THE PROMISE OF SOCIOLOGY Critical Theory and Emancipatory Knowledge T. R. Young The Red Feather Institute August 19, 1990 October 29, 1990 November 10, 1990 March 15, 1991 No. 144 Prepared and circulated as part of the Transforming Sociology Series of the Red Feather Institute for Advanced Studies in Sociology, 8085 Essex, Weidman, Michigan, 48893. Ph. 517 644- 5176. And Gladly wold he lern; and gladly teach. ...Chaucer, ....The Clerk's Tale THE PROMISE OF SOCIOLOGY Critical Theory and Emancipatory Knowledge ABSTRACT The classic article by C. Wright Mills on the Promise of Sociology is reworked and up-dated to make it accessible and understandable to students of sociology in this generation. The work of the Frankfort School, not available to Mills, informs this reading of the promise of sociology in the 1990s. The personal problems that students and other young people face in school, work, sports, and gender relations are connected to current issues in the USA. The promises which emancipatory sociology can and cannot make to women, minorities, students and workers are reviewed using critical theory and conflict methodology as a point of departure. Students are given a sense of what the postmodern is all about and how a praxis society might work. Introduction Sociology, as a scientific discipline, makes many promises to those who follow its ways. As C. Wright Mills said, it promises to help people connect their own very personal history to the larger issues in social life. I want to follow up on the earlier work of Mills and lay some of these promises before the beginning student of sociology. Some of these promises emerge from orthodox, traditional sociology that Mills knew and some emerge from critical sociology that has developed since his death. I will try to help the student sort out what each version of sociology promises and, often, fails to deliver. All sociology promises to give its students a fair and balanced understanding of the society in which they live and the personal problems they experience. Critical sociology, especially, makes a series of promises that take the student beyond mere understanding of the sources of their personal problems toward empowerment and a praxis society in which people realize their human capacities to an extend far greater than elitist societies permit. My concern is to help the student of society understand and thus, work toward a critical, transforming knowledge process in all domains of social life: economics, politics, sports, and education itself. I want to offer all new students an overview of a critical sociology which will serve them well in the problematics of life with which each student must deal as they enters the fullness of their morality. As one thinks about the promises listed, one must keep in mind that there are many positivities in American society that rightly deserve respect and commitment. It is too easy, however, to lose sight of the negativities of a society when one is too innocent, too loyal, too uncritical or benefits too much from social arrangements that are most painful to others. One of the central tests of one's morality is to look at one's own society through the eyes of others. If one already does that with mercy, compassion and the giving of support, one doesn't really need to spend too much time on this essay. Critical Sociology There are many parallel sociologies bundled together in critical sociology: there is the class analysis of Marx; the study of gender privilege by feminist sociologists; investigations into the economic and psychological sources of racism; the study of the changing sources and varieties of peace and war; a growing literature in ecological and environmental studies; there are a great many media studies of false consciousness and status degradation; studies of age grade origins and degradations together with the study of multinational corporations and their effects on health, poverty, pollution and oppressive politics in the 3rd World. The main line of critical sociology today can be traced from the Frankfurt School in Germany which tried to determine why German workers turned to fascism to solve their personal problems rather than to democratic socialism. (NOTE 1) Critical sociology was greatly inspired and shaped by the many contributions of Karl Marx in philosophy (his theory of knowledge), economics (his analysis of the tendencies of capitalism and sources of social change), social psychology (his concepts and ideas about alienation, false consciousness and ideological hegemony), politics (his theory of imperialism and revolution) as well as his abiding concern with emancipation of those who produced the wealth of nations but were deprived of the fruit of their labor (his study of the labor process in modern capitalism). (NOTE 2) As it became clear in the 1920s that economic factors alone did not account for political choice, the Frankfort School added cultural, ideological and social psychological dimensions to an class analysis of capitalism. Critical sociology is also inspired by such independent thinkers as Georg Lukacs, Antonio Gramsci and Rosa Luxembourg who added much to critical, transforming knowledge processes. Today, critical sociology promises to show people how their lives are shaped by the dynamics of capitalism and how their understanding is shaped by a knowledge industry working, for the most part, for the powers elite: class, state, and ethnic elites. (NOTE 3) But critical sociology no longer centers itself in class analysis; there are rich contributions made by those who study other structures of domination: racial, gender, ethnic, national, bureaucratic and age grade structures. In all of this, critical sociology promises to link the personal troubles of people: poverty, ill health, rape and battering, violence and crime, depression, low self esteem and suicide, unemployment as well as anger and rebellion to the larger institutions of a society that produce them. In so doing, some of the blame for these troubles is shifted from individuals to the social policies of the powers elite. In shifting the blame from the individual for the conditions that push her toward crime or him toward violence, one does not thereby shift all the blame for pretheoretical solutions that people sometimes use when they are victims of race, class or gender privilege. One is still responsible when one abuses others still weaker or more vulnerable. No one can use his own pain as a justification for inflicting pain on innocent others. All these critical sociologies come together to be called postmodern sociology. Some forms of Postmodern scholarship are very reluctant to make any promises at all since the knowledge process is so complex and there so much room for uncertain and invalid analyses in both the Right and the Left studies of politics, economics, art, science and