Sat, 8 Oct 1994 18:51:32 -0700 for Date: Sat, 08 Oct 94 21:47:24 EDT From: Steve Harvey Subject: sociology and personal experience To: SOCGRAD@UCSD.EDU Date: Sat, 08 Oct 94 21:17:14 EDT From: Steve Harvey Subject: Re: Molotch To: David Gibson ======================================================================== Thanks to David for the interesting post, but, without having read the article which catalyzed the discussion, I'm still in disagreement with a lot of the David's observations. I very much disagree that depth and breadth of experience is either neutral or counterproductive to "doing sociology" (or science, art, or philosophy of any kind). The pitfalls of casual observation, and the inevitable misconceptions and biases we all carry within us as a result, is partially mitigated by diversity of experience. One develops a better sense of what constitutes the particular, and what constitutes the general, for instance (or, more precisely, the dispersion of aspects of events along a continuum from particularity to generality). And, as a person also with a "rich biography", I can attest that it does not inevitably lead to an atheoretical relativism, as it did with your Dutch friend. I consider the relativistic aspect of the world to be amenable to abstract generalizations of a subtler sort than "in all times and places, event A happens thusly...." And, though neither our specific nor general assertions are ever "absolutely true", they are useful abstractions, either for their mathematical precision or their poetic evocativeness. So, five years of overseas travel, stints on communes and kibbutzim, an army tour of duty, work in child care and nursing home care and sales, factory work and field (agricultural) work, have not deprived me of my willingness to theorize. "If something is true statistically" it may indeed escape casual observation, but the more one casually observes, the more likely that it _will not_ escape casual observation (this is the nature of statistical likelihoods). So, since we all have casually formed frameworks _within which_ and _from which_ we launch ourselves into scientific endeavors (and rightly try, with imperfect success, to suspend our casually formed framework in the process), isn't it better to have a casually formed framework that is based on a broader spectrum of observations? That is, after all, the jist of statistical controls: To discern that which would be discernable given enough observations (but through the use of controls that reduce the number of actual observations required to achieve a certain degree of confidence). I'm not saying that counterproductive biases don't creep into perspectives born of rich biographies; just that, all else being held equal, a rich biography is more informative than a narrower one. It better enables one to hold more perspectives simultaneously, which is one vital element of an active sociological imagination. Steve Harvey harvey@uconnvm ======================================================================== 6 LINE 1 %DATE LINE 2 %FROMEND %FROM LINE 3 %SUBJ LINE 4 %IDEND %IDSTART LINE 6 %DIV LINE 46 V920104 %RESUME Re: Molotch 6 24 7 1 0 0 0 46