Towards the Sociology of Truth (Continuum Studies in Education)

Towards the Sociology of Truth

Also available from Continuum Sociology of Knowledge and Education, Rob Moore Educational Attainment and Society, Nigel Kettley Education and Community, Dianne Gereluk Meritocracy, Citizenship and Education, John Beck

Towards the Sociology of Truth

Rob Moore

Continuum International Publishing Group The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane 11 York Road Suite 704 London SE1 7NX New York NY 10038 www.continuumbooks.com © Rob Moore 2009 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Rob Moore has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN:

978-1-8470-6228-4 (hardcover)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Moore, Rob, 1946Towards the sociology of truth / Rob Moore. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-1-84706-228-4 (hardcover) 1. Knowledge, Sociology of. 2. Educational sociology. I. Title. HM651.M66 2009 306.43–dc22

Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India Printed and bound in Great Britain by

2009002788

I dedicate this book to my great good friend Mike Hickox for many things over many years.

This page intentionally left blank

Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction: Being Sociological about Knowledge: Setting the Agenda

viii 1

Chapter 1: Knowledge, culture(s) and Culture

17

Chapter 2: Schismatism, the Pursuit of Difference and the Tradition of the New

40

Chapter 3: The Arbitrary and the Absolute

63

Chapter 4: New Times

89

Chapter 5: Getting Real – in media res

120

Conclusion

152

Notes

154

Bibliography

158

Index

163

Acknowledgments

As always, I must thank my friend and colleague, John Beck, who has kindly read the draft of each chapter and provided me with his always excellent advice. Karl Maton, Joe Muller and Michael Young have also provided much needed advice and support. More generally, I have benefited greatly from the stimulus created by the growing international network of ‘social realism’ in the sociology of education and from the discussions that took place at the first international symposium in Homerton College, Cambridge in July 2008. I would like to thank the College for supporting this event. My colleagues and students, both doctoral and undergraduate, in the Cambridge Faculty of Education and in Homerton College are a constant source of challenging and stimulating debate. I also thank the Faculty for the period of study leave in 2008 in which I completed the bulk of this work. Mike Hickox has provided a constant stream of encouragement and incisive observations and suggestions.

Introduction

Being Sociological about Knowledge: Setting the Agenda

To the extent that we lose a sense of the value of truth, we shall certainly lose something and may well lose everything. Bernard Williams It is said that science will dehumanise people and turn them into numbers. This is false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods. Jacob Bronowski

Introduction The two quotes above, in juxtaposition, vividly announce the central concern of this book. The fact that Bronowski was a well-known scientist is significant because it is precisely the scientific version of truth that has come in for so much criticism from the relativizing forms of postmodernism that I attempt to refute below. Bronowski’s words give weight to Williams’ warning. This introductory chapter provides a distillation of the major themes and issues of the book. It aspires to present a clear summary of the things that are explored in greater depth and detail in the chapters that follow and to indicate why these things are seen as needing to be addressed in the way that they are. The core concern is with what is involved in being sociological about knowledge. It is argued that too often this has been done in a onesided manner that tends towards forms of reductionism that account for

2

Towards the Sociology of Truth

knowledge entirely in terms of the standpoints, experiences and interests held to be those of the groups constructing the knowledge. Knowledge is accounted for in terms of external interests and power relations. This approach tends towards relativism because knowledge is not treated as having intrinsic properties internal to it as knowledge. Accounts of knowledge are thoroughly externalist in character. A further consequence of this is that debates about knowledge then become highly ideologized and political. This condition is reflected in the so-called culture and science ‘wars’. The key argument below is that this chronically acrimonious situation is based in an illusion. Rather than there being an irreconcilable divide between those realists who wish to defend knowledge in a strong sense and those constructionists who seek to relativize it, there is an internal relationship between the two positions. The latter necessarily presupposes the former while formally denying its possibility. Recognizing this antinomy allows for knowledge to be recovered sociologically as a definitive category and points to other ways of being sociological about knowledge.

Sociology, Knowledge, Education The sociology of education has a strangely uneasy relationship with knowledge. It is very unclear what being ‘sociological’ about knowledge entails: how can a sociological approach to knowledge reconcile the apparent conflict between the recognition that knowledge is inevitably socially produced under particular historical conditions and associated in various ways with relations of power and the requirement that for it to be knowledge it must in some radical manner be independent of these things? How can knowledge and its truths be related to a socio-historical context, but not made merely relative to that context. How is knowledge both knowledge and social at the same time? This is the classical Mannheimian problem. One reason why this issue was and still is so intractable is a matter of a historical legacy relating to positivism and the way in which sociologists, in crucial debates in the 1960s and 1970s (and also still to a considerable extent today), understood knowledge almost exclusively in positivistic, foundationalist terms, i.e. that to count as knowledge beliefs must be grounded directly in unmediated sensory experience and, hence, outside of history and detached from power and the social. Positivism was assumed as the model of knowledge and also of science. Behind this is a long-standing hermeneutic tradition that defines the science of culture as necessarily distinct from the science of nature. But the force of the argument relies upon

Introduction

3

a particular foundationalist view of the science of nature and one that entails an unbridgeable chasm between epistemology and the sociology of knowledge. In its more radical, constructionist forms, this approach is turned against the science of nature itself and it is argued that science’s own ‘objective’ knowledge and the ‘reality’ it is knowledge ‘of’ are also socially constructed. On the one side the claim is that to be knowledge beliefs must be non-social and disinterested, but on the other it is that they cannot be anything other than social and interest promoting. This ‘epistemological dilemma’, as J. C. Alexander (1995) terms it – that the only options are absolutist foundationalism or relativist constructionism – remains with us today and in certain respects might be even more deeply entrenched because of the influence of postmodernism. Being sociological about knowledge seems to relentlessly drive us into the relativist position that, actually, there is no knowledge. These more general problems of sociology and knowledge are in some ways intensified in the sociology of education. Here the questions, ‘what is knowledge and how is it made?’ are supplemented by ‘how is it transmitted and acquired and, so, distributed in society?’ In this manner, questions of knowledge become associated with questions of social inequality and difference. Some social groups get more or better knowledge than others and as a consequence some groups end up with greater opportunities, wealth and status than others. Hence, sociological questions about knowledge frequently become ideological and political. Being sociological about knowledge is to examine the relationship between knowledge and social inequality and, behind that, power. Educational knowledge is, as it were, seen as ‘doubly’ constructed – a curriculum is socially constructed from knowledge that has itself already been socially constructed. But because, for constructionist approaches, this prior knowledge cannot provide an epistemological basis for the curriculum arrangements, such arrangements are ultimately arbitrary and reflect power relations in society. The manner in which the sociology of education is sociological about knowledge, then, has important implications for approaches to school knowledge and how educational reform is seen, or ‘misrecognized’, as a means of promoting greater equality of opportunity and social justice. Because of the reductive nature of the sociological approach adopted, knowledge relations in themselves are treated as epistemologically arbitrary. In the final analysis they reflect (more or less directly) the broader social relations of society. A person’s place in the organization of knowledge is a function of their place in the social order and to learn the organization of knowledge is to learn the social order. An influential example of

4

Towards the Sociology of Truth

this from the 1970s is Bowles and Gintis’ Schooling in Capitalist America (1976) with its ‘correspondence principle’ and the same is to be found in Bourdieu’s relational field theory, albeit in a more complex way, through the homologic relationships between fields of symbolic capital and those of the economic field. This is the common logic of reproduction theories. If it is the case that the organization of knowledge is epistemologically arbitrary in that it is entirely reducible to power relations, but socially nonarbitrary in that it necessarily expresses those relations (through what Bourdieu calls an ‘objective probability structure’, for instance) and the interests and standpoint of the dominant social group, then it follows that the way to radically change the social order of education would be to radically change the knowledge order of education (though how, within the parameters of such a theory, this could ever be possible remains a vexed problem). Within the mainstream of educational reform it was this type of thinking that played a part in fuelling comprehensivization, progressivism, mixed ability teaching, integrated studies and the curriculum innovations inspired by the Schools Council in the 1970s. Progressivism became transmuted in the turbulent years of the 1980s, in more specialized ways, into forms of critical ‘girl-friendly’ and anti-sexist education and multiculturalism and anti-racism. In this period, such developments were engaged in intense ideological ‘wars’ with the New Right government’s own reform programme. But it is important to recognize that successive waves of vocational education invoke essentially the same principle and the New Right itself promoted its programme on the grounds that it would expand opportunities, especially to working class pupils, who, it argued, had been betrayed by progressive ‘permissiveness’. Across the spectrum, certain aspects of these reform movements share in common, despite other fundamental differences, a deep hostility to knowledge in a strong epistemological form and any sense of knowledge as having an inner necessity that gives it an autonomous structure in its own right. It is important to stress, here, that this is no less true for certain sorts of ‘traditionalist’ defenders of a subject-based curriculum. They do not defend it on epistemological grounds, but on the basis that it embodies traditional wisdom, values and authority and constitutes a distinct culture. Hence, there is a wide range of ideologically contrasting critiques that attempt to restructure the organization of knowledge in ways that are held to be capable of bringing about changes in the educational and social relations between groups. Between them they construct a view of knowledge as something that is plastic and pliable and can be pulled around in all directions. The curriculum can be remodelled into shapes that are held to

Introduction

5

be the cultural profiles of different groups: the masculinist form of science moulded into a girl-friendly shape, Eurocentric history into multicultural history, the literary cannon into popular culture, the scholarly and detached into the relevant and technically instrumental or certain aspects of each combined to represent the ‘British way of life’. Knowledge has no inner power to resist; different people and interests can do with it as they wish. It has no form or structure other than that imposed upon it from without – the only question is, ‘who wins the battle to shape it in their own image?’ Not what knowledge, but whose knowledge, not which truths, but whose power?

The Limitations of Reform and the Problems of Explanation The approach of the sociology of education as described above and its relationship to educational change reflects a preoccupation with issues of education and social justice. Sociology of education has seen its primary task as identifying sources of education-related inequality and promoting those changes, at various levels, that might alleviate those inequalities. Similarly, educational reform has historically been concerned with changes that will increase equality of opportunity in education and beyond and, to varying degrees, in different periods, the sociology of education has supported and/or critiqued those reforms. In both cases, there are more or less explicit assumptions or claims about ‘causality’ – this inequality is a result of x, if we change x to y we will achieve the desired result, z. With around 50 years’ worth of work in the sociology of education and rich experience of educational reform, we have, in effect, a substantial historical and comparative laboratory in which to critically evaluate various explanatory models and their claims about causality in education and links with social inequality. However, the evidence suggests more puzzles than it does answers or solutions and this situation, I feel, requires a radical rethink about how the sociology of education has tended to approach these issues for some long time now. The most striking example of such a puzzle is that of class differences in educational attainment. The outstanding fact in education over the past 50 years is that, despite all the substantial reforms that have taken place, class differentials have remained unchanged (Goldthorpe 2000). This fact is of major significance for sociology generally as it raises fundamental issues for social scientific explanation. If we note that Britain is not unique in this way, then the historical and comparative laboratory presents us with

6

Towards the Sociology of Truth

a major challenge. To be quite clear: the average absolute level of education has risen consistently, but equally for all classes, hence relative differences have remained unchanged (though it is the case in England that the bottom 20 per cent of pupils have not raised their level in the same way). This raises serious issues about the relationship between the kinds of things that were changed through successive waves of educational reform and the kinds of things that are responsible for class differences in educational attainment. Clearly the kinds of things changed and the changes made have had no strong effects in relation to class differentials in education. But, of course, there has been a major revolution in education: the gender revolution in the last part of the twentieth century (Arnot 2002, Arnot et al. 1999). If we could understand this striking success, might it help us to understand the resounding failure of class? However, it is highly unlikely that we can explain this revolution in terms of reforms in education itself (Moore 2004, 2007). Feminist commentators tend to stress the ad hoc, fragmented, localized and frequently short-lived character of attempted reforms. Feminist initiatives tended to be grass-roots based and from the bottom up and often met official hostility. This is in stark contrast to 50 years of systematic reform aimed at closing class differentials by governments of very different types. The problem is compounded if we ask the question: who was in the vanguard of the gender revolution – which girls? From certain points of view, the vanguard was an unexpected one. It was primarily located in the traditional sector of female education, mainly in middle and upper middleclass single-sex, selective girls’ grammar and independent schools. These schools not only greatly outpace the attainments of working class girls in state comprehensives (where progressive anti-sexist educational reform was more common), but often those also of the equivalent boys’ schools. The systematic improvement in the relative position of girls is not associated with a commensurate programme of systematic anti-sexist reform whereas the systematic reforms aimed at reducing class differentials have had little or no success. Furthermore, the vanguard of the gender revolution was an elite fraction of the middle class in the traditional sector of education. In short, there was no change where there should have been and there was change where there should not have been. The problem with these puzzling facts is that they suggest that factors which reasonably could be expected to be associated with significant differences are not so to the degree to be reasonably expected. Successive waves of reform had no impact on class differentials. The (bourgeois/masculinist?) conservatism of traditional selective girls’ schools did not prevent those

Introduction

7

girls from leading the gender revolution. It is surprising how inconclusive so much research into what would appear to be major differences in educational arrangements have been. On the basis of much fine-grained analyses over the years, apparently big differences such as co-ed/single sex or selective/non-selective or traditional/progressive appear to make little actual difference. Although evidence suggests that school attainment levels (as measured by conventional test scores) have improved over time, this improvement has not generated increased social opportunity and although expansion in higher education has disproportionately benefited the more affluent, it is also the case that students from the state sector do slightly better in higher education than students from the independent sector. So, what does make the difference? What differences do different differences make?

The Cultural Turn In broad terms, sociological accounts and attempts at explanation have tended to concentrate on cultural aspects of educational organization and processes such as the selectively alienating effects of a ‘middle-class’ curriculum or its ‘sexist’ or ‘ethnocentric’ features. These things are seen as contributing to the under-attainment of various groups and changing them should improve their chances. It is this kind of explanation and approach to educational change that could be called into question by puzzles and anomalies such as those above. It will be argued that the sociology of education has been disproportionately preoccupied with ‘culture effects’, but that the evidence indicates that the actual effectivity of such factors is relatively weak in terms of the production of social differences in educational outcomes. This is not to reject outright the undoubted influence of ‘culture effects’ in education (in terms of the cultural capital of home background or the habitus of educational institutions, for instance), but to suggest that, in their various forms, they do not account for enough of what needs accounting for. Nor is it to ignore ‘structure effects’ associated with macro forces such as increasing social inequality and the reduction in rates of social mobility over the past 25 years – though these issues are not to be addressed to any great degree here. The argument that runs through this book is that there is a third kind of effect that has been virtually ignored completely: that of knowledge and this is largely because ‘culturalist’ approaches have tended to be actively hostile to the idea of knowledge as a strong category in its own

8

Towards the Sociology of Truth

right. The sociology of education has, in ways and for reasons to be explored in subsequent chapters, difficulties in integrating theory and research into these three analytically distinct types of effects. To a significant degree, macro and micro approaches to the study of education have come to be been viewed as constituting different paradigms and, hence, as incommensurable rather than complementary, and knowledge as a distinct category has been in effect invisible for a long time. The principle aim of this work is to recover ‘knowledge’.

Knowledge, Learning, Society Within the sociology of education the theory of knowledge is at the same time, in a broad sense, a theory of learning. Different groups are held to learn (or fail to learn) as they do because of the way in which knowledge is organized and presented to them. Working class children, for instance, are held to be alienated by a narrowly academic ‘middle-class’ curriculum, girls by androcentrism, and non-Western ethnic minorities by Eurocentrism. Social differentiation in education is a function of the organization of knowledge and the manner in which that organization is itself a reflection of the inequalities of the social order. Changing the organization of knowledge should induce change in both the other dimensions. But this has not been realized. Within the arena of public debate, progressive attempts to make educational success more widely available to disadvantaged groups through progressive ‘culturalist’ reforms, often come up against the charge of dumbing-down and of lowering of standards and the undermining of traditional values. The peculiarity about these often-fierce debates about school knowledge is that knowledge is actually the absent party in that there is no theory of knowledge itself: knowledge as knowledge. What does this entail? Karl Maton and Johan Muller have put it well with reference to disadvantaged groups: Simply put, one is effectively presented with a choice: change the underlying structuring principles of the school, curriculum or classroom to match the code already possessed by these pupils, or develop ways of providing those pupils with the key to the code enabling success within those contexts. Unfortunately, the former, often advocated by well-intentioned but misguided educationalists, would effectively relegate subordinate social groups to lower-status forms of educational knowledge and hence

Introduction

9

to the lower rungs of the division of labour; the latter is open to misreading as a deficit theory and requires acknowledging the differential status of different forms of knowledge, an admission considered beyond the pale in much contemporary social science. (Maton and Muller 2007, pp. 17–18) There are two important points to be taken from this. The first is the distinction between, ‘chang[ing] the underlying structuring principles of the school, curriculum or classroom to match the code already possessed by these pupils, or develop[ing] ways of providing those pupils with the key to the code enabling success within those contexts’. The former is what I am calling the ‘culturalist’ approach whereas the later points towards ‘knowledge effects’. The other is that of the difficulty of addressing this second option: that this, ‘requires acknowledging the differential status of different forms of knowledge, an admission considered beyond the pale in much contemporary social science’; that is, that some knowledge is objectively better than others. Given the dominant view of what being sociological about knowledge entails, it is easy to see why acknowledging the differential status of different forms of knowledge is ‘beyond the pale’. If the hierarchy of knowledge is always seen as a representation of social hierarchy, then to say that some knowledge is better than others is to say that some people are better than others – to elevate the perspectives and experiences of some groups over others. For a sociology of education that has seen its primary purpose as promoting social justice by revealing the social bases (and biases) of knowledge, to defend established knowledge is to reinforce entrenched social inequalities. In these terms, epistemological relativism is the equivalent of social equalitarianism. It is very important to note, here, that lurking behind this reflex is the assumption that knowledge is the same thing as experience. It is this reflex that lies behind certain calls to make knowledge ‘inclusive’; that is, not to provide equal access to the best knowledge, but to include all ‘knowledge(s)’ (experience) on an equal basis. The logic of standpoint reductionism is that the dominant form of knowledge represents the perspective of the dominant group – its experience of the world from its particular place in the social order and in terms of its interest. It is the social construction of ‘reality’ from a particular point of view. In this manner it is necessarily exclusive because only those within that standpoint can have that knowledge (experience) and the power to impose it. Alternatively, in a different way, it can be argued, instead, that the dominant groups have privileged access to the best knowledge, in ways that can

10

Towards the Sociology of Truth

marginalize other groups, rather than having imposed their particular knowledge as ‘the best’. The implications of this alternative are developed throughout the book. Michael Young (1998) has argued that it is necessary to be able to differentiate between stratification in the organization of knowledge and social stratification in society rather than, as in the dominant approach, simply reduce the former to the latter. The logics of the two systems are distinct and represent different principles. There is no intrinsic reason why knowledge might not be systematically stratified according to epistemological principles, but social stratification reduced according to principles of social equality and justice. Increasing stratification in knowledge is not necessarily incompatible with reduced stratification in society – indeed, under certain conditions, the former might facilitate the latter. For Young, the key issue is that of ‘connectivity’ – that is; knowledge might assume a strong disciplinary structure, but the issue is that of a further capacity for connections to be made within knowledge between disciplines or types of knowledge such as theoretical and vocational. This in turn calls for connectivity at the level of the education system, especially in terms of the opportunities for people to move between knowledge and institutional boundaries. These ideas suggest the following set of inter-connected areas of investigation: z

z

z

z

What in epistemological terms are the fundamental intrinsic characteristics of autonomous knowledge fields (the issue of stratification in knowledge)? How should the structure of the above be represented in the organizational structure of the education system (e.g. in the form of possible educational career routes)? How might the structure of knowledge relate to the transmission of knowledge in a way in which epistemology informs pedagogy (e.g. in the sequencing of knowledge acquisition)? How might education organized in such a way facilitate access to cognitively powerful forms of knowledge in a way that reduces inequality in access and promotes greater educational and social opportunity and equality (the issue of stratification in society)?

Taken together these points allow for the possibility that increased stratification in knowledge (on the basis of epistemological principles) could support reduced stratification in society by facilitating access by disadvantaged

Introduction

11

groups to cognitively powerful knowledge codes through forms of pedagogy appropriate to the knowledge rather than through ones presumed to be appropriate to the cultural codes of different groups of pupils. This raises the key issue of the relationship between a realist rather than a constructionist, theory of knowledge and pedagogy. Within the sociology of education this requires a shift from a preoccupation with culture effects to knowledge effects and to ways of promoting greater equality of access to the objectively best knowledge. The crucial shift in orientation outlined above might be difficult to achieve because for the currently dominant and deeply entrenched approach that has been described so far there can be no such thing as ‘best’ knowledge, no means of objectively differentiating in knowledge because to do so is to do no more than introduce invidious distinctions between groups. Inclusion on this basis comes to mean the critical unmasking, debunking or deconstruction of the ‘dominant’ form of knowledge in such a way that all knowledge, i.e. forms of experience, become equal in that none are privileged. However, in the array of perspectives that emerges, each is equal but each is also exclusive unto itself because each is incommensurable with all others because specialized to and authorized by its particular experiential base. There is no knowledge, only a plurality of knowledges or ‘voices’.

Making Knowledge Visible The heart of the matter is the problem of recovering the category of knowledge per se in such a way that it can be recognized as knowledge, but in a way that is still sociological – a different way of being sociological about knowledge. Maton and Muller put this in terms of ‘making knowledge visible’ (Maton and Muller 2007, p. 21) – a task that is extremely difficult when debates about knowledge have become, as they say, ‘over-ideologized’ (ibid.). Maton and Muller acknowledge all that is of substantive value in the work that has been done in examining the links between knowledge and power and external social interests, but argue that, ‘the barrier that an unnuanced image of knowledge and pedagogy creates is simply that, from these perspectives, we do not have to take the internal ordering of symbolic forms seriously. Education becomes a reflection or epiphenomenon of social structure, one without any intrinsic powers, properties or tendencies of its own’ (ibid., emphasis added). This indicates an alternative way of being sociological about knowledge that involves taking seriously the question of the ‘internal ordering of symbolic forms’.

12

Towards the Sociology of Truth

It is clearly difficult to move towards a theoretical focus on the internal ordering of symbolic forms within the context of such a long-established and ingrained reductionist and subjectivist legacy of over-ideologized debates about knowledge. As has already been discussed, these debates are deeply polarized around the issue of, if knowledge is social is it knowledge? Being sociological about knowledge has been preoccupied with the ways in which knowledge is not really knowledge rather than with how it is knowledge. I have suggested that in part this is a legacy of positivism and its position within the field of sociological debate on these issues. To this extent, the problems might be seen as an artefact of this situation – if knowledge could be understood non-positivistically maybe the problems disappear, or are at least ideologically defused? I want to argue, however, that there is a deeper level. The problem is also illusory in that there is in fact an internal relationship between reductionist sociologies of knowledge and that which they claim to critique. Rather than there being a radical discontinuity between two irreconcilable approaches to knowledge and the only choice one or the other, in fact, one is always immanent within the other. The claim that there is no knowledge is itself a knowledge claim: being sociological about knowledge in the dominant culturalist mode is itself a form of knowledge. But what is its form when understood as a specific modality of the field? In the first instance, there is something inherently paradoxical and selfundermining at the centre of the dominant way of being sociological about knowledge. For example, if it is true that all knowledge is standpoint relative, then, of course, this is true also for this particular piece of knowledge. It is ‘true’ only relative to its own particular standpoint because there is no other way in which it can be true. There is a fundamental logical problem in attempting to apply the principle consistently because, if accepted, it can be equally true that from some other standpoint knowledge is not standpoint relative. If applied consistently, the principle not only proclaims its own ‘truth’ but also allows the equal possibility of its opposite – it allows the contradiction, both ‘p’ and ‘not-p’. Obviously each cannot be equally true, it has to be one or the other.1 Beneath the surface, something more is going on within this way of being sociological about knowledge. The only way to escape the inherent contradiction entailed in applying the standpoint principle consistently is to covertly exempt it from its own ‘truth’: ‘all truth is standpoint relative, except the truth that all truth is standpoint relative’. But then, of course, it is not true that all truth is standpoint relative! The principle cannot be applied consistently in a way that produces a complete account of how things are because it must exempt itself from its own

Introduction

13

principle and hence its account remains crucially incomplete. There is simply no way out of this and the problem is general across the range of ways in which knowledge is held to be ‘socially constructed’ and hence merely relative. In order to actually do being sociological about knowledge in this way, it is necessary to actually be doing, in some manner, the very thing that is being denied: producing some knowledge about knowledge that is not standpoint relative.2 It is necessary to take this one step further. Supporters of the dominant way of being sociological about knowledge frequently invoke the principle of ‘reflexivity’ or, indeed, ‘radical reflexivity’ in relation to their methods. It is claimed that reflexivity is what sets them apart from other researchers. They aspire to make explicit the ways in which their own standpoint must (unavoidably) influence their own analyses. But how could it be demonstrated that, in any particular case, an account that claims to be reflexive is in fact reflexive? Only by some other account that must also claim to be reflexive. But how would we know that that account actually is reflexive? This is the problem of epistemic regress – a regression chain of accounts that can only go on and on indefinitely because there can never be any way of terminating it or of choosing any one account above all the others. The appeal to ‘reflexivity’ cannot offer a lifeline – it simply displaces but inevitably reinstates the original set of problems. In the second instance, the point here is not just that this particular way of being sociological about knowledge is logically incoherent and unsustainable (these logical objections are well known if frequently ignored), but that its alternative is immanent within it. In order for it to do what it does, it must be doing what it denies can be done – producing knowledge that actually is knowledge in that it contains a surplus element that is not reducible to an external social power base. So what is it doing when denying that what it is doing can be done? It is this surplus element and how it is socially produced that should form the central focus of the sociology of knowledge. This is to recognize and make explicit or ‘give voice’ to what the dominant way has always been doing, sotto voce as it were, anyway. It is, to shift the metaphor, to make knowledge visible by foregrounding and bringing into theoretical focus that which has previously been submerged and systematically denied, but which, nevertheless, inescapably provides the subterranean foundation of that denial. Ironically, it is precisely where ‘reflexivity’ has been most needed that it has been entirely absent. The dominant approach to being sociological about knowledge is firstly in denial – in its refusal to recognize that it necessarily presupposes that which it rejects and secondly it indulges in displacement activities such as

14

Towards the Sociology of Truth

‘radical reflexivity’ that continually deflect attention from that denial. The necessary possibility of knowledge is the immanent presence that paradoxically constitutes the intelligibility principle for claims that knowledge is not actually possible. A starting point for investigating what is involved in instituting the task of taking seriously the question of the ‘internal ordering of symbolic forms’ is the examination of this particular symbolic form itself. What kind of ‘symbolic form’ is it that operates with this perverse logic and what are the sociological conditions for its position and influence within an intellectual field? And this, in turn, demands a general theory of symbolic forms and of their principles of order and generative powers: ‘to take the internal ordering of symbolic forms seriously’ – a materialist theory of the mode of symbolic production in a Marxist and Durkheimian manner (Moore 2004, ch. 6 and 2007). What is required is a theory of intellectual fields as autonomous modes of symbolic production and their historically situated, structured modalities. It is important to note that this is sociological in that it is concerned with enduring collective forms of social activity and not with the logical structure of propositions as in traditional epistemology. It is also operating at the level of the emergent properties of knowledge-producing practices that are extensive in time and space and, in this respect, differs from ethnographic studies of laboratory life. A programme of this type can be described through the work of a number of contemporary thinkers such as Basil Bernstein, Randall Collins, Andrew Abbot and in some later works by Pierre Bourdieu (especially in Pascalian Meditations – a book that seems significantly at odds with much of his earlier corpus) who will be considered in detail below. It is interesting that these writers, though working independently and rarely cross-referencing, appear to be moving conceptually in very similar ways (though it might be significant that each is strongly influenced by Durkheim). There is also a second body of work to be drawn upon by a group of writers who are self-consciously engaged in a collective interreferential effort: John Beck, Karl Maton, Rob Moore, Johan Muller and Michael F. D. Young. This book will draw upon and introduce readers to this alternative, ‘social realist’, way of being sociological about knowledge.3

The Truth About Truthfulness The above is not so much an argument against what I have called the dominant way of being sociological about knowledge, rather it is directing attention to the way in which the inherent inconsistencies or antinomies of its

Introduction

15

‘epistemology’ not only fatally undermine its own analyses, but systematically deflect attention away from what should be the central focus: knowledge as knowledge rather than simply a reflex or relay of some external power. But, crucially, it is also argued that this is immanent within this way of being sociological about knowledge and necessarily presupposes it. Rather than calling for some radical alternative, the intention is to make this condition visible and explore its implications. The central implication of this is that the dominant way of being sociological about knowledge and the radically dichotomous positions it has constructed as the default positions of debate are fundamentally misconceived. In other words, the intention is not to confront the dominant way on a point by point basis (as far as many of the points are concerned there is no disagreement; with feminist politics, for instance, or with anti-racism and other types of minority advocacy), but, rather, in a more wholesale way, to make visible, through a critical exegesis, its concealed antinomies in order to better further those points. To summarize: z

z

z

z

The range of reductive and relativizing perspectives (social constructionism, postmodernism, etc.) have force (their critique can only be ‘critical’) only if it is presupposed that some form of positivistic, Cartesian foundationalism is the only allowable model of knowledge. The dominant mode is fatally and irrevocably undermined by the inherently insoluble problems of inconsistency, incompleteness and epistemic regress. The alternative to the dominant way of being sociological about knowledge is not a radically discontinuous position but, rather, the necessary immanent position that the dominant position implicitly presupposes in order for its claims to be intellectually intelligible. The alternative way of being sociological about knowledge is to make visible what the dominant way is already doing in denying that what it is necessarily doing covertly can be done at all. There is an internal relation between the two, not a fundamental division.

