REINVENTING SOCIOLOGY Missions and Methods for Postmodern Sociology T. R. Young Texas Woman's University James Yarbrough University of North Texas June, 1993 REINVENTING SOCIOLOGY Missions and Methods for Postmodern Sociology ABSTRACT There are two fundamental problems to solve in reinventing sociology in a postmodern modality. One concerns structure and the degree to which pattern and predictability reside in the ontology of the world. The second is concerned with human agency and its role in constituting both theory and social facts. Chaos theory modifies post-structural critique of meta-narratives by showing that macro-structures have a fractal and variable ontology. This ontology depends upon (a) dynamical state, and (b) scale of observation. Chaos theory yields insight on the second question by showing that potential for human agency varies with (a) dynamical state, and (b) proximity to bifurcation points. Human agency, then, as well as macro-structure are seen as dynamic phenomena which incorporate nonlinear as well as linear change components. Further, human agency, mediated by power and wealth, is seen to permeate all elements of social life, including scientific endeavor. A postmodern phenomenology is developed which further supports the postmodern critique of modern science. Given these understandings of structure and agency, a more affirmative postmodern sociology is possible. Protocols for a postmodern sociology based on grounded theory research tactics in both situated social life worlds and in deep structural dynamics are offered here as a means to ground a postmodern emancipatory social science. I. INTRODUCTION Wiley (1990) has noted that American sociology has been without a 'dominating center' for the past 20 years. It is precisely effort to install a new dominating paradigm which poststructuralism denigrates and which most postmodern sociologies oppose. In this 'interregnum' more than any other, there is a sentiment that the interregnum is the paradigm; periods with dominating centers are but temporary exercise of power. As Wiley notes, "...grand narratives are indeed in disrepute in social theory, the current lengthy interregnum being characterized by precisely that fact" (:407). Rather than an effort to replace structural-functionalism with a new 'hegemonic paradigm,' or to abandon the knowledge process as hopelessly contaminated by human frailty, the suggestion is that there are ontological grounds to conceive of social realities as multi-dimensional and polycentric but still knowable in all of its complexity. In simple terms, other than a preference for order and a desire for intellectual hegemony, there is no particular reason for a 'dominating' paradigm. Further, there may be very good reason for avoiding exclusive and sovereign frames of reference. A plurality of approaches may produce helpful results, but at another level theory draws freely from that diverse realm. Ultimately, paradigm construction itself is a human endeavor fraught with poetics and politics (Young, 1991a). STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS The assumption of most post-structuralist critique is that life is too rich, too varied, and too interconnected to give much credence to grand theories, universal standards, iron laws, or absolute certainty. Chaos theory affirms that insight. However, the absolute rejection of all such structures by the French post-structuralists is not supported by the findings from chaos research. The architecture of the 'structures' revealed by chaos research are fractal rather than integral. Most postmodernists believe, along with modernists, that either a structure exists in which case statements about them have predicate truth or they do not exist and thus statements about them have no predicate truth. The view presented here upon which to ground postmodern structural analysis is that process becomes structure as iterations of a system are stabilized in time and place. More than that, as a system settles down into one of several dynamical states, it comes to have a causal impact on other systems in its environment (Young 1993). Thus both structure and causality are variable depending upon dynamical state and upon scale of observation. Yet the structure is, in fact, there even if it is very different from that supposed in modern philosophy of science. It was Mandelbrot (1977:5) more than any other contributor to Chaos theory who established the fractal geometry of both form and process in his work: Scientists will be surprised to find that not a few shapes they had to call grainy, hydra-like, in between, pimply, pocky, ramified, seaweedy, strange, tangled, tortuous, wiggly, wispy, wrinkled and the like, can henceforth be approached in a rigorous and vigorous quantitative manner. The fractal is central to the study of such loosely structured forms. A great deal of research has shown that most of nature exhibits both the nonlinear dynamics as well as the fractal structure which are the subject matter of this new science. Apart from psychology and some work in economics, there is little systematic work done in social science. Fractal geometry and the new mathematics used to model nonlinear dynamics, might will handle such slippery concepts as self, group, class, race, gender, and the like. The Fractal Geometry of Society. In a series of essays, Young (1991a; 1991b; 1992a; 1992b; 1993) has made a case that the ontology revealed by Chaos theory offers a different view of social structure from that of traditional modern science or that of post-structural critique. Class analysis is impossible if one uses euclidean architecture with which to sort out members of a social class. Yet if one has the idea of a fractal, one can understand that social class itself is grainy, pocky, wispy, open, wrinkled and, most importantly, varyingly connected to other such fractal structures not the least of which are gender and race. If one treats class, race, gender and self as fractals, i.e., objects with fractal reality, then one is much more comfortable with the idea of structure and can then proceed to ask questions about the facticity of structure and its varying causality. Class as a Fractal Concept There are any number of ways to define class. If we use the 'lifestyle' as the basis for gathering data with which to map the class structure, we find a very tortuous mix with some very rich persons at the middle and some high living persons who, at any moment, might be plunged into poverty. Doctors, plumbers, retired school teachers, engineers, drug dealers, and mechanics are cast into the same category. If one uses 'relationship to the means of production' as the basis for drawing class lines, more definite structures emerge; at any time a drug dealer or an engineer may lose their job and, within months, be in quite a different lifestyle. Divorced women whose only connection to the means of production is a male working for wages or salary may go from a Dallas suburb to a Dallas ghetto within days. If one looks closely at any given political economy, one finds several interconnected and/or parallel economic activities. In the USA, besides the usual market exchanges, one observes several non-market activities which redistribute wealth; the