociology, economy, and popular culture provide many routes back into sustainable and supportive life. This rapid revival reminds us how resilient and constructive our underlying shared progress really is. But because of what people suffered, the crisis must not be forgotten. Those losses sustained during the disaster will later be able to be discussed more sympathetically and constructively. In the end, I remain optimistic that a catastrophe can be overcome, first by the rapid reappearance of society, second, by a sustained reflection on what different kinds of people suffered.

Coronavirus: Three Sociological Questions

The 2020 virus pandemic raises lots of scientific questions which I am in no position to comment on – no more than any other layperson. But as a sociologist, there are questions about people and organizations which trouble me. When this crisis is over, I want to know if these will be answered by social science. Here are the top three sociological questions on my list.

First, here’s an organizational question. High stress has been reported in workers in hospital Covid intensive care units. This has been described as traumatic and debilitating. There seems to me a sociological cause for this. Hospitals today are unfamiliar with high rates of mortality. Unlike in hospice care, doctors and nurses in these units are unable to discuss death and dying – with each other and with patients. The sociology here concerns the institution, its mission, and what discourse is professionally acceptable. To me, what is going on today looks like a return to what Bluebond-Langner (1978) called the “private worlds of the dying.” In hospitals with high death rates, staff, patients, and family members alike conceal from each other the impending deaths. I suspect this contributes a lot of stress to employees.

My second question concerns generations. Specifically, how have the politicians and policy makers, who have taken most countries into a harsh lockdown, affected young people? Before this virus took hold, there was already noticable feeling against the older generation. An example is the internet phrase OK Boomer, which is part of a rising criticism of older generations during the last decade. Coronavirus has added an intense and personal conflict between parents and their teen children. Awareness is rising generally that locking down friendships, separating girlfriends and boyfriends, and preventing wedding parties, for example, is hurting young people in what matters to them most. Interestingly, Sweden is one country where effort has been made to keep social interactions normal. Tentatively, some claims have been made in Sweden that normality will, in the long run, be better for human relationships. A BBC report by Maddy Savage, 24^th July 2020, quotes Nordenstedt as saying that Swedish “People are not as exhausted as they might be in other countries where the restrictions have been much wider and much stricter.” And economics professor, Karolina Ekholm, is quoted as saying that “There’s been less disruption for the generation now growing up – in terms of learning. That may produce benefits further down the line …” The future of generations is, to me, a sociological question which demands to be studied. What is remarkable, for this sociologist, is that nobody is currently advocating for young people’s relationship needs.

This leads to my third question, the language of social science. Shouldn’t sociologists be able to talk about personal relationships and explain why these are important? Sociologists know friendships, courtship, and associating at events are crucial; parents want these for their own children. But all public speakers fall into an inexplicable silence when it comes to explaining youth. Isn’t sociology what explains young people’s need for friendships, romances, and congregating at peer events? Educators talk about the harm that lockdown does when children are excluded from schools and universities. Economists possess language and data supported facts to show harm being done to national economies. The equivalent task for sociologists is to articulate young people’s need for personal relationships and advocate for this understanding in social policy. Professional silence during these harmful times seems to me inexplicable. Damage is being done to young people, yet no one is pointing out the possible long term effects for an entire younger generation.

Each of these areas gives social scientists something to contribute to ensure that, before the next crisis comes along, we can demonstrate the sociology within youth’s relationships, personal needs, and people’s employment in institutions.

How Students See the World: Inequality or What?

I’ve noticed that, when my students get the chance to write, they don’t focus on inequality, even though their professors understand this as ‘the dominant research paradigm in sociology’ (fabiorojas orgtheory.net April 28, 2020).

Recently, the topics freely chosen by undergraduate students got me thinking about this again. Asked for their own experiences of youth, students in a recent class chose to write about such topics as popular culture, consumer objects, strict parents versus more modern ones, and the transitions between phases of life such as between middle school, high school and college life. These should have given scope for identifying unfair and difficult aspects of their lives. But their papers really didn’t complain about anything they faced.