This internal relationship has been powerfully explored by the philosopher, Bernard Williams, in his book (2002), Truth and Truthfulness. He begins by saying that, ‘Two currents of ideas are very prominent in modern thought and culture. On the one hand, there is an intense commitment to truthfulness – or, at any rate, a pervasive suspiciousness, a readiness against being fooled, an eagerness to see through appearances to the real structures and

16

Towards the Sociology of Truth

motives that lie behind them’ (ibid. p. 1). In these terms, our way of being sociological about knowledge has been preoccupied with ‘truthfulness’, with seeing through appearances: the ‘reflex against deceptiveness’ (ibid. p. 1). But, he argues, ‘there is an equally pervasive suspicion about truth itself . . .’ so that, ironically, ‘The desire for truthfulness drives a process of criticism which weakens the assurance that there is any secure or unqualifiedly stateable truth’ (ibid.). We can see how the demand for truthfulness and the rejection of truth can go together. However, this does not mean that they can happily co-exist or that the situation is stable. If you do not really believe in the existence of truth, what is the passion for truthfulness a passion for? Or – as we might also put it – in pursuing truthfulness what are you supposedly being true to? This is not an abstract difficulty or just a paradox. It has consequences for real politics, and it signals a danger that our intellectual activities, particularly in the humanities, may tear themselves to pieces. (Williams 2002, p. 2) The sociology of truthfulness calls for a sociology of truth as its necessary foundation. Being sociological about knowledge is to ‘do’ a sociology of truth – but what is it that is being done. We begin to address this question by taking seriously the ‘internal ordering of symbolic forms’. Williams poses the question: ‘Can the notions of truth and truthfulness be intellectually stabilized, in such a way that what we understand about truth and our chances of arriving at it can be made to fit with our need for truthfulness?’ (ibid. p. 3). This book is a sociological response to this challenge and based in the conviction that facing up to it is of fundamental importance to education and beyond. The argument to be developed is that postmodern relativism is as much a threat to Truth as absolutist forms of certainty – the truth lies in the zone between the two, within a quantum of tolerance between their extremes: in media res. The relativizers tend to take for granted that their position is benign and tolerant. But consider: There is no such thing as truth. Science is a social phenomenon and like every other social phenomenon is limited by the benefit or injury it confers on the community. (Adolf Hitler, cited in Sayer 2000, p. 47)

Chapter 1

Knowledge, culture(s) and Culture

Introduction The situation described in the Introduction and the analysis outlined could be seen as highly problematical for the sociology of education for two reasons. The first is because it suggests that cultural factors are relatively secondary as far as major types of scholastic success or failure in education are concerned. Much of the sociology of education (as with other areas of the discipline) has for some time treated such factors as primary (the ‘cultural turn’). The second reason is deeper, and the more fundamental. It has to do with knowledge and the widely promoted view that knowledge is not really knowledge at all, but, in fact, always (someone’s) culture. How is the ‘culture’ of the cultural turn understood and how, in terms of that understanding, is knowledge, then, understood? The central domain assumption of the sociology of education is that knowledge is socially constructed, historically located and intrinsically connected with power (for brevity I will call this the ‘historicist’ principle, though I do not want anything special to be read into that overloaded term). The basic principle is that knowledge has been accounted for when an account of its socio-historical origins has been produced (this is sometimes known as the ‘genetic fallacy’, though that it is a fallacy seems to have been largely forgotten). This view is shared with the sociology of knowledge, though its history there and the perceived epistemological implications can be rather different. This general idea is not in itself new – we see earlier versions in Mannheim and, of course, in Marx. Since the 1970s it is the constructionist version of this approach, from phenomenology and ethnomethodology to postmodernism and poststructuralism, that has been dominant and is the focus here. This chapter is in part descriptive in that it attempts to provide a critical exposition of this dominant constructionist, or ‘culturalist’, perspective. It will conclude by exploring an alternative direction to that of the constructionist

18

Towards the Sociology of Truth

perspective on the relationship between ‘culture’ and knowledge and to being ‘sociological’ about knowledge.

culture(s) and Culture The role of different ways of thinking about ‘culture’ requires further examination. Johan Muller argues that The idea of ‘culture’ has been both a help and a hindrance in clarifying matters. ‘Culture’, understood aesthetically (or epistemologically), denotes cultivation and discernment, a sense or sensibility that has ‘higher’ or ‘lower’ embodiments. It can apply to individuals or to elites, as when T. S. Eliot uses it to denote those who consciously deploy it against those who simply dwell in it. . . . On the other hand, ‘culture’ understood anthropologically, denotes the shared attitudes and patterns of behaviour of a group or society. ‘Culture’ in sense one is about distinction; in sense two it is about difference. Both senses come with a ready made ideology – cultural elitism for the first, multiculturalism for the second, an ideology which specifically prescribes making the kinds of distinctions made in sense one. And of course, the two senses willy-nilly bleed into one another. (Muller 2007, pp. 3–4) What I am calling ‘historicism’ operates through accounts that present instances of sense one culture (or Culture) as being, in fact, no more than arbitrarily elevated examples of sense two culture (as Muller implies, this category is always in the plural: culture(s)). When he says that ‘“Culture” in sense one is about distinction; in sense two it is about difference’ he expresses, what is for many, the key sensitivity. In Bourdieu’s terminology, Culture is the illusion associated with misrecognition and symbolic violence whereby the culture of the ruling group is transformed into Culture through acts of delegated consecration performed by the subordinate fraction of the dominant class (the creation of cultural capital). However, this view is critically flawed – as I will go on to argue – and, henceforth I will refer to it as ‘weak’ historicism. Bourdieu might be seen, in some respects, as the high priest of weak historicism (his theory is typically read in this way, though later I will suggest an alternative position based on some of his later writings), but this reduction of Culture to culture(s) can be achieved in a wide variety of ways in various constructionist perspectives and forms of standpoint and interest theory.

Knowledge, culture(s) and Culture

19

The weak historicists have consistently identified Culture with the culture of a particular group – the ‘ruling class’, however defined. For example, when describing the ‘feminist standpoint theory’ of Sandra Harding, Potter says that For feminist standpoint theory, in contrast to the modernist view, knowing agents are local and heterogeneous. This is because agents as knowers are ‘embodied’, having specific gender, racial, class, historical, and cultural locations that shape the content of their thought. Thus Harding argues not only that ‘the scientific world view’ is, in fact, a view of (dominant groups in) modern Western societies, as the historians of science proudly point out, but also that the content of scientific thought is shaped (but not determined) by its ‘historical location’. (Potter 2006, p. 136) The ‘scientific world view’ (as an example of Culture) is actually, then, no more than the view of the dominant group (an instance of culture(s)). The alternative position, to be argued here, is that Culture is not the culture of the ‘ruling class’,4 but is in various ways expropriated and conditioned by it. The reason why Culture might be confused with the culture of the ruling class is that part of what being a ruling class entails is having privileged access to Culture and the capacity to partially recontextualize it within its culture. This is one dimension of the more general structure of social inequality: inequality of opportunity to become ‘cultured’. It is not that the ruling class has the power to impose its culture(s) as Culture, but, rather, it has the power to a significant (but not absolute) degree to expropriate the principle modes of symbolic production and access to their products. Culture comes to be seen as (and in some areas of sociology, theoretically construed as being) in some intrinsic sense ‘theirs’ (that it comes from within them, is their culture) rather than something which is genetically outside their culture in a manner that, potentially, makes it far more widely available – potentially a Culture for all culture(s).5 The key argument to be developed is that there is, in fact, a space in which knowledge can be approached as type one Culture in its own right as something radically distinct from the culture of the group that dominates access to it and in a way that is inclusive not exclusive. In the first instance, this way of distinguishing between Culture and culture is analytic because, as Muller points out, ‘the two senses willy-nilly bleed into one another’. However, the distinction is important in order to recover a way in which Culture and culture(s) can be made to work together rather than against each other.

20

Towards the Sociology of Truth

In summary: weak historicism understands the socio-historical character of knowledge in terms of (a) the standpoint of the groups whose experience it represents, (b) the interests of those groups and (c) assumes that, by virtue of inequalities of power, the dominant form of knowledge structure represents the perspective and interests of the dominant group. The purpose of the sociology of education is, then, to expose the epistemologically arbitrary nature of knowledge and the standpoints and interests that lie behind it and to promote alternative, ‘inclusive’, forms of knowledge and educational organization that promote the interests of the disadvantaged – to change the cultural code of education rather than the pedagogic mode of access to Culture.

Standpoints, Perspectives and Reflexivity A number of the issues and problems to be addressed in the remainder of this book can be introduced here through further consideration of Elizabeth Potter’s clear and sympathetic account of ‘standpoint theory’ in her book, Feminism and Philosophy of Science: An Introduction (2006).6 Potter is introducing ‘feminist standpoint theory’ and, in particular, the ideas of Sandra Harding (though the concern, here, is not with Harding in particular, but the broader ‘generic position’). She begins by saying that, ‘A standpoint is an achievement, the result of analysis by more than one person who, in the first instance, occupy a particular location in a political order’ (p. 131). She describes a ‘social location’ as the intersection of various dimensions of social hierarchies such as class, gender and ethnicity, e.g. a group can be ‘located’ as ‘white working-class women’. She, then, goes on to define a ‘standpoint’ in more detail by contrasting it with a ‘perspective’: A standpoint is not the same as a viewpoint or a perspective, for any group of people occupying a common social location (e.g. Puerto Rican immigrants to the US mainland) may unreflectively hold a point of view or perspective. Such a perspective may be typical of people occupying that location but the perspective is not a standpoint. A standpoint arises when people occupying a subordinate social location engage in a political struggle to change the conditions of their lives and so engage in an analysis of those conditions in order to change them. Thus, a standpoint is an achievement that is ‘struggled for’. We can find a recent example in consciousness-raising, formalized among some groups of women in the 1960s and 1970s, which contributed to the activities of the various women’s movements of that time. (ibid. pp. 131–2)

Knowledge, culture(s) and Culture

21

It seems from this that the crucial distinction between a ‘perspective’ and a ‘standpoint’ is that the former is held non-reflexively whereas the latter emerges from a process of politically engaged critical reflection directed towards progressive social change. Part of this process would be a ‘demystification’ of the previously non-reflexively held ‘perspective’ (see ibid. p. 133). Clearly, the key moment is the analysis that is the standpoint coming into being. This would seem to be a good example of the concern with what Bernard Williams calls ‘truthfulness’ – the ‘reflex against deception’. The ‘perspective’ told us that one thing was true, but through analysis we come to see that it is not and that the (or at least a better) truth is revealed by the ‘standpoint’. The last part of the previous sentence suggests were a problem might lie – ‘truth’ has entered the scene. If we are, indeed, able to differentiate between a ‘perspective’ and a ‘standpoint’ in this way, then there must be epistemological demarcation criteria of some kind. To put it straightforwardly, how can we know that any particular analysis is actually the right (or, in the original Leninist sense, ‘politically correct’) analysis? The history of left and radical politics demonstrates the near impossibility of ever getting any effective agreement around such a thing! The fact of people belonging to a subordinated group is not in itself enough to guarantee a ‘standpoint’ as a ‘correct’ critical analysis – or even any kind of critical analysis, after all, their response could be to form a cargo cult or commit mass suicide and that would not become ‘correct’ simply because the group is subordinated (or would it?). More is needed than simply ‘membership’ and it is this surplus element that is absent from this type of theorizing. Lois McNay expresses a significant aspect of the issue as follows: While the project of making experience visible may bring to light the impact of repression upon the lives of marginalized groups, it often hinders a critical examination of the way in categories through which experience is represented are themselves historically constituted. The metaphor of visibility exposes the mechanics of repression along a vertical analysis of the explicit and the latent, the dominant and the marginal, but it does not have a horizontal analysis of the way in which these categories of representation are relationally constructed. (McNay 2008, p. 179) It might be said, in the light of this, that standpoint theory lacks the theoretical means of articulating ‘standpoints’ within ‘locations’ because this requires a higher order theory that transcends the local and it is precisely such higher order theory that the standpoint approach, through its reductionism, disallows on principle (I should point out here, in order to avoid

22

Towards the Sociology of Truth

possible confusion, that there is no relationship between McNay’s use of the terms ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ and Bernstein’s. In Bernstein’s conceptualization the higher-level theorization of the standpoint would be produced within a ‘vertical knowledge structure with a strong grammar’. The two thinkers are using the same words for quite different conceptual purposes). We can get deeper into the issues here, and also identify some new ones, by considering another extract from Potter where she goes on to discuss ‘the agent of history’ and the manner in which feminist standpoint theory distinguishes itself from Marxist standpoint theory (again, I am treating this as Potter’s exposition of a position and am not attributing it to her as her own view). One important difference between the standpoint of the proletarian postulated by Marxists and the standpoint of marginalized people postulated by feminist standpoint theorists is that the proletarian standpoint was conceived as disinterested, objective, having no point of view, no cultural identity; the proletarian was the unitary, universal knower equivalent to ‘rational man’ in social contract theory and in many ways to the traditional empiricist agent of knowledge. This agent of knowledge, best exemplified by the scientist, is supposed to be objective in the sense that, as a scientist, he has no point of view and is ‘universal’ precisely because, having no point of view, he knows in the same way that anyone having no point of view would know; all agents of knowledge are the same in this respect. Any cultural, gender, racial, or other social differences among agents are epistemologically irrelevant; hence, the epistemic agent is homogenous and unitary. It follows that the knowledge produced is universal: the same for all knowers. (Potter 2006, pp. 135–6) Such, then, is how the ‘classical Marxist’ position is presented. I can only be openly honest after this and simply admit that I cannot see any warrant what so ever for it in Marx’s own writing or in any school of Marxist theory with which I am familiar. The lack of referencing and citation makes it impossible to check it against any sources. A number of points, of rather different kinds, can, however, be drawn from this. First, some observations concerning ‘classical Marxism’ made not so much in order to ‘save’ Marxism from this account, but because they have relevance to what is to follow. It might be the case that this account of ‘classical Marxism’ is based in a fundamental confusion regarding Marx’s view that the proletariat represents the ‘universal’ interest of humanity and that its emancipation represents the emancipation of all of humanity

Knowledge, culture(s) and Culture

23

(see ibid. p. 139). It certainly is the case that, in a particular sense, Marx saw the proletariat as the ‘universal’ class. But this means nothing even remotely resembling the above. The proletariat has this position (its ‘class theoretical position’ as Althusser termed it and can play this role not because it is, ‘disinterested, objective, having no point of view, no cultural identity’, etc., but for exactly the opposite reason. It is precisely its specific class interest, its distinctive class standpoint and its identity as a class for itself structured by its unique position within the contradictions of capitalism in the moment of crisis that, in being driven by its own class interest, it comes to realize the universal interest. The proletariat does not represent a universal interest and go into action on its behalf, it realizes a universal interest by pursuing its own interest. Within the ‘classical’ theory, the interest of the proletariat coincides with the universal interest because its revolutionary resolution is the only way in which the final crisis of capitalism can be resolved. The interest of the proletariat, in this particular way, coincides with the universal interest, but it is not identical to it. The point of the above is not purely a ‘theological’ one, it has implications for the way in which feminist standpoint theory is then displayed as different from the ‘classical Marxist’ version as so depicted. The ‘agent of knowledge’, the epistemic agent, is described as, ‘having no point of view, he knows in the same way that anyone having no point of view would know; all agents of knowledge are the same in this respect.’ This is the epistemic counterpart, or aspect, of the sociological condition described earlier where the agent is depicted as having, ‘no cultural identity’, etc. – the proletariat is, ‘homogenous and unitary’. But, of course, such a condition is in real terms impossibility.7 The point is not that in order to hold the same standpoint all proletarians must become ‘the same’ (whatever that might mean), but that the range of groups that constitute the proletariat (or at least their ‘vanguard’ members) can, despite differences, unite around a common interest that transcends those differences – to move from a class-in-itself to a class-for-itself. This is because of they come to theorize a common position within the structure of capitalist class relations, not because they acquire some common identity. The proletariat does not become a class-for-itself by becoming ‘homogenous and unitary’, it does so by adopting a common position around its differences – that is, by developing revolutionary theory (as the famous Leninist slogan has it, ‘No revolutionary practice without revolutionary theory’) that reveals the objective structural causes of its condition and such a theory transcends the particularities of the various ‘social locations’ occupied by different proletarian groups (heterogeneity within theoretical and political unity: ‘solidarity’). Analysis is the achievement of

Towards the Sociology of Truth

24

theory, not culture. And it is at this point that the problem for culturalist feminist standpoint theory, as Potter presents it, re-presents itself because it is just such a context or ‘location’ transcending epistemology (theory – that ‘analysis’ presupposes?) that it sets out to deny and in doing so defines its central project. This will be returned to below.

Actors and Devices There are two further points to be made. These are more discursive in character. The first was anticipated in that it has been noted by a number of commentators (some of whom will be covered in later pages). This can be seen in the introduction of the ‘epistemic actor’ described in the way represented above; that is, as z z z z z

disinterested, objective, having no point of view, no cultural identity; the unitary, universal knower equivalent to ‘rational man’; any cultural, gender, racial, or other social differences among agents are epistemologically irrelevant; the epistemic agent is homogenous and unitary; the knowledge produced is universal: the same for all knowers.

This ‘character’ – the ‘epistemic knower’ – appears frequently across a range of positions that, in different times and places, operate in this distinctive discursive mode. The ubiquity of this characterization of the ‘epistemic agent’ as a disembodied and decontextualized subject is symptomatic of a ‘discursive mode’ in that it occurs within positions that in theoretical and ideological terms would see themselves as very different (and further usually claim this depiction as an original insight – see the next chapter). In Chapter 4, for instance, we encounter ‘him’, in almost precisely the same terms, in the phenomenologically inspired discourse of constructivist sociology in the 1970s. This decontextualized, disembodied model of the subject, as described above, is the necessary inversion of the one that, by contrast, is ‘hyper-situated’ and embodied (see below). McNay has noted a problem that characteristically accompanies positions of the latter type in her discussion of culturalist feminist standpoint theory: This replays a dilemma central to certain types of interpretive sociology, namely that by attributing an epistemological privilege to experience, any kind of sociological abstraction comes to be regarded as inherently

Knowledge, culture(s) and Culture

25

alienating. Taken to its conclusion, this logic implies that sociology should limit itself to a faithful description of experience rather than any kind of objectifying analysis. (McNay 2008, p. 179) This describes precisely the logic of the radical interpretive sociology of the 1970s to be considered in Chapter 4. What these positions share is that they are in the first instance linguistic paradigms – at an even earlier period, Gellner made similar points regarding linguistic philosophy. In their various ways, they approach the social through the metaphor of the text, but without awareness of the material limitations of the metaphor: that it is, at the end of the day, whatever its heuristic value, it is only a metaphor. What was not anticipated, because it only became apparent after having read so much literature of this type, was that this character is also associated with a characteristic discursive device or ploy; namely, depict your opponent, the position you are constructing as the one you are opposing, as the representing the epistemic knower as described above. We have, here, a case of Karl Marx being construed in this way, but in Chapter 4 we will explore an instance of the liberal philosopher of education, Paul Hirst getting the same treatment. In other words, the character of the epistemic agent defines a position within a discourse of a particular type or one operating in a particular mode (as a ‘horizontal knowledge structure with a weak grammar’ in Bernstein’s terms) that can be filled by whichever particular opponent any particular instance of this type of discourse is constructing itself as being in opposition to and representing as ‘hegemonic’. Although ‘classical Marxism’ and ‘liberal education’ are very different things, both can be represented as the same ‘epistemic agent’ through this discursive device. However, the thinker who has most consistently been ‘reconstructed’ in this manner, and to the greatest degree, is Emile Durkheim. Susan StedmanJones has examined the case of Durkheim in depth in a brilliant study entitled, Durkheim Reconsidered (2001). This will be returned to in Chapter 5. The point of the above construct of the standpoint theory of ‘classical Marxism’ is not to produce an account of Marxism that is consistent with Marxism itself, but to produce one that is consistent with the model of the ‘epistemic agent’ in contrast to which ‘feminist standpoint theory’ can construct itself. We do not begin with classical Marxism and move ‘out’ to the epistemic agent. We begin with the epistemic agent and move ‘back’ to classical Marxism. Within this perspective ‘feminist standpoint theory’ must be constructed as radically different from Marxist standpoint theory because the latter is ‘male’ and this, in turn, requires the construction of ‘classical Marxism’ in this particular manner in order to differentiate

26

Towards the Sociology of Truth

‘feminist standpoint theory’ in terms of a contrast between the detached, disembodied ‘male’ subject and the engaged, embodied ‘female’ one. The model of knowledge (Culture) in the form of the socially detached, ahistorical, universal knower with his ‘God’s eye view’ is presented as the only alternative to knowledge that is local, context-dependent and hyper-situated. This, in turn, is associated with a distinctive view of the social in which it is (and cannot be other than) micro – as located in the local, the immediate, the experiential and the contextual (culture(s)). It is this micro view of the social that defines the underlying paradigm of approaches of this general type of which culturalist feminist standpoint theory and radical social constructionism are instances. The logic of this approach can be explored by, now, turning to Potter’s detailed exposition of feminist standpoint theory8 in contrast to the classical Marxist version as she describes it.

The Perspective of the Standpoint There are certain intractable problems in ‘feminist standpoint theory’ (as a form of ‘culturalist feminism’ and, then, of ‘culturalism’ more widely) that are symptomatic of this type of thinking in general. In what follows, it is the ‘standpoint’ term that is the important one, not the ‘feminist’ (by no means all feminists are standpoint theorists and there is nothing specific or exclusive to feminism that should incline it in that direction. Indeed, some feminists strongly argue that, for feminist purposes, it is better avoided!). These problems can be approached through the ambiguities surrounding and tensions between key terms – ‘perspective’, ‘standpoint’, ‘location’, ‘community’ – and the particular way in which ‘heterogeneity’ and ‘embodiment’ are treated. Potter argues that, ‘Against the traditional empiricist assumption that the individual is the primary epistemic agent, feminist standpoint epistemology holds that communities, not individuals, produce knowledge in the first instance’ (p. 138). She describes the position as follows: Communities as epistemic agents are internally heterogeneous, multiple, and very likely contradictory or incoherent, not homogenous, unitary, and coherent. This is because they are constituted by people who differ in many important ways. That is, the people within a community might not share many social locations although they share enough to constitute an epistemic community, e.g. the scientific community of neurobiologists. (pp. 138–9)

Knowledge, culture(s) and Culture

27

This particular example of a ‘community’ – ‘the scientific community of neurobiologists’ – could be relatively non-problematical in that it is strongly bounded by well-defined professional criteria, but ‘community’ is not, here, limited to groups of this type: ‘different communities as epistemic agents may differ in many ways from each other: a community of middle-class Chicanas [women of Mexican descent in the United States] differs culturally, by gender, ethnicity, and class, from a community of poor, Anglo women’ (p. 138). But in what manner is there a ‘community’ of women of Mexican descent in the United States other than in that there are some women in the USA who happen to be of Mexican descent? This is a much broader and more difficult view of ‘community’. The issues here are, perhaps, more worrying for the sociologist than for the philosopher because it is the sociologists who have to do the ‘hard labour’ of defining and discovering actual examples of ‘communities’ that function as ‘epistemic actors’ in the manner described. There is a further complication: ‘And while different epistemic communities may produce similar accounts of the same aspects of the natural or social world, they may well produce different or even contradictory accounts’ (ibid.). This seems highly likely. But then, in addition to the problems of providing a sociologically robust definition of ‘community’, even if achieved, it would not settle anything anyway because members of the same ‘community’ can still produce accounts that are ‘different or even contradictory’. How, then, do we decide between them? It becomes difficult to see in what sense ‘epistemic communities’ are actually epistemic. On this basis the concept ‘community’ becomes otiose because in itself it cannot actually settle anything or effectively differentiate between a perspective and a standpoint or evaluate competing analyses. The particular problem for feminist standpoint theory is that in rejecting ‘essentialism’ (i.e. the claim that women, ‘share one or more essential properties’ that make them ‘who they are’ (Potter, p. 155)), there is, then, a crucial loss of ‘epistemic privilege’ and, hence, ‘there appears to be no way to decide between or among conflicting knowledge claims produced by different groups of women’ (ibid.). But even if such ‘essential properties’ did exist they would not in themselves guarantee ‘epistemic privilege’ because, for any particular case, something in addition would be required to warrant truth claims. Essentialism is not the real problem and hypersituated locatedness is not an answer. It is important to stress at this point that the objection is not to what Potter describes as the feminist standpoint principle, that ‘Against the traditional empiricist assumption that the individual is the primary epistemic agent, feminist standpoint epistemology holds that communities, not individuals, produce knowledge in the first

28

Towards the Sociology of Truth

instance’ (though this idea is in no way exclusive to feminist standpoint theory). The position being advanced in this book is in complete agreement. The disagreement is to do with how this is understood. Following on from this, there is a final observation to be made concerning the ‘dominant’ group. Potter’s account stresses two things, the first is the heterogeneous and ‘localized’ character of subjugated communities and their standpoints and the second that it is these communities that can move from perspectives to standpoints through ‘analysis’ by virtue of their location. The implication seems to be that the dominant group is not in the same way heterogeneous and cannot develop a standpoint of its own because it, by definition, cannot see beyond its own perspective (its standpoint is identical to its perspective in that it represents its interests, but for subjugated groups their interest is elsewhere) and also that there is an irreducible boundary between the dominant group as an epistemic agent and (despite the local differences between them) the multitude of subjugated groups (only the subjugated can ‘see’ certain aspects of the dominant reality). However, realistically the ‘dominant’ group is also heterogeneous and different groups within it might not only have different perspectives, but might also have different and conflicting interests (unless it is implied that although ‘essentialism’ does not hold for the subjugated, it does for the dominant group). Again, there is, here, a major problem in translating the philosophical position into a viable sociological model. Given the multidimensional model of ‘location’, and if it is admitted that the dominant group is also heterogeneous and its locations also multidimensional, then it follows, given the absence of any essential properties that all women (or men) hold in common, that certain groups of men and certain groups of women will have more in common with each other, and have closer interests, than they do with other groups of men or other groups of women and such men and women could develop a shared, ‘politically correct’, standpoint. The model of society presented by standpoint theory seems to be that of a multiplicity of hyper-situated subjugated groups at the base with a massive, monolithic ‘dominant discourse’ representing the dominant social group hovering above – rather like the enormous, menacing alien space craft in the film, Independence Day hovering above the city.

The Problem of Hyper-situatedness All of these problems are brought into a tight focus by the problem of ‘interest’ itself. Subjugated groups attempt to move, through ‘analysis’,

Knowledge, culture(s) and Culture

29

from a perspective to a standpoint for ameliorative and emancipatory purposes – to improve their situation and redress injustice – because it is in their interest to do so. But it cannot be assumed that groups that are dominant automatically know what in practice at any moment actually is in their interest (a point that Marx himself made about capitalists). They also need ‘analysis’ to identify this and, as with subjugated groups, might get it wrong or fail to agree! It is extremely unlikely that, in a complex modern society, there could ever be a ‘dominant group’ so unified that it shares a common ideology that could in any meaningful sense be described as ‘hegemonic’ (though how any system of thought could ever actually be demonstrated as being hegemonic remains a moot point – what, in practice, are the criteria?). This particular way of being sociological about knowledge becomes, in a sense, too sociological. On the one hand, it attempts to ground knowledge in multidimensional social locations, but these, by their very complexity and their capacity for multi dimensional interconnectivity, on the other hand, render the epistemological aims impossible. Douglas Porpora has described this condition as being ‘hyper-situated’ (Porpora 2004, p. 52). Porpora is performing what he calls a ‘reverse discourse analysis’ – that is; he employs the devices of postmodern deconstructionism against that position itself in order to demonstrate that in order to do what it intends it necessarily presupposes what it sets out to deny. In this respect my own argument, in the previous chapter, parallels his. His focus is a debate between a group of feminist thinkers that was brought together in a collection edited by Linda Nicholson entitled Feminist Contentions. Porpora illustrates the problem by which the tendency towards ‘hyper-situatedness’ undermines the possibility of analyses and debates within this type of perspective having any kind of ‘wider significance’ (ibid.). For example, in her introduction to the volume, Linda Nicholson is at pains to assure us that the volume is not representative of feminist theory in general. Although she does not put it quite so laboriously, Nicholson wants us to understand that the volume represents only four white women; four white women from the United States; four white women from the United States who are in the academy; who, within the academy, each represents only a particular tradition within particular disciplines. If that does not yet make the point, Nicholson (1995: 1–2) further denies that the volume represents even ‘a state of the art discussion of “the relationship of feminism and postmodernism”’. What then does the volume represent? If the views of these women have no wider significance, then what justified their being brought

30

Towards the Sociology of Truth

together in the first place? What justified the republication of their debate, first in German and, then, again in English? (Porpora 2004, p. 52) In fairness, as Porpora’s further exposition indicates, not all of those involved in this debate should be associated with the position being examined here and he registers his own support for Benhabib’s position, for instance. But Porpora does identify a basic problem for ‘hyper-situated’ accounts. As ‘locations’ become increasingly multidimensional, and identities more and more ‘hyphenated’, then what is said becomes, in everdecreasing circles, ever more restrictedly ‘local’ (see also Maton 2000). There is an inverse relationship between the increase in what might be called ‘sociological density’ in the description of the location and what can be said that is of ‘wider significance’ and if there is no wider significance, what, then, is the point of saying it in the first place? Such speakers are at best simply talking about themselves or at worse merely talking to themselves. In a rather contradictory way, according to Porpora, Nicholson also describes the participants in the debate as, ‘powerful theorists’, but, he argues, The problem is that by so hyper-situating the debate, Nicholson disavows the only way we have of making sense of this theoretical power. If, as claimed, these women truly do offer us powerful insights, then those insights should be about some object and should be objectively defensible independent of the voice that first uttered them. In that case, it should not matter whether the insights are offered from the United States, by academics, or by women who are white. (Porpora 2004, p. 52) Basically, it is the ‘aboutness’ of knowledge that comes to be lost here – the sense in which knowledge is about something other than itself, something that exists independently in its own right. Knowledge, in hyper-situated approaches, is only ever, really, knowledge about the knower and never about anything other than the knower because there can be no separation between the two, no ‘epistemology without a knowing subject’ as Popper called it (Popper 1972). Essentially, the problem comes down to attempting to advance this type of approach as a general epistemological position. In a more pragmatic and piecemeal manner its basic propositions and insights concerning ways in which people’s social circumstances might affect their ways of knowing and of making knowledge are entirely plausible. A standpoint might well inspire a particular analysis, but it cannot in the same way warrant that analysis because to the degree that any particular location can produce a number of

Knowledge, culture(s) and Culture

31

different analyses, a standpoint in itself provides no basis for judging between them. It is ‘epistemic’ only in the sense that it produces knowers, but not in the sense that it produces knowledge. More is required: truth making as well as the demand for truthfulness. Something more is needed than simply a standpoint and it is this that needs to be identified.9

Recognition Lois McNay usefully distinguishes between three approaches to ‘the subject of recognition’. In the first instance, in ‘liberal theory’, ‘Individuals are understood to have fairly fixed, pre-given beliefs and are regarded, therefore, as relatively impervious to democratic deliberation. On the whole, any response to collective social and normative problems must be based on an appeal to their rational self-interest, rather than to any altruistic capacities, or on an appeal to the intrinsic importance of certain normative ideals’ (McNay 2008, p. 7) (at the extreme this broadly corresponds to the detached, asocial, disembodied ‘epistemic agent’ described by Potter – ‘rational man’). She then develops a contrast between post-structuralism (broadly corresponding to the ‘hyper-situated’ subject described by Porpora) and the position associated with ‘thinkers of recognition’: Against these two streams of thought, thinkers of recognition, argue that if subjects are understood in a different way then difference is no longer reified as an ineliminable obstacle to social and political arrangements based on normatively thick ideas of shared understanding, empathy and agreement. The inclusive inflection that thinkers of recognition give to the diological constitution of the subject means that individuals have the capacity, indeed in some cases are predisposed, to empathize with the other rather than being locked in an antagonistic relation with them. The inclusive proclivities of the subject are reinforced through the ideas of its situated and practice-oriented nature which emphasize the underlying shared regularities, assumptions and norms that structure embodied social existence. By highlighting the commonalities of existence in this way, even if they are latent, recognition thinkers seek to sketch out potential grounds for shared understanding and action. (McNay 2008, p. 7) McNay goes on to further develop these significant features of ‘recognition theory’ through a ‘materialist understanding of subject formation’ (ibid. p. 11).