welfare state, private charities, kinship sharing, and crime to mention the more active economies occupying the same phase-space. Given such a mix and given untracked interactions between them, the concept of class is difficult to operationalize with the precision, clarity, and certainty required by modern science. Yet, given the concept of the fractal and given the idea that the very same unit acts can be part of very different systems, one can sustain class analysis in ways not agreeable to linear interpretation. If we change scale of observation and include the workings of Kutznet cycles and Kondratieff cycles in class analysis, we see that there is a very definite structure which has very definite mathematical form (Berry, 1991) and supports the contentions of marxists about the dynamics of capitalism. Since the fractal does not take up all the space available to it in even the most closely controlled social occasion, other fractals may co-exist and obscure those dynamics at the everyday level of lived economy. The Fractal Nature of Self and Society The concept of the self is another case in point. There are very few times when one acts as if s/he were a doctor and only a doctor. In the same phase- space, a doctor might act as a parent, a customer, a citizen, and/or a friend. If one were to observe 'unit acts,' the same act might be counted as both that of a parent and a doctor; a friend and a customer, or some combination of six or seven social identities. Were that doctor in something called a hospital, s/he would have a varying role in several dozen simultaneous potential processes, not excluding those of spouse, parent, religious adherent, political party member, or other such social identities central to the structure of self. Given that self and society are twinborn, it takes little imagination to understand that, in any given social occasion, there can be several social realities occupying the same time- space continuum. Given that many, if not 'unit,' acts actually observed in a situated social life-world have little meaning for any one given line of construction, the fractal nature of social reality can be appreciated. Given the millions of unit acts and hundreds of separate psychological, physiological, chemical, and physical processes occurring in the same time-space continuum, one can begin to appreciate how very dense is the field of study before us. Given the delicate and unknown ways that each person and each process is connected with every other person and process, even so deep as the sub-atomic level, then one begins to perceive the magnitude of the research task awaiting a reunified knowledge process in the 21st century. Fractals and Culture When we compare unit acts across cultures, we find even more fractal sets which appear to have even less than unitary facticity. The phenomenological nature of social reality is clearly visible. The concept of the physician in the USA is different from but similar to that of England; that of England similar to but different from that of Germany; that of Germany similar to but different from that of Poland; that of Poland similar to but different from that of Russia; and that of Russia similar to but different from that of China. When we compare the behavior of a doctor in the USA with that of a doctor in China, we 'see' very different fractals, but when we see all the variations between we can appreciate that what people called doctors do in China are members of a larger self similar set of social facts which include doctors in every society. As with the parameters which produce fractals, the elements of culture feedback upon themselves to produce self similar forms at different levels and regions as well as to create 'harmonics' that change the status quo in semi-stable ways and which may drive a society to discontinuous change. In American culture, capitalism as macro-structure, affects and fashions micro- interpersonal relations in a diversity of realms, from recreation to romance, which in turn support (or resist) the larger structures of belief and action. At the individual level the notion of capitalism is continuously reinterpreted, producing a continuous revision of the 'reality' of the capitalism of any given day and age, region or locality. All this appears to make sociology a hopeless endeavor; but when one proceeds to the task at hand, it very soon resolves into fairly easy routine. We simply accept the very loose nature of 'structure' in sociology and, if we want more definite resolution--more visible facticity--we simply change scale and find it registered as macro-structure in phase space. What is process and highly variable in real time thus takes on much more solid shape and much more specific form in phase space. Structural Analysis A major obstacle to the democratization of social theory and postmodern emancipatory social research is the modernist view on 'structure.' Much of the animus of postmodernist critics is directed at both objective conceptual structures as well as objectively existent macro-societal structures, since personal action is difficult and/or discouraged by the determinism built into such views of structure. How we think, how we act, and how we feel are, presumably, preprogrammed or captured by these putatively natural structures variously called laws, stages, categories, essences, or social forms. In anthropology, L‚vi-Strauss had posited deep structures in mind and society which preorganized thought and action. Wertheimer, in building Gestalt theory, posited four grouping structures with which humans perceived the world. Husserl posited deep (eidetic) structures which constituted and preshaped human grasp of natural and social 'facts.' In sociology and in economics, a variety of modernists from Comte to Marx to Durkheim and Weber posited deep and enduring structures into which people were born; within which people acted and failed to act; from which people departed at their peril. In his philosophy of science, Kant posited 12 natural categories which guided empiric research and, being natural, did not contaminate pure reason. Comte, Spencer, Parsons, and today, neo-structuralists assume natural structures with which a value free scientist, using natural analytic categories, can build formal deductive theory that predicts indefinitely into the future. Peter Berger, in his Invitation to Sociology, (1963:5), advised the student that '...It is thus an act of pure perception...toward which sociology strives.' In such a sociological theory, the room for human agency is small while those who don't conform are seen to be deviants, genetic failures, psychological cripples, or, simply, mad. Since the 1960s, a new wave of structural critique, building upon the anti-positive critique, asserts a much more radically contaminated knowledge process and a much less knowable universe than that presumed by modern science. Lyotard, Foucault, Derrida, Baudrillard, and Gadamer, together with many others, have challenged intellectual grounds for sure, certain, and objective knowledge. In this critique, all certainties, all absolutes, all claims of objective truth are held to be partisan political agenda. In this critique sociology is impossible. The hopes of Comte, Stahl, Schelling, Durkheim, Parsons, and