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Mitschrift der Vorlesung über die Soziologen
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, Konzept der VorlesungenVorstellung verschiedener Autoren ihre Konzepte
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u .
Moderne ?
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Erklärung der Moderne : Wie rekonstruieren die einzelnen Theorien die
Entstehung von
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Welche Methodologie verwenden die Autoren : Wie erklären sie ?
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Welche Instrumente / Konzepte verwenden sie dafür ?
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Welches Konzept von Gesellschaft steckt dahinter ?
AP Mitte Juli (wahrscheinlich 13.070 2007 .
90 min Sozialstruktur der BRD Choke Test
Single - -
90min Soziologie Fragen beantworten
,Peter L. Berger (1)
INVITATION TO SOCIOLOGY
A Humanistic Perspective
1. SOCIOLOGY AS AN INDIVIDUAL PASTIME
There are very few jokes about sociologists. This is frustrating for the sociologists, especially if
they compare themselves with their more favored second cousins, the psychologists, who have
pretty much taken over that sector of American humor that used to be occupied by clergymen. A
psychologist, introduced as such at a party, at once finds himself the object of considerable
attention and uncomfortable mirth. A sociologist in the same circumtance is likely to meet with no
more of a reaction than if he had been announced as an insurance salesman. He will have to win his
attention the hard way, just like everyone else. This is annoying and unfair, but it may also be
instructive. The dearth of jokes about sociologists indicates, of course, that they are not as much
part of the popuIar imagination as psychologists have become. But it probably also indicates that
there is a certain ambiguity in the images that people do have of them. It may thus be a good
starting point for our considerations to take a closer look at some of these images.
lf one asks undergraduate students why they are taking sociology as a major, one often gets the
reply, "because I like to work with people." If one then goes on to ask such students about their
occupational future, as they envisage it, one often hears that they intend to go into social work. Of
this more in a moment. Other answers are more vague and general, but all indicate that the student
in question would rather deal with peopIe than with things. Occupations mentioned in this
connection include personnel work, human relations in industry, public relations, advertising,
community planning or religious work of the unordained variety. The common assumption is that
in all these lines of endeavor
2
one might „do something for people," "help people," "do work that is useful for the community."
The image of the sociologist involved here could he described as a secularized version of the liberal
Protestant ministry, with the YMCA secretary perhaps furnishing the connecting link between
sacred and profane benevolence. Sociology is seen as an up-to-date variation on the classic
American theme of "uplift." The sociologist is understood as one professionally concerned with
edifying activities on behalf of individuals and of the community at large.
One of these days a great American novel will have to be written on the savage disappointment
this sort of motivation is bound to suffer in most of the occupations just mentioned. There is
moving pathos in the fate of these likers of people who go into personnel work and come up for
the first time against the human realities of a strike that they must fight on one side of the savagely
drawn bittle lines, or who go into public relations and discover just what it is that they are expected
to put over in what experts in the field have called "the engineering of consent," or who go into
community agencies to begin a brutal education in the politics of real estate speculation. But our
concern here is not with the despoiling of innocence. It is rather with a particular image of the
sociologist, an image that is inaccurate and misleading.
It is, of course, true that some Boy Scout types have become sociologists. It is also true that a
benevolent interest in people could be the biographical starting point for sociological studies. But it
is important to point out that a malevolent and misanthropic outlook could serve just as well.
Sociological insights are valuable to anyone concerned with action in society. But this action need
not be particulary humanitarian. Some American sociologists today are employed by govermental
agencies seeking to plan more livable communities for the nation. Other American sociologists are
employed by governmental agencies concerned with wiping communities of hostile nations off the
map, if and when the necessity
, 3
should arise. Whatever the moral implications of these respective activities may be, there is no
reason why interesting sociological studies could not be carried on in both. Similarly, criminology,
as a special field within sociology, has uncovered valuable information about processes of crime in
modern society. This information is equally valuable for those seeking to fight crime as it would be
for those interested in promoting it. The fact that more criminologists have been employed by the
police than by gangsters can be ascribed to the ethical bias of the criminologists themselves, the
public relations of the police and perhaps the lack of scientific sophistication of the gangsters. it
has nothing to do with the character of the information itself. In sum, "working with people" can
mean getting them out of slums or getting them into jail, selling them propaganda or robbing them
of their money (be it legally or illegally), making them produce better automobiles or making them
better bomber pilots. As an image of the sociologist, then, the phrase leaves something to be
desired, even though it may serve to describe at least the initial impulse as a result of which some
people turn to the study of sociology.
Some additional comments are called for in connection with a closely related image of the
sociologist as a sort of theoretician for social work.. This image is understandable in view of the
development of sociology in America. At least one of the roots of American sociology is to be
found in the worries of social workers confronted with the massive problems following in the
wake of the industrial revolution-the rapid growth of cities and of slums within them, mass
immigration, mass movements of people, the disruption of traditional ways of life and the resulting
disorientation of individuals caught in these processes. Much sociological research has been
spurred by this sort of concern. And so it is still quite customary for undergraduate students
planning to go into social work to major in sociology.
Actually, American social work has been far more influenced by psychology than by sociology
in the devel-
4
opment of its "theory." Very probably this fact is not unrelated to what was previously said about
the relative status of sociology and psychology in the popular irnagination. Social workers have
had to fight an uphill battle for a long time to be recognized as "professionals," and to get the
prestige, power and (not least) pay that such recognition entails. Looking around for a „
professional" model to emulate, they found that of the psychiatrist to be the most natural. And so
contemporary social workers receive their "clients" in an office, conduct fifty-minute "clinical
interviews" with them, record the interviews in quadruplicate and discuss them with a hierarchy of
"supervisors." Having adopted the outward paraphernalia of the psychiatrist, they naturally also
adopted his ideology. Thus contemporary American soeial-work "theory" consists very largely of
a somewhat bowdlerized version of psychoanalytic psychology, a sort of poor man's Freudianism
that serves to legitimate the social worker's claim to help people in a "scientifie" way. We are not
interested here in investigating the "scientifiec“ validity of this synthetic doctrine. Our point is that
not only does it have very little to do with sociology, but it is marked, indeed, by a singular
obtuseness with regard to social reality. The identification of sociclogy with social work in the kulturelle
Verzögerung
minds of many people is somewhat a phenomenon of "cultural lag," dating from the period when Soziologie
as yet pre-"professional" social workers dealt with poverty rather than with libidinal frustration, soziale Arbeit
and did so without the benefit of a dictaphone.
But even if American social work had not jumped on the bandwagon of popular psychologism
the image of the sociologist as the social worker's theoretical mentor would be misleading. Social
work, whatever its theoretical rationalization, is a certain practice in society. Sociology is not a
practice, but an attempt to understand. Certainly this understanding may have use for the
practitioner. For that matter, we would contend that a more profound grasp of sociology would be
of great use to the social worker and that such grasp would obviate the necessity of his descending
into the mythological
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