32

Towards the Sociology of Truth

It is on the basis of such ‘inclusive proclivities’ that it becomes possible to say something of ‘wider significance’ – wider in the sense of being more than simply a personal statement about a local condition that is beneath either contestation or warrant. Such statements of wider significance can provide the basis for ‘potential grounds for shared understanding’ because they are about things that are themselves independent of those making the statements and that provide a basis whereby statements can be independently evaluated through procedures, forms of social practice, that are shared. McNay (pp. 176–80) argues that standpoint theorists such as Harding have, in various ways, modified their positions and tend to argue that the experiences of subjugated groups should be treated only as the starting point, but cannot be the finishing point. The key issue is how to get to the finishing point? As Margaret Archer puts it: For example, social constructionists hold society to be made up of intersubjective meanings, but they are also maintaining this to be objectively the case. Although relativism undermines their social ontology, it does not prevent their aim from having been to make a true statement about the nature of social reality. Like the Welshman asked for the route to Snowdon, a realist would reply they were starting from the wrong place – not that Snowdon was an undesirable destination. (Archer 2004, p. 117)

Don’t Start from There It is now necessary to move from the problems of hyper-situated and reductive forms of culturalist analysis in the alternative direction indicated, in their various ways, by Archer, McNay and Porpora, and that is not simply back to the decontextualized, disembodied subject. It is probably fair to say that, today, no one would disagree as such with the historicist position that knowledge is socially constructed, historically located and intrinsically connected with power (e.g. see Fay1996, ch. 4). Towards the end of her review of standpoint theory, Potter offers the following formulation: ‘depending upon the project, some social locations and standpoints have epistemic advantage inasmuch as they allow an empirical assessment of how likely it is that the knowledge particular knowers produce will not be objective, will fail to maximise the epistemic virtues for that project’ (ibid. p. 158). This could well be the case, but it is difficult to think of any school of thought that would on principle oppose this

Knowledge, culture(s) and Culture

33

idea or see such opposition as a necessary condition for establishing an epistemologically strong sociology of knowledge. At this point standpoint theory has modified itself to the extent of becoming anodyne and innocuous. In these terms, it has become so specifically conditional that it applies only to special cases, each of which would have to be assessed on its own merits by means that are not standpoint specific. It is difficult to see how this differs from simple, ‘old fashioned’ objectivity and avoidance of bias in scholarship. What makes weak historicism ‘weak’ is that the claim that knowledge is socially constructed, historically located and intrinsically connected with power is, as it stands, crucially incomplete. The explicit statement shadows another that is implicit, but is its necessary condition and is the more fundamental. The full-blown statement should read: ‘it is in fact the case that knowledge is socially constructed, historically located and intrinsically connected with power’ and it is the, ‘it is in fact the case’ clause that is most important. As argued in the previous chapter, the fact of the historically located character of knowledge is not intrinsically incompatible with the possibility of truth or rational objectivity in knowledge. For this statement about knowledge to be itself knowledge it must in some way or other be performing an ‘it is in fact the case . . .’ type operation in order both to ground its own statement and to insist that any statement to the opposite is false. As Porpora puts it, despite, ‘all attempts to ward off truth as something unholy, truth continues to manifest its absent presence’ (ibid. p. 56). The ‘finishing point’ is, as it were, already there at the beginning. What can be termed a ‘strong’ historicism, by contrast, starts from the recognition that the historicist principle is in fact a fact, but crucially recognizes that this fact about knowledge does not, then, preclude the possibility of knowledge – it actually entails it. It is time to turn attention to the suppressed, ‘absent’, side of the full-blown proposition – to move from: it is in fact the case that knowledge is socially constructed, historically located and intrinsically connected with power to: it is in fact the case that knowledge is socially constructed, historically located and intrinsically connected with power What are the social conditions whereby we can come to make, ‘it is in fact the case that . . .’ type statements that are, ‘in fact’ in the case?

34

Towards the Sociology of Truth

Strong Historicism Knowledge is, in a real sense, knowledge and, as such, has attributes specific to it and which are non-reducible to external, local interests. Knowledge has its own interest. Intellectually successful educational sectors are successful because of their relationship to knowledge, not because of their relationship to a culture(s). Sectors that seek to become intellectually successful should seek to do so on the basis of a relationship to knowledge, to construct a knowledge culture. This is most crucial for socially disadvantaged groups because the culture and structure of knowledge provides a context and principle that can become available to them in a manner that is in a significant manner relatively (never absolutely) independent of other culture(s) and systems of stratification. It is the non-arbitrary of knowledge that enables us to advance the claim that, ‘it is in fact the case that . . .’ and it is this that we should now be pursuing: the sociality of knowledge itself as well as its inevitable entanglement with other things. Succinctly: whereas weak historicism is reductionist and is concerned with the historicity of knowledge, strong historicism is emergentist and concerned with the sociality of knowledge. It is the emergent powers of knowledge and the properties of the manner in which it is produced that enables knowledge to be context-transcending and to constitute Culture for culture(s). It is not that knowledge is in the positivistic manner independent of social context, but that it can move beyond the conditions of its immediate context and demonstrate validity across contexts. Weak historicism, as ‘critical’ sociology, works to deconstruct the illusion of Culture, to recognize the misrecognized and to counter its symbolic violence. Culture will be cut down to size and made to modestly assume its proper place as just one more of the culture(s). Here, there is a onedimensional, horizontal model of society, of culture(s) each cohabiting on the same plain. Each of the culture(s) receives equal respect because none can claim any transcendental authority. Bernstein describes this condition in terms of a ‘horizontal’ knowledge structure (see ch. 9). Gellner, in a rather similar way, employs the term ‘symmetrical’; that is, that all cultures and cognitive styles are held to be equal. What I have described above, he refers to as, ‘the imaginary universe’ of the ‘hermeneutic relativist’ (represented today by the postmodernists): the imaginary universe of our hermeneutic relativist is symmetrical. It somewhat resembles the expanding universe of the physicists, in which discrete galaxies all recede from each other, and the universe as a whole

Knowledge, culture(s) and Culture

35

looks much the same from any given vantage point. The important thing is, indeed, that there must be no privileged vantage point. This was the ideology of colonialism. The truth is that all cultures are equal, and no single one of them has the right to judge and interpret the others in its own terms, and, above all (the ultimate horror), it must not claim that the world is correctly described in its own terms. It is this fearful symmetry which is a total and disastrous travesty of the world we live in. Anyone who endorses it cannot even begin to understand the present human condition. (Gellner 1992, pp. 56–7) Weak historicism simply is not a viable account of our world. The denial of cognitive asymmetry (of Culture) is for Gellner, who was never inclined to pull his punches, merely a self-indulgent, intellectual affectation and postmodernism a passing fad. However, in another key area, Gellner is equally forthright in facing up to uncertainty. Although it simply is a fact that one cognitive style is superior to all others, ‘No one quite knows just how it is done. . . . But there is no shadow of a doubt that it is done, even if we do not know just how it is done’ (ibid. p. 59). Cognitive asymmetry, as Gellner calls it (or the possibility of ‘verticality’ in Bernstein’s terms), is represented in the way in which the knowledge associated with one particular cognitive style is certainly produced under particular social and historical conditions, but has the capacity to transcend those conditions and be adopted, applied and developed further transculturally. The extended quotation below makes a number of important points: The postulation of this kind of completely indisputable asymmetry has nothing whatever to do with a racist, or any other, glorification of one segment of humanity over another. It is a style of knowledge and its implementation, not any category of personnel, which is being singled out as symmetry-defying. That style of knowledge did of course have to emerge somewhere and at some time, and to this extent it certainly has historical links with a particular tradition or culture. It emerged in one social context, but it is clearly accessible to all humanity, but endorses none; and it does rather look as if it were more accessible to some segments of mankind amongst whom it had not sprung up spontaneously. Its greatest elective affinity need not be, and probably isn’t, with its place of origin. The first industrial and scientific nation is not, at present, at the top of the First Industrial Division. It sometimes looks as if it were struggling in the relegation zone. This is a curious and important fact, one which had become conspicuous in the course of this century.

36

Towards the Sociology of Truth

So the conditions which have favoured its emergence are not necessarily the same as those which favour its subsequent development: in the late twentieth century, industrialism is doing rather less well in its place of origin than it is in countries which failed to give birth to it, and were perhaps rather unlikely ever to do so. It is not clear which of the conditions surrounding its birth were crucial, and which were merely accidental and irrelevant, and presumably the crucial ones might have come together in other places and at other times. But above all, it is absolutely clear that the asymmetry-engendering powerful form of cognition is not the prerogative of any one human group. So it does not, in this sense, give rise to any ranking of human groups. (Gellner 1992, p. 61) What is central, here, is Gellner’s point that what is really significant about Culture is not the degree to which it is tied to any particular culture(s), but the degree to which it is not. It is this understanding that distinguishes strong historicism from weak historicism. In line with the basic historicist principle, this particular cognitive style had to come from somewhere and at some time (which is not to say that under different conditions it could not have come from somewhere else at some other time – this is Weber’s big question). But, as globalization so dramatically demonstrates, it is not tied to the cultural context of its origins and, indeed, other cultures may be applying it and developing it with even greater efficacy. Globalization brings the great benefit of our, now, being able to see that modernization is not simply Westernization. In significant respects, the West is now itself being modernized by ‘others’. Most, significantly, as far as the culturalist sensitivities of weak historicism are concerned, these observations do not, ‘give rise to any ranking of human groups’ – it is the knowledge that counts, not the knowers. It is a ranking of cognitive styles not cultures. Gellner is forthright: ‘We happen to live in a world in which one style of knowledge, though born of one culture, is being adapted by all of them, with enormous speed and eagerness, and is disrupting many of them and totally transforming the milieu in which men live. This is simply a fact’ (ibid. p. 78). Sense one type Culture does not occupy the position it does simply because it is the sense two type culture with the biggest guns. It occupies that position because of what it demonstratively does and has achieved historically. And what it has achieved is a result of what it does – how it ‘works’ – and this is culturally transportable. It is a Culture that transcends culture(s). Although the production of knowledge cannot but occur except within an immediate socio-historical context (it is always in and of the world) – and this constitutes its historicity – it is also always something

Knowledge, culture(s) and Culture

37

that is being done in the world. It is a form of human practice – and this is its sociality. Strong historicism recognizes the interdependence between both of these facts. They are, of course, actually, one and the same complex thing, but the analytical distinction between them allows us to search for the major features of the sociality of knowledge; that is, the necessary features of social practice that enable symbolic resources developed within one particular socio-historical context to be valid in other contexts – to be transcultural and, hence, Culture.

Conclusion The key characteristic of Culture is that it is transcultural – it is valid across cultures and can be taken up, applied and further developed in cultures and places other than those of its historical genesis. Today this fact is represented in the existence of global networks of scholarship and most powerfully so in the natural sciences. However, these networks are not only extensive in space, the most successful ones are also extensive in time, they are grounded in canons (Moore 2007, ch. 3). Sociologically, Culture is a matrix that is extended in time and space. This provides an ‘extended’ model of ‘epistemic community’ that is radically different from the ‘restricted’ local one of the standpoint theory described by Potter. This difference is that identified by Muller when he says that, ‘“Culture”, understood aesthetically (or epistemologically), denotes cultivation and discernment, a sense or sensibility that has “higher” or “lower” embodiments . . .’. It cannot be acquired simply by ‘dwelling’ within a culture(s) (the immediate, the intimate, the everyday). It can only be acquired through a systematic programme of learning, through the cultivation of a specialized habitus. The matrix becomes embodied as enduring predispositions towards behaviours of a particular, specialized kind. It requires ‘cultivation’ (education in a structured systematic form) and involves the capacity to participate in a particular way within a particular enduring structure of extended sociality. The historicist principle that, it is in fact the case that knowledge is socially constructed, historically located and intrinsically connected with power, requires one further refinement. It is this: . . . This is so, is it not?, and here it is the ‘?’ that is crucial. The formulation comes from F. R. Leavis. Richard Hoggart puts it well: Endless different readings of any text of subtlety are always possible. Many, not all, are useful; no one reading is exhaustive, and we must each

38

Towards the Sociology of Truth

be prepared to defend those we arrive at and to modify them if necessary. Some current theorists live in a different world from that invoked by the celebrated Leavisean formulation; that, after a mutual, sustained and close attention to a text, one might hope to arrive at a point where it is possible to say, ‘This is so, is it not?’ Anyone present has the right to answer: ‘Yes’, or ‘Well actually, no.’ But the very fact of being willing to sit down before the text and undergo such a practice and to ask the ‘This is so?’ question implies the possibility of a shared significant past and the meaningfulness of the search for ‘true judgement’ outside ourselves, which also can be shared. (Hoggart 1995, p. 86) ‘This is so’ presents a candidate for truth, but the ‘?’ qualifies its certainty, acknowledges its intrinsic fallibility and removes it from the realm of the absolute. The assertion is embedded within the ‘?’. The ‘is it not?’ invites dispute, debate and collective evaluation. Hoggart is describing a particular type of social practice to do with the sharing of texts, a communal participation in the life of a canon, of something outside the self and that is shared and is a process undergone. It is not just the discipline of academic scholarship that Hoggart is describing, however, it is a broader vision of a public sphere. A good sense of what this entails is provided when McNay, in contrasting post-structuralism with the ‘recognition’ perspective, argues that, thinkers using the idea of recognition tend to conceive of this relational dynamic in terms of a social dialogue with concrete others, independent individuals who exist externally to the subject’s projections. On this view, language is conceived not as an abstract system of signification but as a type of practical action that aims at self expression, communication or mutual understanding. Dialogue is, therefore, orientated towards the realization of some kind of pragmatic, intersubjectively shared goal. This difference between the relational subject of poststructuralism and the dialogic subject of recognition can be restated as the difference between an exclusionary and an inclusionary view of the interaction between self and other. (McNay 2008, p. 4) In this broader sense, the public sphere is the Culture of the culture(s) that a strong historicist sociology of education can explore and to which an education grounded in knowledge is the introduction. The dominant weak historicism in the sociology of education posits a strong linkage between the organization of knowledge and the structure of

Knowledge, culture(s) and Culture

39

social inequality and power in society. It rewrites the former in terms of the latter and, hence, presents the former as a historical arbitrary. The strong form of historicism, by contrast, suggests weak linkage between these two systems on the grounds that knowledge has an autonomous (non-reducible) material base in its own right. This is represented in the emergent powers of knowledge-producing practices and their capacities to be transcultural. Hence, as Michael Young (1998) has argued, it is necessary to be able to theorize and investigate the logics of epistemological and social differentiation with a certain degree of independence (reflecting the relative autonomy of the educational and knowledge-producing field). In principle, once weak historicist reductionism is abandoned, it can be understood that increasing differentiation and hierarchy in knowledge is compatible with decreasing hierarchy and inequality in society. Progressive or ‘critical’ educational reform has failed in part because of its assumption that knowledge relations are simply reducible to external power relations. I have argued that there is little evidence to suggest that either conservative educational arrangements or progressive reforms in themselves produce scholastic success. Essentially, this is because what is important is not the relationship of knowledge to culture(s), but the relationship of culture(s) to knowledge and the manner in which educational reform can facilitate non-exclusionary access to Culture from the culture(s).

Chapter 2

Schismatism, the Pursuit of Difference and the Tradition of the New

Introduction The purpose of this chapter is to examine more broadly that way of being sociological about knowledge that in the previous chapter was associated with the distinction between Culture and the culture(s) and that reduces the former to the latter. The intention is threefold: (a) to demonstrate that this condition has a long history, (b) that the culture(s) approach has a distinctive paradigmatic form revealed by that history, and (c) to indicate how these things can be conceptualized within a more general theory of the structuring of intellectual fields (to be further developed in later chapters). This is to identify an aspect of intellectual fields in the humanities and social sciences that has been remarked upon, in strikingly similar ways, by a number of commentators over several decades. It is that when a claim is made that a particular kind of knowledge or perspective is innovative in the sense of representing a radical break with hitherto existing kinds of knowledge or perspectives. Today, this is most commonly associated with a wide range of self-proclaimed ‘post’ theories. In the 1970s, the comparable phenomenon was expressed in terms of movements proclaiming themselves as ‘New’ – the New Sociology of Education, the New Criminology, New Directions in sociological theory, for instance – and with announcements of ‘the death of . . .’ various established institutions: ‘the death of the family’, for example, identified in the work of radical psychiatrists such as R. D. Laing, and even ‘the death of God’ for some radical theologians such as Thomas Altizer. In between those dates, in the 1980s and 1990s, there emerged a range of standpoint and discourse theoretical approaches in feminism, multiculturalism, post-colonial theory and in association with sexual orientation that proclaimed an incommensurable break, grounded

Tradition of the New

41

in the unique perspective of a given group (the culture(s)), with an established knowledge (Culture). I will also deal below with instances prior to the 1970s (we may now be in a post-post period – there appears to be an increasing number of publications with ‘After . . .’ in the title: After is the New Post!). The previous chapter briefly related the ‘culture(s)’ model to what Bernstein terms a ‘horizontal knowledge structure with a weak grammar’. This is to conceptualize the structure of a field or paradigm rather than engage with its content. Randall Collins argues that one of the options open to the sociology of knowledge is to, ‘concentrate on the shape of the network structure itself and its dynamic over time; this leads us to considerations of the internal stratification of intellectual networks, and to the principle of change through structural rivalry’ (Collins 2000, p. 48). This chapter is located within that framework of concerns, with, ‘the shape of the network structure itself and its dynamic over time’. The underlying thread that runs through these episodes in sociology is a tendency towards a subjectivist anti-epistemological relativism grounded in forms of standpoint reductionism that conflate knowledge with the experiences of various categories of people as they are positioned within the relationships of society. Frequently, and very much so today, this positioning is further understood in terms of power relations. The work of Ernest Gellner, from his first book Words and Things (1959/2005) to the posthumously published Language and Solitude (1998) provides a running critical commentary on these episodes. He summarizes the basic position as follows: A certain subjectivism, an exaggerated preoccupation with ‘meaning’ and hermeneutics, characterises this movement; or, perhaps one should call it a style or mood. In part, it reached anthropology from literary studies, and more generally that part of the ‘humanities’ which had never even aspired to constitute a ‘social science’ . . . It had various names: first, in its milder form, it was called ‘interpretive anthropology’, whilst the later, more virulent version liked to be known as ‘postmodernism’. (Gellner 1998, p. 175) The long-term perspective provided by Gellner’s work (some 40 years) makes visible the character of this position as the repetition of a particular type of episode with certain distinctive features. It has, as Frank Kermode pointed out in the mid-1960s (see below), a ‘paradigmatic aspect’.

42

Towards the Sociology of Truth

Ring in the New An Initial sense of what is at issue, here, and how the above relate to each other is provided in the following from Pierre Bourdieu when discussing the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ sociologies of science: It is worth reflecting on such use of the opposition old/new, which is doubtless one of the obstacles to the progress of science, especially social science: sociology suffers greatly from the fact that the pursuit of distinction at any price, which prevails in certain states of the literary field, encourages an artificial emphasis on differences and prevents or delays the initial accumulation in a common paradigm – everything endlessly restarts from zero – and the establishment of strong, stable models. This is seen in particular in the use made of Kuhn’s concept of the paradigm: any sociologist who feels so inclined will declare himself the bearer of a ‘new paradigm’, a ‘new’ ultimate theory of the world. (Bourdieu 2004, p. 8) He goes on to say how, ‘Cut off from the other specialities by a series of breaks which tend to turn it in on its own debates, traversed by countless conflicts, controversies and rivalries, this subfield is driven by the logic of supersession, of outflanking . . .’ (ibid.). What I am, here, calling schismatism corresponds to the ‘logic of supersession’ – the claim of radical break and of the incommensurability of standpoints. The condition that Bourdieu describes entails a specific strategy in relation to intellectual innovation, one that he describes as, ‘the fictitious pursuit of difference’ (ibid. p. 7) – that is, that a claim to radical originality disguises that it is restating what has already been said before. In essence, the problem that Bourdieu describes is that of how we recognize, in the social sciences, that which is different and that which is the same and that which is change (Bernstein 1990): the relationship between continuity and discontinuity in ideas and, hence, what might count as progress. There are striking parallels between Bourdieu’s account from the early twenty-first century and one produced in the early 1970s by Basil Bernstein. In a ‘brief review’ of the sociology of education, he wrote that In a subject where theories and methods are weak, intellectual shifts are likely to arise out of conflicts between approaches rather than conflict between explanations, for, by definition, most explanations will be weak and often non-comparable, because they are approach specific. The

Tradition of the New

43

weakness of the explanation is likely to be attributed to the approach, which is analysed in terms of its ideological stance. Once the ideological stance is exposed, then all the work may be written off. Every new approach becomes a social movement or sect which immediately defines the nature of the subject by re-defining what is to be admitted and what is beyond the pale. Old bibliographies are scrapped, the new references become more and more contemporary, new legitimations are ‘socially constructed’ and courses take on a different focus. What may be talked about and how it is to be talked about has changed. (Bernstein 1977, pp. 167–8) Bernstein is discussing the role of what he terms ‘approach paradigms’ in that period (i.e. the idea that what counts is the manner in which an issue is approached rather than how it is explained). The ideas of Thomas Kuhn – or at least a particular way of assimilating his ideas – loom large in this discussion (see Chapter 4). The idea of a ‘paradigm’ (understood in a certain way) itself became a paradigm for describing intellectual fields in terms of radical breaks (‘scientific revolutions’) and incommensurability. Despite being separated by around 30 years, these accounts by two major thinkers in the field provide very similar descriptions. When discussing Kuhn, Bourdieu projects his analysis back in time to the period that provided the backdrop against which Bernstein was writing: Kuhn, who was in no way a revolutionary, was adopted, somewhat in spite of himself, as a prophet by the students of the University of Columbia and integrated into the ‘counterculture’ which rejected ‘scientific rationality’ and proclaimed the supremacy of imagination over reason . . . The invocation of such theoretical references can be understood when one sees that the student movement took its challenge right onto the terrain of scientific life, in a university tradition where the separation between ‘scholarship’ and ‘commitment’ is particularly sharp; the aim was to liberate thought and action from the control of reason and convention, in the social world as a whole, but also in science. (Bourdieu 2004, p. 17) The phenomenon that Bourdieu is identifying has more recently found expression in the so-called culture and science ‘wars’, especially on campuses in the USA. These two pieces, describing a condition of a field, indicate a continuity of status over a considerable period of time. But, paradoxically, this

44

Towards the Sociology of Truth

continuity is grounded in the repetition of claims to difference, of radical breaks and discontinuities – revolution, innovation and paradigm change. This is the continuity of discontinuity, the tradition of the new. The strategy of discontinuity, of schism, the rejection of tradition, is itself a tradition. It operates through an organization of time, through a device of radical break that separates a particular present from a representation of a moribund past or (synchronically) a ‘new’ standpoint radically different from an incommensurable, oppressive mainstream hegemony. What is central, here, is the attitude to the past. Frank Kermode (1966) distinguishes between two forms of modernism, a newer and an older one (the former is now known as postmodernism): In fact, what distinguishes the new from the older modernism most sharply in this context is not that one is more apocalyptic than the other but that they have such different attitudes to the past. To the one it is a source of order; to the newer it is that which ought to be ignored. (Kermode 2000, p. 115) Kermode makes an important point: although chronologically the older modernism predates the newer in terms of origins, they also ran in parallel in the twentieth century. In the contemporary context, postmodernism has not historically succeeded modernism (in the historicist grand narrative sense that the postmodernist themselves explicitly reject but covertly rely on to valorize their argument), but rather tracks alongside it in counterpoint: ‘This anti-traditionalist modernism is the parent of our schismatic modernism; but at both periods the two varieties here co-existed’ (ibid. p. 104). In terms of Kermode’s account of this condition (from the 1960s) it could be suggested that a modernism that does not ignore the past can comprehend and contain a postmodernism that does ignore the past and, consequentially, cannot properly recognize either modernism or itself – this despite its much vaunted claims to ‘reflexivity’. Bourdieu points to the issue, here, when he says, with reference to Kuhn, that the, ‘revolutionary . . . necessarily conserves what he supersedes’ (Bourdieu 2004, p. 17). Schismatic modernism (postmodernism, standpoint theory), by contrast, treats the conservation of what is superseded as a betrayal of the revolution – it is revolutionary precisely because it does not conserve. On this basis we can distinguish schismatic modernism from ‘conservationist’ modernism. Schism is, in its relation to the past, a type of erasure and its revolutionary model Jacobin in temper.

Tradition of the New

45

Schism and Erasure Bernstein described an approach paradigm as being like a ‘social movement or sect’. Kermode made a similar point: ‘A disregard for the past makes such movements easy to start; there is an analogy in the history of heresy, where fanatics often re-invent the doctrines of earlier sects without knowing it’ (Kermode 2000, p. 120). This type of schismatic break with the past erases the past as a reference point (or, more precisely, what is to count as a relevant past is perceived to be very near – it is the ‘distant’ past that is dismissed). Abbott describes an instance of this: The insight that social reality is produced by practice rather than given ex ante has made at least four separate appearances in this century’s [i.e. the 20th] social science: first in the pragmatism of Dewey and Mead, then in the relational Marxist epistemology of Mannheim, then in the strong constructionism of existentialism and phenomenology, and finally in recent theoretical work from France. There are different wrinkles to these appearances, and of course there is a new terminology in each case. But there is no real progress, no fundamentally new concept. We simply keep recalling a good idea. (Abbott 2001, p. 17) This is similar to Gellner’s point with reference to the associated case of relativism. Abbott illustrates this situation when he goes on to say that, My generation footnotes the constructionist position to Berger and Luckmann. Our elders attribute it to Mannheim or, if students of Blumer, to pragmatists like Mead. But many of our current students are convinced that social constructionism was invented by Foucault and the feminists and that all of preexisting sociology from Mead and Thomas to Mannheim to Berger and Luckmann was an exercise in hegemonic objectivist discourse. (Abbott 2001, pp. 20–1) Abbott reckons that these episodes occur in 20 to 30 year cycles – constructionist episodes reappear, with new names, around every 25 years. The near past, that which is gone but remains continuous with the present and is relevant as a source of reference, is very near indeed and the moribund ‘distant’ past trails silently and exhausted behind it. The propaganda effect of any kind of self-proclaimed post theory is to convince us that there is simply no point in considering the ‘distant’ past. This recontextualization

46

Towards the Sociology of Truth

is to do with the framing of intellectual space, with the positioning of the break between the near and the distant past. It is because of this that, ‘many of our current students are convinced that social constructionism was invented by Foucault and the feminists and that all of preexisting sociology from Mead and Thomas to Mannheim to Berger and Luckmann was an exercise in hegemonic objectivist discourse.’ The significant feature of erasure is to be found in the organization of the space-time parameters of the intellectual field and the criteria of membership. Consider the case of Harold Rosenberg. Here we have a key statement (and it is important to remember that this was written in the 1950s): Mondrian leaves ‘naturalistic’ art behind, and it’s up to the artist who comes after him to leave Mondrian (or Picasso or Klee, depending on whom he conceives as ‘last’) behind. But not Rubens of Correggio, since Rubens has been left behind by other people. It follows that Mondrian is Art, but Rubens and the others are tombstones in a receding series, not even containing anything that can be negated. (Rosenberg 1994, p. 79) In the same way that for Rosenberg, Mondrian is Art (who would it be if he were writing today?), so for the students referred to by Abbott, Foucault is Thought. In the above, the distant past is the time prior to Picasso or Klee or Mondrian. All that has gone before is, ‘not even containing anything that can be negated’. In the broader argument, Rosenberg is contending that the segment represented by each ‘tombstone’ contains its own distinctive aesthetic and that the exhaustion of that aesthetic concludes the time of the segment. Furthermore, and crucially, the principles, standards and criteria of one aesthetic are irrelevant to the evaluation or judgement of any other. In short, each aesthetic is incommensurable. American action painting has genuine novelty because it represents the first genuine American aesthetic that owes nothing to Europe. Its principles are incommensurable with European aesthetics and it is impossible to judge it by those standards. Hence, Rosenberg’s principle is that of incommensurable radical breaks within the field of the aesthetic. Bourdieu provides a description of this general condition: Every paradigm reaches a point of intellectual exhaustion; the disciplinary matrix has produced all the possibles it was capable of generating (a theme that was also found, with reference to literature, in the Russian formalists), like an Hegelian essence that has realised itself, in accordance with its own logic, without external intervention. (Bourdieu 2004, p. 16)

Tradition of the New

47

It is fascinating that around the same time as Rosenberg was producing such a model in the arts Thomas Kuhn treats the history of science in the same way in, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn 1962/1970). The issue of how Kuhn was assimilated into sociology will be considered in more detail in Chapter 4.

Incommensurability and Conversion Kuhn’s account of science in terms of scientific revolutions and paradigm change itself became a paradigm for describing intellectual fields and differences and changes within them. In the 1970s the ‘News’ that were announcing themselves in sociology invariably presented their newness as that of a new paradigm. It is this that Bernstein is describing in his ‘Brief Review’ in terms of ‘approach paradigms’. The implications of this are extreme in terms of how knowledge relations in a field are to be understood. Kuhn says, for instance, that, Examining the record of past research from the vantage point of contemporary historiography, the historian of science may be tempted to exclaim that when paradigms change, the world itself changes with them . . . It is rather as if the professional community has been suddenly transported to another planet where familiar objects are seen in a different light and are joined by unfamiliar ones as well. (Kuhn 1970, p. 111) What was genuinely (and, for some, outrageously) novel about Kuhn’s version was that he applied it to the natural sciences. What made this especially attractive in some areas in sociology was that it appeared to undermine the strong epistemological claims of the natural sciences and positivistic demands that the social sciences should operate on their model (as the positivists defined it). This seemed to indicate that not only were the natural sciences not epistemologically privileged, but also that they are, in fact, much more like sociology in its interpretive hermeneutic forms. Kuhn goes on to liken paradigm change to a gestalt switch. This way of thinking provided a sympathetic and encouraging background to the social constructionism that was asserting itself at the time (Abbott’s third episode). If each paradigm is ‘another planet’ in another universe with its own distinct geometry (in the way that in an even earlier period Sapir and Whorf described the differences between language systems) and if all are incommensurable, what then is the relationship between them and how do people get from one paradigm to another? In the extreme, the answer to

48

Towards the Sociology of Truth

the first question is that there is no relationship – that is what ‘incommensurable’ means (though this answer is fatally flawed (see below)). The answer to the second is that we are inducted through an act of conversion. Scientists, or any others, moving from one paradigm to another cannot do so along lines that translate terms or points in one into terms and points in the other because they are radically discontinuous. As with the gestalt switch the change must be sudden and wholesale. Though in the humanities and sociology, where the ‘paradigm’ is frequently an identity – a ‘hyper-situated’ category of persons – conversion as such might not be an option because it would, for ‘Others’, entail a change in who they are (male/female, black/ white, etc.). In this ‘Calvinist’ form, the privileged knowers are a predetermined and exclusive elect. The language of conversion is used explicitly by Rosenberg: Based on the phenomenon of conversion the new movement is, with the majority of painters, essentially a religious movement. In almost every case, however, the conversion has been experienced in secular terms. The result has become the creation of private myths. The tension of the private myth is the content of every painting in this vanguard. This act on the canvass springs from an attempt to resurrect the saving moment in his ‘story’ when the painter first felt himself released from Value – myth of past recognition. Or it attempts to initiate a new moment in which the painter will realize his total personality – myth of future self-recognition. (Rosenberg 1994, p. 31) This secularization of eschatological impulses is the central theme of Kermode’s book. Kermode does not dispute the fact of the rapidity of social change that he sees as provoking these apocalyptic anxieties. His concern is with the amplification of that sense into a mood of crisis that expresses itself in schismatic forms such as the radical break with the past that renders the past irrelevant and sees transition as perpetual. He says that for Rosenberg, we have somehow to understand that the criterion by which we decide to receive art into our lives cannot be any criterion deriving from the past, since all such is inapplicable. The logical development of the doctrine of perpetual transition is that the only criterion by which we may decide if an object has meaning for us is the novelty of the object. This is the situation, and, Mr. Rosenberg believes, it has been for some time; he

Tradition of the New

49

speaks of a ‘tradition’ of the New. Instead of being a point of balance between two ages, our transition is an age in its own right. (Kermode 2000, p. 102) Kermode identifies a major problem with the value of novelty within such a schismatic, transitionalist discourse, and this will be returned to below. At this point, it is the ‘paradigmatic aspect’ of paradigmatic thinking that is to the fore. Kuhn’s account of science in terms of paradigms itself provided a paradigm for thinking about the shape of knowledge structures in terms of radical, incommensurable discontinuities. The point, here, is that Bernstein’s description of ‘approach paradigms’ points in the direction of an established, identifiable phenomenon in the history of the representation of intellectual fields; that is, a tendency to represent fields segmentally and serially as radically discontinuous, incommensurable frameworks, as a strongly classified array of approaches, paradigms, forms of life or ‘tombstones’. In terms of the framing of an intellectual field, a knowledge structure of this type is concerned to truncate the field of reference and relevance, to pull in the boundaries of knowledge and to restrict the translation and exchange of meanings. This in itself can be advanced as a legitimation for a knowledge claim – that the knowledge represents the unique ‘voice’ of a particular social group (Moore and Muller 1999, Maton 2000).