others for a grand integrated theory of society are dashed; even Merton with his more modest ambitions for middle range theory is abandoned. Nihilism and opportunism are refueled by such critique while progressive social action is subverted. Postmodern critique today denigrates structural analysis: the deep psychic structures of Freud as well as his psychodynamics are seen to resonate with the patriarchal and class bound culture from which he took his ideas. Marxian theory, grand and sweeping in its reach, assimilates and thus discounts far too much in the concept of class and class struggle. Postmodernists, looking at freudian, marxian, parsonian structural analysis, or even at that of Chomsky, Levˇ- Strauss, or Wertheimer, insist that realities are much too varied, far too complex and interconnected to support such 'totalizing' theories. Economic behavior is far too complex to support either Marx or Milton Friedman; political behavior too messy to support even the subtle analytic categories of Weber or simplistic categories of Mills; religious behavior too varied and ever changing to speak of a 'real' Christianity or of Christianity itself as a coherent whole. Traditional phenomenology, building on Kant, Hegel, Marx and Husserl posit natural categories for studying the world; categories which pre-exist human thought or desire. Postmodern phenomenology, after Saussure, sees all such concepts on which social theory is built arising out of diverse linguistic traditions, or after Wittgenstein, as arising out of the totality of the content in which such concepts appear--they have no natural affinity to 'that which really exists.' Chaos theory, emphasizing the incredible complexity and interconnectedness of all of nature grounds this postmodern phenomenology in ways that the hardest of scientists cannot ignore. In postmodern phenomenology, the number of 'natural' categories for guiding research is limited only by human imagination and human politics- -often quite elitist politics. Such a view is most liberating to the human spirit; however, absent structure; absent natural and stable concepts, prediction is impossible; and absent prediction, rational planning seems impossible. Hence, while on the one hand modern structures that seek 'perfect prediction' tend to ignore the creativity and dynamism that are the most human aspects of social life, on the other hand, radical postmodern perspectives which reject the irregular regularities found in nature and society simultaneously defeat efforts at theory construction and prediction. In short, both modern science and its quest for grand unified theory together with nihilistic versions of post-positivists, post- structuralists, and the postmodernists defeat the knowledge process. Sociology today is bereft of an anchor point with which to guide the specification of research hypotheses; bereft of grand theory with which to predict outcomes or to inform social policy. We offer a postmodern sociology informed by the new science of complexity often called Chaos theory. This new body of knowledge uses concepts entirely new to the knowledge process which serves the ancient quest for sure certain knowledge abandoned by nihilistic postmodernists while it grounds a postmodern knowledge process more subtle and more interconnected than possible in the analytic, reductionist format preferred by modern scientists. Basic to the postmodern phenomenology offered here is a view of structure much more subtle and more complex than either positivists or nihilists conceive. This version of phenomenology rides on the fractal geometry of nature and society. Human Agency In pre-modern knowledge processes, for the most part, human agency was subordinated to supernatural plans and power. In modern science, human agency is confined to compliance with natural/social law. One might use natural/social law to further the course of history in which some preset end-state is achieved but one could not alter the realities out there since they were beyond the touch of human will or desire. Refusal to conform to the Will of the Gods or to conform to historical necessity were, equally, evidence of madness and perversity. Postmodern phenomenology accommodates a much more active role for human beings in both the reality construction process and in the knowledge process which describes it. More than simply mirroring reality, postmodern phenomenology insists upon a dialectic relationship between knowledge and reality in which both change continuously and interdependently. Chaos theory adds to this postmodern theory of human agency by refusal to postulate an end state toward which all processed in nature and society tend. The Law of Evolution is reduced to a fuzzy statement about adaptation to an ever-changing environment (Gould, 1989). Young (1992a) suggests that there are regions in a complex nonlinear causal field in which creative human agency is possible and regions where it is much less so. For most of human history, human agency is subsumed to natural law...as the knowledge process developed, knowledge was used to reshape the world in which human beings live. With the advent of modern science in the 17th century, human agency grew enormously even if it were vested in the service of powerful lords and wealthy industrialists. Falsely convinced they were doing the Will of God or Nature, human beings built a world which could have been far different from what now is the case. Trapped in a knowledge paradigm which limited human agency to conformity to natural law, an entire knowledge industry expanded ignorant of its potentials and limitations. Today, when and if the knowledge paradigm becomes democratized, human agency will continue to expand. And given a globalized democracy, human agency just might be used to create a multi-faceted cultural complex which fits more comfortably in the environment than is now the case. The case made here is that sociology and the social sciences generally could play a much greater role in the reality creating process and, more than that, it could be a much more democratic role than is permitted than in either pre-modern, modern or pessimistic postmodern sensibility. Postmodern Phenomenology Postmodern emancipatory phenomenology in social science has its practical origins in the atheoretic resistance and rebellion of feminists, minorities, workers, populists, atheists, homosexuals, and others marginal to orthodox economics, religion, and politics. Even in the face of positive knowledge of the putatively natural (hence inevitable) categories of biology and society, these peoples strove for and continue to strive for more egalitarian and diverse relationships which, in formal, universalistic theory would be considered utopian in the worst sense; i.e., hopelessly irrational. Joining those who were/are marginalized as deviants by modern sociologists were a set of astructural but empirically astute sociologists in academia. Mead, Cooley, Blumer, Goffman, and others set forth a symbolic interactional paradigm in which people constructed their own social life worlds out of an inexhaustible supply of symbols. Together, they fashioned what is now called 'constructionism.' Constructionism acknowledges the role of