media. We return to the stances of postmodern sociology, briefly, in the last section. (NOTE 4) Morality and Deviancy Traditional social science had taught (and still does) that those who do not serve the functions or accept the structures of their society as it is presently organized, are abnormal, neurotic, poorly socialized, psychopathic, mentally ill, deviant, immoral or genetically inferior. Such people are to be 'cured' by medicine, religious salvation, psychiatry or corrections. Most social scientists still label ancient ways of life 'primitive,' 'uncivilized,' or 'underdeveloped.' Such societies are 'modernized' by using force to make them over in the image of rich European nations or the United States. Critical sociology does not rely upon compliance to existing norms as a test for sanity, loyalty or morality. Sometimes deviation and rebellion are symptoms of health or good judgment. Critical theory does not rely upon measures of wealth (number of cars, telephones, computers or television sets) to judge the progress of a society. Resistance and rebellion against rich countries which exploit 3rd world countries is often a sign of wisdom and good politics. Critical sociology uses the concept of praxis as a basis for moral reason. Praxis is a way of working and living together that combines sociality, rationality, self-determination and creativity as the test for moral behavior. (NOTE 5) In a praxis society, one must engage in prosocial labor; one must take responsibility for one's own life; one must be creative and change as circumstances warrant; and one must make rational connections between one's problems and the solutions one uses to solve them. A morally informed response to personal troubles thus requires that one make the connection between one's troubles and the real sources of those troubles in the first place--and work to build better, non-exploitive social relations in the second place. One cannot blame minority groups for job loss even if Blacks and Anglos compete for the same jobs. A rational analysis requires one ask the prior question why there are no jobs when there is so much work to be done and when so many people want to work. With the help of many other disciplines, critical sociology can enable people do just that. That is the central promise of critical sociology; it connects private troubles and social issues while it helps work toward a praxis society. Troubles, Issues and Social Change C. Wright Mills taught us to use our sociological imagination to understand why people have trouble at school, work, or in the family. Mills said that such an imagination could make the connection between personal troubles and public issues. Such information is emancipatory knowledge: when personalistic explanations are inadequate to explain problems, efforts to solve these troubles have to have more than just personal solutions; they require emancipatory social change. Consider education. When only a few students fail a course or drop out of school, one should look first at the faults and inadequacies of those students. However, when 10%, 20%, 30% or more students fail a class then one should look for structural obstacles to learning and teaching. Too often students have to juggle school, work, family and social life when they should have time free to study. Too often classes are too large and impersonal while authentic education requires intimate knowledge of student problems and progress. Too often courses are required that serve the information needs of elites rather than the personal needs of students. Too often universities spend scarce funds on things other than good teachers and good teaching facilities. Too often professors are rewarded for research or administrative activity that conflicts with dedicated preparation for classes. Many professors have private businesses or personal pursuits that supplement income; just as students, professors often juggle time between school, outside work, family and social life. When the social structure produces such drop-out rates and such bad teaching, social change becomes necessary while blaming the student for dropping out becomes a political act to protect the university. Consider suicide. Sociology shows the connection between suicide and social location. It shows how friends, religion, and social organization make life bearable--or unbearable--for young people. It studies the ways in which young people find work; the ways in which young people play as well as the ways in which they engage in destructive behavior; destructive to themselves and to others. When few if any young people try to commit suicide, then one should treat these individuals but when suicide is a leading cause of death among young people in some parts of the social order, then the whole social order may be producing teen-age suicide. It is then time to change the social order. Some students may have seen a movie called The Dead Poets Society. It was about a young man who was forced to study something his parents wanted him to study while he was more interested in drama and poetry. As must all parents, his parents were thinking about how he might best fit into society as it was; become a doctor, get high status and high income and be 'successful.' However, the young man wanted to be an actor and do Shakespeare. His father forbid it--insisting that the young man devote all his energy to courses that would advance his career; the young man committed suicide; decidedly pretheoretical rebellion. (NOTE 6) The movie was also about a teacher who was more interested in emancipatory education than in technical schooling. He committed occupational suicide by encouraging his students to love poetry and encouraging the young man to play Puck in a Shakespearean play rather than fit into the social niches planned for them. Every society needs doctors and other professions but every person needs to learn of poetry and prose as well. Consider unemployment. If only 2, 3, 4, or 5% of those who aren't working can't seem to find work, then maybe they are lazy, unskilled, parasitic or have some other personal failing. However, if 5%, 10%, 20 or 30% of the population can't find jobs or can get work only in jobs that debase and degrade them, then there is probably something seriously wrong with the way in which the economic system works. Technological innovations, speed ups, dis-investment in the United States and re-investment in cheap labor countries may explain disemployment better than laziness, ignorance or moral weakness. If so, it is time to change the social order. Or consider war. Another recent movie, The Memphis Belle, showed how young men, in all their variety, might survive war. The movie caught the many troubles they had in warfare; coming of age with dignity, finding courage to overcome terror, keeping some sense of compassion while being