From the Perspective of the Local Schismatic thinking can adopt two (not necessarily disconnected) forms: transitionalism that is diachronic (radical break or ‘post’ theories) and perspectivism that is synchronic (standpoint theories). Whereas the former distinguishes the near from the distant past by erecting a marker that inaugurates the start of the present (that identifies the point of the radical break before which there are now only tombstones), the later distinguishes itself from a ‘mainstream’ (in some feminist versions this was identified as a ‘malestream’) of thought that is held to be official, dominant and hegemonic and as oppressive, marginalizing and silencing. The segmented structure in this case is generated by a form of standpoint reductionism that conflates knowledge with knowing and identifies knowing with the experience and subjectivities of particular categories of people. That is, knowledge is grounded in the local and the knowledge structure is authorized and authenticated as a homological expression of the local.

50

Towards the Sociology of Truth

The central issue at stake, here, has been described by Abbott: For our debates within the social sciences about ‘universalism’ and ‘local knowledge’ have obscured the fact that the vast majority of social scientists share the moral project of knowing society in a way that everyone else in society thinks of as universalistic. We can try to add ‘the voice of the unheard’ to our work, but the unheard know very well that social science is something other than their world, that it is addressed to someone other than them. The project of social science as a definable enterprise is, in reality, the production of sharable ‘universal’ knowledge about society. We ought to stop kidding ourselves that it is not. (Abbott 2001, p. 5) Schismatic perspectivism denies the very possibility of universalism. All knowledge is local. The claim to universalism is regarded as an ideological device that privileges one particular local (that of the dominant social group) over all others and constituting it as hegemonic, as Culture. This type of schism makes two moves: the first is that of denunciation, of the unmasking, debunking or deconstructing of an allegedly dominant hegemonic knowledge structure that reveals its oppressive partisan character and the second is affirmative, an emancipatory claim to be giving ‘voice to the unheard’ (the culture(s)). This type of operation often describes itself as ‘critical’. Kuhn’s concept of paradigm was assimilated into this kind of sociological reductionism. Theories were understood as discontinuous and incommensurable perspectives grounded in the interests of the groups whose experience and standpoints they represent. Such accounts are thoroughly externalist in character: knowledge is explained exclusively in terms of factors and forces outside itself and particularly in terms of power.10 The concept of paradigm was embraced because it appeared to draw the epistemological teeth, as it were, of ‘official’ knowledge claims. The question was no longer, ‘is this right or wrong?’ (the level of explanation), but ‘whose knowledge is it?’ (the level of approach) – there can be no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ that is not anything other than standpoint or paradigm relative. In the earlier extract, Bernstein distinguishes between conflicts over approaches and conflicts over explanations. He says of the approach mode in the field that, ‘What is of interest is that the new approach is not an approach, but is made up of a variety of approaches (some of which are in opposition to each other)’ (Bernstein 1977, pp. 166–7). As has already been described, the major problem, here, is that there is little in the way of growth and progression in knowledge: ‘old bibliographies are scrapped,

Tradition of the New

51

the new references become more and more contemporary.’ As Bourdieu puts it, ‘everything endlessly restarts from zero.’ Essentially the problem, Bernstein suggests, is that approaches do not show ‘how’, but simply indicate a ‘direction’: There is also the very perplexing issue of what happens when we move from raising questions or writing highly speculative essays to the giving of answers. It is not at all clear how we obtain reliable knowledge, which can be made public and plausible. Whilst we are told of the sins of empiricism, of the abstracted fictions created by observer’s categories and arithmetic, of the importance of close ethnographic study of situated activities, we are not told precisely what the new criteria are by means of which we can both create and judge the accounts of others. We are told and socialised into what to reject, but rarely told how to create. In the same way as the first approach to the sociology of education defined research problems, so the recent approaches carry research directions. (Bernstein 1977, p. 167) Bernstein is distinguishing between two contrasting field modalities. The first is operating in a problem/explanation mode, the second in an approach/direction mode. The former allows for progression in knowledge by conserving what has been superseded, the latter is driven by, ‘the logic of supersession, of outflanking’, by the ‘the fictitious pursuit of difference’ in Bourdieu’s words. Bourdieu’s more recent description echoes the earlier one of Bernstein: Another feature of this field is that relatively few empirical data are handled or demanded there, and these are generally reduced to texts, which are often drowned in interminable ‘theoretical’ discussions. A further characteristic of this hybrid region where all sociologists are philosophers and all philosophers are sociologists, where (French) philosophers who concern themselves with the social sciences mingle and merge with the indeterminate devotees of the new sciences, ‘cultural studies’ or ‘minority studies’, who recklessly plunder and borrow from (French) philosophy and the social sciences, is that it is very undemanding as regards rigour in argumentation. (Bourdieu 2004, p. 8) In short, both Bourdieu and Bernstein are suggesting that it is easier to deal in approaches rather than in explanations (it takes little ingenuity

52

Towards the Sociology of Truth

to contrive a description of some knowledge as ‘bourgeois’, or ‘male’, or ‘Eurocentric’, etc.). Starting from zero, erasing the old bibliographies and dealing only with the ‘contemporary’ – the New or the Post or the After – relieves the burden of informed, rigorous scholarship. ‘Any sociologist who feels so inclined will declare himself the bearer of a “new paradigm”’ by claiming to represent ‘the voice of the unheard’. Bourdieu describes the strategy of the ‘radicality effect’ generated by, ‘the skilful use of ambiguous concepts’ (ibid. p. 26): The strategy of moving to the limit is one of the privileged devices in the pursuit of this effect (I remember the use made in the 1970s of Illich’s thesis of ‘deschooling society’ to counter the description of the reproductive effect of the educational system); but it can lead to positions that are untenable, unsustainable, because they are simply absurd. (Bourdieu 2004, p. 26) In this specific case, Bourdieu is referring to the ‘splippage’ whereby the recognition that knowledge is ‘socially constructed’ comes to be presented as the claim that it is, ‘a fabrication, and therefore an artefact, a fiction’ (ibid.). The point of general relevance here is that the recognition that knowledge is social does not necessarily imply that it is also, then, no more than a fabrication or fiction. The ‘splippage’ involved in the radicality effect is the production of an absurd conclusion (e.g. relativism) from a perfectly sound premise (e.g. that knowledge is socially produced) or that because those producing the knowledge are men, then the knowledge is ‘male’, or if white, then ‘Eurocentric’ (Moore 2004, 2007). The field description produced by these accounts by Bourdieu and Bernstein in their particular ways can be identified with the earlier one of Kermode writing on the field of criticism; of ‘the fragmentation of the traditional language of criticism and aesthetics into private dialects notable for a reduction rather than for an increase of power and scope’ (Kermode 2000, p. 120). Further: That this public should break up into specialized schools, and their language grow scholastic, would only be surprising if one thought that the existence of excellent mechanical means of communication implied excellent communications, and we know it does not, McLuhan’s ‘the medium is the message’ notwithstanding. But it is still true that novelty of itself implies the existence of what is not novel, a past. The smaller the

Tradition of the New

53

circle, and the more ambitious its schemes of renovation, the less useful, on the whole, its past will be. And the shorter. (Kermode 2000, p. 117) Schismatic discourses reduce all knowledge to the local (or, more precisely, to locals or culture(s) because, by definition, there can be no universal local). The historical priority of Kermode’s account is apt in that the condition described by Bernstein is on the way to becoming that which Bourdieu describes as, The semiological vision of the world which induces . . . that paradigmatic form of scholastic bias, textism, which constitutes social reality as text . . . Science is then just a discourse or a fiction among others, but one capable of exerting a ‘truth effect’ produced, like all other literary effects, through textual characteristics such as the tense of verbs, the structure of utterances, modalities, etc. . . . The universe of science is a world that succeeds in imposing universally the belief in its fictions. (Bourdieu 2000, p. 28). Textism (post-structuralism), as Bourdieu defines it, treats scientific texts as no different from literary texts, they are just another genre. They employ a particular set of conventions to induce a ‘reality’ or ‘truth’ effect in the reader – Bourdieu employs the term ‘radicality effect’ in ironic contrast.

The Banality of the New What has been outlined above is a particular way of representing the structuring of intellectual fields. In Bernstein’s language, the field is seen as ‘segmented’ both in time (through radical breaks – the schismatic transition) and contemporaneously (in terms of standpoints – the schismatic perspective). The segments of the field are strongly classified and held to be incommensurable (Bernstein describes this as a ‘horizontal knowledge structure with a weak grammar’ – see below). The device that creates this representation is one that defines originality or innovation in knowledge in terms of the radically incommensurable superseding of the received. In this manner, novelty in itself becomes the criterion of progression in knowledge – we are saying that which has never been said before and which owes nothing to what has been said before. This device constitutes the logic of ‘fictitious difference’, of the segmentation and fragmentation of the field. But for this to work, it has to be taken that this thing in fact has never

54

Towards the Sociology of Truth

been said before and owes nothing to history (e.g. for feminist discourse to truly be feminist discourse, it must owe nothing to ‘male’ discourse). To return to Bourdieu’s view that, ‘the revolutionary . . . necessarily conserves what he supersedes’. He says also, that, ‘In other words, a (true) scientific revolutionary is someone who has a great mastery of the tradition’ (and not someone who sweeps away the past or, more simply, just ignores it) (Bourdieu 2000, p. 16). Similarly, Kermode objected that, Mr Rosenberg’s New is not, in my opinion, a useful criterion; the forms of art – its language – are in their nature a continuous extension or modification of conventions entered into by maker and reader, and this is true even of very original artists so long as they communicate at all. Consequently, novelty in the arts is either communication or noise. If it is noise there is no more to say about it. If it is communication it is inescapably related to something older than itself. (Kermode 2000, p. 102) There are two points to be taken from this. The first is that schismatic discourse, despite its Jacobin inclinations, cannot actually dispense with the past (though it can affect to ignore it – but this stance is no more than affectation, though those affecting it are generally in ignorance of this because the stance they adopt precludes the possibility of their recognizing it). Secondly, and underlying this, is another point to do with incommensurability. It is important to recognize that the logic of schismatism, of ‘outflanking’, has the effect of privileging the voice of particular speakers within any given segment or paradigm or perspective. Where knowledge is held to be nothing but local the speaker of any particular vernacular is doubly protected: (a) because of the exclusive authenticity claimed for their ‘voice’, and (b) because no one speaking any other vernacular can claim the authority to challenge them – only we are qualified to speak about this because of who we are. The explanatory logic of standpoint analysis allows it to be assumed axiomatically that the knowledge expressed in any voice (of the unheard or otherwise) is unique because specialized to a culture(s), and it is the speaker who counts (Maton 2000, 200611). Employing his later conceptual language of vertical and horizontal knowledge structures, Bernstein says that, the set of languages which constitute any one Horizontal Knowledge Structure are not translatable, since they make different and often opposing assumptions, with each language having its own criteria for legitimate texts, what counts as evidence and what counts as legitimate questions

Tradition of the New

55

or a legitimate problematic. Indeed the speakers of each language become as specialized and excluding as the language. Their capital is bound up with the language and therefore defence of and challenge of other languages is intrinsic to a Horizontal Knowledge Structure. (Bernstein 2000, p. 162) In this manner, schismatism and the pursuit of fictitious difference can be understood, in Bourdieu’s terms, as a particular strategy for acquiring capital within an intellectual field. By pitting the local against the universal (the culture(s) against Culture) in the way that it does (by invoking the ‘voice of the unheard’ as the basis of its authority), it both debunks the authority of established knowledge and protects itself from criticism from the representatives of established knowledge. In this respect, the schismatic tactic can bring rewards in (at least some areas) of an intellectual field. However, it is important to recognize that this tactic depends upon a very particular representation of intellectual fields (i.e. as segmented) and is grounded in a very particular view about knowledge and how it is produced (or ‘constructed’). The claim to incommensurable exclusiveness is crucial, so it is also crucial to understand how this claim is untenable. The considerable literature and discussion on the concept of incommensurability and its place in Kuhn’s work is beyond the scope of this chapter (see Lakatos and Musgrave (eds) 1970 (especially the chapter by Margaret Masterman) and Sharrock and Read 2002). But for present purposes, the central point can be made succinctly: if it were in fact that case that paradigms (etc.) are incommensurable, then we would never know. The reason for this is that if, indeed, all meanings are framework relative, then we could only ever see the meanings of other frameworks in terms of the meanings of our own and, therefore, would not be able to see them as different frameworks. If the incommensurability thesis were true, we would never know because the one thing we could never see would be difference. This self evidently is not the case. Not only are we able to see differences, but we are also able to translate (or ‘paraphrase’ (Sharrock and Read 2002)) terms between frameworks (paradigms or perspectives). We can be very much aware of ‘holes’ in our meaning system where there is no term comparable to a term in another meaning system – but, nevertheless, we can paraphrase our way into an intelligible understanding and, indeed, might integrate the term into our own meanings system and give ourselves a new possibility (the English language has been especially proficient in this). The two significant implications of this fact are: (a) that the privilege and exclusiveness being claimed by schismatic discourses are unwarranted

56

Towards the Sociology of Truth

(who speaks might in some particular circumstances be very important, but that is never the end of it and, in any case, this would have to be independently demonstrated) and (b) that universal (though always fallible) knowledge is in principle possible (though how this is independently demonstrated in any particular case is another question). The schismatic vision is fatally flawed because its condition cannot be met. Bourdieu argues as follows: The ‘essential tension’ of science is not that there is a tension between revolution and tradition, between conservatives and revolutionaries, but that revolution implies tradition, that revolutions are rooted in the paradigm. (Bourdieu 2004, p. 16) This argument, that he actually takes from Kuhn (pointing again to the issue of exactly how Kuhn was recontextualized in sociology), echoes Kermode’s argument regarding Mr Rosenberg and the New: ‘Schism is meaningless without reference to some prior condition; the absolutely New is simply unintelligible, even as novelty’ (Kermode 2000, p. 116). The African-Caribbean poet, Derek Walcott makes the same point: ‘those who break a tradition first hold it in awe . . . They know . . . that revolutionary literature is a filial impulse, and that maturity is the assimilation of the features of every ancestor’ (Walcott 1998, p. 36). What the poet describes as ‘the assimilation of the features of every ancestor’ is in a more prosaic language the concern with the issue of integration and progression in knowledge in a field such as sociology (see Moore 2007). The rhetoric device of radical break approaches, the radicality effect of a proclamation of the New, the Post and the After, obscures the underlying condition that the New is simply being endlessly reinvented. The rhetoric may serve to secure a particular position within a field for those for who, under certain conditions in certain places, it confers capital. However, as these writers insist, revolution always conserves and it is this essential tension that schismatism fails to confront.

The Essential Tension and the Possibility of Progression The Tension between tradition and revolution corresponds to that between the universal and the local or between Culture and the culture(s). The local is the revolutionary camp from which is launched the assault on the universal, basically by attempting to demonstrate that the universal is merely

Tradition of the New

57

the master’s local – his ‘big house’. Each of the critics considered above described the field represented in this way in terms such as ‘segmentation’ and ‘fragmentation’, in terms of breaks and standpoints. In his later writing, Bernstein (2000) began to develop a more systematic way of conceptualizing these issues. He makes two major distinctions. The first is between horizontal discourses and vertical discourses, and, second, within vertical discourse, between hierarchical and horizontal knowledge structures. z

z

z

z

By a horizontal discourse, Bernstein means local everyday knowledge (culture(s)) that is highly context-dependent and restricted in transferability. It relies very much on tacit understanding shared between members of particular communities. By vertical knowledge structures, he means forms of knowledge that are context transcending and which entail the unpacking or elaboration of meanings so that they can be shared across contexts. By a hierarchical knowledge structure he means one in which this process is achieved to a high degree by virtue of its capacity to integrate knowledge to increasingly higher levels of abstraction (the exemplar is physics). Such a knowledge structure has ‘strong grammar’, i.e. the capacity to translate terms into a common code (universalism or Culture). By a horizontal knowledge structure he means one where this capacity to translate and integrate is much lower. In this case there is a ‘weak grammar’. At the extreme, schismatic discourse is the exemplar of a horizontal knowledge structure with a weak grammar.

The strength of ‘grammaticality’ is the thing that differentiates between vertical knowledge structures of these different types: a capacity (and willingness) to enable the integration of knowledge. In contrast to the paradigm model of radical breaks and incommensurable discontinuities, verticality is achieved through the translation, paraphrasing and integration of terms in a way that allows knowledge to progress to higher levels of generality and abstraction across the contexts of horizontal discourse (it is paradigm or culture or standpoint transcending) (Moore and Maton 2001; Muller 2000, 2006). Collins (2000) in a similar way refers to this process as ‘abstraction/reflexivity sequences’ whereby knowledge fields theoretically consolidate existing knowledge and move to conceptual problems of a higher level. Essentially, education is (or should be) the systematic induction into this type of activity. Bernstein illustrates the key differences between these field modalities by asking the question, what counts as development in a field? In the case of a

58

Towards the Sociology of Truth

horizontal knowledge structure, development is, ‘the introduction of a new language’ – the ‘voice’ of a previously silenced culture(s). By contrast, in the case of a hierarchical knowledge structure: Opposition between theories in Hierarchical Knowledge Structures is played out in attempts to refute positions where possible, or to incorporate them in more general propositions. At some point, sometimes later than sooner, because of special investments, a choice is possible provided the issue can be settled by empirical procedures. However, in the contrasting case of a Horizontal Knowledge Structure within the Social Sciences (for example Sociology which I have in mind here and above) then neither of these possibilities are possible because the discreteness of the languages defy incorporations into a more general language. Indeed, built into the construction of the language here is the protection of its discreteness, its strategies of apparent uniqueness, its non-translatability and its essential narcissism. (Bernstein 2000, pp. 162–3) As with Bourdieu’s ‘pursuit of fictitious difference’, so Bernstein also notes a similar device: ‘strategies of apparent uniqueness’. It is important to observe, here, that Bernstein says that in hierarchical knowledge structures, the choice between theories can be made, ‘provided the issue can be settled by empirical procedures’. This points back to his 1970s distinction between ‘explanations’ and ‘approaches’. Hence, hierarchical structures grow through the integration of languages (translatability or ‘strong grammar’) whereas horizontal ones grow through the addition of languages (incommensurability or ‘weak grammar’): ‘integration of language in one case and accumulation of languages in the other’ (ibid. p. 162). Schismatic discourses, in their various manifestations, are devices for the proliferation of languages (specializations and privileging of identities and the ‘protection of discreteness’) – none more so than post-structuralism with its endless hyphenation of ‘fragmented’, hyper-situated identities and ‘decentred’ selves. By contrast, where grammar is strong, ‘the passage from one theory to another does not signal a break in the language. It is simply an extension of its explanatory/descriptive powers’ (ibid. pp. 163–4). Horizontal knowledge structures with weak grammars are inherently unstable because the logic of fragmentation, of schism, is potentially unending, both because of the endless possibilities for creating new hyphenated ‘identities’ and that of the epistemic regress of ‘reflexive’ accounts. It is for this reason that, as Bourdieu observed, it is difficult to establish ‘strong, stable models’, and, so, accumulate knowledge or create ‘news’ as Bernstein

Tradition of the New

59

liked to say. Growth in the field is through subdivision – categories split into smaller and smaller components and the bibliographies become more and more contemporary, the parameters of each segment increasingly condensed and restricted. It becomes less and less important to know very much (or to be able to teach very much) because simply knowing who you are (and the Other who you are not) is sufficient – Bourdieu terms this ‘narcissistic reflexivity’. As with certain approaches in the field of sociology as described by Bernstein and Bourdieu in different periods, so Kermode, in a similar fashion, previously provided a parallel account of such a tendency in criticism. In Bernstein’s words, the contributors to these segmental discourses, ‘cannot think beyond the sensibility which initially formed them, a sensibility embedded in a knowledge structure and on an experiential base, local in time and space’ (ibid. p. 167). However, it should be recalled that what is being described in this instance within fields of intellectual production is a phenomenon of a more general type. Abbott (2001), in his highly original and systematic study of these things, uses the term, ‘fractionation’ to refer to this process of segmentalizing fragmentation and points to examples in other fields such as the political, with the tendency to factionalism on the Left (think of the history of the Fourth International), and, in the religious, to the history of sectarian divisions within Protestantism. A sense of the generality of the phenomenon is important in order to underscore the point that the issues here are sociological, to do with the representations and structurings of intellectual (and other social) fields and not polemical in the sense of engaging with any particular instance of a segmented knowledge structure in itself on ideological or political terms (though it is the case that the general issue is of political consequence). The point about a horizontal knowledge structure with a weak grammar is that it represents and authorizes itself as a homologue of horizontal discourse (expressing ‘the voice of the unheard’). Bernstein says that Horizontal discourse may be seen as a crucial resource for pedagogic populism in the name of empowering or unsilencing voices to combat the elitism and alleged authoritarianism of Vertical Discourse. Here students are offered an official context in which to speak as they are thought to be: Spon-Tex (the soundbite of ‘spontaneous text’). This move at the level of the school is paralleled by the confessional narratives of a variety of Feminist and Black Studies in higher education. The ‘new’ ethnography celebrates Horizontal discourse though extensive use of quotations which serve as experiential ‘evidence’. (Bernstein 2000, pp. 169–70)

60

Towards the Sociology of Truth

What is important, here, is not that the examples are, ‘a variety of Feminist and Black Studies’ or other recent forms of ‘educational populism’ (see Bernstein 2000, fn 12, p. 174), but the question why should it be that discourses such as these collapse into such weak grammar forms that deny both to themselves and those they seek to empower access to epistemologically powerful forms of knowledge? Bernstein concludes that, ‘There may be more at stake here than is revealed by attacks on the so-called elitism, authoritarianism, alienations of Vertical discourse’ (Bernstein 2000, p. 170). He is right – part of what is at stake is the right of the ‘unheard’ to discover that which is beyond the local, to move between their culture(s) and Culture.

Conclusion The distinction that Bernstein makes between vertical and horizontal knowledge structures, between strong and weak grammars and between the development of knowledge through the integration of languages or through the addition of languages has parallels with Kermode’s earlier distinction between forms of modernism. Essentially, the difference is in how the relationship between continuity and discontinuity in intellectual fields is represented. On the one hand, vertical knowledge structures recognize that revolution is ‘rooted in the paradigm’ – it presupposes the tradition, the canon. On the other, schismatic modernism (horizontal knowledge structure) proclaims that revolution entails the rejection of tradition – that tradition contains nothing that can even be negated. As Bourdieu put it, each paradigm is seen as having an internal limit of the possible and when this potential is exhausted it becomes just one more tombstone. By contrast, to acknowledge the ‘essential tension’ is to recognize that the schismatic condition is in reality unobtainable, it is an affectation – for both Bourdieu and Gellner (thinkers of very different temperaments but very similar backgrounds as ‘philosopher-anthropologists’) an ‘absurdity’, and must be approached as a positioning device within an area of a field. Kermode recommended that the best posture to adopt to such approaches is that of ‘clerkly scepticism’. Schismatism should be treated sociologically rather than intellectually (what are the conditions under which certain kinds of people should come to advance a position such as this?). But, at a deeper level, there is an awareness that the essential tension is the paradoxical condition that provides the creative energy that drives intellectual fields. As Randall Collins says, ‘The paradox is that for an intellectual community

Tradition of the New

61

to be in a great creative age, it must be both making great discoveries and also overturning them, and not just once but over and again. The most successful intellectuals tend to be chained together across the generations’ (Collins 2000, p. 32). Collins effectively illustrates this point: The argument for the autonomy or particularistic flow of culture is allied with a more general position variously labelled poststructuralist, postpositivist, or postmodernist. No general explanations are possible; there can be no general theory of ideas, sociological or otherwise. Yet, paradoxically, postmodernism is itself a general theory of ideas. The theory has been accumulating in intellectual networks for several generations. One stream began in the phenomenological movement searching for the essences of consciousness, broadened by Husserl into a crisis for European science and by Heidegger into a crisis of lived meaning. Another stream came from Saussure’s semiotics of language structure via formalist literary theory and Levi-Strauss’s search for the codes underlying every item of society and culture. Wittgensteinian analytical philosophy was eventually levied for contributions, yielding the argument that thought has fragmented into a plurality of language games. Popularizing the whole movement was the fusion with Marxism and Freudianism widespread amongst French intellectuals after 1960; then in a twist which snatched intellectual victory from political defeat came the shift to postMarxism, spearheaded by disillusioned activists who turned the Marxian technique of ideological unveiling (and the allied technique of Freudian unveiling) against those grand narratives themselves. These sets of overlapping movements have constituted a theory of ideas, converging on its reflexivity and its rejection of any fixed standpoint from which an explanation might be made. At the same time, postmodernism is itself an explanation. (Collins 2000, pp. 10–11) It is worth, at this point, quoting Collins at some length because condensed in this extract is the essence of the message that this chapter is attempting to convey: that schismatism has a history of its own in its repetitions (the tradition of the New) and that each of its repetitions has a subterranean history of its own – a tradition. However, by virtue of the very logic of their position, such discourses cannot recognize this fact, let alone develop a sense of why it is important. Kermode, as a ‘knower’ of his generation, knows very well why it is important. Schismatic fictions can be useful (they can announce new issues and address received injustices). However, ‘If we treat them as something other than they are we are yielding to irrationalism;

62

Towards the Sociology of Truth

we are committing an error against which the intellectual history of our century should certainly have warned us. Its ideological expression is the Final Solution. And we are always in some danger of committing this error.’ A ‘post’ modernism that ignores the past – that is unaware of the essential tension – might have great difficulty in grasping Kermode’s concern. A key theme that unites the arguments reviewed in this chapter is that of segmentation and repetition. But it is important to have a clear understanding of exactly what it is that is repeated. What is repeated is a particular epistemological posture, representing sociologically a position in a field, that associates and authorizes new knowledge by reference to the knower and which privileges the position of those who claim to be giving voice to those knowers – to the ‘voice of the unheard’; what Karl Maton terms a particular ‘language of legitimation’ (2000). As Bernstein said: ‘Indeed, built into the construction of the language here is the protection of its discreteness, its strategies of apparent uniqueness, its non-translatability and its essential narcissism’ – for Bourdieu, ‘the logic of supersession, of outflanking’ and, the ‘fictitious pursuit of difference’ and ‘narcissistic reflexivity’. Although it might well be true that recent ‘post’ theories have refined these strategies into a high art, this chapter has demonstrated that the schismatic position has a long (if repeatedly erased) history. What is not being repeated, however, is the particular body of substantive knowledge that each segment of a horizontal knowledge structure provides. In terms of data we have become very rich, but our wealth is in small change. Our need is to start cashing it in for notes of higher denomination – to move from the addition of languages to the integration of languages. A final point: a feature of schismatic thinking is that it frequently proclaims its virtue as being that in giving ‘voice’ to the subjugated it bestows ‘recognition’ and promotes ‘inclusion’. But ‘inclusive’ is precisely what it is not.

Chapter 3

The Arbitrary and the Absolute

Introduction The previous chapter examined examples of recent ‘post’ theories as instances of a more general type of ‘schismatic’ thinking that appears periodically within intellectual fields and that can be seen as exhibiting a distinctive paradigmatic form. That discussion did not seek to engage argumentatively with specific propositions advanced by the post theories, but rather to reveal the form of a particular position-taking strategy within a field – one that assumes a particular modality within the structure of the field through the claim that this is the proper way of understanding knowledge and that to claim otherwise is to commit a species of ‘symbolic violence’. Similarly, in the Introduction the concern was not with such arguments in terms of their claims and positions, but with their underlying logics and their antinomies. The concern was with the generic syntax (the paradigmatic form) not the surface semantics. It was demonstrated that the inherent problems of inconsistency, incompleteness and epistemic regress are fundamental and intractable. Such ways of being sociological about knowledge cannot be intellectually consistent without being logically contradictory and those contradictions render intellectual coherence impossible. Hence, the argument that there is no possibility of knowledge beyond that which is merely relative cannot be sustained. But if the argument against the possibility of truth is unsustainable – ‘don’t start from here’ – then where might a positive argument for the possibility of truth start from and how, sociologically, might this be translated into an account of something that human beings do in the world? Or, in other words, what is the basis for an alternative modality – a vertical knowledge structure with a strong grammar rather than a horizontal knowledge structure with a weak grammar? The key issue for the alternative approach is how do we ‘reclaim knowledge’ (as Johan Muller puts it (2000)) and (in Michael Young’s words (2008)), ‘bring knowledge back in’. It has been stressed that within the sociology of education problems of this type are not simply formalistic or ‘academic’. They are associated with the

64

Towards the Sociology of Truth

work of explaining how certain aspects of social stability and change are as they are: particularly with the issue of inequality in education and society and the manner in which the organization of knowledge might be implicated in such states of affairs. The key feature of most influential ‘critical’ approaches to educational knowledge is that they are not arguing that the problem is that of an arbitrarily unjust inequality in access to a valued resource – knowledge – but that the organization of knowledge as such is intrinsically arbitrary in that knowledge claims in themselves are ultimately without any objective basis. Knowledge or truth claims are held to be only relative to a ‘framework’ of some kind and the role of critical analysis is to explicate the ‘true’ meaning of knowledge through some kind of deconstructive analysis. Such frameworks, in their various forms, have over the years had many names: standpoint, perspective, world view, form of life, language game, paradigm, problematic, field, discourse, etc. In view of this it is important to emphasize that the argument to be developed below is not an argument against the idea of the framework in itself, but, rather, against what is widely taken as the radical implication of the acknowledgement of the inevitability of the framework; namely, that it renders knowledge in the last analysis arbitrary because it is always framework-relative. This chapter will draw upon the work of a number of writers who argue, against such claims, that the framework is the necessary condition for valid knowledge rather than signalling its impossibility. Certain frameworks are enabling not merely limiting. The first part of the chapter will be concerned with certain types of underlying continuities between the main forms of constructionist relativism and the absolutist position they both critique and represent as the ‘dominant’ or ‘hegemonic’ discourse. The second part will be concerned with how recognizing these continuities to be so in the way that they are, points to an alternative approach to being sociological about knowledge. To begin with, it is necessary to consider in more detail what it is that the schismatic, radical break theories covered in the previous chapter are actually breaking with and what is their relationship to ‘it’. Key thinkers to be examined below suggest that that relationship is not all it might seem.