thinking, hoping, striving, failing human beings in the creation of the social structures in which they lived out their lives. This view of social life was/is itself marginal to American sociology since it did not/can not provide the grand unified theory which is centerpoint to the Enlightenment project. Certainly it did not provide testable and falsifiable hypotheses which could be accumulated and linked together in a neat and elegant deductive system amenable to logical positivism. Those who listen to Mead, Cooley, and Blumer today think in such terms as the self-fulfilling prophecy, the looking-glass process, social reaction theory, the labelling process, and the significant symbol. They appreciate the role which sentient human beings play in the construction of each other as significant others, in the construction of situated occasions with rare genius and insight. They appreciate the vast panoply of social control tactics built into the socialization process, into the self system, and into the very architecture of social institutions and of physical buildings. These control tactics help engineer the very social forms which are held to be prior to and independent of human agency. Those who studied the history of labor movements, feminist struggles, anti-colonial rebellions, as well as the long history of civil rights could see human agency at work before their eyes even in the face of raw power. Anthropologists contributed much to a theory of human agency with concepts of culture, 'rites of passage,' and cultural 'themes.' Events of the 60s were epochal to theoretical speculations on human agency in academic sociology. The women's, civil rights, and student power movements changed the face of academia in Europe and the USA. Today, the children of the 60s go everywhere, teach everywhere, and everywhere oppose academic norms, values, and paradigms which privilege an Euro-centric and patriarchal sociology. Given the pejorative term of 'political correctness' by those who presume the political correctness of their own knowledge process (Richardson, 1991), postmodern emancipatory phenomenology has been forged and is displacing the newtonian, classical, Enlightenment paradigm in American universities. Post-positivists and post-structuralists together with symbolic interactionists, feminists, third world peoples, and minority groups have shown the radically human character of the putatively natural analytic categories and natural structures of modernist social science. Given a postmodern phenomenology, the operative question becomes, 'which categories of analysis will be used in social science and what politics inform them?' In the Enlightenment project, the politics were to be those of a scientific elite floating near the top of a highly stratified social pyramid under a false presumption of value free politics, usually under the banner of 'rationality'. In emancipatory phenomenology, the political project is to set theory as democratic discourse oriented to value full politics. II. REINVENTING SOCIOLOGY Given the fractal nature of social reality and the irregular opportunities for human agency, the question then becomes, how does one do emancipatory postmodern sociology? A recent issue of Sociological Theory invited several people to respond to a seminal essay by Steve Seidman. Seidman (1991:131) had called for more social theories which are connected to 'public moral and political debates and social conflicts' and the abandonment of a quest for formal axiomatic theory. He held up Marx, Weber, and Durkheim as exemplars of those who gave us 'social narrative with a moral content.' In response, Jeffrey Alexander (1991:147) said that social reality stands outside of (mere) discourse and has a factual content even if Marx, Weber, and Durkheim had politics as well. Robert Antonio (1991:154) held that scholars are bound by 'truth' seeking norms and that storytelling has but limited utility in social theory. Antonio sees postmodern critique as a continuation of the Enlightenment rather than a disruption and urges American sociology to build upon it. Laurel Walum Richardson (1991:173) sees all sociologists as engineers 'lusting in our theorizing hearts to shape the ongoing course of history.' Richardson goes on to offer a brief treatise on current sociological theory as an edifice built upon the engineering metaphor. In her response to Seidman, Richardson goes outside of the 'bounds' of sociology to think about how sociology fits in the larger knowledge process and how other pathways to knowledge can complement postmodern sensibility. She points to the way in which good sociology can be written in other forms. She mentions poetry and storytelling. We would add that some of the best sociology may also be seen/read/heard in cinema, song, dance, art, religion, tee shirts, and, sometimes, politics. Poetry has much in common with good science. It captures the themes of an age in parsimonious language; at its best, it is elegant and enduring and it offers a clarity of vision which reaches the most profound depths of human understanding for those who take the time to consider its patterns and rhythms. Charles Lemert, in his gentle and wide sweeping wisdom (1991:164), recounts the history of the knowledge process in sociology, and then suggests we go about doing what we do best-- making sense and doing good. Lemert offers an interesting twist to the end of history thesis; he says now that we understand all is ideology, ideology is dead. By that he means that ideology can no longer parade as universal truth. Any sociologist honest to the knowledge process must declare her/his political agenda and announce its metaphor and go on about helping make the world over in whatever image s/he can justify. Such a view permits of a much larger role for a sociology informed by human values and desire. Endemic in postmodern scholarship is the assumption that every act or endeavor has political, interest-full underpinnings. Social science, too, is driven by such interests, interests which discredit its usual claim of value-free objectivity. One who does social science may well try very hard to remain 'objective' in the immediate research endeavor but in the selection of research topics, in the choice of variables, in the selection of research instruments and in decision of research subjects, a researcher is pulled and pushed by cultural values and political necessities. Still more, in the use of research results, is the knowledge process embedded in the larger political economy. All this politicizes the modern science knowledge process even without allegations of 'false consciousness,' 'researcher bias,' or 'self-deception' aimed at the individual researcher. One can not escape a value orientation; a larger intellectual honesty calls for one to deconstruct and consciously direct such orientation of her/his own research. Another consideration that leads many postmodernists to view social science as interest full is derivative of a broadened definition of what comprises 'social science,' or science altogether. In Science in Action, Bruno Latour (1987) suggests that sciences that are not located within a larger social, economic, organizational, praxical web of influence and interaction are without