Building sociological knowledge within and across disciplinary boundaries: megalomania vs. modesty?

Abstract

Interdisciplinarity in sociology, with the aim of integrating sociological and other disciplines’ knowledge of social phenomena, may take two directions. One is so-called “intradisciplinary interdisciplinarity”. Its goal is to build up a complex and all-encompassing theory of society and kindred phenomena within sociology itself. Some examples taken from works by Gurvitch, Bourdieu and Ritzer illustrate this strategy together with its strengths and weaknesses. The other strategy is interdisciplinary in a standard sense. This strategy limits the relevance of sociological knowledge, as it moves across disciplinary boundaries and brings sociology into cooperation with other disciplines and their theories, usually through empirical research. Some examples are taken from historical sociology, ethnic relations studies and studies on transition to illustrate the characteristics of the strategy, including its strengths and weaknesses. In conclusion, two explanations are offered for the strategic bifurcation of sociology. One explanation refers to different cognitive cultures that inhabit sociology, and the other to some ideological patterns moving different strategies towards interdisciplinarity. Finally, the epistemological results of the strategies are evaluated in terms of the pluralism of basically incommensurable epistemological orientations in sociology.

Keywords:

• sociology
• interdisciplinarity
• multiparadigmatic theories
• interdisciplinary research
• cognitive cultures
• ideological influences

Notes

1. This amplitude of sociological ambition may be illustrated in terms of Steinmetz's three forms of interdisciplinarity: (1) the annexation of one discipline by another, a situation that is analogous to colonialism; (2) non-hegemonized systems of equal disciplines analogous to the Westphalian state system; and (3) non-imperial “traveling” and transculturation among disciplines analogous to the practices of inhabitants of weak or declining imperial states (Steinmetz 2007). It seems that, as practised in the first strategy described in this article, sociology has or had the ambition to capture much from other disciplines, and in the other strategy it seems to experience, sometimes at least, the reverse outcome, i.e. to be captured by some other disciplines.

2. Nowadays, particularly in the context of social sciences study in Europe with the advent of the Bologna system of study at universities, such a monodisciplinary education in sociology seems outdated. Nevertheless, a multidisciplinary study or sociology combined with other subjects need not necessarily contribute to the (extensive) integration of sociological knowledge or the knowledge of society in general (as indirectly suggested, for instance, by Meyer 2007, and by Rhoten and Parker 2004), for it does not guarantee that students in a multidisciplinary study will better understand the complexity of social phenomena than in the case of studying sociology on the basis of a multiparadigmatic perspective such as Bourdieu's.

3. Nevertheless, the issue as to how much the system theory, whether general or sociological, is mono- or even polyparadigmatic, and in which specific ways is linked to Ritzer's version of the general theory in sociology, goes beyond the scope of this article.

4. This is a breaking point in sociology that Mouzelis has appositely described as a transition from the substantive theory, such as Parsonsian, to a more modest theoretical genre that he terms a conceptual framework and that consists of “the formulation of some interesting questions” (of course, adaptable to the procedures of empirical research, i.e. falsification) (Mouzelis 1995). Nevertheless, it remains debatable as to whether the search for the answers to the “interesting questions” can lead anywhere but to embracing a theory or a set of, more or less, different theories. For further discussion of this issue, see the next section.

5. The “revisionists” originate from sociology or historical sociology and some other disciplines as well, such as history or economic history, economics and geography. They commonly maintain that the West and the East were equally developed in terms of the economy and technology until sometime around 1800, but then, the argument runs, the West made a breakthrough, basically because it was “lucky” with the climate, accessibility of resources (e.g. British coal) and with the fact that the European colonies in Africa and the Third World were within proximal predatory range. In other words, there was no long-term specific development in the West, which predated, and respectively caused, its nineteenth-century ascendancy (cf. Bryant 2006).

6. An interesting question might be whether the theorizing pertinent to interdisciplinary research is akin to Robert Merton's idea of the “middle-range theory”. However, this issue is beyond the scope of this article because it seems to be much more complicated than it may look at first glance, especially because Merton rejects the idea of theories as empirical generalizations. Yet, in this case, the ethnic conflict explanation, as well as in the path dependency of historical sociology, it is clear that the explanations are strictly based on empirical analysis, as they do not want to take the risk of making non-empirical generalizations. Is empirical research, then, as Merton himself warned, a way towards the “Balkanization” of sociology? (cf. Amassari 1998).

7. Here I disagree with Berger et al .'s positioning of (neo)institutionalism (polity model) exclusively among sociological “theoretical research programmes” (Berger et al. 2005), for it is, like rational choice or path dependency, situated somewhere in between sociology, history, economics and political science. In any case, the theoretical language of neo-institutionalism is evidently inter- and multidisciplinary and, of course, as such much less generous with theoretical generalizations.

8. So far, unlike transdisciplinary climate research, for example, in which specific sciences do not weaken their disciplinary structure, for they have entered into the common research enterprise in a later phase of their disciplinary development (cf. Lenhard et al. 2006) – and the participant sciences are mature, i.e. natural, sciences, which are much older and more developed than social sciences – it still seems to be too early for sociology, as a younger science, to enter into transdisciplinary research without risking abandoning its disciplinary structure, either theoretically or methodologically.

9. On difficulties with generalizing about revolutions on the basis of comparative analyses and departures from various theories and disciplines, see Goldstone (2001).