Relativism and Objectivity Brian Fay has provided an eloquent statement indicating why a non-relativizing model of the framework is required: In so far as the world in which we live derives from our conceptual framework, and in so far as fundamentally different frameworks are

The Arbitrary and the Absolute

65

incommensurable with respect to each other, it follows that those within radically different frameworks live in different worlds which are radically separate from each other. This is the final picture of relativism: isolated groups trapped inside separate spheres unable to understand or share or communicate with others in different groups. Relativism ends in separation. How ironic, since one of the deepest motivations behind relativism, and one of its most attractive features, is its recognition of difference and its respect for it. Relativists are deeply impressed by the variation in belief, desire, morals, reasoning – in short, conceptual schemes – of people from age to age and group to group. Relativists want to avoid ethnocentrism which thinks that everyone is just like us. Relativists want not just to tolerate difference; they want to trumpet and to celebrate it. But instead of joining us to others in the ways that are respectful and appreciative, relativism separates us into enclaves of mutual incomprehension. Motivated by a deep appreciation of the ways people are different from one another, it ends up making it impossible for us to recognise and appreciate this difference. Something has thus gone very wrong with this line of reasoning. Is there a way to recognise difference without making it into a wall of separation? (Fay 1996, pp. 81–2) The problem that Fay identifies comes about when the doctrine of the framework is associated with the view that because all knowledge is based in experience and because experiences differ between social groups according to their situation in society, then their experiences are fundamentally different in kind and all frameworks, consequently, are incommensurable. This position is given an added twist when these differences are associated, also, with power relations between groups. As Fay implies, the relativists in their enthusiasm to celebrate difference and diversity tend to overlook the considerable problems that this logic entails and its implications (as previously discussed). The incommensurability of frameworks ensures the exclusiveness of various standpoints and the knowledge associated with them and privileges each particular category of ‘knowers’. Potter insists that for feminist standpoint theory, ‘Only the standpoints of those marginal to these scientific communities are strong enough to identify the culture-wide beliefs, interests, and values of scientific communities’ (2006, p. 141, emphasis added). This sort of stance can be initially attractive in that it appears to grant a special authority to certain vanguard groups. Some feminists, for instance, claimed that only women can have ‘women’s knowledge’ (and should teach ‘women’s studies’) which is constitutively different from ‘male knowledge’ and that this necessitates a distinctive feminist methodology

66

Towards the Sociology of Truth

grounded in ‘female reason’ and experience. Yet as Andrew Sayer points out, ‘In practice, the exaggeration of the problem of incommensurability, making a difficulty appear as an impossibility, looks suspiciously like a way of protecting favoured discourses from external criticism. Contrary to initial appearances, relativism encourages closed rather than open minds’ (2000, pp. 47–8). The celebration of difference and diversity in this way, when doubling as a theory of knowledge as described in Chapter 1, abandons the possibility of any sense of what might be held in common and hence not be intrinsically exclusive to privileged or vanguard groups of knowers. The root problem here has to do with the way in which the concept of the framework is treated as rendering knowledge relations arbitrary in the manner just described. This, in turn, has to do with the way in which such exclusive and incommensurable stances define themselves not only from within – positively: who we are – but with how, negatively, they define the position they are against – the dominant Other – who we are not (and ‘others’ us).

The Construct of Positivism A good way of coming to understand what a position stands for, then, is to understand what it presents itself as being against, or, more precisely, how it constructs what it is against (I must concede, of course, that this must also be true for my own argument here). Classically, the argument in certain important cases claims to be against the idea that the social sciences should be modelled on the natural sciences (‘positivism’). In more radical versions, however, the argument against knowledge is an argument against science itself – not just that the social sciences cannot be ‘scientific’, but also that science itself is not really scientific at all (e.g. Filmer et al. 1972, Usher and Edwards 1994). However, the force of arguments as radical as these relies upon a very specific construct of science: one that is in a general sense a kind of positivistic, Cartesian foundationalism. It is necessary to say: ‘in a general sense a kind of . . .’ because such accounts are often sparse in detail in this area and it is difficult in the literature to find references to anyone who actually holds to the view that is presented as the mainstream or ‘hegemonic’ view of knowledge or science or what Potter calls the, ‘culture-wide beliefs, interests, and values of scientific communities’.12 Fay calls this construct of science ‘objectivism’ which he identifies as a very particular way of

The Arbitrary and the Absolute

67

representing what is involved in being objective (other ways will be explored later). Objectivism, in Fay’s sense, is a view of knowledge in which its defining characteristics are that (a) it is a direct, unmediated reflection of reality, (b) that it is socially and historically decontextualized (a condition for (a)), (c) that it is, consequently, certain and absolute, and so (d) universal and eternal. This corresponds to the male ‘epistemic agent’ of feminist standpoint theory as considered in Chapter 1. A representative example of postmodernists writers describing knowledge in this ‘objectivist’ fashion is provided by Usher and Edwards (1994) on ‘the dominant discourse of science’: It places science firmly outside of any context of social locatedness arguing that its knowledge is warranted precisely because it is outside. Knowledge is understood as a matter of standing outside or apart from that which is to be known and from the activity of knowing. Hence, there is apparently no problem of reflexivity. Everything can be properly and truly known through an unshakable structure erected on an assumed Archimedean point transcending human social practice. (Usher and Edwards 1994, pp. 33–4) This ‘dominant discourse of science’ carries with it a corresponding model of the subject; the knower – ‘Knowledge, as well as the knowing subject, therefore becomes context free. Furthermore, rationality is cast as universal and transcendental, operating across all historical and social contexts but independent of all of them. The result is an individualistic epistemology where the solitary individual confronts an independent reality of objects’ (ibid. p. 36). This model of the individual self as something given, ‘centred’ and unchanging is contrasted in post-structuralist literature with the model of a decentred, embodied self and its ‘performativity’, as discussed in Chapter 1. A similar picture can be painted in relation to the arts and aesthetic values. Here, the corresponding idea to epistemological ‘objectivism’ can be termed aesthetic ‘essentialism’. Essentialism, here, is the view that aesthetic value and quality is an intrinsic or essential property of an artwork in-itself. This quality can be identified and appreciated by those individuals who, in turn, ‘naturally’ possess special qualities of discrimination – ‘taste’ – and who collectively comprise a cultural elite or ‘aristocracy’ (see Bourdieu 1986, part 1). John Carey has described this position as follows: ‘Works of art belong to a separate category of things, recognised and attested by certain

68

Towards the Sociology of Truth

highly gifted individuals who view them in a state of pure contemplation, and their status as works of art is absolute, universal and eternal’ (Carey J. 2005, p. 14; see further Moore 2007, ch. 4). This is strikingly similar to Usher and Edwards’ description of the ‘dominant’ view of science. In each case, these forms of objectivism and essentialism place knowledge and value in both science and the arts outside of society and history in the way that Usher and Edwards, and Potter, describe. The condition that is being presented in both these cases can be placed under the general heading of ‘absolutism’ in that it is assumed that truth and value can be identified with certainty and are both universal and eternal. As with ‘objectivism’, it is true that instances of essentialist forms of aesthetic thinking can be identified historically; Carey, for instance, provides a number of important cases – tellingly, they are mainly from the nineteenth century (see his chapter 1). However, as with objectivism, it is far from clear that this position in aesthetics could be accurately described as ‘dominant’ or ‘hegemonic’; certainly not today or, possibly, in any other period.13 What is contentious is Usher and Edwards’ claim that they are describing the dominant discourse of science or that Carey’s description is of the dominant discourse of aesthetics. Significantly, neither Usher and Edwards nor Carey present us with any influential or extensive contemporary examples. Such descriptions of absolutism, then, underpin the postmodern critique, and are also typical in that they provide little substantive evidence to support the claim being made that the type of discourse they identify actually is dominant and hegemonic. This raises a number of pertinent questions. Who exactly is it that now argues in this way about science and what are the authoritative sources and means through which the claimed ‘dominance’ is imposed? Which actual scientists or artists are on record as seeing things in this way? Are children taught anything like this in school; are undergraduates on natural science or fine art courses inculcated into such a mindset? Where in syllabuses, in course descriptions or in reading lists is there evidence of this? Where today in philosophy of science or epistemology or aesthetics do we find these absolutist views being expressed?14 Although there are therefore major problems in locating the absolutist perspective in contemporary or recent thought (let alone establishing its dominance), its sources in the past are much clearer. Its origins are in the scientific world view that emerged in the early modern period in the West with the scientific revolution, and which gathered pace and increasing solidity and substance in the Enlightenment. One significant time-line could be drawn from Descartes and Bacon to logical positivism. This thread is that of ‘foundationalism’ and can indeed be seen as

The Arbitrary and the Absolute

69

exhibiting the absolutist features described by Potter, Usher and Edwards and others. Michael Luntley has described this position as that of the ‘cosmic register’: The central idea behind the cosmic register is that the idea that truth is independent of judgement, and that is what makes it objective. Truth concerns what is objectively the case however we may think about it. The idea behind this notion of a recipe for success is the idea that it is a recipe for detecting truth amongst the distortions of human dogma. (Luntley 1995, p. 47) The language of the ‘cosmic register’ is, in an important sense, not a ‘human’ language at all, but, as Luntley neatly puts it, ‘the world’s own language’. It is (or would be if it were possible) founded simply in the way things are when that order can register itself in human consciousness free from the distortions of human misunderstanding. The scientist here is ‘the messenger of nature’ (McHugh et al. 1974). This corresponds to what Gellner, with reference to Wittgenstein of the Tractatus, calls, ‘the individualistic-universalistic, atomic vision of knowledge, thought, language and the world’ (Gellner 1998, p. 46). He says, further, that, ‘the greatest classics articulating this vision will remain David Hume’s Treatise on Human Nature, and, in somewhat different form, Kant’s three Critiques. Their terms of reference are the same as those of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus: an individual, assumed to be the standard exemplar of an invariant humanity, faces the world, or his world. How can he think it, conceptualise it, comprehend it?’ (p. 47). He describes the modern origins of this ‘vision’ as follows: It began with the Promethean defiance of René Descartes, who decided to go it alone, to step outside the custom and prejudice of his own age and culture and to seek truth on his own. He thought it would be possible to judge the culture in which he had been reared from the vantage point of a solitary individual purified by doubt, who accepts nothing other than that which his own reason compels him at accept. Cosmic exile, as Quine aptly named it, was, above all, cultural exile. It expresses extreme distrust of culture, one’s own, and all others. Moreover, Descartes felt an acute contempt for culture, which he called ‘custom and example’ and considered to be the source of all error. The human mind was so made as to ensure that, on its own, it would find the truth. (Gellner 1998, p. 43)

70

Towards the Sociology of Truth

Hence, Gellner draws a line from Descartes, through Hume and Kant, to Wittgenstein and, by implication, logical positivism in the first half of the twentieth century. There are two main points to be drawn from the example of Gellner, here. The first is how closely his description matches that of the ‘dominant hegemonic discourse’ described by the postmodernists and the feminist standpoint theorists. But, a key point, it is precisely Ernest Gellner who is producing this description – no lover of postmodernism, to put it mildly! In other words, to be able to be able to see this particular ‘vision’ – the ‘the individualistic-universalistic, atomic vision of knowledge, thought, language and the world’ – in this particular way and, furthermore, to be able to systematically critique it is not something exclusive to the postmodernists or to those holding the epistemic privileges of the subjugated and marginalized. The second point is that this critical demolition of this ‘vision’ was effectively completed before postmodernism was ever thought of (see below). Gellner describes the Tractatus (published in 1921) as one of the ‘terminal culminations’ of the empiricist tradition (ibid. p. 60, my emphasis). The ‘dominant hegemonic discourse’ was well on its way to becoming a busted-flush before the Second World War. This foundationalist, absolutist model of objectivism as the ‘dominant hegemonic discourse’ figures within postmodern type discourses in the following ways: (a) It is presented as the model of objective knowledge and rationality. (b) This model is posited as being dominant and hegemonic. (c) It is claimed that claims grounded in this model represent the standpoint and interests of dominant social groups. (d) As such this dominance is a form of subjugation and symbolic violence. (e) This is so because these ‘absolutist’ knowledge claims are false because they represent no more than the standpoint of the dominant social groups. (f) It is postmodern-type forms of critical deconstruction that most clearly reveal this situation, by virtue of their identification of exclusive standpoints. (g) Only postmodern types of standpoint relativism provide a really radical alternative to the dominant model. (h) Consequently, there is no possibility of knowledge that is rationally objective (only objectivism, never objectivity). One evident contradiction of arguments of this type is that they insist, at some moments, that knowledge in the absolutist sense cannot exist, and, at

The Arbitrary and the Absolute

71

other moments, that if knowledge could exist it would have to do so in this absolutist manner. There are two major problems with this set of claims: the first is that there is no substantive evidence presented that such a model is dominant and hegemonic, and secondly, there is no good reason to think that, if it was, postmodern types of relativism would be its only alternative. Consequently, there is actually no good reason to accept that rational objectivity in knowledge is not, in some other way, possible or that, indeed, it is not already with us (which, of course, it is).

Objectivism The key point, here, is that to argue against postmodernist and constructionist positions on knowledge is not to argue for the absolutist positions to which they misleadingly oppose themselves – ‘objectivism’ or ‘essentialism’ – but, rather, to observe in the first instance, that the positions they oppose are in the main constructs of their own devising. Absolutism so represented is a chimera cobbled together from odd (often inconsistent15) scraps of Cartesian rationalism and positivism or vestiges of Kantian aesthetics. There is, then, a fundamental problem here for positions that, for axiomatic reasons of ideology or rhetoric, require the presence of such a ‘dominant’, ‘hegemonic’ discourse. Such a device must inevitably lead to a simplification of fields of knowledge and culture that reduces them to unified monolithic forms ‘centred’ by the standpoint and interests of supposed dominant and hegemonic social groups or a ‘ruling class’. To reiterate, representations of the sciences and the arts as objectivist or essentialist and their position, in these ways, as dominant and hegemonic are largely constructs of postmodern-type thinking rather than an account of any actual state of affairs demonstrably rooted either in the history of ideas or current realities. They ‘exist’ mainly only within the framework of postmodern discourse (constructs such as ‘bourgeois’ ideology or ‘bourgeois science’ play a similar role in some forms of Marxism and we see similar devices in feminism associated with ‘maleness’ or ‘androcentrism’). But something of this kind is a necessary condition for postmodernism types of approach, in a sense it is their foundation, because without it they make little sense and have little critical force. There is a certain irony in this in that a central tenet of the postmodern position is that discourses are not about objects, but are constitutive of them. This is certainly true for what the postmodernists construct as the ‘dominant’ discourses of science

72

Towards the Sociology of Truth

and art! They have little meaningful representation outside of those discourses. The postmodernist discourse about knowledge is self-enclosed in the sense that it itself constructs the object of its critique. There is, however, a further sense in which this discourse is self-enclosed that parallels the argument in the Introduction that there is an internal relationship between those positions that deny the possibility of knowledge and the possibility of that which they deny. Fay describes relativism as ‘disappointed objectivism’ (Fay 1996, p. 220). He argues that But in fact objectivism and relativism are not true opposites; indeed, they exist on the same spectrum albeit at opposite ends. Both assume that objectivity requires unmediated access to the world, the only difference between them being that objectivists believe this access attainable, at least in theory, while relativists deny this access attainable even in theory. Objectivism and relativism are simply opposite sides of the very same coin. The proper response to the choice between objectivism and relativism is to deny that they are the only alternatives by showing that their common assumptions are problematic. (Fay 1996, p. 220) This internal relation has been observed by a number of other commentators – each in very similar ways. Niinilluoto (2002, p. 95), for instance, uses the phrase ‘disappointed absolutists’, Luntley argues that, ‘postmodernists are not really postmodernist enough, for they still hanker after the idea that unless knowledge can be founded upon certain foundations it cannot exist at all’ (Luntley 1995, p. 140). Bourdieu describes the same thing as the ‘nostalgia’ of ‘anti-rationalist nihilism’ for ‘the illusory quest for an ontological foundation’ (Bourdieu 2000, p. 121) and Niinilluoto further suggests that, ‘This mode of thinking could be called the All-orNothing Fallacy. Its different forms propose a strong or absolute standard for some category (e.g. truth, knowledge, conceptual distinction), and interpret the failure or impossibility of satisfying this standard as a proof that the category is empty and should be rejected’ (Niinilluoto 2002, p. 81). It is instructive to note also that Popper, in a paper from 1965, made essentially the same point: ‘The proponents of relativism put before us standards of mutual understanding which are unrealistically high. And when we fail to meet those standards, they claim that understanding is

The Arbitrary and the Absolute

73

impossible’ (Popper 1994, pp. 33–4) – yet again, le plus ca change le plus ca le meme chose. The reason for invoking a number of authorities in this way is not merely rhetorical; it is to illustrate that the key point being made here is already well established by commentators working independently of one another in a variety of cognate areas. That is, it actually already constitutes an established position. And this position radically revalorizes the polarity of debate because it undermines the purported ‘radicality effect’ of the rhetorical moves of the post theories. It makes visible what objectivism and relativism share in common and opens the path towards a different argument for knowledge, based upon an alternative to what these other stances share in common. But this also underscores, again, the peculiar regularity with which this position (some version of the New, the Post, the After) occurs as an episodic phenomenon. Fay’s view that, ‘objectivism and relativism are simply opposite sides of the very same coin’ is an example of the situation that Bourdieu describes sociologically as that when, consecrated oppositions eventually appear as inscribed in the nature of things, even when the slightest critical examination, especially when armed with knowledge of the field (constructed as such) very often forces one to discover that each of the opposing positions has no content beyond its relationship with the antagonistic position of which it is sometimes the just the rationalized inversion. (Bourdieu 2000, p. 101) The postmodern, relativist view of knowledge is the ‘rationalized inversion’ of its own construct of the supposedly dominant objectivist model of knowledge and has little substance beyond its relationship to that construct. The view that knowledge is arbitrary because inevitably framework-relative has force only on the assumption that a necessary condition for knowledge is that it should be framework free. The main points of the argument so far are as follows: 1. That which schematic-type theories ‘break’ with is a supposed inherited or mainstream position that places knowledge outside of any context, beyond history and presents the knower as detached and disembodied (a more detailed and contextualized example of this will be considered in the next chapter).

74

Towards the Sociology of Truth

2. There is in fact, however, little evidence to suggest that such a position is actually identifiable and active (let alone dominant and hegemonic) in contemporary or recent thinking. 3. Consequently, it has been argued, this representation is a projection from within postmodern-type discourses, a construct that is necessary in order to valorize their positions in order for their critical claims to have sense or force. 4. There is an internal relationship between the constructed position that ‘break theories’ claim to break with, and the break theories themselves. Rather than the latter being radically and critically discontinuous with the former, they are, rather, continuous with it as the ‘opposite ends’ of the same spectrum, ‘the two sides of the same coin’. They both come together as a package, as it were, rather than as two radically disparate items, because one constructs the other – the Other ‘othering’ the Other. The real anchor-point therefore is not the ‘dominant discourse’, but, rather, the supposedly ‘subjugated’ discourse that has projected the fiction of the ‘dominant’ discourse in this particular form and has, for a number of decades, in fact, itself actually constituted the dominant discourse in a number of intellectual fields, including the sociology of education.

The Positivist Way The key argument above is that the allegedly dominant absolutist discourse is largely a projection from within postmodernism rather something we ever routinely encounter independently. However, it was also acknowledged that postmodernism’s ‘other’ is not merely a fiction. It can be identified as ‘foundationalism’ (or more specifically, as ‘positivism’, or even more precisely as ‘logicism’) and, indeed, postmodern writers generally make this identification and a common way of understanding postmodernism as being post-foundationalist. There is certainly a sense in which this is perfectly true in that foundationalism in its final expression as logical positivism effectively fizzled out as an intellectual project some 50 or more years ago (see below). But in this sense we are all postmodernists (or simply post-modernists), because there are no longer any foundationalists. So what makes the ostentatiously postmodernist position different from the rest – from the simply post-modern? To a degree, the issue is one of mood or tone (much in the way that Kermode, in The Sense of an Ending, described similar things in an earlier period). For some, the demise of positivism is an event

The Arbitrary and the Absolute

75

of apocalyptic proportions – a crisis for the West (or at least its dominant white males) – but most others (including most of the dominant white males) seem to have taken it in their stride and are not much bothered. There are other, less histrionic, ways of being post-foundational. Andrew Sayer describes the situation thus: Postmodernists make a great deal of fuss about their rejection of ‘foundationalism’ and notions of (absolute) truth, and are quick to accuse opponents of assuming a ‘god’s-eye view’ or an Archimedean point from which they can evaluate knowledge. They also oppose what Derrida terms ‘the metaphysics of presence’, that is, the assumption that the intentions of an author, both subjective and concerning references to real objects, are transparent, as if there were no complications to do with language and textuality. Against this, postmodernists see language and textuality as opaque and slippery, and yet constitutive of knowledge. These are largely invented targets; it is not too inaccurate to say that almost everyone has been an anti-foundationalist for a long time, certainly well before postmodernism became popular. Contemporary realism is included in this since it is openly fallibilistic, indeed necessarily so, as we have already seen. Yet defeatist postmodernists are reluctant to believe that their opponents could be anything but dyed-in-the-wool foundationalists or naïve objectivists. (Sayer 2000, p. 68) In a similar way, Fay argues that, Perspectivism is the dominant epistemological mode of contemporary intellectual life. Perspectivism is the view that all knowledge is essentially perspectival in character, that is, knowledge claims and their assessment always take place within a framework that provides the conceptual resources in and through which the world is described and explained. According to perspectivism knowers never view reality directly as it is in itself; rather they approach it from their own slant, with their own assumptions and preconceptions. Perspectivism replaced positivism as the dominant view. (Fay 1996, p. 72) Accounts such as these entail a radical reassessment and reorientation of the field of debate as dictated by what has, at least until recently, been the dominant way of being sociological about knowledge. Contrary to the postmodern view, the real battle-ground is not between foundationalist absolutism and postmodern relativism, but between two very different ways

76

Towards the Sociology of Truth

of being post-foundationalist and also, then, between two very different ways of being sociological about knowledge. The postmodernists (as ‘disappointed absolutists’) exhibit a perverse reverence for the very thing they so vehemently oppose – the subjugating, dominant hegemonic discourse. They simply cannot let go of it. They preserve and cherish its images (as ‘androcentrism’, ‘Eurocentrism’, ‘hetereocentrism’ or whatever) in order to rage against it. It seems to be the only thing that makes their lives worthwhile (and their positions tenable). For the other post-foundationalists, the response is much more low key – ‘why all the fuss, it was only foundationalism. The world goes on.’ Another way of viewing the situation argued for above is to say that until recently the ‘dominant discourse’ is protected into the ‘space’ once occupied by foundationalism. This dominant discourse is a kind of fantasy or virtual image of something that used to be, and was influential; though whether ever ‘dominant and hegemonic’ is debatable. It is the space in which feminist standpoint theory, for instance, places ‘classical Marxism’ in order to be able to distinguish its variety of standpoint theory from the Marxist ‘male’ version. The logical positivism of the first half of the twentieth century can be seen as the last gasp of foundationalism and because it, or at least a partial representation of it, figures so large in the dominant way of being sociological about knowledge it is worth examining it more closely. This is instructive in a number of ways. A useful starting points is Gellner’s discussion of the radical shift that occurs in Wittgenstein’s thought between his early positivism in the Tractatus to the later position in terms of which he was and remains most influential. Gellner summarizes the early position in a way that very closely fits Usher and Edwards’ description of the ‘dominant discourse of science’. Real thought was concerned with a universally shared reality. Cultural idiosyncrasy constituted a kind of irrelevant distortion or noise, and it was brushed aside in his work with a single dismissive remark. There was, he taught, a universal form of thought and language, concerned with nothing but reflection of objective fact and the imposition of logical form. This universal pattern was captured by the notation of formal logic, as developed by Russell and Whitehead, and it was quite invariant. Cultural idiosyncracies of natural languages were irrelevant accretions, and received little specific comment. They played no part in the real business of language or thought. The omissions and additions for which they were responsible were quietly discounted and compensated by speakers and

The Arbitrary and the Absolute

77

listeners, when they conveyed or comprehended the real sense of an assertion. (Gellner 1992, p. 118) The manner in which Gellner’s account draws the contrast between ‘real thought’ and the ‘cultural idiosyncracies of natural languages’ perfectly reflects the type of bifurcation that is general across postmodern and similar positions. However, there are a number of points to be drawn from this: First, the model of ‘real thought’ is ‘logical positivism’ and this is grounded in an a priori set of ‘logicist’ assumptions about what ‘real thought’ should be like; that it should conform to a particular type of propositional structure as mapped by Russell and Whitehead in Principia Mathematica. It should be noted that this does not prescribe any particular substantive instances of knowledge (it is content free) but, rather, describes the logical form that any candidate for knowledge must conform to in order to be a possible instance of knowledge. The basic model is that of axiomatic deduction – the logical positivists believed that this was the logic of science. Popper demonstrated that it was not. Secondly, although influential into the 1950s in certain areas (particularly in sociology in the USA where many members of the Vienna Circle fled to escape the Nazis16), in its own time it never constituted the sole (or ‘dominant’) position in philosophy, let alone beyond, and, more significantly, its problems were being made apparent certainly by the early 1930s and in important instances by individuals within or at least associated with the Vienna Circle (whose members for a time held Wittgenstein in awe and with whom he occasionally met after leaving Cambridge). One such notable was Karl Popper (who claims to have single-handedly brought down positivism, but certainly did not hold Wittgenstein in awe) and another was Kurt Gödel. Gödel (who came to be ranked as the twentieth century’s greatest logician) is especially significant, here, because he dramatically personifies a more general process that Gellner goes on to describe (below). In 1931 Gödel published a short paper concerned with Principia Mathematica and ‘related systems’ that effectively demolished their entire foundation. Esssentially, ‘Gödel’s proof’ demonstrated logically that no logical system can be completely logical in the sense of being both complete and consistent – there is always one ‘hole’ in its logic (it will always depend on one principle or term outside itself). According to Collins, More fireworks exploded at this moment when the Circle’s conflicts became most intense. Within the next year Popper, a peripheral member

78

Towards the Sociology of Truth

of the Vienna Circle network, proclaimed the end of the verification criterion and its replacement by falsification. The moment when Popper made his debut was the time when Gödel demolished the hopes of the Russell-Carnap logicism for providing an unassailable foundation and hence as a possible demarcation criterion. Popper’s ideas no doubt received an immediate and friendly welcome from some factions of the Circle because he stepped into a gap. Soon Carnap, Neurath, and Wittgenstein were announcing the abandonment of earlier programs for major new directions. (Collins 2000, p. 728) Positivism was internally differentiated between a number of ‘factions’; individuals (most radically Wittgenstein) changed their positions and the school was in a constant state of flux over time. The arguments in the Introduction to this book concerning relativism and the problems of consistency, completeness and epistemic regress are a kind of sociological ‘play’ with Gödel’s principles, albeit, in terms of contemporary debates, with the polemical polarity reversed in that they are used to argue back from relativism towards knowledge. The space that today is occupied by postmodern types of relativism is a space that, in part, opened up in response to Gödel’s proof and was the one that Wittgenstein returned to fill in his later thought, and was, under his influence, first occupied by linguistic philosophy. In a sense, Wittgenstein’s ‘journey’ from his early to his later position is archetypal because it maps the route that comes to be followed again and again through The ‘News’, The ‘Posts’ and, now it seems, The ‘Afters’. However, what changes most significantly over time is that the point of origin of this journey, in these highly technical debates in mathematical logic and the particular problems of logical positivism, have been forgotten – each group of travellers believes it is a trail-blazer. By definition and inclination, ‘post’ theorists do not acknowledge legacies or lineages: their tendency is schismatic, not canonical. It is important to stress therefore that this historic ‘failure’ of knowledge was a failure of knowledge as understood in a very particular way. Gellner’s key argument is that if, for Wittgenstein, it became evident that the positivist model was mistaken, so for him the only alternative was its opposite. And it was ‘opposite’ in the sense that Fay describes it (above). And it is this essential move that comes to be replicated across the decades. Basically, if the one true language of ‘real thought’ is logically (or later with Winch anthropologically) unobtainable, then it follows that the truths of all languages are equally true because there is no one special language (that is culture or context transcending) that can legislate for the rest. There is no

The Arbitrary and the Absolute

79

Culture, only culture(s) – if not ‘real thought’, then only ‘cultural idiosyncrasy’. All languages are equal and, hence, each of their truths equally true. Yet as Gellner, and other thinkers referred to above, point out: ‘There is no reason to accept the claim that only those two options, and no other ones, are available. Wittgenstein did not actually show or adduce any direct arguments to convince us that we did, could, or should live only within a cosy and self-justifying cocoon of conceptual custom, embodied in a given system of ordinary speech’ (ibid. p. 121). The key point to be underlined is that the position that is the ‘opposite’ of positivism, for Wittgenstein, its only alternative, is not grounded in the view that positivism was wrong, but that its conditions for knowledge are unobtainable and, hence, is the opposite end of the spectrum to it and not a radical alternative. This is the kind of ‘disappointed absolutism’ where relativism is adopted on the rebound as a kind of second best because it is all that is on offer – what Sayer (above) calls ‘defeatist postmodernism’ (though some in the postmodern camp do celebrate it as the emancipation of ‘Others’ from the ‘dominant discourse’). This particular problem of knowledge became in the 1930s sharply defined in the world of mathematical logicians, and no more so than in Gödel’s proof. However, it was also the case that very few people outside of that world knew of it, hardly anyone understood it and few appreciated its implications for things beyond that technically rarefied and restricted world. Nevertheless, this ‘crisis’ did, over time, in successively transmuted forms, pass into sociological debates in the post-war period – especially through the conduit of Winch’s The Idea of a Social Science (1958) and the ‘rationality’ debate.17 Gellner credits Winch (Gellner 1998) with being one of the few Wittgensteinians who fully acknowledged the anthropological implications of Wittgenstein’s response to the logical crisis of positivism, though, of course, the way in which it worked itself out in sociology in the period that led into the New theories of the 1970s, was several steps removed from the pre-war crisis of the mathematical logicians and it has undergone several further transmutations (this will be developed further in the next chapter). The original problem in all its technical sharpness has, like the Cheshire cat, gradually faded away, in the successive repetitions of the break theories, leaving behind only the ‘grin’ – the dogmatic assertion that for knowledge to be knowledge it must be absolute. It is perhaps not surprising therefore that the ‘positivism’ of the positivist debate in sociology in the late 1960s and early 1970s had only an attenuated relationship to logical positivism itself. Instead, the key problem of ‘positivism’ for the emerging radical forms of interpretive and Marxist sociology was that it was conservative 18 (a normative ‘social order’ theory) and served