significance or efficacy. Technically, unused knowledge is 'noise in the system.' Science itself is social activity, and likewise political, including the science that takes society as its point of focus. Postmodern social science looks both at the interests of practitioners of science; interests in reproducing and rewarding itself. As it comes to grip with the meaning and significance of the diversity of interests within society, it will likewise take a new look at itself. Many 'partisan' or 'parochial' sociologies may emerge, each taking basic assumptions and a strategic course of investigation based on partisan beliefs or preferences. If such were to occur, it would likely follow a pattern toward a more distinctly plural society, as otherwise there would be no social context nor political economy to 'support' the new sciences. The logic of the Richardson response is a call for a multifaceted knowledge process in which the totalizing eye of grand unified theory is replaced by myriad eyes, voices, and bodies, none of which are given a monopoly over truth, insight, understanding, explanation, or discourse. Her views resonates well with Chaos theory in that this new science of complexity supports a polycentric knowledge process with contrarieties, partial truth values, and limited theoretical horizons of the sort implicit in postmodernity. Affirmative Postmodern Critique There are affirmative varieties of postmodern understanding which can ground systematic and disciplined research; varieties of useful and value full knowledge with which social policy can be guided. Many in postmodern critique take the view that human agency can build social structures anew. In so doing, ancient reifications of privilege and oppression can be replaced by a knowledge process in which the relationship between social structure and human agency is made visible and made democratic. Quentin Skinner (1985) [1990] reviews more affirmative ways to interpret and use the work of postmodern critics. If we follow Gadamer, Skinner says, one can do social science as 'text;' certainty is not possible but a 'fusion of horizons' is possible (1985:7). If we follow on with Derrida, one engages a certain 'radical hermeneutics' with which one can contribute to understanding and interpretation of the age in which we live (1985:44). Skinner also reserves a place for Foucault in the quest for social theory, which if not grand is at least respectable: Foucault gives us a credible version of a social history in which we became human subjects, subject to human power and human law more so than as objects of impersonal scientific analysis (Skinner, 1985:68). Pauline Rosenau (1991) offers a very lucid survey of an emancipatory postmodernism among activists, New Age groups, marxists, and post-marxists. Rosenau (:179) quotes Heller who suggests that the barrier between the subject and the object of research be erased. She cites Pratt (:179) who recommends that postmodern social scientists 'go among the people' and simply let them 'speak for themselves.' Throughout, Rosenau highlights the divide that exists between 'skeptical' and 'affirmative' postmodern thinking and warns one away from rejecting all since some is nihilistic and contemptuous of grand totalizing theories. Most traditional critics of modern sociology as well as skeptical postmodernists themselves would agree that social theory is limited to, as Antonio put it, 'a subversive strategy for decentering and deconstructing' every fact as interpretation, every perspective as a precursor to power' (1991:155). Postmodern critics see structuralist sociology as foundational to the omnipotent state. Preoccupied with the desire for 'modern' structures and given its preference for rationality, the state demands compliance with its policies to institutionalize high technology; formal organizations monitor every human act and intervene promptly to constrain what they consider to be deviant or 'irrational' acts. Under such a regime, the peculiarity of the majority or dominant minority is often the only position that is not generally held as 'peculiar' or deviant. Postmodern sensibility, on the other hand, delights in diversity in recognizing the ubiquity of difference. Another possible way to do sociology in the 21st century is to take it out of academia and privatize it in for-profit research institutes, not-for-profit public interest groups, and self-help publishing endeavor. Given the multi-billion dollar budgets of multi-national corporations, privatization of the knowledge process is seen as a dismantling of state power which further exacerbates class privilege. Public interest groups, representing everybody, thus represent nobody and therefore have no constituency with which to oppose the institutionalization of rationality in the production of goods and services...a rationalization predicated upon private profit. Absent state power on behalf of the other, concentration of wealth, degradation of the environment, colonization of desire to consumer goods, subversion of democratic politics, as well as the secularization of human behavior present themselves as a common future. Reinventing sociology in a postmodern emancipatory modality requires a radically democratic phenomenology in which perceptual/conceptual categories are understood to be human products in the first instance. At the same time, postmodern phenomenology acknowledges the reciprocal role which such constructed social forms play in preshaping perception, conception, and, subsequently, human activity. In the sections which follow, we wish to reject that version of phenomenology represented by Husserl, Levˇ-Strauss, and Wertheimer which posits some set of natural categories in mind, self, or society which, in turn, preshape social activity to some one given pattern. Instead, we offer the more nuanced and politicized phenomenology grounded, above, on this new science of complexity. Social Theory as Democratic Discourse Mark Wardell and Anna Zajicek (1992) explore the prospect for a sociology which fits within a democratic discourse. The Wardell/Zajicek agenda, supported here, suggests that it is possible to reinvent academic sociology in a way which avoids both the nihilism of skeptical postmodernity and that of totalizing and externalizing grand unified theory of modern science oriented to the state as Leviathan. Such a route involves a radical democratization of the knowledge process in which sociology serves both the information needs and the emancipatory interests of a variety of publics and private interest groups. It respects the critique of both the German post-positivists as well as affirmative postmodernists such as Seidman, Richardson, Lemert, and Antonio, while it accepts the agenda for empowerment to which Wardell and his colleagues invite American sociologists. A major working assumption of emancipatory postmodern phenomenology, taken over from Marx and others, is that human agency increases as the technology used to mediate nature and society improves. However, the location of human agency is dependent upon the social relations of production. In postmodern emancipatory phenomenology, democratic relations to the means of production of knowledge are requisite to human agency and