asked to kill. Each person in the movie has his special problem exacerbated by war. One was a virgin and was teased about it. In wartime, he couldn't do the usual thing; find a young lady, court her and propose marriage in order to act on his sexuality. He did meet an attractive young lady, took her to the Memphis Belle and there learned the ways of love. One was a very frightened navigator and thought he would surely die. He wanted to drop bombs indiscriminately on schools and homes and get out; however, his captain refused to bomb innocent victims of war. Later the same navigator rose to the occasion and helped save the life of a crew member. All these personal troubles were resolved in ways that showed how boys grow up to be responsible men during wartime. What the movie did not show was that World War II was fought over which nations would have favored access to the raw materials, markets and cheap labor of Eastern Europe and the 3rd World. Germans thought that they were a superior race and that the 'inferior' races of East Europe should supply Germany with food, oil, and cheap labor. Japan and the United States were fighting over who would control the rubber plantations, the tin mines and the sugar fields of the far East. Young men in Germany, Japan, England and America were, all of them, taught that they were fighting for noble causes and their problem was to survive with dignity and courage. Young American men, during the Vietnamese war, thought and were taught differently by radical professors. They were taught that this American war was a war to replace the French as colonial master in the Far East after the French had been defeated at Dien Bien Phu. Hundreds of young men refused to go fight in that war; some were cowardly and some were very courageous just as the young men who did join the army were both cowardly and/or courageous. Consider sports. Sociological studies of sports make the connection between the kind of sports young men and women play and the larger structure of authority and elitism that many games reinforce. The sociology of sports discusses how violence and human sexuality becomes linked in commercial sports and in television advertizing. Critical sports analyses make the connection between political legitimacy and sponsorship of Olympic teams in countries with severe inequality and unsolved personal problems; South Africa, East Germany, and Brazilian governments all gain unearned legitimacy by sponsoring victorious team sports while people at home are systematically exploited, oppressed and repressed. The sociology of sports also sorts out the growing financial connections between media monopolies, giant stadiums and commercial sponsors. As Shakespeare might have said, Olympic gold medals refreshes the hoar leper to the April day again. The Olympics are becoming contests between multinational corporations rather than between individual athletes or nation-states. It is no longer the USA vs. the USSR but rather General Motors teams vs. Nissan teams. Consider crime. When only a few people commit crime, perhaps the best analysis is faulty socialization or character flaws. If crime is a way of life for corporate executives, political leaders, and professional men like doctors, lawyers, and professors: all adult white males who have been well socialized to the values of their society: competition, acquisition, and conspicuous display of wealth, then one has to move to a sociological explanation of crime. And one has good reason to work to change society. Consider human sexuality. When only a few people engage in forms of sexual activity that harm others: rape, child abuse, sadism, pornography, prostitution, or other forms of sexual exploitation, then perhaps faulty socialization or physiological factors are at work. When violence, sexuality and power become linked for most men in a society, one must look at economic relations that produce a gender division of labor and a gender stratification of power. One must look at the way movies, books, sports and religion tries to channel human desire for contact and intimacy into forms that hurt women, children while it put men themselves at risk. Promises to Keep In its effort to connect personal problems with social issues, critical sociology promises to provide the authentic self-knowledge of a society free from bias and free from the influence of rich and powerful alike. For the larger society, critical sociologists in conjunction with radical economists, psychologists, political scientists and ordinary citizens promises to reveal both the best and the worse of existing social forms. The promise is to provide the data base for sound social policy and for democratic participation in public policy. Sociology studies the social problems that beset a society showing which factors promote and which factors defeat the human project; how crime, poverty, ill-health and homelessness vary across cultures. Sociologists along with anthropologists, historians and poets lay out the organizing themes and deep structures of a society; structures that are felt but never directly seen by individuals. To people in general, critical sociologists, in cooperation with critical historians, economists, political scientists and others, promise to explain the political and economic sources of the S&L scandals and the crisis into home construction it produced. Sociologists, with historians and political scientists, can help people understand the origins of the conflict in the Middle East and the Arabian Gulf. Critical social science can help sort out the income tax policies that shift the cost of military weapons and overseas bases to middle and lower income people. It can help people understand why they must live in polluted cities and drink water with thousands of toxic chemicals in it while the technology for a clean environment exists. It can explain the declining income of working class families and the resulting tensions in families and between racial groups in a land where democracy, equality of opportunity and social justice are possible as they might not be elsewhere. To students in general, critical sociology promises to provide a guide to the world in which each lives. Together with history, it promises to provide an understanding of the trends that reach out from the past to shape the near future. It promises to give an overview of social change; its sources, its dynamics, its obstacles, and its course and its many possible destinations. It promises to unravel the social sources of resistance, rebellion and warfare. It promises each person a grounding for moral action and for responsible citizenship with which to change the destiny of their own personal social relationships. Sociology promises to help those who are oppressed know which tactics will work and which will not work in trying to make progressive change