80

Towards the Sociology of Truth

the interests of the established order rather than being ‘critical’ and promoting social change (a ‘social change’ theory). This ideologized and politicized condition was understood in terms of the ‘two sociologies’ (Dawe 1970) and is described by Bernstein, in what turned out to be a remarkably prescient way, in, The Sociology of Education: A Brief Review (Bernstein 1977, ch. 7): ‘These debates are fierce because they are fundamentally political. They are about what view of social phenomena the sociologist ought to have and the relationship between the sociologist and his society. They reveal the dilemma of being a sociologist. Whom do we serve? Which side are we on?’ (p. 159). Most recently, this state is that of the culture and science ‘wars’. The position of ‘positivism’ remains in place, but its opposite (the position colonized first by the later Wittgenstein and linguistic philosophy) is filled successively by waves of radical constructionists, feminists, multiculturalists, postmodernists, etc., each of which gives ‘positivism’ its own particular spin, as ‘conservative’, as ‘male’, as ‘Eurocentric’, etc. The relationship with actual positivism and its logical crisis becomes more and more attenuated and the link increasingly subterranean and obscure. Gellner is a particularly illuminating observer of these events because he ‘begins’ with linguistic philosophy and ‘ends’ with postmodernism and, takes in episodes such as ethnomethodology and Feyerabend’s ‘epistemological anarchism’ along the way. His consistent polemical engagement with each schismatic episode makes acutely visible what it is that is fundamental and remains the same beneath the surface of these self-proclaimed radical breaks or ‘paradigm’ changes. It is significant that it was the greatest of the logicians who reasoned that logically a logical system of the kind logically required by positivism was logically not possible. The position that Wittgenstein’s later thought filled and significantly defined (the position subsequently occupied by New and Post and After theorists) was, Gellner argues, reasoned into by precisely the people who began from the position that is its opposite; that is, by the positivists themselves: It was, precisely, their effective commitment to rational thought, which led them to irrationalist conclusions. It was their rationality which led them to irrationalism. They felt morally bound to put their conclusions on record, because that was where reason led them. If the conclusion was unpalatable, too bad. The really important and persuasive attacks on reason, on universalism, on rational order, were carried out by rational means, by reason itself. Some of the greatest irrationalists were perhaps despairing and tormented, but above all, honest rationalists in their own thought style. (Gellner 1992, p. 131)

The Arbitrary and the Absolute

81

The ‘despairing and tormented’ would certainly seem to be personally appropriate for Gödel himself. Gellner suggests though, that the situation for Wittgenstein was rather different – he simply moved from one position to the other through a kind of gestalt switch or ‘conversion’ of the type described in Chapter 2. However, as with Popper, Gellner did not like Wittgenstein very much. The relevant internal complexities of the situation within the Vienna Circle are summarized by Collins as follows: Carnaps’s shift to the language of physics broke from the older phenomenalism supported by Schlick, towards Neurath’s rival camp. The Vienna Circle was splitting in not just two but three main directions: Schlick’s old programme, now reduced to following the lead of Wittgenstein – what Neurath called the ‘right wing’ – plus Carnap’s continuing development of logicism, and a ‘left wing’ led by Neurath. Wittgenstein moved increasingly toward becoming a rallying-point for outright opposition to logical positivism; abandoning his older logicism to Carnap, he shifted abruptly toward Gödel’s position and even surpassed him in extending the radicalness of its implications for philosophy. The action which kept the loyalists of the Vienna Circle alive shifted to points at issue between the programs of Carnap and Neurath. (Collins 2000, p. 730) It needs to be emphasized, however, that there is an important difference between this first episode of the ‘suicide of reason’, as Gellner describes it, and subsequent repetitions. The original actors began in one place (the positivist project) and, in ways consistent with their own principles and procedures, painfully and reluctantly reasoned themselves into its opposite: ‘tormented cases of reason turning in on itself and devouring itself’ (ibid. p. 132). But increasingly, after the event when the position had, as it were, been put in place, others (News and Posts and Afters), flowed into it in successive waves without having to repeat that original labour and, indeed, apparently having little or no knowledge of it. These perspectives maintained a kind of spectral image of positivism (as in Usher and Edwards’ picture of the ‘dominant discourse of science’ above) that has become increasingly faded and indistinct with time. Gellner makes a further point. Although the early and the later positions are the obverse of each other, they are both theories of language. If not the ‘language of languages’ (as Bourdieu puts it (2000, p. 99)), then all languages or any old language. Each language constitutes its own unique context and meaning means no more than what it means in the way it is used within that context (essentially the implications of this for interpretation

82

Towards the Sociology of Truth

was the central issue in the rationality debate). But, Gellner points out, such a position has important sociological implications in that a ‘form of life’ is intrinsically social in character and (as Wittgenstein himself actually understood) this is more than just language (or ‘discourse’). Gellner, in effect, asks the question: ‘what would this theory of language look like as a sociology, as a substantive description of a society?’ His thought-provoking answer is that it could not in any viable way look like a modern society. Gellner, the anthropologist-philosopher, demands that philosophical theories be sociologically robust in that the descriptions they produce could, as it were, ‘survive’ in the real world. He shares this characteristic with the other anthropologist-philosopher, Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu’s criticism of postmodernism, of ‘textism’ or ‘linguistic fetishism’, has obvious parallels with Gellner’s of linguistic philosophy (for whom postmodernism is linguistic philosophy in contemporary guise): it is probably the typically scholastic fetishism of the autonomous text which leads a number of those who see themselves as ‘postmodern’ to confer the status of self-sufficient, self-engendered texts, amenable to purely formal internal critique, on all social realities and on the social world itself. This is true, for example, of one kind of feminist critique which tends to make the female body, the female condition or women’s lower status a pure product of performative social construction and which, forgetting that it is not sufficient to change language or theory to change reality (the typical illusion of the lector) uncritically attributes political efficacy to textual critique. (Bourdieu 2000, p. 108) For both Gellner and Bourdieu, the theory of truth, at the end of the day, must be in key respects a social theory, not a decontextualized set of formal philosophical prescriptions or the metaphor of text, and it therefore requires a sociology of truth. In contrast to those who held and those who continue to hold to the demand that knowledge be absolute or nothing, thinkers such as Gellner and Popper took the view that the logical positivists were simply mistaken to begin with – and, as Gellner argues, there is, consequently, no reason to assume that there is only one alternative to positivism. The alternative alternative response is, as Margaret Archer advises, simply, don’t start from there in the first place! Turn away from the linguistic (and cultural) turn and towards a sociology of knowledge in terms of its material sociality – a social realist, materialist approach to knowledge (Young 2008). This is the alternative to both positivism and relativism.

The Arbitrary and the Absolute

83

The Leason from Positivism The way in which Gellner tells the story of positivism is instructive in a number of ways. First, it demonstrates that positivism was never a single, complete or completed thing. It was a project that began in mathematical logic in the late nineteenth century and had worked itself through by the 1950s. It seems as if it is in the early 1930s that the signs began to appear that the project was fundamentally flawed on its own terms – by events such as Gödel’s proof and ‘Hempel’s Paradox’ concerning black ravens (though I must admit that, even with the aid of the excellent Edmonds and Eidinow (2001), I can make neither head nor tail of it!). Secondly, it is important to recognize the crucial extent to which the deconstruction of positivism came from within (albeit with help from Popper without) and through its own logical tools. In other words, the consistent application of the techniques of logical positivism fatally undermined the principles of logical positivism and its aspirations. The critique of foundationalism was the achievement of logical positivism itself and was in place a very long time before postmodernism was ever thought of. Thirdly, foundationalism was not deconstructed from the standpoints of marginalized and subjugated groups by virtue of their epistemic privilege, but through a process of internal autocritique whereby the members of the positivist school came, themselves, to see the inherent limitations of their own project. They fell upon their own swords. The final irony is, as Collins tells us, that ‘The last notable act of . . . the Vienna Circle’s organizational core was to commission Thomas Kuhn, a physicist turned historian, to write The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’ (Collins 2000, p. 730). Positivism (or foundationalism more generally) was never a single thing presenting a dominant and hegemonic force. It was a dynamic project that evolved over time and was internally complex and differentiated and, also, contained the seeds of its own destruction. But was it in any way out of the ordinary or exceptional in these things? It is possible to see some parallels between Gellner’s story of logical positivism and Potter’s story of feminist standpoint theory. Both schools begin with a ‘big idea’ – a radical ‘launch pad’ concept about the nature of knowledge (though of opposite types). But, in working through these ideas, in both cases, these schools have to successively modify the principles from which they began (such as the need for completeness or the presumption of essentialism) to the degree that at the end of the day they in effect implode upon themselves by undermining their own starting points. Gellner makes the same point in regard to

84

Towards the Sociology of Truth

Descartes: ‘For Descartes, the ego was a starting point. What he did not realise, when he started off on his quest, was that his point of departure was destined also to become his terminus. The argument is simple, even if it took a little over a century to work out’ (Gellner 1998, p. 43). Positivism simply leaves us with the reminder that we are actually meant to be looking for knowledge and feminist standpoint theory simply alerts us to the possibility that how we do so might possibly, in some cases, be gendered. It might be a mistake, however, to conclude that these projects ultimately failed. Randall Collins suggests an alternative interpretation. Typically an intellectual movement in philosophy is fruitful when it opens a vein of troubles. Counter-intuitively, the largest philosophical attentiongetter is not a method which solves all its problems as promised; this would dry up the life flow of the field, leaving nothing for later generations to work on. A successful movement hits on a method which seems to promise a great deal, while in fact encountering unanticipated difficulties. These problems give rise to new efforts at solution, and to rival tendencies within the movement which publicize and energize, provoking further creativity and sometimes ending up far from the starting place. (Collins 2000, pp. 696–7) Intellectual movements are successful to the degree that they provide new problems, not to the degree that they produce definitive solutions. Elsewhere, in a major essay on Weber, Collins quotes Weber as saying, ‘Here again is an old truth exemplified that an ingenious error is more fruitful for science than stupid accuracy’ (Collins 1980). On the positivists Collins says that, ‘The logical formalists provide one of the strongest proofs that a philosophical movement lives not on its solutions but on its problems’ (2000, p. 697) (Iris Murdoch makes a related point of some importance: ‘Movement of philosophical thought is slow, it takes a long time to work out a deep insight’ (Murdoch 2003, p. 186)). As Collins says, this view is ‘counter-intuitive’ in that our standard assumption is that the point of intellectual work is to solve problems, to produce ‘solutions’ (in the main this is what the public and the policy makers expect and, indeed, demand). Collins suggests that intellectuals as individuals are driven by the urge to solve problems, but collectively schools of thought, over time, are fruitful to the extent that this drive for solutions at the individual level, in aggregate, generates a succession of new problems – after all, solutions need problems; things to work on!

The Arbitrary and the Absolute

85

Collins argues that the Vienna Circle had run into a problem at the very outset in relation to verifiability. But, ‘If Schlick’s original doctrine had proven simple to put into operation, the problems of philosophy would have immediately dissolved, and the group would have put itself out of business’ (ibid. p. 33). In effect, this would seem to be what Wittgenstein thought – that the Tractatus, as the cherry on the icing of the Principia, had brought an end to philosophy. He simply packed his bags and went home (in Gellner’s view, he also thought this about linguistic philosophy, that he had actually ended philosophy twice, first one way, then the other (Gellner 1992b). Collins’ highly original approach, his theory and substantive analysis, is the source of a wide range of illuminating insights (more of which will be considered later). For immediate purposes, the value lies in the way in which he presents intellectual movements as dynamic and internally complex, as representing a process of increasing differentiation of positions as ‘solutions’ successively generating new problems and responses to those problems. This is in stark contrast to the view that there is simply a ‘dominant hegemonic discourse’ and its opposed array of marginalized counter standpoints.

Conclusion This chapter began with the question, ‘what are the break theories “breaking”’ with? It has been argued that they break with something – the ‘dominant hegemonic discourse’ – that is effectively a fiction of their own construction projected into the ‘space’ once occupied by logicism. Little or no evidence is provided that such a discourse actually exists in any substantial and effective sense and no theoretical basis is provided for how to determine how any discourse can be determined to be ‘hegemonic’ or ‘dominant’. The ‘break’ theories have no theory where it most counts – one that can anchor their position by providing criteria for defining ‘hegemony’ and a methodology by which it can be determined and substantively demonstrated that there is in fact (a) a ‘dominant hegemonic discourse’ and (b) that it has the particular character ascribed to it, and (c) has the determinate effectivity attributed to it. Where is the ‘church’ that the schismatics are breaking with? Break theories need something to break with and, hence, there is the need to construct their opposite, the ‘Other’. The ‘dominant hegemonic

86

Towards the Sociology of Truth

discourse’, personified in the ‘male knower’, fulfils such a role, but at the expense of a reductive simplification that presents that discourse as given, one-dimensional, monolithic and unchanging. The history of the logicist project illustrates the problems with such a device. The point is that logical positivism actually has a history. A number of key issues raised above can be drawn together by considering an essay by Iris Murdoch on Derrida that is relevant to semiological and culturalist approaches more generally: It is interesting to see how a number of half-truths, which might be expressed as intelligent suggestive hermeneutic observations about language, are made into what appears to be a closely knit metaphysical argument. Of course, in an obvious sense, language transcends its user, meanings are ambiguous, words are clarified through discrimination, and so on. But the amassing of such general considerations is remote from a conclusion to the effect that ‘really’ no final statement which can be said to be true or false is ever made. Here, as in other metaphysical ‘totalities’, system obliterates a necessary recognition of the contingent. What is left out of the picture, magically blotted out by a persuasive knitting-together of ideas and terminology, is that statements are made, propositions are uttered, by individual incarnate persons in particular extra-linguistic situations, and it is in the whole of this larger context that our familiar and essential concepts of truth and truthfulness live and work. ‘Truth’ is inseparable from individual contextual responsibilities. The ingenious continuous weave of structuralist generalisation checks reflection at the point where it should be most industrious, and makes important problems invisible and so undiscussable by removing familiar distinctions and landmarks. (Murdoch 2003, pp. 193–4) This (originally in a volume from 1992) demonstrates a number of interrelated points covered by other writers considered in this chapter. In the first instance, Murdoch is not disagreeing about all of the detail of the position she is describing. She sees it as an assembly of ‘half-truths’, each one in its own right and, as it where, standing alone, being acceptable and, even, ‘obvious’. These propositions become (seductively dangerous) ‘half’ truths when they are assembled into a ‘totalizing’ metaphysic that proposes a complete account of ‘how things are’. It is this ‘clicking together’ of the elements into a whole, ‘postmodernism’, that creates the problem and which differentiates postmodernists from simple post-modernists.

The Arbitrary and the Absolute

87

The really big problem, though, emerges when this construct is opposed to another totalizing metaphysic: that of foundationalism or logicism, inflated out of all proportion as the only alternative and, furthermore, presented as the only way in which we can have knowledge. It is true that, ‘in an obvious sense, language transcends its user, meanings are ambiguous, words are clarified through discrimination, and so on’, but this becomes a ‘half truth’ when it is assumed that because of this we cannot have knowledge, ‘a conclusion to the effect that “really” no final statement which can be said to be true or false is ever made’. It is this conclusion, taken as the unavoidable implication of the ‘obvious truth’, that is simply wrong for it would follow only if logicism was the only way of truth – and it is not. As Gellner put the issue (see ch. 1), we know that we have knowledge, but we don’t quite know how we do it. The failure of logicism was the failure of one particular attempt to answer this question, but having a theory of knowledge is not the necessary condition for our having knowledge. Knowledge is there anyway and comes first in just the way that the world is just there anyway and is not dependent upon human beings having a theory of it. Murdoch, like the other critics considered, is drawing attention to the limitations of linguistic approaches to these problems – what Bourdieu calls ‘textism’. She points to the importance of, ‘individual incarnate persons in particular extra-linguistic situations’. It is within the ‘extra-linguistic’ context that, ‘our familiar and essential concepts of truth and truthfulness live and work’. Lois McNay makes the same point in her critique of culturalist feminism and ‘performativity theory’. Drawing upon Bourdieu and the concept of habitus she argues that identity and agency, are the product of the subject’s exteriorized relation with social structures which is both intentional and non-intentional. It is non-intentional in that it expresses the latent tendencies of the world that have been absorbed into the body as a set of physical and psychological dispositions. However, it is also an intentional engagement with other individuals and social structures and, in this sense, identity is actively created through action. (McNay 2008, p. 183) McNay refers to this as a ‘socio-centric’ perspective where the approach to practice, ‘points towards its specifity’ rather than proposing a, ‘universal linguistic structure’ through which identity is ‘acted out’. Whereas ‘discursive constructionism’ (p. 186) continually collapses all things back into a

88

Towards the Sociology of Truth

discourse, a materialist ‘socio-centric’ approach recognizes the non-linguistic aspects of the ‘extra-linguistic context’ including the powers of social structures and processes (p. 187). The specifity of the extra-linguistic context emerges from the ways in which things of different kinds – people as agents involved with other people as agents, social structures and processes, as well as discourses – intersect. Because these things are things of different kinds, with different types of powers and liabilities, the language of theory needs to be sufficient to generate concepts of different orders. It is in this that the metaphor of the text reveals its limits: ‘An understanding of power as text does not provide a sufficiently differentiated model of the logic of social relations’ (p. 178). Finally, it is important to note that McNay includes, ‘intentional engagement with other individuals’ within the extra-linguistic context and Murdoch says that, ‘“Truth” is inseparable from individual contextual responsibilities.’ This points to the ethical dimension of these considerations. Responsible engagement with others frequently, and ideally, involves the intention to ‘make things better’ – to improve the world in some way. As Andrew Sayer points out (2000, ch. 8), postmodern culturalist relativism is as destructive of such aspirations as is objectivist ‘value-neutral’ science.

Chapter 4

New Times

Introduction The main purpose of this chapter is to look in detail at a particular, significant episode in the sociology of education: the emergence of the New Sociology of Education (NSOE) in the early 1970s.19 It has been argued that relativizing, sceptical approaches to being sociological about knowledge exhibit a typical logic, despite their tendency to proclaim their own special originality, and that they have a recurring episodic, schismatic character as ‘break’ theories. Further, such approaches define themselves in opposition to an absolutist ‘mainstream’ or a ‘dominant, hegemonic discourse’ that, although identified in different ways (e.g. as positivism, bourgeois, male, Eurocentric, etc.), is constructed in the same way, as exhibiting the same basic characteristics. This constructed ‘Other’ valorizes break theories in two ways: it provides a key intelligibility principle for the radical argument about knowledge, and it energizes them politically as purportedly representing the standpoints, experiences and interests of those groups marginalized by the dominant discourse. But tacitly, it also generates the ‘epistemological dilemma’ whereby it appears that the only choices we have concerning knowledge are between absolutism and relativism. It is also being argued here that this condition constitutes a position defining a distinctive location for itself within a field through a device that defines knowledge in a particular way and attempts to reorientate the field to that principle. In Bernstein’s terms, this has the form of a ‘horizontal knowledge structure with a weak grammar’. There are, then, two main concerns in this chapter. One is to demonstrate the phenomenon of repetition whereby approaches that claim to represent a ‘radical break’ with the mainstream discourse do so in strikingly similar ways despite surface ideological differences. This is not to describe continuity over time at the level of conscious theorization because such approaches are not inter-referential or cross-referencing. Their claim is to

90

Towards the Sociology of Truth

be doing what they do for the first time by virtue of some exclusive, radical insight (e.g. a feminist standpoint). Yet it is in this respect that such episodes, by virtue of their displaying a common paradigmatic form, can be approached as phenomena of intellectual fields and open to explanation in terms of the sociology of the structuring of intellectual fields and their modalities. Central to this is the manner in which the category ‘positivism’ is constructed in key texts in the period under discussion. Secondly, the chapter presents a detailed analysis of the contemporary context within which the New Sociology of Education (NSOE) emerged and an attempt to explicate the set of conditions whereby it was frequently described (and in some quarters accepted) as a new ‘paradigm’ representing a radical break with an ‘old’ mainstream sociology. It is important to clarify the point that this analysis does not aspire to the status of an ‘explanation’ in the sense of proposing a causal model. Rather, it presents itself as a ‘sketch’ of a complex configuration of largely contingent, contiguous circumstances that, as substantive conditions and in their elective affinities, created the conditions whereby the NSOE came to be constructed in the way that it was. In this respect, the orientation is more Weberian than Marxist – there was no imperative ‘inner necessity’ that was driving events from behind the scenes. It happened to work out like this, but could have been otherwise. A field of intellectual production is not only a field of ideas, it is a field of structured and structuring institutional relationships and positions that are valorized and energized relationally (Bourdieu 1988). The former can be thought of as the means of symbolic production (the material for creating new ideas) and the latter as the social relations of that production, and the manner in which they articulate shapes what is produced. In the case of the NSOE, this can also, initially, be understood in terms of a distinction between the ‘problem field’ (Popper 1972) that is generated by the logic of the disciplines and the ‘institutional field’ defined by the organizational structure of the education system. More generally, each of these fields has its own dynamic. Typically, the problem field is driven by the logics of the disciplines: the problems that practitioners currently deem interesting and important in their areas. The dynamic of the institutional field is crucially affected by external forces such as political and policy demands and those of various constituencies in the state and public sphere. The problem field tends to be ‘inward’ looking and the institutional field ‘outward’ looking. Both Bernstein and Bourdieu have developed complex and sophisticated ways of mapping these relations, and these will be considered in the next chapter. The problem field is, however, substantively located within the

New Times

91

institutional field, is stretched across it, as it were, and both necessarily interact (though they are better understood as the dual aspects of one complex thing rather than two things brought together, because they can only be separated analytically). A crucial factor shaping that interaction is the dynamic of educational expansion that continually destabilizes established positions and relationships (Moore 2007, ch. 8). A third dimension is that of the ‘network’ of relationships between participants in these fields and their personal and intellectual connections. Ideas are produced by intellectuals operating along what Collins (2000) terms ‘interaction ritual chains’ within which the ‘work’ of intellectual production takes place in the formation of problems, disputes and debates. In what follows, a key network is that located between three institutions within London University: the London School of Economics (the ‘old’ sociology), the London Institute of Education (the New Sociology of Education) and the Sociology Department of Goldsmiths College (the New Directions in Sociological Theory). A full analysis of an event of the type to be considered below properly requires detailed historical study; hence, as stated above, what is being presented here is a ‘sketch’ or more formally (or pretentiously) a ‘prolegomenon’. Essentially, the situation to be considered below has to do with the way in which the developmental dynamic of the institutional field has an impact upon the problem field through the manner in which it reorders the relationships between positions or ‘spaces’ within the field. The means of symbolic production in the problem field – ideas, perspectives, traditions, etc. – are worked upon in such a way as to establish a particular position within the social relations of knowledge production in the institutional field. The dynamic of development in the institutional field of education in the UK in the relevant period has primarily been that of expansion and this includes (a) the progressive expansion in representation of social groups previously under-represented at different levels and sites within the system and (b) the proliferation of the number and types of courses on offer within the system. There are crucial points and moments when these two currents intersect in various sites: for example, as when with the raising of the school leaving age (ROSLA) in the UK to 16 in 1971/72 expanded state secondary school fifth-forms by around one third and this event was responded to by the expansion of a new examination, the Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE), that was, in contrast to the traditional ‘O’ level GCE (General Certificate of Education) non-academic in character (or ‘relevant’ in the language of the times) and in many cases contained a major element of course-work. This event required or at any rate built upon

92

Towards the Sociology of Truth

major developments in the problem field of education studies in relation to curriculum development and, behind that, ‘supportive’ theories of knowledge and learning. It is important to recognize that such developments within the fields of education and of sociology of education crucially entailed the production of professional identities and roles for both researchers and teachers around nodal points of interaction mediated, often, by Institutes and Colleges of Education and Local Education Authorities through in-service training programmes and by research-funding bodies and government policy initiatives. Finally, as will be argued at the end of this chapter, it is also important to have a sense of how debates about knowledge in education in this period where also debates about learning in the sense that it was held that the organization of school knowledge had socially differentiated effects upon pupil learning. This is to return to the point made by Maton and Muller discussed in the Introduction: ‘Simply put, one is effectively presented with a choice: change the underlying structuring principles of the school, curriculum or classroom to match the code already possessed by these pupils, or develop ways of providing those pupils with the key to the code enabling success within those contexts.’ It has to do with the assumption that the key factor in accounting for socially differentiated outcomes in education is the relationship between the ‘underlying structuring principles of the school, curriculum or classroom’ and the ‘code already possessed by these pupils’. It is the assumption of effectivity being attributed to the organization of school knowledge that, in the instance under discussion, is at the heart of the problem about the way in which the sociology of education has been sociological about knowledge.

Setting the Scene In the case of the sociology of education in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a major shift occurred in its institutional location from a (very) small number of university sociology departments (Halsey 2004) to institutes and colleges of education. It is important to note that this institutional relocation of the sociology of education had significant implications in terms of scale. Bernstein observes that in the 1950s, Apart from London and Leicester, there were few universities of this period that possessed viable departments of sociology. During this period, there were only two major sociologists engaged in research or systematic

New Times

93

teaching in the sociology of education. The sociology of education in the 1950s did not exist as an established examined subject in the colleges and departments of education, nor in undergraduate degrees in sociology. The first taught master’s degree in this area was established at the University of London Institute of Education only in 1964, and the first degrees awarded in 1966. (Bernstein 1977, p. 161) Karabel and Halsey (1977) in their review of this period point out that in the 1960s the, ‘influx of social scientific researchers into education coincided with a period of enormous growth of public expenditure on schools and universities’ (p. 5). They tell us that in OECD nations between 1950 and the end of the 1960s student numbers rose by over 30 per cent in primary education, 100 per cent in secondary education and 200 per cent in the tertiary sector (p. 5). They say that, ‘The magnitude of this expansion was unprecedented, and it brought with it a number of problems. At the same time, educational systems everywhere had become arenas of political and social conflict, and it is therefore hardly surprising that governments gave increased priority to the funding of educational research’ (ibid.). Hence the ‘new’ sociology of education came into being under conditions of significant change in education itself. The expansion of the institutional field was associated with radical change in the problem field. But the problem field itself, and disciplinary identity within it, was weakly defined because, as Bernstein and Halsey point out, there were simply very few sociologists in the first place and they were doing relatively few things and hardly any were doing education. So, what actually were the problems, who was going to address them and how? As a result of this relocation, the sociology of education acquired a new and large professional client group: the teachers and the Local Education Authorities (LEAs) which, rather than central government, in England, at that time, directly administered the school system. It thus acquired a much wider constituency and a previously relatively exclusive relationship of a few individuals acting as governmental policy advisors turned into one of many more servicing ‘front line’ professionals. This also involved a major shift from research to teaching and the devising of undergraduate courses. The problem that this reorientation and its expanded constituency entailed was how to make the ‘foundation disciplines’ relevant to the needs of students, say, on the new B.Ed. degrees, preparing to be primary school teachers. The predominant London School of Economics (LSE) model of sociology, the social mobility/social stratification problematic, was not an obvious candidate. It was also the case that around this time, sociology itself was

94

Towards the Sociology of Truth

providing increasing evidence that the social democratic welfarist reforms, with which it was politically associated, were not delivering the goods in terms of progressive social change (Boudon 1977, Husén 1979, Jencks 1972). Hence, this ‘new’ sociology of education came under pressure to redefine itself relative to the received model both in terms of substantive areas of study and politically. This switch can be summarized succinctly in terms of a move from the concern with inequalities of access to one with equalities in outcomes (Karabel and Halsey 1977). The sociology of education, then, had had to do two things in relatively quick succession. In the 1950s when sociology was establishing itself and (modestly) expanding in the universities, it had to establish its own position within the discipline. But it then had to redefine itself, again, in terms of teacher education by addressing the school, educational processes and the curriculum. This required a new set of theoretical resources that where to be found within qualitative, interpretative traditions and was inspired more by the spirit of 1960s student radicalism than social democratic reformism. It is useful to consider the parallel situation of philosophy of education within the, then, emerging field of ‘education studies’. The philosopher, Richard Dearden, describes the position as follows: The opportunity came in the early 1960s. The teacher training colleges were extending their certificate courses from two or three years, while the Robbins Report was recommending that the colleges themselves be redesignated ‘colleges of education’ and that, for some students, there should be a new education degree, the B.Ed. These changes combined to require more and academically better qualified lecturers and new courses that would be of a rigour deserving the award of a degree. A comparable change was taking place in the U.S.A. where such bitter critics of the ‘Mickey Mouse’ education courses offered to teachers as J. B. Conant and J. D. Koerner were urging a much stronger grounding in the disciplines relevant to education. Yet a further factor in the creation of an opportunity for new academic initiatives was the state of the schools, in which many controversial changes were taking place, such as the ‘revolution’ in the primary schools, re-organization at the secondary level and the trial runs of various curriculum development projects. There was never a time more ripe for someone to mark out the claims of any newly emerging discipline of education. (Dearden 1982, pp. 57–8) The writers referenced above, and others to be considered below, are describing a complex situation. Crucially, as Dearden describes for philosophy,

New Times

95

‘There followed [in the 1960s] a burst of activity which scarcely seems credible in the sober, not to say sombre, 1980s. Courses in philosophy of education at all levels and in all teacher education institutions (save the Open University) were offered and were even mandatory.’ The core of these new degrees in teacher education was courses in the ‘foundation disciplines’: usually sociology, philosophy and psychology (already well established in education) and sometimes history. Dearden argues that, mainly through the work of Richard Peters (located like Bernstein and Young, at the London University Institute of Education) a distinctive ‘philosophy of education’ also emerged. But, unlike the situation in sociology, this was not a ‘new’ philosophy of education, but, rather, the application of established analytical methods to educational concepts and issues. In effect, there had not been an ‘old’ philosophy of education. The major contrast between sociology and philosophy in this context was that philosophy in the UK had a well established disciplinary identity and a secure centre anchored in the analytic approach, but sociology did not have the equivalent – what it was to be a sociologist of education, or even a sociologist, was far less clear. In the philosophy of education it is the problems that were ‘new’, not the approaches. One aspect of this quest for identity was that the NSOE sought to distinguish itself from the philosophy of education by providing an alternative approach to the question of knowledge. Chris Jenks, for instance, stated that, ‘It is interesting to note that within theories concerning education such questions addressing mind and knowledge have fallen under the aegis of the philosophers (as specialists) – I wish to claim them back [for Sociology]!’ (Jenks 1977, p. 23). This move depended upon positioning ‘the philosophers’ (specifically Hirst and Peters) in a very particular way. This will be considered in more detail, below, because it is here that the issues in this chapter connect with others raised earlier.

