rfmcdonald | [LINK] "To 'Commit Sociology'" (Reply)

Continuing on this evening's theme on shenanigans in Canadian politics and this blog's theme of interest in the social sciences, I thought I'd share an essay at the Everyday Sociology Blog, written by sociologist, teacher, and blogger Jonathan Wynn in response to Prime Minister Harper's accusing Liberal leader Justin Trudeau of "committing sociology" by asking why young people became terrorists.

Recently, when the Canadian Government arrested men suspected of planning a terrorist attack, Prime Minister Stephen Harper warned the media not to “commit sociology” by asking for their motives. (It’s a reference to a W.H. Auden poem.) Best not to think too much, apparently, about the world around you.

In my Foundations of Social Theory class, we began the semester with the broad, big worldviews that many people often use unreflexively and to their own detriment: horoscopes, homeopathy, numerology, dousing, conspiracy theories, and the like. I hope you are equipped for the task of making sense of the world you’ll find around you: to “commit sociology.”

Maybe you ascribe to one of those all-encompassing meta-theories: the astral alignments determining behaviors and the gods working in mysterious ways. What have you learned about sociology that will explain your everyday challenges? An engineering class may help your colleagues get jobs but it won’t help them understand the dynamics of the world they live in. The same could be said about journalism, food studies, and management classes. How could I not try to convince you that sociology, and theory, will?

I understand the resistance. It’s a hell of a lot of work. Maybe it’s too French, too dense, or too depressing. I do not expect you to all be sociological theorists. I don’t expect you all to be sociologists—and that’s a good thing. But I hope you’ve found something of use. I hope that you have with more questions than answers, and I hope you think that’s yet another good thing.

What I hope is this: At the very, very, very least, there will be a point in your life, when you’ll look down a road of inquiry at some opening of your mind. And you’ll allow yourself to walk along just a little bit further that way, just a little bit deeper, to think about the conflicts inherent between in-groups and out-groups when we debate immigration reform, or the logics that perpetuate the inequalities of culture when we valorize one set of ideals over others, or the structural conditions that led you to see that homeless man on the sidewalk. You won’t think of your assignments or specific theorists or your TA or instructor. But I sleep at night hoping you’ll think of the world through more than one set of goggles, and get a little double consciousness from the interplay of what you learn here and your everyday lives outside the classroom.