Geschiedenis van de sociale wetenschappen
College 1 (3/4/2023)
Welke thema’s van zijn boek kondigt Jack David Eller aan in de Introduction van zijn boek?
- Wat is de sociologie van sociale wetenschappen?
- Hoe zijn verschillende disciplines door de geschiedenis heen ontstaan?
- Wat zijn alternatieve bronnen van kennis (naast wetenschap)?
- De status van sociale wetenschappen
- In hoeverre heeft achtergrond invloed op de wetenschap?
- Hoe zit de wetenschap in elkaar en is dit juist?
Sociale wetenschap is mensenwerk. Het is een geïnstitutionaliseerde praktijk.
Mag iedereen onderzoek? Wie wel/niet?
Naar welke onderwerpen doet men wel of niet onderzoek?
Hoe worden onderzoeken gepubliceerd?
Welke onderzoeken worden wel gelezen en welke niet?
Science is ‘the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the
structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and
'experiment'.
● Science is the more or less systematic search for knowledge by experts, who react to earlier knowledge and
share their ideas with others.
● ‘Any creative systematic activity undertaken in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of
man, culture and society, and the use of this knowledge to devise new applications’
● Wetenschap is een systematische activiteit met de hersenen
Research is ‘the systematic investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to
establish facts and reach new conclusions.’
Eller on science
- ‘scientific knowledge inexorably “progresses,” that is, each day science has more and better knowledge than the
day before;
- Scientific knowledge is superior to other forms of (or spurious claimants to) knowledge because of its “method”;
and
- Scientists are particularly conscious of both’
Sociology of knowledge = the social organization of knowledge-making and
knowledge-transmitting
,College 2 (5/3/2023)
Institutions
Intuitive definitions of “institutions”
Institutions are frozen answers to recurrent, fundamental questions (Geert de Vries, after James Feibleman)
● Elke samenleving moet zich reproduceren als hij wil blijven bestaan. Kinderen moeten worden grootgebracht.
Meestal gebeurt dit door twee ouders, die vaak beide seksuele behoeften hebben. Om te zorgen dat dit beiden
gebeurt is de institutie van “het huwelijk" ontstaan.
● Ander voorbeeld: de siësta in Spanje is een institutie.
Thomas theorem
Thomas theorem: “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences” (William Isaac Thomas &
Dorothy Swain Thomas, 1928).
Als mensen denken dat iets echt is, dan handelen wij daar na.
The social construction of reality, step by step
- ‘The sociology of knowledge is concerned with the analysis of the social construction of reality’
- The sociology of knowledge gaat over alle kennis niet alleen wetenschappelijke kennis
- ‘The problem is contained in nuce in [Blaise] Pascal’s [1669] famous statement that what is truth on one side of
the Pyrenees is error on the other’
- ‘The reality of everyday life further presents itself to me as an intersubjective world that I share with others. [...]
the others have a perspective on this common world that is not identical with mine. [...] All the same, [...] I know
there is an ongoing correspondence between my meanings and their meanings in this world
- Er is een overeenkomst tussen iedereens beeld van de wereld
- ‘Social order exists only as a product of human activity’
- ‘All human activity is subject to habitualization’
- ‘Institutionalization occurs whenever there is a reciprocal typification of habitualized actions by types of actors.
[...] The typification of habitualized actions that constitute institutions are always shared ones. They are available
to all members of the particular social group in question’
- ‘With the acquisition of historicity, these formations also acquire another crucial quality [...] this quality is
objectivity. This means that the institutions that have now been crystallized [...] are experienced as existing over
and beyond the individuals who “happen to” embody them at the moment.
- ‘Only at this point [then, is an] institutional world [...] experienced as an objective reality’
- ‘The institutions as historical and objective facticities, confront the individual as undeniable facts. The institutions
are there, external to him [...] They have coercive power over him’
- Deze institutions zijn dwingend.
‘The central question [...] can then be put as follows: How is it possible that subjective meanings become objective
facticities?’ (Berger & Luckmann 1967 [1966]: 30).
Hoe kan het dat het voelt als feitelijkheden? Drie dingen die dit kunnen helpen.
Sanctions
Als je je niet gedraagt naar een institutie kunnen er op een gegeven moment sancties komen.
Symbols (including language)
Een voorbeeld hiervan: volgens de voorzitter van de tweede kamer hoort een mannelijk kamerlid een jasje aan te
hebben, want dit wordt gezien als teken van respect.
Roles
Mensen die dezelfde kennis hebben van de sociale praktijk. Om die institutie, die alledaagse praktijk uit te kunnen
voeren moeten mensen kennis hebben van deze rollen.
,Alternatives for the concepts of institutionalisering in Eller
In hoofdstuk 1 van het boek van Jack Eller gebruikt hij termen die expliciet of impliciet betrekking hebben op de
institutionalisering van sociale wetenschappen of specifieke disciplines binnen de sociale wetenschappen. Een aantal
van deze termen zijn als volgt:
Michel Foucault: discourse, discursive regime
Pierre Bourdieu: habitus
Antonio Gramsci: hegemony
Karl Mannheim: generation
‘One’s generation profoundly affects one’s individual knowledge [...] People of the same age, having lived
through the same events, have in common “possible modes of thought, experience, feeling and action”, resulting
in what he called “the stratification of experience”
Karin Knorr-Cetina: epistemic culture
‘Those amalgams of arrangements and mechanisms –bonded through affinity, necessity, and historical
coincidence– which, in a given field make how we know what we know
De manier waarop je onderzoek bedrijft.
Basil Bernstein: canon
‘The “canon,”, the body of information that “counts as” knowledge, that has been officially sanctioned for
knowing and therefore for teaching’
The expert as an institution
‘Knowledge is not only socially constructed but also socially distributed. [...] One of the most important distinctions is the
knowledge distribution, especially in regard to science, is that between the “expert” and the novice’
Expert staat hier in aanhalingstekens omdat een expert niet een vaste/hard gedefinieerde rol is, maar door
andere mensen zo beschouwd wordt. Being an expert is a performance.
‘Individuals who are recognized for possessing expert knowledge enjoy a certain prestige and power [...]: experts are
often paid well for their expertise, and ordinary people often defer to and obey the recommendations of experts’
Institutionalisation of disciplines
‘Each discipline must enshrine its knowledge –and its territory or “turf,” if you will– in specific institutional forms and
perpetuate those institutions over generations’
Genealogy of disciplines
, Conclusie
● Both academic research in general as the respective disciplines are institutions
● Institutionalisation occurs whenever there is a reciprocal typification of habitualized actions (Berger & Luckmann)
● Discursive regimes, habitus, hegemony, generation, epistemic cultures, and canon are other terms describing
aspects of institutionalisation