The New Sociology of Education As has been mentioned previously (Ch. 2), the 1970s was the time of the ‘New’, of the ‘neophiliacs’. Conventionally the inception of the NSOE is associated with the volume edited by Michael F. D. Young (1971) Knowledge and Control: New Directions for the Sociology of Education. Young records that ‘The idea for this book was first conceived in a discussion between Pierre Bourdieu, Basil Bernstein and myself after the Durham Conference of the British Sociological Association, of April 1970’ (1971, 2008, Preface and Endword). The phrase itself is usually accredited to David Gorbutt in 1972 (Gorbutt 1972). In the broadest sense, it was ‘new’ in that it marked a

96

Towards the Sociology of Truth

shift from the macro-structural concerns of sociology of education within the mainstream discipline to a focus on the relationships between school knowledge, educational processes and the classroom – new areas and issues. However, a more specific understanding developed in terms of which the NSOE is now mostly remembered. First, these more micro level concerns where approached through interpretative perspectives drawing upon symbolic interactionism, phenomenology and ethnomethodology (Abbott 2001). Secondly, this shift was often presented not simply as a change in focus, but as a paradigm change (more below). Hence, rather than seen as being complementary to the ‘old’ sociology of education it was seen as constituting a radical critique of its supposed ‘positivism’ and its alleged innate conservatism and as incommensurable with it. It was in this way that ‘the sociology of knowledge approach’, as it was sometimes known, tended towards relativism and it was this that tended to attract most attention from its critics at the time. Hence, the New Sociology of Education was ‘new’ in two senses: first in that it addressed new areas with new methods, and secondly in that it did so in ways that were seen as representing a radical break with the ‘old’ sociology of education. What is problematical in this is not that the ‘new’ sociology of education extended its range of interests and concerns, but that it did so in the way that it did: by adopting the ‘paradigm’ account of that development rather than simply seeing it as adding new resources to the repertoire of the sub-discipline and extending its explanatory powers by seeking complementarities between methods and approaches and in integrating data at different levels. There was nothing intrinsically inevitable about this. Bernstein described this situation as one where ‘Contemporary sociology offers a weakly co-ordinated body of thought and practice, but is extraordinarily prolific in approaches’ (1977, p. 157): However, the ‘news’ of much contemporary sociology appears to be news about the conditions necessary for creating acceptable news. Theories are less to be examined and explored at conceptual and empirical levels, but are to be assessed in terms of their underlying models of man and society. It follows that students are made aware of the values underlying theories, and to learn how to place them in the perspective of an approach; students are socialized into approaches rather than encouraged to create news. (Bernstein 1977, p. 157) Karabel and Halsey offer some similar observations: ‘What is now needed is a concerted effort by adherents of the interpretative school to carry out the

New Times

97

program of empirical research it implies and to link findings with the structural studies that have traditionally dominated the sociology of education and that continue to move the subject forward’ (1977, p. 61, my emphasis). This, however, was precisely what did not happen and it is this condition that requires an explanation. As Bernstein’s comments suggest, this situation was by no means unique to the sociology of education. Rather, there was a division of this kind within the field of sociology in general (the ‘two sociologies’ (Dawe 1970)). Hence, the more specific question is why the relocation of the sociology of education into teacher education was associated with this particular move that not only selected interpretative approaches as the preferred method (there are perfectly good methodological reasons for this in terms of, for example, school based ethnography) but also understood this as a ‘paradigm change’ representative of a more general cleavage within sociology. Somewhat surprisingly, however, it is highly debatable if a project of this type was dominant in Knowledge and Control itself. Bernstein, for instance, was always adamant that this was not (e.g. 1996) and Young has consistently expressed reservations about its limitations, especially for political purposes (e.g. 1977, Young and Whitty 1977). It is probably fair to say that the only paper in the volume that fully represented what was to become the ‘NSOE’ as it is mainly remembered is that by Geoff Esland in an article that provides an overview of the interpretative currents that informed the approach and also includes a lengthy discussion of Kuhn. It is also significant that Esland, and other key graduates of that generation from the London Institute took up posts at the Open University and that it was their sociology of education reader, School and Society (Cosin et al. 1972), that was probably the first fully representative expression of the approach. Bernstein (1977, p. 164) suggests that comparing the contents of that reader with Halsey, Floud and Anderson’s Education, Economy and Society (1961) provides a good measure of the change from the ‘old’ to the ‘new’. It is in this form, then, as radical social constructionism, that the NSOE itself becomes the paradigm for successive types of ‘break’ theories in the sociology of education. For obvious reasons, the conservative right was highly critical of the NSOE, and it has already been noted how Young himself had important reservations while Bernstein’s position is well known, but it also had other critics on the left (see, for instance, Ahier and Flude (eds) 1974). Probably the most systematic contemporary critique came from two other former students of the London Institute, Rachel Sharp and Tony Green (1976) in Education and Social Control: A Study in Progressive Primary Education, a study that also went against the grain in its critical analysis of the educational

98

Towards the Sociology of Truth

progressivism that the NSOE tended to assume to be its natural ally and professional constituency. Sharp and Green’s opposition was from a Marxist perspective. Karabel and Halsey (1977) provided an extensive review and initial assessment from the perspective of the ‘old’ sociology, but with reservations, and argued that a further ‘new synthesis’ was required and that this was possible through the work of Basil Bernstein (p. 62). But synthesis was precisely what the purveyors of the ‘news’, like their postmodern successors, were against. The need for a robust realist sociology of knowledge production is the central concern of this book, but is part of a wider project involving a number of others. This chapter, as has been made clear, presents an analysis of the New Sociology of Education and its context. But what is the relationship between this analysis and its object? It is not simply one of detached scholarly exegesis because I was there at the time. Not as a contributor, but as a postgraduate student in the sociology of education at Goldsmiths College in the University of London and as a secondary school teacher beginning his career in a comprehensive (or ‘high’) school in south-east London. Michael Young provides some important observations on these issues relating to the subtitle of his recent book From Social Constructivism to Social Realism in the Sociology of Education (2008): I am aware that I may do less than justice to the positive achievements of the ‘new sociology of education’. Hindsight is too easy, and not always a reliable source of insight. Progress in developing a social realist theory of knowledge of the kind that this book makes claims for would not have been possible without the emancipatory vision of the ‘new sociology of education’ of the 1970s and its success in calling into question the idea of knowledge itself and its role in education. The problem, I have increasingly come to realize . . . is to recognise that if an emancipatory vision of education and, it follows, the sociology of education is not to be vacuous, it must include rather than try to wish away the centrality of epistemological constraints and the inescapable reality that acquiring and producing new knowledge is never easy. (Young 2008, p. xvi) Among other things, this raises issues about progression and growth in sociological knowledge. As suggested above, it was not that people at the time supportive of the New Sociology of Education and, indeed, strongly associated with it, were unaware of the shortcomings of the idealist traditions upon which it, in some part, drew (e.g. see Sharp and Green, ch. 2 and Whitty 1977), but the intellectual resources necessary to systematically

New Times

99

resolve those problems did not appear to be available. It was not until the end of the decade that works such as that of Ted Benton (1977), for instance, introduced critical realism to sociological readerships and even then, it is fair to say, they made little impact in the sociology of education. It was not until the beginning of the twenty-first century that this began to happen – in the form of ‘social realism’ (see Young’s ‘Introduction’ (2008)). It can be tentatively suggested that there were two main reasons for this within the intellectual field at the time. The first was that the ‘space’ of realism was filled by various Marxisms that had their special attendant problems and required special commitments made more sensitive by what was felt for some to be the failure of the ‘student rebellion’ of the 1960s. The second was the absence of Durkheim. The treatment of Durkheim in this history is a topic in its own right and will be returned to in the next chapter. But the conventional reconstruction of Durkheim, at that time, essentially as a conservative positivist, effectively set him up as the high priest of the tradition the new sociologists were attacking and so the rich treasure chest of his ideas remained firmly closed.

What’s New? There is a complex interweaving of themes and a summary might be useful at this point. Michael Young describes the condition of the sociology of education in the late 1960s and early 1970s as follows: In 1971, Knowledge and Control was published and became associated with a much wider reorientation of the sociology of education, towards questions of knowledge and the curriculum, and away from its previous focus on the distribution of educational opportunities. What became known as the ‘new sociology of education’ recognised that it was the process of cultural transmission that lay at the heart of the specific role of formal education and schooling in modern societies. It followed that a key issue for sociologists was the discontinuity between the common culture of educational or school knowledge and the differentiated culture that students acquire in their homes, peer groups, and communities and bring to school. Engaging with this continuity might be defined as ‘the pedagogic problem’ for teachers as well as the central problem for the sociology of education. The social basis of this cultural discontinuity in England was first analysed by Bernstein in his work on language codes and educability . . . and by Bourdieu with his concept of cultural capital. . . . Whereas

100

Towards the Sociology of Truth

most empirical research derived, at least implicitly, from the ideas of Bernstein and Bourdieu, it tended to focus narrowly on the social factors influencing the differential attainment of children from different social classes. In contrast the ‘new sociology of education’, which developed from the same concern with cultural transmission, pointed in the opposite direction towards the socially distributed effects of the school curriculum. (Young 2008, pp. 164–5) The shift that Young outlines is in the first instance one of focus as far as cultural transmission is concerned – from an ‘externalist’ concern with factors outside the school to ‘internalist’ concerns with factors within the school (Moore 2004, ch. 1) but, as stated above, this also involved a radical theoretical orientation associated with a move from macro/structural issues to micro/process issues and their associated methodologies and, further, this was presented by some as a paradigm change. This was significant in a number of ways: z

z

It introduced strong boundaries between what hitherto had been seen simply as various perspectives (Moore and Maton 2001). Typically, sociological perspectives had been treated as relating to different areas or levels of interest and providing the methods appropriate to them. The difference between quantitative and qualitative methods, for instance, was mainly understood in terms of domain specificity rather than the latter being seen as providing a radical critique of the former on metaphysical (or ideological) grounds. The choice of a method was guided by the nature of the problem to be examined and explained. The shift to treating perspectives as paradigms entailed that a choice of method became something much bigger and more consequential: a commitment to its supposed meta-theoretical grounds – an implicit ‘world view’ or ‘form of life’. This reflected the particular way in which, more widely, the concept of ‘paradigm’ came to be recontextualized within certain areas of sociology (see below). Consequently, because of the way in which paradigms are associated with incommensurability, translation or complementarities between perspectives are disallowed. On this model, different perspectives are no longer seen as being directed towards different aspects of the same world but, rather, as being grounded in ‘meta-paradigms’ (Masterman 1970) that are constitutive of the worlds they study. Different perspectives, in effect, deal with different worlds. In later years, Foucauldian ideas have come to be employed in much the same way.

New Times z

101

This can be understood, as Bernstein argued, as a switch from a concern with ‘explanations’ to a concern with ‘approaches’. In a sense, analysis in this style became inward looking. The central concern was to reveal the unexamined assumptions, the ‘grounds’ or ‘auspices’, of sociological perspectives rather than applying them to problems ‘in the world’. The nature of the question changed from ‘how can we explain this?’ to ‘how is this being approached?’ Bernstein’s complaint was that once this task was seen as achieved and the approach that happened to be under critical attack was identified in terms of its metaparadigmatic assumptions (or ‘standpoint’), that was the end of it, the approach was then simply ‘written off’.

Although this particularly radical interpretation of Kuhn was associated with wide use of the term ‘paradigm’, other, more specifically sociological currents, also fed into this general approach. In the main they drew upon phenomenological sociology with its roots in Schutz (and ultimately Husserl) via Berger and Luckmann’s influential The Social Construction of Reality (1966), ethnomethodology (e.g. Douglas (ed.) 1974 (first published USA 1970/UK 1971)) and, in the case of the ‘analysis’ school represented by Blum and McHugh (e.g. McHugh et al. 1974), an influence from Wittgenstein and linguistic philosophy. These strands entwined with an established tradition of symbolic interactionism going back to Mead and its more specialized applications in labelling theory and deviance studies by figures such as Howard Becker that were already influential in the sociology of education. Hence, the NSOE was in no way a simple thing. Its range of influences and intellectual resources was wide ranging, but, inevitably, there were tensions and, indeed, contradictions between them.

Normative and Interpretative Paradigms The range of influences that contributed to the constructionist currents upon which the NSOE in part drew is displayed in the collection, Understanding Everyday Life, edited by Jack Douglas (1974). This volume contains contributions (from the USA) representing the social phenomenology of Schutz, symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology and the ‘analysis’ school. It also contains T. P. Wilson’s paper on ‘Normative and Interpretative Paradigms in Sociology’ (ch. 3). Wilson states his purpose as follows: This chapter forms a transition between the conventional approaches to the study of social phenomena predominant in contemporary sociology

102

Towards the Sociology of Truth

and the quite different approaches explored in the remaining chapters in this volume. Its purpose is to lay the groundwork for these chapters by showing how the approaches taken in them stem from fundamental theoretical and methodological difficulties pervading conventional sociology. Our, concern, however, is not with particular conceptual or logical difficulties in specific theories or with methodological defects in various empirical studies. Such shortcomings are common in all disciplines, and clearing them up is part of the normal work in any field. Rather, we are concerned with more fundamental troubles inherent in the assumptions underlying conventional sociological inquiry irrespective of that inquiry’s specific theoretical or methodological orientation. (Wilson 1974, p. 57) He then goes on immediately to develop this with reference to Kuhn and the concept of ‘paradigm’ and this, is in turn further developed, at the level of the ‘metaparadigm’: ‘a set of pretheoretical notions underlying research’ (ibid., p. 58). Hence, the volume’s programme begins with a field division between the ‘normative’ (conventional) and the ‘interpretative’ (critical) paradigm. However, in the following chapters, further divisions are introduced. Denzin (ch. 11) attempts a synthesis between symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology. This, however, is rebuffed by the ethnomethodoligists. Zimmerman and Wieder (ch. 12) complain that Denzin has misunderstood and, so, misrepresented ethnomethodology. In particular, they argue, he has failed to grasp the truly radical character of ethnomethodology: In conclusion, we suggest that the problem encountered with Denzin’s discussion of ethnomethodology stem from the failure to consider seriously the claims to a radical departure from traditional sociological thinking advanced by advocates of this approach. Whatever the gains or losses of this ‘radical departure’ might subsequently prove to be, proper understanding of what ethnomethodoligists are trying to do cannot be achieved without explicit recognition of the fundamental break with the sociological tradition discussed above. (Zimmerman and Wieder 1974, p. 295, my emphases) In keeping with the other numerous ‘break’ or ‘schismatic’ approaches covered in previous chapters, this example typically proclaims its radical exclusiveness and denies the possibility of complementarity, commensurability or synthesis. The volume concludes with contributions by Blum (ch. 13) and McHugh (ch. 14) that incipiently signal a further break

New Times

103

between ethnomethodology and ‘analysis’. In Bernstein’s terms, we see very clearly a proliferation of ‘approach paradigms’ and an accumulation of languages rather than an integration of languages – all criterial of a ‘horizontal knowledge structure with a weak grammar’. There was a major cleavage within this broad critical approach, or ensemble, that was of special significance for the New Sociology of Education. In the main, this type of radical sociology in the USA was analytic in its attempts to expose the taken-for-granted assumptions of social interaction in everyday life, but not necessarily politically radical. In the UK, in the main, and especially in the NSOE, the desire was more to mobilize ‘critical’ approaches in order to facilitate radical educational and social change. This alternative possibilitarian approach (Whitty 1977) complemented the strands described above with others drawn from a Marxist and Mannheimian tradition of ideology analysis and sociology of knowledge. From this point of view, ‘grounds’ or ‘auspices’ were understood also as standpoints and interests. Revealing the unexamined assumptions concerning what counts as ‘school knowledge’ was inseparable from revealing their class base (and later their gendered and ethnocentric standpoints). In this manner, debates about school knowledge came to be seen as ideological and political. This division is also represented in the way in which Michael Young consistently emphasized the need to seek links between the organization of knowledge, educational processes and social structure and, so, social inequalities. However, radical constructionists in the analytic mode in both the UK and the USA (Filmer et al. 1972, McHugh et al. 1974) took their analysis to the point of dissolving such concepts – on the grounds that they merely represented the taken-for-granted assumptions of members of the social scientific community and were in principle no different from such notions in any other community (see below). Class, for instance, if it exists at all, is for these theorists no more than what members of the community employing the term ‘class’ come to agree it to be in their routine use of the term and it is the usage that constitutes class rather than its identifying something that exists independently. Language is the world, not ‘about’ the world. Although critical of the ‘new’ approach in its radical phenomenological form, Marxist perspectives, however, had a problem of theoretical stabilization in the sense that they lacked a robust epistemology to ground a materialist theory of knowledge production (that is, to see symbolic production such as the production of knowledge as material modes of production (Moore [1988] 2007, ch. 10)). This reflected the enduring problem of the sociology of knowledge. In this respect they have been vulnerable to much the same problems as the constructionists (except that the constructionists

104

Towards the Sociology of Truth

do not see them as problems). The major reason for this is that Marxist approaches have likewise been mainly preoccupied with the critique or debunking of established forms of knowledge through standpoint reductive forms of ideology analysis, but, unlike the constructionists, many of them do explicitly argue for the scientific status of their knowledge – most aggressively so in the case of the Athusserians. This is a form of the ‘deep problem’ discussed in the Introduction and also in relation to feminist standpoint theory: that it cannot be claimed that any knowledge is simultaneously objectively true and, hence, universally valid, but also exclusive because only available to those occupying an epistemically privileged standpoint such as the ‘class theoretical standpoint of the proletariat’ (or more precisely in the case of Althusserians, that of the politburo of the Communist Party of France). Such groups are caught between the devil of vanguardism (that bestows privilege) and the deep blue sea of universalism (that takes it away) – they are, as the Americans say, between a rock and a hard place in epistemological terms. Hence, four general sets of conditions can be identified: 1. There was perceived to be a major division within the intellectual problem field of sociology between a dominant ‘normative paradigm’ that was described as being positivistic, conservative and non-reflexive and serving the established social order and a range of ‘critical’ perspectives along a spectrum from social phenomenology to varieties of humanist and structuralist Marxism. British sociology, at this time, in contrast to the long-established foundation disciplines of philosophy and History, lacked a strong disciplinary identity and stable core or, on the other hand, a long-established relationship to education as was the case for psychology. 2. In the academic institutional field there was a relocation of the sociology of education from a small number of university sociology departments to ‘education studies’ departments in Institutes and Colleges of Education – alongside the other ‘foundation’ disciplines. This provided the sociology of education with a new, expanded professional client group: the teachers. But it also required that the sociology of education made itself ‘relevant’ to this constituency and that it did so in a distinctive way. 3. The above were both occurring at a time of significant expansion and reform in the education system at both the school and higher education levels, but also within a political climate of a sense unrealized expectations associated with the failures of social democratic reformism. The

New Times

105

main source of inspiration though came from the radicalism of the student rebellion of the 1960s – still fresh in the memory of many of those involved with the NSOE. 4. At the same time, the question of what should constitute ‘school knowledge’ was a subject of considerable debate because of the raising of the school leaving age to 16 and the introduction into the secondary curriculum of new types of ‘relevant’ courses together with a progressive ‘revolution’ in primary schooling as a result of secondary comprehensivization and the phasing out of selection and the 11+ examination, allowing for a redefining of the professional model of the primary school teacher. The general context, the prevailing zeitgeist and the complex interactions and elective affinities between the different kinds of movements in thought, changes in institutional arrangements and in socio-economic and demographic circumstances (such as the ‘baby boom’ that pushed educational expansion) constitute the matrix within which the NSOE emerged. It would be imprudent to assume that any simple causal explanatory model of relationships between these things could be produced.

The Curriculum and Ideology Within the context described above, the NSOE addressed a range of new concerns. Writing in 1976 in a review essay on Knowledge and Control and John Ahier and Mike Flude’s edited collection, Educability, Schools and Ideology, the radical American curriculum theorist, Michael Apple begins by complaining that the question of ‘knowledge’ and more specifically, ‘school knowledge’ had to date been largely ignored: Yet the role of the school as a mechanism for selecting, preserving, and passing on conceptions of competence, ideological norms and values, and often only certain social groups’ ‘knowledge’ is quite important and requires a considerable amount of investigation. This lack of scholarship has begun to be redressed, however. Recent work on the ‘hidden curriculum,’ for example, has focused on the tacit teaching that goes on in schools, on the relationship between the principles of social control and both the social structure of and the forms of curricular knowledge found in educational institutions. At the same time, a somewhat parallel movement has occurred in a number of countries, and perhaps especially

106

Towards the Sociology of Truth

in England, where sociologists of education are seriously raising questions about three areas: their discipline’s rather uncritical acceptance of administrative problems as ‘real’ problems, the way knowledge is actually constructed and used in school settings by teachers, researchers, and pupils, and the research approaches most appropriate for dealing with these concerns. (Apple 1976) Apple’s piece provides an excellent overview of the issues and also conveys a sense of their freshness in that period – one that by now has become less sharp. A feature that unites the concerns referred to by Apple is a preoccupation with questioning received, taken-for-granted and unexamined assumptions relating to a number of crucial aspects of education – in Bernard Williams’ terms, a concern with ‘truthfulness’. In that these are important concerns that have been neglected, there is also an implicit questioning of the sociology of education itself: what kind of sociology was it that neglected these topics? This questioning of the ‘taken-for-granted’ is in the tradition of Marxist ideology analysis, of Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge (‘unmasking’) and what C. Wright Mills termed the ‘debunking’ function of sociology, but updated by constructionism. More recently, it takes the form of postmodern discourse theory. Within the project that Apple describes there was a significant level of engagement with the idea of ‘sociology’ in itself – what is sociology? Clearly, the areas identified by Apple are of intrinsic interest and, furthermore, as he suggests, of considerable importance. What is of concern is the way in which developing these entirely legitimate sociological interests translated into a highly problematical epistemological position that still remains largely unresolved. The title of Apple’s piece is indicative of the issue: ‘Curriculum as Ideological Selection’. But, on what epistemological basis could the sociology of education establish that curriculum knowledge is in fact ideological selection. Apple describes the area of concern as follows: It should be obvious, though it has not been so, that questions about meaning in social institutions tend to become questions of control. That is, the forms of knowledge one finds within school settings – both overt and covert kinds of knowledge – imply relations of power and economic resources and control. The curricular knowledge ‘placed’ in schools and criteria for ordering and selecting it are choices from a wider universe of knowledge and principles of ordering. This very choice, though it may not be done consciously, is often based upon ideological and economic

New Times

107

presuppositions that provide the boundaries for educators’ thought and action. One of the most neglected areas of educational scholarship is the relationship between ideology and educational argumentation. We have but a very few studies of the way ideological presuppositions act as constitutive rules in guiding our day-to-day lives as educators. Perhaps one of the most important places to begin this type of inquiry would be in what might be called the sociology of school knowledge. (Apple 1976, p. 210) The NSOE aspired to be this ‘sociology of school knowledge’, but in order to become that it required also a sociology of sociological knowledge. The idea of ‘paradigm’ was mobilized for this purpose through the way in which it was seen as directing attention to the covert meta-theoretical bases of perspectives understood as the ‘ideological presuppositions [that] act as constitutive rules in guiding our day-to-day lives’. The exploration of such ‘constitutive rules’ was the explicit focus of the allied schools of ‘ethnomethodology’ and ‘analysis’. This work fed into the NSOE (e.g. Esland in Young (1971), Jenks (ed.) 1977), but, as has already been indicated, not without problems. The intellectual field was fragmented in two ways. First, between what was described as the conservative, positivistic ‘normative’ paradigm and the opposing range of ‘critical’ interpretative paradigms and then, within the later between, ‘analytic’ and ‘possibilitarian’ approaches. Two issues follow from this fragmentation: (a) what was at stake in the division between ‘analytic’ and ‘possibilitarian’ positions in the radical camp, and (b) how the ‘normative’ paradigm, or ‘positivism’, was itself constructed? To expand briefly on the latter. It has been argued before that it is necessary to develop a sense of what it is that any particular position defines itself as against in order to explicate the grounds for what it is positively for. The ‘critical’ positions being considered here, as with the cases considered previously, define themselves as against ‘positivism’. As far as the ‘analytic’ approach, in particular, is concerned, a fairly obvious problem is the manner in which its representation of ‘positivism’ contravenes its own constructionist tenets. In other words, it treats ‘positivism’ as real in the sense that its description of ‘positivism’ is a veridical representation of what positivism actually is. This should, to be self-consistent, confine itself to an ‘abstract’ summary of positivism as a philosophical perspective or school, but as actually employed, it implies, also, a socio-historically contextualized presumption that it is in fact present in that way within the relevant timeframe (the 1960s and 1970s) and, furthermore, active within the intellectual and institutional fields

108

Towards the Sociology of Truth

and beyond in the ways claimed. But, as in the cases considered in previous chapters, those now to be examined from the 1970s provide no substantive evidence or rigorous demonstration that ‘positivism’ was in fact present and active and effective in the manner presented. The philosopher D. W. Hamlyn, in a book published in 1970 on the theory of knowledge, said that Positivism has now gone so far out of fashion that it is perhaps difficult to understand why anyone should ever have supposed that it should be acceptable. (Hamlyn 1970, p. 60) This underlines the argument of the previous chapter that ‘positivism’ as constructed in the 1970s constructionist sociology and, in the same way today in postmodernism, is a kind of spectral image projected outwards from within those discourses rather than something that is in any meaningful sense ‘real’ and routinely encountered ‘in the world’. Between the 1970s and the more recent examples considered in earlier chapters, the notion of ‘positivism’ acts as a kind of Procrustean bed upon which ‘epistemic agents’ of quite different kinds can be cut or stretched to size in order to be made suitable cases for treatment of radical schismatic discourses which, though of different ideological persuasions, adopt the same rhetorical or discursive moves in grounding themselves. An extremely interesting, indeed exemplary, text from this period is that edited by Chris Jenks in 1977, entitled: Rationality, Education and the Social Organisation of Knowledge: Papers for a Reflexive Sociology of Education. Its particular interest lies in the fact that it includes chapters by Michael Young and Nell Keddie who where both represented in Knowledge and Control (1971) and others by Paul Filmer and David Walsh who were co-authors of New Directions in Sociological Theory (1972). The authors are all associated with two institutions in London University: the Institute of Education and the sociology department of Goldsmiths College (whose Education Department at the time included influential radical sociologists of education such as Ian Hextall and Madan Sarup20). Both Jenks and Keddie had been at the Institute of Education prior to joining the sociology department in Goldsmiths. The relationship between the intellectual problem field and the institutional field is significantly mediated and energized by network relationships between individuals through what Randall Collins calls ‘interaction ritual chains’ (see next chapter). However, despite these consanguinities, the volume also represents the division between the ‘analytic’ approach and the ‘possibilitarian’ concerns of key figures such as Michael Young and Geoff

New Times

109

Whitty in the NSOE. Young’s contribution is in certain respects significantly at odds with the ‘analytic’ contributions of Jenks and Walsh.

Analysis To begin, in the first instance, with how the ‘analytic’ perspective makes the break with mainstream sociology and how it does so by constructing the ‘mainstream’ as positivistic. This piece by Walsh is symptomatic (see also Filmer et al. 1972). I must emphasize that all the texts from this period being considered here are being treated as ‘historical documents’ representative of their time and there is no suggestion that these writers have not changed their positions since then. Commonsense reasoning, then, forms the background knowledge in terms of which the sociologist researches the world and makes sense of it. His use of a specialized vocabulary is merely a translation of everyday usages which does not transform them into an objective discourse but merely into a gloss on ‘what everybody knows’. Moreover, it is precisely because sociological accounts are grounded in everyday usages that they become reports upon the social world at all since that world is, itself, constituted and made available by such usages. Now the important consequence of this last remark is that it raises all members of the world to the status of sociological observers of it in which no one group can claim to have privileged access to an understanding of it. So the generation of lay members of the world as ‘cultural dopes’ who fail to grasp the reality of the social which the rational model of sociology lays bare only serves to disguise the ways in which that model is itself the outcome of practical reasoning on the part of sociologists. (Walsh 1977, p. 51) What is striking about this piece is the manner in which it dissolves the distinction between theoretical and ‘lay’ knowledge and, in effect, abolishes the very idea of sociology, or any other ‘science’, as science. All knowledge is equal because all knowledge is simply one form or another of ‘commonsense’ or ‘lay’ knowledge – ‘commonsense reasoning’. In terms of the terminology of Chapter 1, we see, again, the reduction of Culture to culture(s). The basis of this move is described by Walsh in this way: ‘the corpus of scientific knowledge (a scientific paradigm) locates both a context and a language for framing scientific accounts, and these accounts trade upon that language (reflexivity) and that context (indexicality) to make sense’

110

Towards the Sociology of Truth

(p. 50). Hence, scientific knowledge has sense only relative to a ‘framework’. The crucial move in the argument follows shortly: ‘Now commonsense reasoning has precisely this character too’ (ibid.), and in this respect scientific and lay accounts of the world are ‘indistinguishable’ from each other. McHugh provides a clear summary of the sceptical implication of this approach: ‘With regard to reality, and if we equate it with truth, we must admit that there are as many realties as there are describable procedures. Because there are in principle many rules of construal, so there can be many realities, all of equivalent status as truths’ (McHugh 1974, p. 333). This extreme relativism from the early 1970s could just have well come from a contemporary postmodernist text. But these observations concerning ‘indexicality’ and ‘reflexivity’ in the production of scientific knowledge and their continuities with ‘lay’ knowledge could as well strike readers as rather trivial – ‘well yes, of course’ (although exploring cases of, say, laboratory science ethnographically could still be of intrinsic interest). It can reasonably be expected that scientific and lay procedures for producing accounts of the world would share some things in common (how could they not?); however, it does not follow that they do not in other significant ways differ. Scientific and lay accounts do not differ in these particular ways, but they might in others and it is this that is important. But, the path taken with this type of analysis is not to explore alternative ways of understanding such a difference, but as a way of abolishing difference as such. Basically, no sense that alternatives are possible is given: it is one or the other, relativism or absolutism – the epistemological dilemma. What are sociological observations concerning the ways in which people do things in routine social situations, aspects of how knowledge ‘gets done’, are treated as epistemological conclusions about the very possibility of knowledge as such. This approach has an apparent radical force only when directed against some significant and influential position that on principle holds that such routine properties should not be involved in knowledge. This position is, of course, the absolutist construct: ‘positivism’. The continuities between these positions and postmodern ones is well illustrated by Jenks when he describes, ‘positivism as the conventional epistemology that has generated the obsessional analytical stance dominated by a correspondence theory of truth’ – it is this thought style that orients the practices of education, science, sociology and indeed most Western intellectual endeavour in a way that has clear affinities with how Potter describes ‘classical Marxism’ and constructs the male ‘epistemic agent’ of feminist standpoint theory, and with Usher and Edwards account of the ‘dominant’

New Times

111

view of science, and Carey’s of the ‘dominant’ aesthetic. Referring to McHugh (1970) Jenks argues that ‘positivism operates with ‘a sheer asocial logic’ in that knowledge as truth is treated as necessarily a feature of the private understandings of individuals as any-man (Jenks 1977, p. 24). The issue, here, across the years, is not how far such depictions are valid sketches of positivism, but how far they constitute plausible accounts of an existing state of affairs at any point (‘positivism as the conventional epistemology’) and what credibility can be given to breathtaking statements such as Jenks’: ‘it is this thought style that orients the practices of education, science, sociology and indeed most Western intellectual endeavour’ – especially given that no evidence is provided to support them or suggestions made as to how they might even be rendered rigorously intelligible. Under the auspices of this construct of ‘positivism’ the Procrustean treatment to which feminist standpoint theory subjected ‘classical Marxism’ is, in this volume, applied to the liberal philosophers of education, Richard Peters and Paul Hirst. In order to avoid repetition and not to labour a point that has already been made a number of times above; briefly, Jenks’ contribution focuses upon Hirst and he constructs Hirst’s position as follows: ‘His forms of knowledge, though historically and descriptively socially constructed, nevertheless take on an ahistorical and absolutist form in his contemporary theorizing’ (Jenks 1977, p. 29). Again, the concern, here, is not with how far this is a reasonable interpretation of Hirst’s position (though no one not already familiar with his work could possibly make a judgement on the basis of this chapter), but the particular way in which Hirst is discursively constructed as a ‘positivist’. The key move is when it is claimed that the ‘forms of knowledge’ have, ‘an ahistorical and absolutist form’ – the familiar construct of ‘absolutism’. As far as Jenks’ own approach to Hirst is concerned, ‘It must be emphasized that throughout, all notions of forms or categories of knowledge . . . are statements of the form of life of the theorist’ (p. 24). The method of ‘analysis’ is a type of deconstruction that attempts to uncover the conditions that make statements of a particular kind intelligible within the communities (forms of life) where such statements are routinely treated as intelligible (McHugh et al. 1974). Keddie, in her chapter, produces a similar analysis of R. S. Peters, but explicitly aligns his philosophy with the ‘old’ sociology of education represented by Olive Banks. We see in this earlier episode all of the features of the ‘dominant hegemonic discourse’ summarized in Chapter 1 on the basis of more recent approaches. In both periods, this construct is identified as ‘positivism’ and as the ‘dominant’ or ‘conventional’ epistemology or discourse.