thus emancipation. There are two dimensions to postmodern emancipatory sociology offered here: the first is designed to create social research as democratic discourse in face to face relationships. The second is oriented to a more macro-structural research endeavor which takes the fractal structures of Chaos theory as its centering topic. In elitist societies; slave, feudal, class society, or bureaucratic socialist society, knowledge technologies tend to serve the ideological and control needs of the resident elite. At present, market dynamics shape the knowledge process and, even with the many virtues of market scholarship, still it tends to reinforce privilege. In a global economy, that responsibility expands to international social science research capacities. In these days, transnational corporations with multi-billion dollar budgets tend to absorb scholarship (as well as human agency) to their own interests while the nation-state enters the knowledge market to manage and regulate more than enquire and empower. In order to build a more democratic society, knowledge technology, including sociology, must expand to serve the information and ideological needs of those sectors of the social order passed over in elitist societies locally and globally. The postmodern emancipatory sociology offered here builds upon the findings of Chaos theory explicated in prior essays cited above. In a postmodern sociology oriented to democratic discourse at the micro-societal level, one uses grounded research cited below. But micro-processual change does not inevitably produce macro-structural change. To enhance a more encompassing human agency at the macro-structural level, one uses the usual techniques of systematic data collection and data analysis developed in modern sociology; one attempts to identify key parameters of a social formation, gauge their proximity to bifurcation points, and help evaluate social policy which is oriented to the differing ratios of uncertainty found in the very different outcome basins discussed below. This labor generates the positive knowledge of whole social orders; the kind of positive knowledge which Habermas sets as a precondition for emancipatory knowledge. Knowledge from the chaos paradigm is 'positive' in many ways, but is neither as totalizing nor constraining as was that of the Enlightenment project of modern science. Without a democratized knowledge process, however, Chaos theory itself is powerless to protect the diversities it so deftly identifies, describes, and relates. These two research capacities together, one related to direct and situated intervention and action for particular sets of persons and one oriented to more collective policy purpose and discourse, are designed to augment human agency. These capacities are far different from those anticipated by Bacon, Newton, Descartes, Comte, and Durkheim who supposed that Reason, informed by careful observation, could be used to identify the unchanging laws of society to which compliance was both sensible and desirable. Over time, Reason itself has come to be seen as a multifarious phenomenon, eluding universal interpretation. Absent iron laws of society; given only the logics of specific social relations adopted and enforced by human activity, the political question becomes whose agency is to shape social realities? Whose 'reason' is to be the reason of the land? It is this question to which a postmodern phenomenology must speak if social science is to speak in a democratic voice. III. POSTMODERN ACTION RESEARCH The first part of the work below builds upon a rich tradition in American sociology in which action, advocacy, participation, and conflict research are fashioned on behalf of the poor and the powerless. It is oriented to specific groups in a situated community; office, factory, city, school, church, or hospital who themselves issue demands without the benefit of formal research. The point of such research is to help build a social life world with infinite centers, infinitely rich detail, and infinite length across the hills and valleys of time. The second part considers the architecture and architects of social structure from the perspective of a postmodern phenomenology. Among the more accessible and developed participatory research protocols for situated social action, the work of the following is helpful: 1. Argyris, Chris Intervention Theory and method 2. Brown, L.D. Participatory Research Design 3. Hall, B. I. Participatory Research Design 4. Lincoln and Guba Naturalist Research 5. Laue, J. Advocacy Sociology 6. Rappaport, J. Empowerment/Prevention 7. Spradley, James P. Ethnographic Interviewing 8. Strauss and Corbin Grounded theory 9. Rowan, J. Dialectic Research Paradigms 10. Tandon, R. Empowerment Research 11. Young, T. R. Conflict Methodology 12. Young and Comstock Intersubjective Research Design Postmodern Emancipatory Research Protocol Two research protocol are presented below; first there is an orthodox research design built upon the ontological and epistemological assumptions of modern science: i.e., that there is a stable set of universal laws which can be identified through a method of successive approximations based upon empirical and objective observation. The second column in Table I below presumes that social forms are constructed, are infinitely variable, and that those who live within those social forms have the right to determine, collectively and intersubjectively, what future forms shall be constituted. [Protocol below, about here] Part II. Fieldwork Guidelines to Postmodern Emancipatory Phenomenology 1. Choose a site (domain) in which the information needs of a(n) suppressed/oppressed group are not met. For emancipatory sociology, it could be: a. a given social practice in a factory, school, or office b. a status role (having two components: self and others) in which there are power inequalities c. a social occasion (church service, sports event, party) in which one sector of the population is excluded from full participation d. a social institution (i.e., family, firm, team, congregation, high school, office, or company) in which programs, policies, or practices privilege one group over another e. a political economy (the USA, the European Common Market, the Ik, the Tupermaros, the Chippewa) in which one group is privileged in law, politics, or policing of economic processes f. a process (socialization, sanctioning, election campaigns, therapy, recessions, or discrimination) in which one group is excluded from full and equitable participation Which ever domain one chooses to research, other domains of the same kind ('categories' in grounded research) become either comparison domains to which you might extend action research or from which you might get ideas for action... or parallel domains which can be used to ascertain external factors which prestructure responses in each different research setting. 2. Identify the analytic concepts and map out the 'shells' of meaning created and used by each party in the research domain at hand with which they, themselves, explain or deconstruct the conflict at hand. Do not give preference to any given shell of meaning since all are, equally, human constructs, else the research is reduced to ideology (in the sense used by Lemert (1991)). In postmodern phenomenology, there is no one 'correct' interpretation to be found; certainly not that of those most privileged by existing relations. 