toward a good and decent society. To women in general, feminist studies of gender and marriage promise to help women understand the social sources of the personal troubles they encounter: how they are denied economic, social and moral power to the advantage of males; why they are subject to sudden outbursts of violence from the people they love. Social scientists who do research in patriarchal forms of marriage, courtship, family and in studies of human sexuality promise to help people know the social sources of rape, pornography, and prostitution of human desire and human intimacy. Critical anthropology offers a rich literature on the many varieties of gender and gender relations found in other societies and treated as quite normal and useful. To women students in particular, critical sociology promises to reveal the ways in which are socialized to a very small set of roles and careers. It provides data on the many ways school and university reproduce male privilege and patriarchy. In the hiring and promotion of women faculty; in the tracking of women to nursing, teaching and social work; in the funding of male dominated programs; in very fabric of interpersonal relations in the classroom, men are privileged and women demeaned. (NOTE 7) In alliance with anthropologists, historians, and African scholars, critical sociology recaptures the political economy of slavery that brought millions of people to America, stripped them of their ancient traditions, their rich religions and their well- ordered social organization; chained them to plow and hoe, bought and sold family members, taught them an alienated form of religion while they were brutally repressed when they resisted and rebelled. Such a sociology reviewed and revised the earlier histories and sociologies which praised and justified slave systems even into the 40s and 50s. Now we see such social systems as the source of many personal troubles rather than necessary and functional social structures. Critical sociology can explain why the centers of so many American cities are deserted while the suburbs thrive with their energy inefficient transport and housing systems. Critical sociology shows the effects of racism, political corruption, disinvestment and poverty on stores, shops and offices in the central city while critical sociology enables minorities and other citizens to participate in public policy and respond constructively to those structural problems. As Marx might have said, most social scientists have only studied the city in various ways, the point is to change it. Comparative urban studies offer examples of low crime cities with rich and thriving ethnic districts such as Toronto, Paris, London or Hong Kong. Those who have visited Toronto know how safe and active is town center every night while one walks the streets of Washington, D.C., Detroit or New York at one's own jeopardy. To workers, sociology promises to help sort out the complexities of career paths that people take; people who start from very similar social conditions sometimes take very different life courses. In studies of social mobility, sociology promises to give students a rough idea of how many of them will be able to move up (or down) from one social class and into another. Critical Sociology reveals the larger dynamics of the world economy which expands job opportunity here and closes it off another place. Sociology follows the ups and downs of the economy and shows how it bends and breaks people who would otherwise live in peace, harmony and security. Critical studies of the work place help people in America understand why they take less joy and pride in work than they could; why they use alcohol and drugs to make such a joyless life tolerable. Critical sociology reports on struggles between owners and workers over wages, job assignment, worker safety, work load. Workers have to pay their bills in good times and in bad, so critical sociologists study job security and layoffs, retirement benefits and unemployment insurance. The student will find that there are societies with full employment, a lot of social justice, much less inequality, better health and much, much less crime than is found in the United States. Sociologists, along with political scientists, follow political campaigns closely. They dig into the secret places where candidates are pre-selected; where public policy is formulated and from where campaign contributions come. Critical sociology goes on to make the connections between ownership of the mass media and the views of people on political candidates, public policies and political allegiances. Critical sociologists measure the breadth and height and depth of democracy and gauge its distortions as well as its consequences. Such sociologists offer models of how political power is distributed among class, racial, and gender as well as ethnic categories. It can help us understand the fascist, authoritarian, and elitist nature of politics at home and around the world. Sociologists, along with philosophers and anthropologists study the sources and uses of science in a society. They count how many scientists are working for the military and how many are working to protect the environment. They study the ways science is sponsored and the class interests such sponsorship reflects in the marketplace, the factory and the university. Sociologists study the ways in which doctors are trained (and not trained); where they work and how much they take from the health and medical budget of the nation. They study the ways in which hospitals, asylums, and clinics are organized. Some hospitals are stratified bureaucracies which give all power and status to doctors while some are interactively rich communities that share social power with patients, nurses and other medical personnel. Critical sociology offers comparison of health care systems in other societies in order to help the public see alternatives to profit-oriented clinics and hospitals. Critical communications scholars study the mass media: radio, television, Hollywood, newspapers and universities themselves to show how they work to reproduce the structures of domination. Media researchers show how the images of women change over time to suit the needs of patriarchy or war or labor markets. Critical researchers in mass media trace the degradations of minorities in movies, plays, songs, art and jokes. These images are studied not to celebrate them as natural but to politicize women and help change them. Critical sociology traces the ways mass media colonize and direct desire and emotions. Love, hate, anger, fear, anguish, anxiety, compassion, and indifference all have social uses and are encouraged or discouraged by a society. The gentle Zuni forbid anger when preparing for sacred ceremonies; European tribes encourage anger and rage when sacred customs are violated; some african