Return to reflexivity

Image: Hélio Oiticica/ Large Nucleus
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By PIERRE BOURDIEU*

Text of the posthumous book, recently published in Brazil

Epistemology and sociology of sociology (1967)

I had no intention whatsoever of talking about the model and, like Pierre Gréco[1] has just said more or less what I would have said if I had agreed to speak on the subject, I reiterate my intention. I would like to try to expose, very quickly, not the epistemological problem of the model in sociology, but, more precisely, the sociological question of the conditions under which the question of models arises in sociology, in order to try to show that sociology contains internally the power to reflect on itself and, in particular, to reflect on its own scientificity.

I do this […] with many ulterior motives. I believe, in fact, that the particular situation of sociology, and more precisely the situation of sociology in relation to the natural sciences and the methods they propose, is such that various phantasmagorias of a scientific aspect, to which certain sociologists indulge, are the product of the relationship – lived in illness or malaise – that sociology and, […] more generally, the human sciences maintain with the natural sciences.

It seems to me that we cannot, in the current state of affairs, reflect on specific problems established by the epistemology of the human sciences without reflecting on the social conditions in which these epistemological problems arise. And, at the same time, I would like to try to show, or rather, indicate how a certain number of traditional epistemological reflections, elaborated essentially in relation to the natural sciences, can be enhanced in their scope and extension, on the condition that we restore them to a properly sociological context.

I will only recall what Pierre Gréco said at the beginning, when he described roughly the three main positions that sociologists or psychologists take, more often implicitly than explicitly, in relation to the problem of theory; such positions can, as Gaston Bachelard suggested, be grouped into pairs of symmetrical positions in relation to a central epistemological position, which is characterized mainly by the overcoming of these oppositions, which are mostly fictitious.[2]

As things stand today, sociology is often divided into social groups that organize themselves along epistemological lines. This means that the oppositions between formalism and positivism, or between social philosophy and blind hyperempiricism, which the epistemologist might describe as pairs of complementary and opposing positions, are in fact supported by groups that occupy certain positions in an intellectual field within which they become social positions.

It seems to me, therefore, that it is in reference to the structure of a certain epistemological field at a given moment that the oppositions […] (and there we would find the problem of models or, more precisely, the problem of the relationship between sociologists and models) assume their real meaning.

For example, I think that in the current [situation] it is impossible to understand the epistemological situation of the human sciences without seeing the role that the image, at once mutilated and mutilating, terrifying and fascinating, plays in the properly sociological practice of the natural sciences. It has been said earlier, quite rightly, that practitioners of the human sciences would benefit greatly from immersing themselves in the spirit of logical or mathematical procedures rather than in the more external and more mechanical techniques.

In fact, the relations between the human sciences and the natural sciences can be described according to a logic that the sociology of contacts between civilizations knows very well: due to the duality of training mentioned by Marc Barbut, sociologists, in most cases, are trained as literary men and perceive the natural sciences based on laws of “cultural borrowing”, that is, they perceive the form more than the function, the external signs of operations more than the spirit that carries them out, so that they mechanically reproduce what is most mechanical in the operations.

We could take the example of statistics, which [comprises] an entire epistemology: it would be enough to reflect on what it is to perform an error calculation or a significance test, etc., to observe that the use of these techniques, however small, presupposes an extremely acute epistemological awareness, an epistemological awareness that is, in some way, dormant by the logic of borrowing. Ethnologists have often described what they call nativistic movement, that is, types of revival rites, the most famous example of which is the “cargo cult”.[3] Several works by scientifically-minded sociologists admirably illustrate the cargo cult paradigm.

From all this, a fundamental consequence follows: when we reflect on the current state of development of the human sciences, when we ask ourselves whether sociology is a science, we refer to an extremely simplistic evolutionary scheme according to which all sciences would successively pass through the same stages, which leads to the idea of ​​sociology as a beginning science. An absurd proposition due to a simple fact: the human sciences have never repeated the path taken by the other sciences, alleging for this the good reason that they knew this path, so that most of their errors would have their origin in a false image of the path of the other sciences.