3. Search the literature, the minds of key persons, the files, and the public record for background material with which to deconstruct (Derrida) or provide a genealogy (Foucault) of the situation (text for Barthes) at hand. What larger social facts shape the present occasion?; what hidden agendas, what tacit agreements or outside pressures/interests are at work? Marxists would refer to the larger political economy; feminists to patriarchy; others to racism, mass society, or hyper-reality as the genealogy of the activity under observation. 4. Look for inequalities in four kinds of power resources (below); be sure to look at the diffuse forms of power of which Foucault speaks (b. and d.) which legitimate inequality and give oppression a gloss of legitimacy: a. economic power: funds, semi-monopolies, property rights to public goods b. social power: role relationships, stratification systems, status grades, exclusionary social differentiations c. physical power: police, armies, weaponry, physical size d. moral power: law, 'public' policy, religion, rules, orders, commands, directives and opinion issued by traditional or charismatic authority; in modern science, knowledge and expert testimony take on moral authority 5. After looking about, talking with, and mulling over the internal dynamics, one makes preliminary grounded hypotheses (grounded in that particular setting) about power relations and stratified rights to construct social realities. Relationships between basic concepts yield situated theory. One then tests them against social facts at hand; one asks knowledgeable others to critique them. 6. Develop strategies using such working hypotheses to change policies, programs, practices. Bring as many power resources as are available to bear in slow and careful fashion. Generally, moral power is inalienable and can be used to generate social opinion. 7. Ask participants/informants and/or knowledgeable others to help gauge progress and/or adequacy of these hypotheses after action/intervention begins. If successful in getting change, working hypotheses are thus confirmed or discarded; modify, revise these hypotheses as needed. 8. Write up/present a report to serve as a point of departure for similarly situated others. If one is making a report back to the people from whom the data came, one would make slides, video documentary, charts, or other visual aids to help them understand what is helpful or obstructive to solving personal troubles. Make it clear that the purpose of the research and the report is to empower people and to guide (not lead) them toward the solution of their own problems. Postmodern emancipatory research locates moral responsibility in the agency of the people concerned; not in the social scientist as such, nor in the 'organic intellectuals' (Gramsci) who reproduce existing social relationships in school, media, religion, politics, or science itself. Such peoples probably 'know' the problems and can conceptualize them excellently well; they will also provide a genealogy for such problems with very little encouragement. They may not realize the internal resources available. They may not know external sources of support (laws, funds, support groups). Whatever the case, it is unlikely that the social scientists will always have the interest at heart of the workers, students, prisoners, patients, or other excluded group since they do not live in the same social life world; since the researcher can always withdraw to a kinder, gentler social life world. POSTMODERN PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE The 'principles' of Chaos theory (really summary statements of a lot of diverse research) have several quite important implications for postmodern philosophy of science generally, postmodern sociology in particular, and postmodern politics more particularly. In thinking about these implications, keep in mind that Chaos theory is a mathematically grounded study of the changing ratio between order and disorder. While modern science gives privilege to order, this new science of complexity does not. In fact, disorder turns out to have several survival advantages over disorder; it offers flexibility to existing conditions; offers capacity to adapt to changing conditions and it allows a system to undergo spontaneous self reorganization of quite surprising form. Nonlinear heart beat has been shown to be very important to accommodate change in physical activity. Nonlinear Brain waves is thought to be helpful to creative thinking. The same flexibility is of great value to social policy in an ever- changing social and natural environment. Perhaps the most interesting point upon which to focus is the fact that there are several dynamical states in which order is predominant over disorder. The first two regimes, that of the point attractor and that of the limit attractor are more typical of manufactured systems (cars, trains, planes, computers) than for natural and social systems. There are two generic attractor fields (the torus and any field with more than 2n and fewer than 32n basins) which contain sufficient order such that reliable statements of fact are possible; they are typical of natural and social systems. The torus begins the contest between order and disorder in that, while the outcome basin itself can be sharply delineated, the path of any given system on the surface of such a torus cannot be predicted. Since self-similarity is the ruling regime for most of the outcome basins this side of full chaos, most of the canons of modern science and most of the techniques of quantification as well as estimates of validity, reliability, and significance remain useful notwithstanding the continuing phenomenological point that such structures are a product of human agency more so than that of God or Nature. It is within these regimes that one finds the possibility of valid theoretical statements of the sort Alexander (1990) and Antonio (1991) call for. Another interesting point which can help ground postmodern social science is that the number of outcomes and size of a basin of outcomes for any given system increase as bifurcations in key parameters occur. This means that causality changes with each transition of one dynamical state to another. The more outcome basins (called attractors), the more regions between them. It is in these regions that uncertainty is greatest. In Chaos theory, such a finding means that a given set of persons with similar initial conditions may have very different fates and that the fate of persons, firms, or economies caught in the margins between attractors is very uncertain indeed. Any research effort which happens to sample regions between attractors and, correctly, returns estimates of no significant connection between variables is not, by that fact, capable of falsification. A great many epistemological tools, valuable to well ordered systems, lose their efficacy as the ratio between order and disorder increases. In modern science, similar initial conditions produced similar outcomes; in Chaos theory, similar initial conditions can