tribes encourage women to be proud and some encourage women to be humble. Advertizing firms try to identify the way desire is produced and constrained and then connect these socially constructed desires for status, for intimacy or for power to the purchase of beer, fast food or automobiles. Most retail stores preprogram its employees for cheerfulness, emotional distance and/or tact. The military teaches its frontline warriors to be ruthless and without mercy while the school system insists its students sit quietly, speak impersonally, and accept authority respectfully. In all this, meaning, desire and emotion are social products and helpful to build--or destroy--different kinds of social life worlds. Together with history, critical sociology helps make sense of the broad sweep of epochs and eras. And, together with poetry, drama and song, critical sociology speaks in a powerful language of the joys and the miseries of human life. Myth-Breaking and Social Change All competent sociologists help destroy myths and ideologies that give a monopoly of status, power and wealth to some and withhold social honor, social power or essential goods and services from others. In criminology, they sort out the correlates of crime using research techniques that connect social problems to the varying conditions that give rise to them. Using such controls, radical criminologists have found that there is no systematic relationship between crime and race; middle class blacks do not commit more crime than middle class whites. Using controls, sociologists have found that there is no systematic relationship between age and crime; senior males commit as much or more crime than do teen-age boys--older men commit white collar crime while they organize corporate crime and engineer political crime. Young, lower class men commit street crime. What differs is the kind of crime committed; not the amount. Sociology, along with political science and anthropology, helps destroy the myth of ethnic superiority; it can restore pride and dignity to Polish, Irish, Chicano and Italian-Americans who have been taught in American schools that the English, French or German culture is superior to theirs. Such social science speaks of the ancient and respectful orientation of American Indians to the environment and to each other; it tells of the many community support groups depending upon the unpaid but essential labor of women; such scholarship notes the deep, supportive and extensive networks of Polish Americans or Irish Americans or Italian Americans. This myth-breaking feature of systematic research serves to help ethnic minorities retain their dignity in the face of systematic destruction of their heritage by books, movies, history texts and a wide variety of racist or sexist jokes produced and distributed by those media dominated by ethnocentric majorities. Comparative and historical studies in sociology restore the lost history of Afro-Americans in founding and running great empires and cities in Africa long before the slave traders came. It recaptures the lost history of struggle and resistance by slaves as well as their flight to freedom in Canada or northern and western states. It records the many inventors, scientists, doctors, and philosophers who take pride in their African ancestry. Racism is shown in its economic origins; when times get hard, racism increases. Radical scholarship accepts that, when people are degraded and mystified, some do become less than whole. Successful degradation routines are found in asylums, armies, prisons and patriarchy as well as in slavery or feudality. However, the solution to such degradations is not more pain and degradation but rather equality and empowerment. From Greece, Turkey, Egypt and Algeria; from India, from China, from Africa and from Latin America, the conquest and enslavement of one people by another is shown to be more the result of better military technology coupled with a social philosophy of racial superiority than biological differences or divine Will. Gender privilege is shown in both its special history and its general effects. Based upon the findings of anthropologists around the world, feminist sociology illuminates the ways in which gender roles are created, changed, reversed, eliminated and expanded through time and space. In some societies, only women weave, make pottery or tend cattle; in other societies only men weave, tend cattle or make pottery. In many societies, women have taken an active part in religious rites, in hunting, in war, in governance, in art, science and law--roles those in patriarchal societies think of as men's work. There were very few roles in history that are exclusively male roles; today there are none. Hunting for large land animals (elephant, mastodon, elk and lion) and for whales were, at one time, male roles but such occupations are too much a relict of low tech economics for any sensible person to claim a gender monopoly today. While there are many positive contributions private capitalism has made to the human condition, critical sociologists along with radical political economists explain the tendency of capitalism to produce more than it can distribute since workers do not earn enough to buy everything they make. (NOTE 8) They show how capitalism tends toward periodic depressions as goods accumulate faster than they can be sold. Critical sociologists show how the capitalist class buys the political process by pre- selecting candidates they prefer with huge donations and by ownership or purchase of the media. They show how the capitalist class uses the power of the state and war to protect markets and to get raw materials overseas. They show how capitalism promotes corporate crime and street crime by pushing people to want far more than they can buy with the wages, salaries, rents, dividends and interest they get. No matter how rich one is, capitalism entices one to want more. In this myth-breaking, critical sociology promises to empower and to politicize people; it promises to work toward a synthesis which transcends the particular good and reaches toward the common good. It promises to speak truth in so far as it is possible. SPEAKING TRUTH Critical sociology promises to build and to operate a knowledge process that speaks to the information needs and political needs of the individual person in creating cooperative and egalitarian family, community, national and global institutions. In the building of such a knowledge process, critical sociology promises to speak truth to its students and its readers and to provide all the forms of knowledge required by a self directed, self healing, self transforming society. Sociology, including critical sociology, promises to put together a knowledge process that is protected from systematic distortions of power and privilege. Critical sociology refuses to give preference