SOCIAL SCIENCE AND HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
Jack David Eller
Chapter 1: What is Social Science?
“The Social Sciences” were only invented in their modern form in the mid-1800s, they only
reached their current form in the early 1900s (such as psychology, anthropology …)
It is a specific way of knowing → first divide knowledge into categories → each discipline
must construct its own knowledge → based in its particular interests → must enshrine its own
knowledge in specific institutional forms
- This process of creation, perpetuation, transmission and institutionalization is referred
to as the social construction of knowledge
- Three different fields or domains; social science, natural science or non-science
- Diverse knowledges each constructed by its own practices and traditions
The Sociology of Knowledge
Karl Mannheim; first to suggest a social approach to knowledge, including knowledge that
is not about society, “how does the social location of individuals and their groups shape their
knowledge” (Swidler and Arditi)
→ Relationship between knowledge and age or generation, “a common location in the
social and historical process, a specific range of potential experience”
→ The stratification of experience is the dividing of people in groups who have in
common possible modes of thought, experience, feeling and action
Swidler and Arditi: “the new sociology of knowledge”, are interested in the more general
question of how kinds of social organizations make whole orderings of knowledge possible, it
also investigated all sorts of knowledge (formal and informal)
Basil Bernstein studied the social processes of educational knowledge; central is the notion
of the school as a social classifier of both people and knowledge, through the three common
message systems built into institutions;
1. The curriculum or contents, from among all of the possible things to know, the things
that are worth knowing and appropriate for the level of the knower need to be selected
- also known as the ‘canon’, the body of information that counts as
knowledge that has been officially sanctioned for knowing
2. Teaching methods or pedagogy, any teacher or institution must decide how to teach,
what the priorities are, group work or individual work, homework or not, …
3. Testing and evaluation, teachers evaluate students and teachers are evaluated by
parents and administrators
Two dimensions of the organization of knowledge itself, first classification (boundaries
between subject areas in the curriculum) and second frame (variable of pedagogy, teaching
practices such as the degree of control over the learning process).
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,When these are both strong → learning operates on the ‘collection code’ meaning that areas
of knowledge are kept neatly apart and study is highly specialized
When these are both weak → learning operates on the ‘integrated code’ subject boundaries
are porous, individuals and ideas can move across or between disciplines and perspectives
(Expert) Knowledge is not only socially constructed but also socially distributed;
One of the most important distinctions in the knowledge distribution is that between experts
and the average member of society, expert knowledge is what qualified individuals know as a
result of their technical practices, training and experience (often domain specific).
→ Other personality traits are charismatic, self-assured, self-confident and outgoing
Power and Protection
Michel Foucault stressed the techniques of power by which individuals, groups, institutions
and societies shape the knowledge and actions of others. Such techniques include curriculum,
pedagogy and evaluation, but also tactics like labeling, punishment and physical constraint.
→ According to Foucault these techniques are also forms of knowledge
→ Knowledge is power and power is knowledge
→ Interested in how the techniques of power and knowledge change over time and
how they become ‘regimes of truth’
→ Referred to the knowledge/power system as a discursive regime or an episteme
Episteme = the ancient Greek term for knowledge, but not only what people in a time or place
know, but everything that is literally possible to know or think.
Much knowledge remains informal, primarily because it is typically not documented and
remains tacit (stilzwijgend) until its expression is demanded in specific applications. It is less
a matter of explicit cognitive or verbal information than it is a matter of practical skills and
learned intuitions, more inscribed in the body than processed by the mind.
Pierre Bourdieu borrowed the term ‘habitus’ to name this acquired but largely unconscious
embodied knowledge that makes social action possible (outline of a theory of practice).
- Habitus defined as systems as principles of generations and structuring of practices
and representations
- Bourdieu considered knowledge to be less about facts and more about skills, like
ways of walking, posture, outlooks, opinions, …
- Humans learn about ‘taste’ as a form of social knowledge, from foods to clothing to
music and more, it reflects our position in society (Mannheim)
Antonio Gramsci focused on informal, sometimes even invisible, forms of knowledge/power
the most persuasive form Gramsci called ‘hegemony’. He saw much knowledge and power as
taken for granted, as even more than common sense but as the very horizon of the thinkable.
It is the knowledge and perspective of a particular society or group/class that is made natural.