Those students who did talk about difficulties – for example having been forced to parent younger children, deal with the death or divorce of parents, or having very strict parents – saw these as factual realities which could be dealt with. Adapting to a different sequence of phases in their life, having foreign born parents, being first generation college, or having sports injuries, were all seen as conditions which could be overcome, balanced with their own personal needs, and understood as aspects of personal identity. Children of foreign parents or strict ones just saw this as an opportunity to possess both a foreign and an American identity, and to balance their own needs with the expectations of their parents. There wasn’t a problem here; nobody saw themselves as, in essence, different from other students. All the features they described were seen as the general pattern by which all people grow up.

Looking at these answers, I had to ask whether students were expressing their true feelings. Was it possible that my presence as the instructor was preventing them from complaining? Alternatively, are students generally suffering from some nation-wide ‘false consciousness’? Were they unable to discern the reality of the world around them or recognize the kind of suffering they are living under? These thoughts suggested a ‘hermeneutic’ problem here. How do people learn to understand the world correctly? But the complexity of any hermeneutic analysis is deciding on which side the misunderstanding lies. Which people need help here? Could it be that students are simply occupied with more important concerns than the inequalities that sociologists worry about? Are our students showing us that the real world has different priorities, things more important than the inequalities professional sociologists stress?

It seems certain that somebody is understanding the world incorrectly. But is it the students or their professors in the universities? The hermeneutic says that one of these two sides needs re-educating, but which one is it – the students in their papers or the sociologists in their professional thinking? Definitely, there is a problem here; in this case I cannot see how both sides of this can be right.

Health Care versus Society

The present corona virus crisis gives us lots to think about. Lessons will be learned when it is all over. But right now, why is there no discussion of the “lockdown” policy now used by most countries, including the ones I know best, the US and the UK?

What happens when we ask people to give up their ordinary lives? And is this really the best approach? In hindsight we may know the answer, but shouldn’t we be asking right now if this is really the way we want to go?

Different countries show us alternatives. Ordinary life is still going on in the streets of Singapore; the only people quarantined are those who test positive for the virus. The Netherlands keeps life’s sociology going by letting this virus run its course just as the seasonal flu does. Here are two countries that preserve the precious relationships that wrap around private life and make possible modern society.

So why have so many countries sacrificed social activities in the name of health? And why has questioning of this policy been unreported? Lockdown means putting everybody’s needs beneath those of hospitals. This is a truly weird reversal. The usual purpose of health care is to put people first and ask health care providers to help the sick. Lockdown reverses this logic. It asks all people, healthy and potentially sick alike, to give up their normal lives and rescue hospitals from an embarrassing flood of patients, who in reality need only minimal care.

How did the medical professionals around hospitals, win the policy battle? The university medical reports that turned Prime Minister Johnson around give us a clue. The medical profession’s own sense of prestige, I suggest, is opposed to turning the pinnacle of scientific medicine, the hospital, into what is essentially a medieval fever house. Waiting for patients’ fevers to pass, with a little oxygen to help breathing, adds nothing to a hospital in terms of science, research, grants, publications, professional prestige, and its reputation with the public. It seems to me that the corona virus threatens the hospitals with a return to medieval medicine – before there was science, pharmaceuticals, and technology.

Did America, the UK, and other countries throw their sociological lives into lockdown for this reason? And has the cost of suppressing every single person actually been measured? Let’s look at what is being destroyed here. Stripped away from everybody are their birthdays, weddings, funerals, entertainments, travel, education, examinations, admission to careers, working lives, businesses, the national economy and world trade. From this list of ill effects, those that are economic may be recognized first. But underlying these, and carrying their own hazards and losses, are what we should understand as the living web of sociology – people’s careers, creativity, physical and mental health, life plans, intimate relationships, and happiness in the long term. In a weird reversal, our nations prioritized the prestige of high tech medicine over the needs of ordinary people. And, in the end, will this lockdown prove to have been really necessary? Let’s hope that critical thinkers will look back at this moment in history and find ways for future societies to value their collective sociology.