or privilege to any given social arrangement. In speaking truth, critical sociology promises to rise above the limited loyalties of tribe, clan, soil, and nationality. Sociology, in its critical moments, promises fidelity only to the human project writ large; to the broadest possible set human interests; Human Rights and Human Obligations. In the United States, critical sociology focussed upon the negativities of capitalism; in the socialist countries, critical sociology studies the negativities of bureaucracies and party elites. In the effort to speak truth to its students and its readers, sociologists generally emphasizes the home-made nature of social reality; its human authorship and its amalgam of conflicting interests. At the same time, critical sociology shows the ways that power gives more control to some than others to construct the basic institutions of a society. Those in critical sociology promise to uncover the way in which social labels, definitions and political agendas are shaped and changed by mass media controlled by the state, by private enterprize or bureaucratic socialist elites. In the interest of truthful and complete knowledge processes, critical sociology promises the continuing review of all settled truths; all established theories; all taken-for- granted methods. Only with absolute integrity can critical sociology fulfill the promises it makes to students, workers, women and minorities to enrich and to empower them in the brief moment they have in the larger flow of history. In all of this, the human interest in change and renewal is served--or defeated. The promise of critical sociology is to help the citizens of a society know when and how to change with the best results at the least cost in human and economic terms. Betrayal and Loyalty Neither traditional nor Critical Sociology set well with those who benefit and prosper from present arrangements; they tend to lump all sociologists together, even the most cooperative kind of social science, and view them with suspicion as socialists, communists, traitors or active agents of foreign governments. They have reason. Every piece of social research, if well done, offers an immanent critique of the self knowledge of a society. The rich and the powerful set up their own knowledge factories and sponsor the distribution of their own interpretations to radio, newspaper, television and universities through a thousand well funded conservative 'think tanks' such as the Hoover Institute, the Rand Corporation, the American Enterprize Institute and the various foundations: Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie and the National Endowment for the Arts. These non-profit institutes issue reports and analyses by the thousand on radio, television, and newspapers as 'community service.' And they are given exemption from taxes on their business. Many universities are funded and do research on behalf of the military-industrial complex of which President Eisenhower warned. Critical sociologists often work under very hostile conditions in university and in society. This is true in the U.S.S.R., South Africa, Latin America and in the U.S.A. In many bureaucratic socialist states, sociology is a forbidden discipline and sociologists excluded from colleges and universities because they won't cooperate with party elites to hide social problems. (NOTE 9) In the United States, most universities are governed by upper and upper middle class financiers, lawyers, and former politicians. They are the social groups who are the target of critical social research and they seldom like the findings. The members of the governing boards of colleges and universities select presidents, deans, chairpersons and faculty who are politically safe. There are sociologists who generate research findings or general theory which privilege the stratification of gender, race or class; they are given title, knee and approbation. They get tenure, promotion, and invitation to the inner councils of state, corporation and academia. Those who do research on behalf of social justice; those who look at society through the eyes of women, minorities, workers or students are often seen to be disloyal, biassed or incompetent. (NOTE 10) It is no mere happenstance that there are those in establishment sociology come up with theoretical statements in praise of the stratification of power and privilege. They base that theory on valid research findings; most societies are stratified. But some societies are much more egalitarian than the theory permits. Some of the stratifications did not exist in history until recent times. All of the stratifications are changing all the time--sometimes heading toward more equality and sometimes toward greater inequality. The stratification of social honor and, to some extent, political power, was gradually reduced in the United States until the 1960s. In the labor struggles of the 1870, 1930s, and the 1950s, income, safety and job security for millions of workers improved. (NOTE 11) The feminist movement helped reduce inequality between men and women over the past 100 years. The Civil Rights movement of the 50s and 60s mitigated inequality between Anglos and Afro-Americans a bit for a while. With the election of Mr. Nixon, Mr. Reagan and Mr. Bush, those inequalities again increased as did the burdens of social problems for minorities and women. Societies do not fall apart when there is more social justice; they work better. Values and Value-free Sociology In the effort to distance themselves from the ways their research findings are used and thus from allegations that they are helping the rich or hurting the subjects of their research, many sociologists claim to be value free, objective and neutral in the seething politics of class, racial or gender struggles. Yet in the selection of problems, in the choice of concepts, in their theoretical framework, in their selection of research sites, and in their conclusions, some sociologists help reproduce the pyramids of power and wealth. Thus workers are studied assiduously but not owners; street crime is reported intensively but not corporate crime; minority problems are researched endlessly but not the pathologies of upper class society; consumers are studied in minute detail but not the betrayal of psychologists and social psychologists who help motivate and transfer human desire from people to the purchase of things. In such artificially framed "neutrality", sociologists betray the subjects of their research and betray the knowledge process along with the human project. In order to survive in an system of higher education, many famous sociologists restrict the mission of social science to a search for general theory rather than include emancipatory knowledge as the mission of social science. Such a mission robs sociology of its moral, transforming potential and