A category of professionals in methodological reflection has developed among sociologists. Through them, the simultaneously grandiose and terrifying image of the natural sciences risks suffering from what an American logician called the “closure effect”: by presenting an image of science as an ideal that must be immediately realized, an image that certain areas of the natural sciences, especially the most formalized ones, are barely able to [realize], there is a risk of producing something like a premature closure effect or, on the contrary, provoking fictitious constructions that will have only the most caricatured external signs of the natural sciences.

In these terms, could sociology not equip itself with the instruments that would allow it not so much to answer the question of its scientificity, but, more specifically, to help itself in some way to advance towards the meaning of scientificity? If it is true that epistemological positions are linked to the positions occupied in a given intellectual field, I believe that the sociology of sociology or, more precisely, the sociology of the social conditions of production of the sociological sciences, is one of the fundamental conditions for the progress of sociological knowledge.

An example of this are the various epistemological conflicts that can be understood from an analysis of the conditions in which sociology researchers are recruited: as long as sociologists do not receive sufficient mathematical training to protect themselves from certain fascinations, we will see an intuitionist and fantastic sociology coexist alongside a formalism that is no less fantastic.

It would also be easy to show that a certain type of social organization of intellectual labor generates a certain type of epistemology. For example, the bureaucratic division of labor, which [divides] the scientific team into those who conceive hypotheses and those who resort to classifications or read tables, is linked to an epistemological division between formalism and hyperempiricism.

I think that these are facts on which sociology has relied so that we can not only account for a certain type of situation of epistemological conflict, but also perceive how an analysis of such a situation can advance, at the same time, both the epistemological consciousness of researchers and the relationship that they maintain with all techniques and, in particular, with models.

Sociology could go even further, seeking to analyze, for example, the affinity that may exist between an epistemological position [and a social position]: [these points of view] on the problem of determinism in the human sciences are probably not distributed at random, [but] according to the social insertion of the researchers, according to their social origin, etc.

As for the problem of the model (because I still want to talk a little about it), I would just like to show, by way of example, how a certain situation in the sociological environment generates an unhappy relationship with regard to all forms of formalization. Methodologists with pure hands – as pure as hands can be – are satisfied with impeccability, or rather, with guilt-inducing impeccability.

Social conditions favor a relationship with models; a relationship that is completely opposite to that described by Pierre Gréco, in that it leads sociologists concerned with “doing science” to be attracted to all the “fancy” methods, such as componential analysis or graph theory. As much as the instruments of logical control, and in particular the model, are – it seems to me – irreplaceable as aids to epistemological vigilance, they also seem to me dangerous in a situation where their function is, almost always, to put epistemological vigilance to sleep.

If I still agree with Pierre Gréco in rejecting the problem of the specificity of the human sciences, I believe that we must insist on the specificity of the relationship that the social sciences maintain with the social conditions in which they are exercised. The sociologist must particularly [redouble] his vigilance to defend himself against all clandestine persuasions, against all forms of impregnation, against the spontaneous sociology that is the epistemological obstacle par excellence for the human sciences, and I see no other real defense, in the current state of things, other than the sociology of sociology.

Not that I think that the sociology of sociology, or the “socioanalysis” that the researcher himself could practice, is sufficient to protect him definitively against all the seductions of fashion and mood of its own. intellectuals of his time. I simply think that we must establish the conditions for a collective socioanalysis, with each researcher being able to carry out, even if only in an illusory way, the sociology of his own sociology and the social conditions capable of inspiring its fundamental assumptions.