Getting Your Theory Paper Published

As someone who works on theory myself and would love to have my own articles published, I was excited to read a recent Twitter thread by a journal reviewer who tells us how to correct common faults. Cite previous publications, help build theory, add only one or two new things, and include the empirical evidence that your ideas explain – these are some of the big do’s. This advice is practical, straight forward, and shows us how to give journal editors what they are looking for. So, maybe, all we have to do is follow the rules. But strangely, it seems that authors of papers keep repeating the errors; they start afresh, ignore past theory, are too complicated, and don’t include empirical evidence. Something strange is clearly bedeviling sociological theory.

Could the persistent failures of theory authors be telling us that educated sociologists cannot keep it simple? Why can’t they build on past sociologists? Is there a deeper problem here? Are sociologists wrongly trained or is it just that existing theory is impossible to build on? To me, this situation looks like it needs a ‘reverse hermeneutic’ analysis.

‘Building on past work,’ I twist the ideas of Habermas (1970) and Giddens (1982) around and run the hermeneutic in the opposite direction. Sociologists should not assume that the clients of any institution, in this case the publisher of a journal, are simply stubborn and resistant to learning. ‘Using the empirical evidence’ that writers get things wrong, we can draw a reverse inference. Perhaps theorists, and sociologists generally, cannot get from current theory what they really need. Maybe popular ‘ignorance’ is telling us that current theory, even when added to bit by bit, isn’t delivering for them? Isn’t the real problem that aspiring sociologists need practical explanations of society and how its people connect with it? If adding ‘itty bitty’ to theory is itself the problem, because it doesn’t weave society together conceptually, this may explain why every new article attempts to create, de novo, what is currently absent from theory.

I sympathize with these struggling theorists. I too want to work in a discipline that can define its main macro concept, society. I’m working on the answer myself but I would love to discover that someone else has done the hard work and put together a connected theory. What I am sure of is that this won’t happen by adding a few bite-sized concepts to existing theorists. So, while the reviewer offers us practical advice for getting published, my bet is that authors will continue to submit awkward, complex and non-incremental theory manuscripts. Sociologists evidently want something better from their theory; let’s hope we can soon explain society’s big questions in a conceptually connected way. On that day, authors, journal editors, reviewers, and practical sociologists will all be happier.

Are Sociologists People?

When they are dead they are. Even persons who are men and Marxists can speak touchingly about a deceased colleague’s personal qualities. Consider a recent newsletter obituary in a sociology sub-field. On Twitter, the serious challenges of work-life balance are presented through the sociological head, and the private side remains voiceless.

The rest of the time, what should we consider sociologists to be? Are they personal life deficient mouthpieces spouting structural concepts? Sociology speakers cannot talk about love; it’s non-admissible in our professional vocabulary. What other essential features of life are prohibited when sociologists talk?

For a sociologist, does it matter who you kiss? Does it make any difference who you commit to marrying, how you bring up your children, and what jobs you won’t take because they’re not where you want to live? Do people ‘compose a life,’ evaluate opportunities, and have long term goals? A visitor from another planet reading our published sociology would conclude that these personal activities do not exist or are not relevant to our collective life.

At what cost to our profession do we ignore private life? Is this the reason we leave non-marriage, fertility, and stratification to other professions – economists, demographers, and IQ hunters, for example? Ultimately, is this why sociologists cannot define society? Without love, without marriage, and without society, how much of sociology’s subject matter is actually left?

It is paradoxical that a profession which prides itself on helping others cannot talk about what matters most in people’s lives. Sociology’s vocabulary gap is a huge problem. Are sociologists going to wake up to this any time soon? Or will they go on forever ignoring, what Harriet Martineau declared a hundred and fifty years ago was the core of ‘morals and manners,’ namely what people care about most but talk about least – which is what is in their hearts? Let’s create a sociology that starts with love and then moves on to the hopes and fears about these relationships. The woman founder of sociological methods long ago stated that this is where we should begin. Can we afford to wait another century before this work of reconceptualizing sociology gets started?