freezes existing relationships for all time as if what is today must be for all time. The quest for one universal theory presumes that there is one set of functions that are universally necessary and that there is one set of social institutions that are better than all others. The quest for general theory is a quest for those polished truths which brook no objection, no criticism, no suggestion for change and renewal. In the protection of their careers, sociologists are trained to write and to think in the most depersonalized ways possible. They are taught that it is science if one translates the incalculable richness of being into words, the words into numbers, the numbers into statistics and to retranslate the numbers into the lifeless language of physical science. In so doing, much information is lost and much political damage is done to the knowledge process. When articles are reviewed by establishment editors, every word and every phrase that has grace, beauty, or moral indignation is removed in order to better preserve the illusion of neutrality and impartiality. In the pursuit of career and esteem from those who run the university, the corporation and the state agencies, sociologists adopt a set of ethics which promise to offend no one, upset no one, discredit any existing social relations nor take sides in struggles of class, race and gender privilege. Consensus methods are used that shield the criminal corporation, the racist school or the corrupt union from public scrutiny. While decency and confidentiality are due to individuals in their private lives, the organization that does business with the public has no such right. Neutrality becomes a wall behind which are hidden acts about which citizens, workers, students, and customers have a right to know. Critical sociology in all its forms, feminist, marxist, critical, and conflict sociology takes sides. It is value-full. It promises to be decidedly partisan. It answers the question posed by Robert and Helen Lynd in their book, Knowledge for What? The answer is, for critical sociology, knowledge for people; not just some people but for all people. Knowledge not about what is but knowledge about what could be and how to get to what could be. Yet critical sociology does not promise to be on the side of any given minority group or social category for all time. When unions take power or share it in a society, they become the legitimate targets of radical research. When women join men to exploit workers, consumers or to manage and mystify others, they become legitimate targets of critical research. When Black cliques replace Anglo cliques in American cities, courthouses, or legislatures, they become legitimate candidates for critical comment. False Promises Critical sociology does not promise to help students find jobs, become prosperous, and gain fame. It does not promise to make one a better worker, a more compliant bureaucrat, a docile woman or a complacent citizen. Advisors and professors in conservative sociology do make such promises; however, these are promises to work within the existing social order no matter how much power and privilege is given to a few. As such, they are, sometimes, promises false to the human project and often false to the quest for the authentic self-knowledge of a society. (NOTE 12) Such sociology does not promise to help the student of criminology better fit within the existing criminal justice system; to make her a better police officer or to make him a better probation officer. Critical sociology promises only to show the way in which criminal justice fits into and reproduces existing structures of race, gender or class privilege; those criminologists who do promise such things are making false promises or teaching a falsely neutral sociology. Radical sociologists think that social justice is preferable to criminal justice as a way to move toward a low crime society. (NOTE 13) Rather than inject more pain and punishment into the society, the better solution is to inject more love and compassion, more prosocial work and more tolerance into a society. In that respect, critical sociology reunites itself with the best of religious thought. Feminist sociology does not promise to help a woman to fit comfortably within the existing structure of gender relations or into existing models of femininity; it only promises to help her understand the social sources of her discontent and to make visible alternative ways of doing marriage, family and femininity. (NOTE 14) Critical sociologists promise to delegitimate courtship patterns that empower males and only males; to delegitimate parenting patterns that load the burden of child care and socialization on solitary women with scarce resources. Those who teach dating, courtship, marriage and the family in ways that legitimate male dominated, stratified gender relations in a marriage are acting as publicity agents for patriarchy rather than, as they assert, objective reporters of gender forms. Critical sociology does not promise to help Blacks, Chicanos, and Indians better assimilate into white, middle-class life styles; to abandon the rich legacy of minority cultures. Critical sociology attests to the positivities and negativities of all such special cultures using human rights and human obligations as the archimedean point with which to make judgments of justice and of oppression. Those who promise equal opportunity to Blacks, Women and Chicanos within the present system also promise them equal opportunity to exploit other Black workers, other female customers and other Indians. This sociology does not promise to make young men and women better soldiers. Critical sociology studies war in order to make visible the hidden purposes, outcomes and beneficiaries of war. It studies the use of force and violence in armies, police forces and in gender relations in order to help those who are the targets of violence and war begin to look for more peaceful and just ways to live together. It is here that feminist scholarship has much to offer since it speaks of influence rather than force; of cooperation rather than competition, of empathy rather than violence as feminist interpersonal styles. Critical sociology does not promise to make elderly people happy on medications, movies, and bingo. It promises only to fuel their political sensibilities such that they do not go gentle into the good night but, rather, rage, rage, rage against the many forms of privilege that degrade their friends, children and their grandchildren. Emancipatory sociology offers a rich literature to enable the American Association for Retired Persons (AARP) to continue to act as a catalyst for social justice; not just for senior citizens, not just for Americans but for the Human Project writ large. Nor do these sociologists promise to make one a solid citizen. critical sociology