To go beyond a “self-socioanalysis,” which risks being just another way of putting oneself in a state of impeccability in order to satisfy oneself by denouncing the guilt of others, we must [establish] a scientific universe in which a generalized exchange of criticisms can be established. And, to employ a “fancy” metaphor of the kind I have denounced, I would say that, in the restricted exchange of criticisms between complicit adversaries—an exchange that, like the restricted exchange of women, is weakly integrative—we must replace the exchange: A who criticizes B who criticizes C who criticizes N who criticizes A.

In relation to the world we know well, that of ritual polemics between great theorists, something completely opposite would be a scientific community subject to widespread criticism, endowed with institutions in which criticism is organized (learned societies, journals, etc.).

Thus, in order to make decisive progress, sociology must perhaps find within itself the weapons of its progress, rather than seeking them at all costs in the most advanced sciences, which ultimately do not offer it the true solutions to its real problems. And as long as the social conditions for scientific practice are not realized, any “demonstration effect” – to use the ethnologists’ vocabulary again – runs the risk of ending in productions that maintain a mimetic relationship with the models they seek to imitate.

Ultimately, sociology must achieve its intellectual autonomy because, more than any other science, it is exposed to external demands – demands from those who commission inquiries and who, through financial pressures, for example, can guide research; demands from the atmospheric ideological agenda, whether in the case of dominant groups or of more familiar intellectual groups – the most dangerous of which are not necessarily those we commonly believe in.

This particular vulnerability of sociology requires specific weapons: this is why I have heard people refuse to talk about the problem of models, not because such a problem seems to me to be completely devoid of interest, but because, in the current state of scientific debate and sociological science, it could have the function of hiding what seems to me to be the real problem. Gaston Bachelard said that any discourse on method is a discourse of circumstance.[4]

An epistemological discourse, when it comes to sociology, cannot be a timeless discourse: it must refer to a given social situation in order to prioritize emergencies, without forgetting that, in [such] a social situation, epistemological obstacles have relative strengths that do not derive solely from a properly sociological logic. Thus, to illustrate this last proposition, we could simply show that, in the current state of things, sociology must face two great obstacles, at once opposite and complementary: the danger of formalism, where discussions about the model threaten to lead us, and the danger of blind empiricism.

*Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002), philosopher and sociologist, was a professor at the École de Sociologie du Collège de France. Author, among other books, of Male domination (Bertrand Brazil). [https://amzn.to/4gd4uNU]

Reference


Pierre Bourdieu. Return to reflexivity. Publishing establishment: Jérôme Bourdieu & Johan Heilbron. Translation: Thomaz Kawauche. São Paulo, Unesp, 2024, 104 pages. [https://amzn.to/4jzNep8]

REFERENCES


BACHELARD, Gaston. The New Scientific Spirit. Paris: Félix Alcan, 1934. [Ed. port.: The new scientific spirit. Lisbon: Editions 70, 1986.]

______. Rationalism applied. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1949. [Ed. bras.: Applied rationalism. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1977.]

Notes


[1] Pierre Gréco (1927-1988), normalien e aggregate of philosophy, was an assistant to Jean Piaget when he taught psychology courses at the Sorbonne between 1952 and 1962. He participated in the research of Piaget's Centre International d'Épistémologie Génétique (1955-1985) in Geneva and, from the mid-1960s onwards, devoted himself to teaching in the sixth section of the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE). There, he was secretary of the program of Enseignement Préparatoire a la Recherche Approfondie en Sciences Sociales (Eprass), in which Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron participated, and thus constituted the main context for the writing of The profession of sociologist (1968)

[2] Bachelard, Rationalism applied, p.4-11.

[3] The “cargo cult” is a set of beliefs and rituals first observed by ethnologists among the aborigines of Melanesia, and consists of imitating American and Japanese radio operators who ordered supplies, in the hope of also receiving shipments full of

Western goods.

[4] “All scientific thought must change in the face of new experience; a discourse on the scientific method will always be a discourse of circumstance […]” (Bachelard, The New Scientific Spirit, p.139).


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