produce similar results in one dynamic state and very different results in another. Causality is very tight in a point attractor and a limit attractor. Linear connections still dominate an outcome field in the torus and in the famous butterfly attractor. But as a system or a set of systems move from 2n outcome basins to 4n, 8n and 16n outcome basins, 'linear causality' hence predictability occupy progressively smaller portions of the total outcome field. After the third bifurcation of key parameters, when ever deeper chaos develops, causality becomes very uncertain and prediction becomes impossible. However, to the extent that rationality requires sure and certain knowledge, it is still possible to be rational(Young, 1992a). Postmodern Methodology If a theory is to be truly grounded in reality and if realities are fractal and discontinuous as chaos findings suggest, then replicability, predictability, falsification, cumulativity, and generalizability have only partial and temporary utility as epistemological tools. A theory building in which one accumulates low order hypotheses and connects them with formal logic toward a grand unified theory is entirely discredited by chaos research; all one finds in the outcome field in phase-space are ever changing and expanding outcome basins with more or less stable dynamics within a given outcome basin and considerably less predictability between outcome basins. If grand unified theory is not to be the mission of the knowledge process, the possibility opens up to include social justice as mission for postmodern social science. Yet social justice itself is a very human concept. Part of the task for emancipatory phenomenology is to work out a way of grounding the concept of social justice in such a way as to empower and enable the present generation without pre‰mpting the future--indeed, in such a way as to benefit following generations; in such a way as to respect cultural diversity without endorsing the many forms of inequality; in such a way as to answer the human need for pattern and certainty on the one side and, on the other, the human need for creativity, flexibility, and, yes, even chaos in the lay sense of the word. Both Chaos theory and postmodern phenomenology can serve as a basis for the reinvention of such a sociology for the 21st century. Neither offer a specific mission nor give preference to a given method for the knowledge process. Both affirm the role of the acting subject in creating the objects of knowledge as well as the tactics of the knowledge process and, in that affirmation, offer the possibility but not the necessity of a social science in which human agency and social facts are reunited. Indeed, Chaos theory reunites all the sciences while postmodern critique descries every effort to privilege any given science. 'Let the interregnum reign,' it shouts. Yet Chaos theory supports the view that there are, in fact, structures, however they came into existence, which shape the behavior of members of a system. It is this contest between order and disorder, between human agency and structural necessity, between fact and value to which Chaos theory and postmodern critique together speak so forcibly. There are many more implications for postmodern social sciences buried in the findings of Chaos theory. Some of these are relevant for theories of social change (Young, 1991a) and some for the nature of symbolic interaction (1991b). Most generally, however, it is true that there is enough certainty in the patterns of uncertainty revealed by chaos research to generate grounded but historically bounded statements of fact; there is enough uncertainty to surprise and confound those of us who prefer routine and delight those of us who want social change. Policy and Science It was Kant who said, 'dare to know.' The challenge of knowledge in the Enlightenment was the capacity of modern science for rational human agency. Yet the kind of rationality permitted by universal law was/is not much more enabling and empowering than that permitted by Divine Law. In both, human beings must defer to authority or be considered mad or evil. Chaos theory offers a certain short-term rationality in which limited and time-bound intervention into both social and natural processes is possible (Young, 1992a). Structural analysis in chaos research can be used to identify the fractal structures of health, poverty, crime, gender, or whatever is of interest to a society. It can be used to identify key parameters and to advise a society on the point at which the ratio between order and disorder is about to change. It can test to see whether a loose torus is better for child rearing than a tight torus. It can be used to check whether a 4n outcome basin is more helpful to fiscal policy or whether an 8n outcome basin might be better. Chaos theoreticians cannot impose solutions upon a society. Since most social processes are collective products, collective action is required to change them. All chaos research can hope to do is to identify key points at which change is least costly and human agency most efficacious. Chaos theory does not lend itself to notions of deviancy and control as does the Enlightenment view of theory. Rather, fractal structures may have infinite centers, infinite length, and infinite detail. There is no natural end or center in the social and natural dynamics discovered by chaos research nor is there a 'telos' toward which all social evolution is perforce headed. The number of present futures available depend upon the dynamical regime at hand, but the universe of possible futures is infinite. On this point, Chaos theory is most congenial to postmodern sensibility. Chaos theory argues against a discipline oriented to grand unified theory. In fact, it is doubtful that more modest hopes such as those of Merton for theories of the middle range, can be realized. The truth value of what is found in chaos research is fractal, historical, varies with region sampled in an outcome field, and varies with scale of observation. Such findings do not support the idea that one can find a proposition at any range in social life that is true for all time for a given set of parameters. Whatever stability is found in Chaos theory, it is to be found in the propositions of the paradigm; not of any social theory based upon its research. For those who need a theory in order to do postmodern sociology, Chaos theory offers a sophisticated and liberating multiparadigmatic envelope with which to anchor and to guide the research process. Others will carry on as humans have always done; with mule-headed refusal to conform and in pursuit of the unusual and with sheer genius in the discovery of new possibilities. Protocol for Postmodern Phenomenological & Emancipatory Research Adapted from Comstock (1980). REFERENCES Alexander, J.C. 1990. Beyond the Epistemological Dilemma: Giving up the Post-positive Ghost. Sociological Forum. V.5:531-544. December. Antonio, Robert. 1991. Postmodern Storytelling versus Pragmatic Truth-seeking: The Discursive Basis of Social Theory. Sociological Theory. V.9:2. Fall. Argyris, C. 1970. Intervention Theory and Method. Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley. 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