studies the state, not to help it celebrate itself or to validate its own distorted self knowledge but rather to reveal its partisanship on behalf of class, race, and gender categories; to illuminate the political and economic reasons for going to war rather than the patriotic reasons put forward by the state. Those sociologists who put forward theories of the state as a neutral referee serving the interests of all its citizens are pushing a child's history and a chauvinist agenda. Postmodern Sociology There are many different sociologies today. All those which do not look for iron laws, grand unified theory or dedicate themselves to prediction and control as does modern science are called postmodern. (NOTE 15) Postmodern sociology does not privilege any given set of gender relations; it does not privilege any given way to do politics, it refuses to endorse a given economic or religious way of life. It promises only to pluck the social process and the knowledge process from impersonal theory or immovable gods and to show the human hand that authors such works. Postmodern sociology transcends national loyalties, ethnic life-styles or religious teachings. In its worst, most pessimistic moments, postmodern scholarship despairs of the possibility of authentic self knowledge or of reliable knowledge of social facts; it decries the possibility of going beyond the moment, below the surface of any society. In such a mood, postmodern scholarship sees all social research as contaminated by power, privilege and parochial political goals; including this essay. Some Postmodern scholarship rejects any attempt to set standards and to impose limits upon people. For such scholars, one can only read the social text; one can only identify its authors; one can only offer parallel and conflicting interpretations of research reports, scholarly monographs or sociology textbooks used by hundreds of thousands of students. In its bleak, unyielding moments, postmodern sociologists, artists, dancers, poets, architects and dramatists tend toward nihilism, self expression and retreat to a very private forms of freedom. (NOTE 16) A Praxis Society In its more optimistic, value-full and progressive moments, postmodern sociology transforms into critical sociology. It respects and honors ethnicities, religiousities and economies that teach and practice compassion, human dignity and equality of opportunity. It joins social research with emancipatory politics, sustainable economics, and democratic socialism, and infinite variety in prosocial forms of desire and love. Critical sociologists join with those in Liberation theology to help find answers to ancient questions of value, purpose and compassion. Along with progressive Catholic, Buddhist, Protestant and Muslim theologians, critical sociology helps answer the four fundamental questions of life: what are our origins; what are the sources of human tragedy and oppression; how shall we live together in peace and, finally, how shall we prepare ourselves for the future?? Critical sociologists join with Greenpeace, Jacques Cousteau, Murray Bookchin, George Page, animal rights organizations and other naturalists to protect and preserve the good earth and all its creatures great and small. Each animal, each plant is a book within which is written the findings of thousands of natural experiments in adapting to the dangers and diseases of life. Each egg, each seed is a precious promise of new life with old and secret solutions buried deep within its billions of bytes of genetic information just as each culture is a treasure trove of information of how to produce, to eat, to live, to build, to heal, to share and to change as nature and society changes. Critical sociology accepts that there is much of value in every existing society; that perhaps as much as 95% or more of the norms, mores, rules and traditions of any society are prosocial and are worthy of preserving. It is the alienating 5% that is the topic of vigorous challenge. Critical sociology accepts that there are some forms of human behavior which, necessarily, must be repressed if prosocial work and a democratic society is to emerge from human desire and social power. While one must be very, very careful about calling for repression, still we must create standards of decency, honesty, integrity and mutual aid that, as the Bible put it, maketh a person's face to shine. Taken together, the forms of critical sociology promise to keep faith with those whose wisdom, courage, labor and struggles for justice made it possible for us to learn and to teach--and gladly do we do so. NOTES 1: See David Held, 1980. Introduction to Critical Theory, London: Hutchinson University Press. The work contains the social history of the Frankfurt School, personal histories of its many associates as well as the various missions it set for the knowledge process and for critical sociologists. 2: Next to the Christian Bible, the works of Marx are the most frequently published works in the world. It is said, truly, that most of the best work in philosophy, history, economics and political science since 1883 (the year Marx died) is either an attempt to refute Marx, to use his concepts or to extend his ideas about praxis and a praxis society. 3: C. Wright Mills said that there were three elites which worked together to shape social life in the United States: big business, big government and big military. Others have added big unions, giant communications firms, elite schools (Harvard, Yale and Stanford among others). See his book, The Power Elite, Oxford University Press, 1956. He also wrote White Collar in 1953, a study of how the entire family and social life of the middle class is absorbed by the companies for which they work. Mills was never promoted to full professor even though many lesser scholars were; as mild as it was, his work was too radical for the times. 4: Post-modern, as a term, came into use in the 1950s in reference to architectural styles as a protest to the cubes, circles, pyramids and cones that marked modern architecture. The term was extended to literary critique of all pretensions at universal standards for novels, poetry, and composition. It use spread to art criticism; to critique of music and theatre. Now it is used to denote an era in which all absolutes; all universals; all claims to objective Truth and all pretensions of perfection are challenged. The Post-modern world view, as a critique and an alternative to modernism, began in the late 1700's and early 1800's in literature, poetry, art and philosophy. It was fueled by feminism, anti-colonialism, democratic socialism, and other movements which located the sources of human genius and wisdom broadly throughout the population rather than in elites: gender, class, racial, political, scientific or bureaucratic elites which dominate social life. 5: Praxis