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,Contestation of Knowledge and Pursuit of Ignorance
Matters of interest and power can intercede in matters of knowledge. It is often assumed that
all people are honest brokers in the pursuit of knowledge and truth. A new field of study has
emerged to study these processes
→ Agnotology is the investigation of the causes and effects of ignorance or know-
ledgelessness
→ Robert Proctor has insisted that ignorance is not merely the absence of
knowledge, but it is a social product as much as knowledge is, often by means of the
samen technique of power
Some knowledge-claims contradict, threaten or undermine cherished knowledge, beliefs,
values or interests (f.e. admitting that cigarettes are bad goes against tobacco companies).
David Michaels in 2008 with his article ‘Doubt is their product: how industry’s assault on
science threatens your health.’
Agnomancy or the conjuring of ignorance = accusations of conspiracy, selective picking of
evidence, censorship and encouraging doubt or insisting that doubt exists
Michael Smithson’s Ignorance and Uncertainty: Emerging Paradigms → ignorance can be
much more than mere absence of or uncertainty about knowledge, two subtypes:
1. Irrelevance include those claims that are off-topic, undecidable or taboo
2. Errors means there is distortion (confusion) and incompleteness (absence, uncertainty)
Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge
Turning to science, three widely-held assumptions about knowledge are that:
- Scientific knowledge inexorably progresses, each day science has more and better
knowledge than the day before (getting more and better facts; positivism)
- Scientific knowledge is superior to other forms of knowledge because of its method
- Scientists are particularly conscious of both
Ludwik Fleck (thought collectives and scientific facts) was one of the first scientists to
ponder how scientific facts come to be. Scientific discovery was not a straightforward asocial
process, rather was essential what he called ‘thought-collectives’ and ‘thought styles’, always
a social or collective activity.
→ A collection of people who share ideas through social and intellectual interaction
→ A scientific thought style consists of a certain mood and the performance by which
it is realised
→ Thought style as the readiness for directed perception, with corresponding mental
and objective assimilation of what has been so perceived
Karin Knorr-Cetina introduced the term epistemic culture to refer to those amalgams of
arrangements and mechanisms, bonded through affinity, necessity and historical coincidence,
which make up how we know what we know, create and warrant knowledge.
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, Thomas Kuhn (paradigms and scientific revolutions) posited that scientific “progress” was
actually a series of revolutions or changes of fundamental worldview, such things are what he
calls paradigms, the context of ideas that makes a theory possible and sensible.
→ A model of reality at a fundamental scale, shared ideas about what kinds of things
exist and their qualities and characteristics
→ A paradigm carries with it a set of methods and practices, tools and instruments
→ A paradigm is distinguished by its own unique questions and problems
→ It has or is a language or terminology, each field of science has its own kind
Normal science = research firmly based on one or more past scientific achievements that
some particular scientific community acknowledged for a time as supplying the foundation
for its further practice, conservative (scientists work within their established paradigm).
A “paradigm shift” is when someone, often a young scientist who isn’t completely socialized
into and committed to the inherited paradigm, offers a new view.
→ The gap between paradigms is not just a difference of opinion, it is a difference of
language and even of facts themselves
→ Where you stand affects what you see, even in science
The Idea of Social Science
Our institutions and practices were taken to be either natural (the way it had to be, no reason
to change or understand) or supernatural (life was given to us bij supernatural authorship, it
is beyond human capacity to change).
First to change this were the Greeks, who introduced the word philosophy (wisdom love), the
philosopher was the person who sought wisdom rather than accepting the popular and / or the
traditional views about things
→ According to Plato we are often ignorant of or blind to truth and wisdom, literally
taking shadows and lies for reality
“The purpose of the social sciences is to study systematically all the aspects of the human
condition and of human behavior, using a methodology borrowed from the physical sciences
wherever possible” (John and Erna Perry).
What is it that makes science scientific? Karl Popper argued influentially that science is
unique among thought-systems because it offers propositions that can be tested and falsified.
→ If a statement is not testable and thus potentially falsifiable, it is by definition not
scientific, because it is basically a guess
→ Knorr-Cetina argued that it is not a single universal method or epistemic culture
→ Kuhn proved that it is not a linear progress
Science in the modern era is characterized by two key concepts; law and cause
1. A law in science is a description, ideally in mathematical form, of the operation of a
phenomenon or a relation between two of those, f.e. the ‘law of gravity’
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