112

Towards the Sociology of Truth

Within such a discourse, the traditional question of, ‘is Hirst right or wrong’, becomes meaningless because ‘rightness’ and ‘wrongness’ are meaningful only within the confines of the forms of life whereby such things are routinely construed as examples of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. In a peculiar way Hirst (indeed, all of us) is always right and wrong at the same time: we are right to believe what is ‘right’ in our form of life because that is what ‘right’ is, but wrong to believe that it really is right! But given that there is no other way of being ‘right’, there is nothing we can do about it anyway (except move to another form of life, maybe), and no clear reason for trying to. So, at the end of the day, nothing has changed and it is not at all surprising if this type of ‘analysis’ is strongly reminiscent of linguistic philosophy. The Wittgenstein influences in this approach are sometimes explicit (e.g. Blum 1974) and the engagement with issues of meaning, interpretation and rationality parallel those of the linguistic philosophers involved in the ‘rationality debate’ following Winch’s The Idea of a Social Science (1958). There could be a good case for arguing that this kind of thing actually is linguistic philosophy and not sociology at all! Gellner (1998) argued that linguistic philosophy was not really philosophy at all, but a theory of language that abolished philosophy by claiming that philosophical ‘problems’ were not really problems, but simply confusions over ordinary language use. Once we understand how someone unproblematically or routinely holds a belief that for us is a ‘problem’ (e.g. the Azande’s belief in witchcraft), then it ceases to be a problem. Once sociologists recognize that ‘class’ is no more than something that sociologists like to talk about in their particular form of life, then ‘class’ is no longer a problem. It was this particular way of apparently ridding the world of its problems that so infuriated the likes of Gellner and Popper about Wittgenstein (Moore and Hickox 2006). But this is echoed, also, in the reservations of materialist feminists such as McNay concerning culturalism and in Bourdieu’s disdain for the ‘linguistic fetishism’ of post-structuralism. On this kind of understanding, the ‘linguistic turn’ is not a ‘turn’ within either sociology or philosophy, but a turn away from each in favour of an alternative form of culturalist linguistic or discourse theory and a kind of cultural studies. This section of this chapter has been concerned with two things: (a) a division within the field of sociology is described in terms of a construct of ‘positivism’ (‘the normative paradigm’) contrasted with a range of ‘critical’ approaches and how the manner in which this was done in the 1970s can be seen repeated across time in positions such as postmodernism and feminist standpoint theory, and (b) how within the NSOE there is a tension or contradiction between ‘analytic’ and ‘possibilitarian’ approaches within

New Times

113

the critical camp. The next section will focus on the latter position. It could be said that the ‘new directions in sociological theory’ and the ‘new directions in the sociology of education’ were not travelling along the same road, but, rather, for a time on parallel tracks that increasingly diverged. ‘Analysis’ was a kind of quietistic pietism where through inner reflection one might gain awareness of the ‘auspices’ of our constructions of reality – a kind of gnosis.

Possibilitarianism The spirit and programme of the NSOE could, by contrast, be termed militant – it wanted to change the world without, not merely the self within. Whereas ‘analysis’ (like linguistic philosophy) sought to dissolve problems, the NSOE wanted to solve them. As Madan Sarup stated the case against ‘analysis’: ‘This kind of work has little bearing on the struggle to make a better world.’ He continued: ‘the “new” sociology of education has no sympathy with this type of apolitical theorizing. It is felt that more is needed than merely ‘showing’ the form of life, and that, if possible, it should be challenged’. (Sarup 1978, p. 48). The NSOE did, as we have seen, in fact have some sympathy with the analytical approach in that there was a common interest in problematizing uncritically taken-for-granted views about knowledge and the curriculum. There were elective affinities, then, but the radical difference can be quickly grasped by contrasting statements respectively from Young in Knowledge and Control and Walsh in New Directions. Young states that ‘The research implication of the meta-theoretical position being proposed is that the sociology of education (or any other sociology for that matter) must take into account the historical and situationally specific character both of its phenomena and its explanations . . . However, such studies . . . must be complemented by attempts to conceptualise the links between interactions and the changing social structures in such a way as to point to the new kinds of research which at present seem wholly lacking’ (Young 1971, pp. 4–5, my emphasis). But, for Walsh: ‘social structure cannot refer to anything more than members’ sense of social structure since it has no identity which is independent of that sense’ (Walsh 1972, p. 54, my emphasis). It could not be clearer. And Young maintains his basic point in the paper in the Jenks collection (which in part reads like a critique of the ‘analysis’ inspired contributions). He also refers to the way in which some of these less ‘engaged’ sociological concerns might seem not just irrelevant to teachers, but even as

114

Towards the Sociology of Truth

undermining their positions. This question of relevance to teachers is even more to the fore in the volume Young jointly edited with Geoff Whitty (also in 1977), Society, State and Schooling. Whitty addresses, in particular, the limits to the possibilities of educational change, even when taken-forgranted assumptions are ‘demystified’, as a result of non-discursive structural forces. Marxist influences are substantial in this collection together with an increasingly explicit engagement with the problem of relativism. There is a complex set of interests and needs at play here, across an eclectic range of approaches and resources. First, there is an interest in challenging taken-for-granted educational categories and examining their effects within the educational process. In this there is an affinity with constructionism in various forms. However, there is also an acknowledgement of the need to retain ‘objectivist’ categories such as social structure and class. The need is to develop a theoretical framework that allows this to happen at the conceptual level in a manner that can enable complementarities between structural and interactional analyses and theoretical synthesis. And all of this in a way that is ‘relevant’ to teachers and supports progressive educational reform and social change. By any standards, a tall order! The ‘old’ sociology, perhaps, set itself a rather simpler task. There is a final piece to be put in place and it has to do with the particular way in which the issue of knowledge was seen as central and urgent in terms of what were taken to be the effects of the organization of school knowledge. This is to point to the active intersection between the problem field and the institutional field. It can be approached through the idea of ‘relevance’. The term ‘relevance’ had a special resonance in education at the beginning of the 1970s in the UK. It had, in effect, become a slogan for the programme of educational reform because, as mentioned above, a number of changes were taking place in the education system and teacher education.

Relevance The raising of the school leaving age to 16 in 1971/72 is a key event in this narrative because it was accompanied by significant curriculum reform at the secondary level that had been systematically developed in the second half of the 1960s by the Schools’ Council. Crucially, these reforms were aimed at extending the range of the secondary curriculum by introducing new non-academic courses that, it was believed, would be seen as ‘relevant’ by pupils who were not academically inclined. For example, fifth-form pupils (aged 15/16) would be able to participate in ‘work experience’

New Times

115

courses and the ‘world of work’ introduced into the curriculum. Social Education was introduced and perhaps the most famous and influential innovation was the Humanities Curriculum Project (HCP) headed by Lawrence Stenhouse at the University of East Anglia Centre for Applied Research in Education. Hence, the question of ‘knowledge’ was being raised in a number of ways by important events occurring within the education system. These questions were not simply to do with knowledge in the formal sense of what should be in the curriculum, but also the everyday, knowledge-in-practice of educators – categories such as ‘success’ and ‘failure’, notions of ‘ability’ and interpretations of pupil ‘deviance’. The problems of knowledge being raised within the NSOE overlapped with those in the educational field, but Young’s concern was that they also articulated with them in ways seen by teachers as relevant rather than as undermining. However, ‘relevance’ was not simply understood pragmatically as that which pupils of certain types might find useful. It was seen as relating to the facilitation of pupil learning. Pupils would learn more effectively, it was held, if they had a sense of the relevance of school knowledge to their lives and when it was related to their own experiences, traditions and expectations. Within this influential progressive model of learning, curriculum theory involved not just what pupils should learn, but how they might best learn. The argument was that the majority of, especially working class pupils, were alienated by the traditional academic curriculum because it was, in effect, a curriculum for the middle-classes and the elite. It was derived from a classical liberal model based in the Grammar and Public Schools and the Oxbridge tradition. On the basis of such an understanding, schools could come to be seen as failing pupils (rather than pupils simply failing at school) because of the socially selective effects of school knowledge. It is this that Young is pointing to when he (above) talks about, ‘the socially distributed effects of the school curriculum’. Because knowledge was ‘social’ in that it related to the experiences and interests of different groups, the selection of some knowledge as school knowledge inevitably had unequal implications for different groups in ways that reproduced social inequalities. The new, relocated, sociology of education ‘within’ education and also within this complex set of developments complemented the social psychology that underpinned the influential progressive educational theory of the time and its concern with creativity, self-actualization, authenticity, the realization of inner potential and individuality. There was an elective affinity between this and the new sociology’s phenomenological concerns with intersubjectivity, symbolic interaction and the social construction of reality and self. This learning

116

Towards the Sociology of Truth

theory stressed factors such as identity, self-image, self-esteem, stereotypes, teacher expectations and the self-fulfilling prophecy in accounting for differentials in pupil learning. Both progressivism in education and constructionism in the new sociology promoted a radical scepticism towards knowledge. Within what came to be the new dominant paradigm, being sociological about knowledge was to declare war on knowledge in order to defend the culture(s) from Culture and, in so doing, redress social inequality in education by devaluing ‘academic’ education and promoting other forms of ‘relevant’ knowledge through progressivism and for some pupils vocationalism (Moore 2007, ch. 8). This demystification of received models of educational hierarchy could, it was believed, redress the inequalities of outcome associated with the traditional model. In the 1970s the main concern was with class inequalities (in effect, the situation of white working class boys). But a not dissimilar model of ‘relevance’ was advanced later to support curriculum change in order to address inequalities between the sexes and to make school knowledge ‘girl-friendly’. The same basic logic underpinned educational approaches to multiculturalism. In each of these cases, an established organization of knowledge was challenged on the grounds that it represented and promoted a particular standpoint and interest and worked against others. Sociology of education in different periods after the early 1970s, in effect, performed the social mapping of culture(s) across the education field, identifying things such as ‘middle-class’ education, ‘masculinist education’, ‘ethnocentric white education’, ‘hetereosexist education’, etc. Each of these, characterized as manifestations of the culture(s) and interests of dominant social groups, excluded a variety of ‘Others’ and was held to be responsible for their educational failures. It located the social bases (standpoints and interests) in terms of which various ‘selves’ were symbolically (later, ‘discursively’ and later still ‘performatively’) constructed and positioned, and on the basis of which they interacted. The underlying logic of all of this is to seek for a curriculum of the culture(s) in which all are equal and in which it is understood that any claims to superior worth, judgement or truth are purely arbitrary, self-serving and pernicious, as representing things such as ‘male’ reason or ‘Western’ science or ‘compulsory hetereosexism’. To deny this ‘truth’ can only be to reveal oneself as a traditionalist reactionary because this is the inevitable logic of the paradigm. These conditions have defined the ‘default settings’ of the field for a very long time – they constitute its doxa. The persistence of this type of analysis, and its assumptions about the social nature of knowledge and its implication for the curriculum and learning, has made it extremely difficult to

New Times

117

‘bring knowledge back in’ on the basis of an alternative, non-positivistic theory of knowledge that promotes progressive objectives as well as meeting the increasingly obvious and pressing problems of the culturalist tradition.

Conclusion This chapter addressed two main sets of issues: it attempted (a) to demonstrate how critical, interpretative sociology in the late 1960s and the 1970s defined itself in opposition to a construct of the ‘conventional epistemology’, or ‘positivism’, in ways that mirror the other examples of ‘break’ theories considered earlier, and (b) to provide a historically situated account of the New Sociology of Education and its way of being ‘sociological’ about knowledge. The emergence of the type of radical interpretativism within the ‘two sociologies’ framework must be seen as an event independent from the emergence of the NSOE and requiring its own explanation. Apart from anything else, it was mostly an American phenomenon that British sociologists came to draw upon for their own local purposes – as was the case with the NSOE. Indeed, as demonstrated above, key figures associated with the NSOE were ambivalent regarding the ‘analytical’ and apolitical stance of much of the American work. There was an elective affinity around the common concern with deconstructing taken-for-granted assumptions and categories, but in other respects, a fundamental divide. The focus, here, is upon the NSOE and why the ‘sociology of knowledge’ approach, as it was sometimes known, approached knowledge in the way that it did. It was stressed in the Introduction to the chapter that this discussion of the NSOE is an ‘account’ and not an explanation. It is also a ‘local’ account in that it is concerned with one particular episode and, although the NSOE is being treated as an example of a more widespread type of development within an intellectual field, there is no attempt to generalize beyond it. Rather, it is hoped that this sketch might be suggestive of the kinds of things and circumstances that facilitate this more general type of field modality. It has also been stressed that the configuration of events described was to a significant degree contingent and that relationships were based more in elective affinities rather than in strong, let alone necessary, linkages. The ‘spirit of the age’ provides the general cultural context. The period in question was the Age of the New, of the ‘neophiliacs’ in the way that later we have the Age of the Post. The key texts drawn upon above were

118

Towards the Sociology of Truth

published within two years of each other in 1971 and 1972 (as was the second edition of Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). The immediate historical backdrop was the student radicalism of the 1960s and, in political terms, a developing disillusionment with social democratic reformism. The latter is especially significant for education because it was through educational reform that social democracy chiefly sought to promote social equality. Within this broader context, the ‘local’ conditions of the sociology of education in the UK can be enumerated as follows: 1. The field of sociology in general was relatively small and its disciplinary identity weakly defined. In part, the reasons for this might be historical given the absence of a British Durkheim or Weber – and the question of ‘why no classical British sociology?’ has been discussed for some time. In this context, the sociology of education developed a niche and legitimacy for itself within the field in association with social mobility studies (based mainly at the LSE). The upgrading and expansion of teacher education both increased the demand for sociologists of education in the ‘foundation disciplines’ in education studies and significantly relocated the field away from university sociology departments to institutes and colleges of education. In contrast to Philosophy and History, Sociology lacked both a strong disciplinary identity and an agreed body of method or the long-established relation to education enjoyed by Psychology. In this context, there was the need to construct taught undergraduate courses in ‘the sociology of education’. It is also tempting to pose the question, given that initially sociologists were in short supply, ‘who actually were the first sociologists of education in teacher education?’ To what degree were some of them ‘converts’ from other disciplines? 2. Relocation required redefinition. The ‘new’ sociologists were dealing with students training to be teachers and also with schools and LEAs. The ‘old’ LSE model of sociology, detached from the classroom, was not of immediate ‘relevance’ to this constituency. The focus of attention needed to shift from macro-structural concerns to the school, the classroom, the curriculum and educational processes. This had to be done in a way that distinguished sociology from both philosophy and psychology that also laid claim to some of these areas. 3. This change of focus entailed a shift in methodology from quantitative to qualitative approaches. However, within sociology, the ‘interpretative paradigm’ was constructing itself as being radically incommensurable with the ‘old’ sociology. Hence, the shift in focus came to be seen not so

New Times

119

much as an extension of the scope of the sociology of education but as a ‘paradigm crisis’ reflecting a fundamental, meta-theoretical cleavage between the ‘two sociologies’. Further divisions were opening up within the interpretative paradigm, e.g. between symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology and ‘analysis’. There was a proliferation rather than an integration of languages. 4. The NSOE drew these things into a framework (not a theory). Its range was eclectic and there were tensions within the body of thought upon which it drew – especially between the ‘analytic’ interpretative approaches and the ‘possibilitarian’ aspirations of key figures associated with the NSOE. There was a common interest shared with the interpretative paradigm in the questioning of taken-for-granted knowledge and the construction of knowledge in routine social situations such as classrooms. 5. Within the educational field, the question of knowledge and the curriculum was already to the fore because of the reforms and innovations associated with the raising of the school leaving age and the ‘progressive revolution’ at the primary level. There was thus an elective affinity between concerns in the field of sociology and those in education and the ‘new’ sociology constructed itself as an interface between the two. This was reinforced by affinities between such a sociology of education and influential progressive learning theories where the organization of school knowledge was seen also as being to do with how children from different backgrounds learn and not just with what they learn. The above is an attempt to ‘make sense’ of the NSOE within the context of its time and the interactions and affinities between different kinds of fields. It is an attempt to understand why it was sociological about knowledge in the particular way that it was. The unresolved problem was that its way of being critical about knowledge continually destabilized the category of knowledge. To return to Madan Sarup’s comments on the analytical approach. To ‘show’ the form of life (the concern with ‘truthfulness’) is one thing. The problem is to ‘challenge’ it (requiring a commitment to some ‘truth’). But the epistemological resources to construct a non-positivistic social theory of knowledge were not to hand.

Chapter 5

Getting Real – in medias res

We are always in medias res, in the middle of things. We always find ourselves in the midst of time, space, discourse, other people. In medias res means that our thinking is always preceded by other thinking, our own and other people’s. Wherever we are is always a region from which space stretches out to an indefinite horizon. In medias res is a primal experience. Randall Collins 2000, p. 860

Introduction In contrast to the ‘break’ theories that have been extensively examined in this book, the quote from Randall Collins, above, points towards the alternative approach to being sociological about knowledge that the book advocates. This chapter will explore Collins’ ideas further and also others offering a similar view. Rather than proclaiming a radical break with the past and being in a constant state of new beginnings, this approach sees our thought as always in ‘the middle of things’ – in medias res. Previous chapters have explored aspects of the ways in which a certain manner of reductive thinking within the intellectual field at the same time represents a particular structuring of the field – or, at least, attempts to impose it through the way in which knowledge claims are legitimated. The focus of concern has been on what I have termed ‘schismatic’ thinking that authorizes itself through the proclamation of a radical break with some mainstream, ‘dominant’ or ‘conventional’, body of knowledge that is held to be hegemonic and, in many cases, also oppressive and implicated in a variety of repressions that reproduce social inequalities in education. This type of thinking abolishes one kind of distinction in knowledge: that between knowledge that is local and context-dependent (culture(s)) and knowledge that is trans-local and context transcending (Culture), by reducing the latter to the former. But, on the other hand, it establishes another kind of distinction

Getting Real – in medias res

121

within the intellectual field: that between the segments of an array of incommensurable perspectives each of which is specialized by its supposedly unique standpoint grounded in the local. A number of the writers previously considered employ, in various ways, the distinction between the ‘horizontal’ and the ‘vertical’ in order to describe this difference. When an intellectual field is conceived of as operating in a vertical mode in the form of disciplines, subjects or perspectives, it aims at the integration of knowledge at increasing levels of abstraction and generality. When operating in the horizontal mode, there is, by contrast, a proliferation of approaches, standpoints or paradigms with little or no possibility of complementarity or integration and, hence, advance in knowledge (though there is an increase in data as new areas, topics and issues are introduced and addressed). Such a field is segmented and reductively characterized by strong classification between each segment (a ‘form of life’, a ‘paradigm’, a ‘standpoint’, a ‘discourse’, a ‘voice’, or whatever). This type of reductionism is one way of being sociological about knowledge, but one beset, as we have seen, with numerous difficulties. It is generally directed towards the debunking of knowledge claims rather than exploring the ways in which they are supported and come to be accepted in ways that are not merely conventional and relative or imposed by dictate. By and large, the one thing the sociology of knowledge has not been is a sociology of knowledge. It has been argued above that in part this reflects the peculiar attachment to a defunct positivist theory of knowledge against which the sociological version (in successive guises such as constructionism, feminist standpoint theory, postmodernism, etc.) is defined in opposition. It is assumed that there is a kind zero-sum relationship between the sociological and the epistemological aspects of the sociology of knowledge – the more it is sociological, the less it is about knowledge. It is this kind of trade-off that an alternative way of being sociological about knowledge must avoid. Randall Collins claims that, ‘It is often supposed that social constructivism undermines truth. If reality is socially constructed, there is no objectivity and no reality. I deny the conclusion. Social constructivism is sociological realism’ (Collins 2000, p. 858). Fundamentally he is correct, but this is not how things have actually been. He says that, ‘social constructivism leads to sociological realism’ (ibid. p. 862, my emphasis). Possibly, in the long run, but not quite yet and for some 40 years it has lead away from it, as Michael Young indicates in the subtitle of his book mentioned earlier: From Social Constructivism to Social Realism (Young 2008). Social constructivism has been very good on the ‘social’, but has got nowhere on the ‘realism’. And because of this has been profoundly self-undermining both

122

Towards the Sociology of Truth

intellectually and in terms of the emancipatory politics to which it often aspired. It is for this reason that some of us prefer, now, to talk in terms of ‘social realism’ and of the ‘production’ of knowledge rather than its ‘construction’. In order to get the realism into constructivism, we must start from somewhere else. The purpose of this chapter is to explore an alternative, realist, way of being sociological about knowledge. This approach recognizes that knowledge is socially produced, but does not see this as undermining its status as knowledge. Truth and objectivity in knowledge are the result of a particular form of historically developed sociality. The recognition that knowledge is real is grounded in the principle of ontological realism – of the independent reality of the real. The fundamental elements of this epistemology are summarized by the critical realist theorist, Andrew Sayer, as follows: Critical realism distinguishes not only between the world and our experience of it, but between the real, the actual and the empirical, defining these in a special way. . . . When critical realists refer to ‘the real’ this is not to claim privileged knowledge of it but to note two things. First, the real is whatever exists, be it natural or social, regardless of whether it is an empirical object for us, and whether we happen to have an adequate understanding of its nature. Secondly, the real is the realm of objects, their structures and powers. Whether they are physical, like minerals, or social like bureaucracies, they have certain structures and causal powers, that is, capacities to behave in particular ways, and causal liabilities or passive powers, that is, specific susceptibilities to certain kinds of changes. In the transitive dimension of science we try to identify these structures and powers, such as the way in which bureaucracies can process large volumes of routine information very quickly, in virtue of their structure (hierarchical organisation, specialization and filing systems, etc.). Similarly, individuals, in virtue of their physical makeup, socialization and education, are able to work; indeed, they have this power even when they are currently unemployed and idle. Realists therefore seek to identify both necessity and possibility or potential in the world – what things must go together, and what can happen, given the nature of objects. (Sayer 2000, p. 11) For what is to follow, it is important to note how Sayer defines ‘the real’ and how the ‘realm of the real’ is described in terms of complex objects (both natural and social) with distinctive powers and liabilities. The form of sociality through which knowledge is produced is a complex object of this type

Getting Real – in medias res

123

defined by its distinctive structures and principles by virtue of which it has the capacity to produce knowledge. Against the reductionism of the dominant way of being sociological about knowledge, realism recognizes a surplus element, an emergent level, which cannot be accounted for reductively. It is this that is the object of social realism in the sociology of education. It is also important to reiterate that it is not being argued that fields of knowledge production are entirely independent from external interests and power relations and it is not being argued that such fields are themselves free from interests and power relations within themselves. Bourdieu describes the condition in this way: In fact, the field is subject to (external) pressures and contains tensions in the sense of forces that act so as to drive apart, separate, the constituent parts of a body. To say that the field is relatively autonomous with respect to the encompassing social universe is to say that the system of forces that are constitutive of the structure of the field (tension) is relatively independent of the forces exerted on the field (pressure). (Bourdieu 2004, p. 46) We know a great deal about ‘pressures’ by virtue of the long history of reductionism in the sociologies of knowledge and education, but we know much less about the ‘tensions’ and, in particular, how the tensions are not pathologies that distort a field, but intrinsic to the dynamic of knowledge production and the autonomy of its fields.

Sources and Resources Within the sociology of education the problems above are compounded by the fact that a long-established mindset dictates than any defence of knowledge is automatically conservative and reactionary. Until quite recently, it has been very difficult to find a language in terms of which to develop a strong sociological defence of knowledge. It has not been that the elements have not been around, but, rather, they have been scattered and dispersed across a number of disparate areas and are brought together in social realism. Of particular importance is the established philosophical tradition of epistemological realism. Although strongly associated with ‘critical realism’ and, in particular, the work of Roy Bhaskar, there are other sources of realism.21 Benton drew attention to this position as long ago as 1977 in his Philosophical Foundations of the Three Sociologies – it is the ‘third’

124

Towards the Sociology of Truth

foundation, but in the main sociological debate has been conducted as if there are only two options: positivism or constructionism. Realism is important because of the way in which the principle of ontological realism provides the basis for a non-positivistic (non-empiricist) rebuttal of constructionist relativisms (Maton and Moore 2009). I suggested in the previous chapter that the ‘position’ of realism within the field of sociology in the 1970s was, in effect, filled by Marxism (see, for instance, Benton’s engagement with Althusser (Benton 1977, ch. 9)). There is no intention to engage here with the relationship between Marxism and critical realism, but, simply, to observe that Marxism had and has an attendant set of issues that historically obscured others that could be addressed independently, and perhaps more sharply, within the framework of philosophical realism. In short, not all realists are Marxists and not all Marxists are realists. At the same time it is not being implied, here, that there must be some kind of unavoidable choice between Marxism and realism – such debilitating vanguardist dogmatism deflects attention from more urgent issues) and ends up in a sterile factionalism that retards rather than advances. The problematics of critical realism and Marxism overlap, but do not coincide. There are two significant features of this shared territory: materialism and the concept of ‘emergence’ both in relation to the character of scientific thought and in terms of the nature of ‘the social’. A second important stream is that which flows from Durkheim. The centrality of emergent materialism (see below) to Durkheim’s thinking indicates a common point around which much of that to be covered below revolves. However, the problems, here, are most pronounced because of the way in which Durkheim has for so long been positioned as the archconservative ‘positivist’. Above all others it has been Durkheim who has been subjected to the procrustean treatment examined above. However, there have emerged in recent years a number of major studies that radically revise our view of Durkheim and reveal him as standing alongside Marx as the other great theorist of historical materialism. Susan Stedman-Jones begins her study thus: Durkheim, who died in Paris in 1917, was a republican philosopher, a self-proclaimed rationalist and socialist; yet he is taken as the apostle of conservative thought as well as the most unphilosophical scientism, empiricism and positivism in the social sciences. He has, it would appear, committed every sociological sin . . . ‘Durkheim’ now evokes all that must be avoided in sociology, and has become a billboard which is so pelted with missiles that the original message is obscured. (Stedman-Jones 2001, p. 1)

Getting Real – in medias res

125

As mediated through a Parsonian structural-functionalist reading, ‘Durkheim’ became fixed as the position against which radical currents of thought, such as the New Directions in Sociological Theory, constructed themselves and this positioning of Durkheim ossified as the received wisdom. As Randall Collins puts it, ‘For humanists, Durkheim is the anti-Christ; for the microsociologists, Durkheim is the most reified of the macro. It is small wonder that Durkheim’s reputation is at its ebb’ (Collins 1990, p. 107). However, studies such as those of Stedman-Jones’, Schmaus (1994), Ward (1996), Poggi (1972) as well as Collins’ own work, for example, have provided the framework for the recovery of Durkheim’s thinking in ways that radically revise the received version. In addition to the work of Durkheim scholars, it is also the case that work within a Durkheimian tradition has an important role. This is an aspect of what Alexander (1990, pp. 4–6) refers to as the ‘subterranean influence’ of Durkheim that is reflected in the work of thinkers such as Bourdieu and Foucault, but, at least in the Anglo-Saxon sphere, is rarely recognized (Bourdieu 1988, p. xxiii). In the same volume, Collins (1990) refers to the, ‘underground wing of the Durkheimian tradition’ (p. 108) and he cites Basil Bernstein and Mary Douglas as, ‘the most notable Durkheimians of recent years’ (p. 109). Bernstein, in his typical manner, was never shy, however unfashionable it might have been, of proclaiming his debt to Durkheim. It is also typical of his style that he nowhere elaborates at length or in detail how he is Durkheimian and how his Durkheim differs from ‘the Durkheim of the textbooks’ (Moore 2004, ch. 5). There are, though, certain clues (e.g. Bernstein 1977, p. 157). It is probably fair to say that, unlike the sociologists who in the 1960s and 1970s constructed Durkheim as the arch-positivist and anti-Christ, Bernstein came to Durkheim through anthropology, and especially that influenced by Durkheim himself and by Marcel Mauss. His central reference point was not Suicide, but The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, not The Rules of Sociological Method, but Primitive Classification. The structuralist influence in Bernstein’s thinking (Muller and Gamble 2008) is apparent across his career and is occasionally acknowledged by references22 to his structural-anthropologist colleagues in London University, such as Mary Douglas and Edmund Leach (Douglas’ Natural Symbols (1970)) is one of the most extensive and original applications of Bernstein’s ideas, but, in my experience, little-known in the sociology of education). Bernstein’s ‘Durkheim’ was not a positivist or functionalist one, but a structural, anthropological one. It is how Bernstein sees Durkheim as defining ‘the problem’ that is most significant: ‘the relationship between symbolic orders, social relationships and the structuring of experience’ (Bernstein

126

Towards the Sociology of Truth

1973, p. 194). A few sentences later, he restates this in his own conceptual language: ‘the whole question of the relation between the classification and frames of symbolic order and the structurings of experience’ (ibid.). Bernstein often proclaimed that it is ‘the problem’ that is most important and that questions of perspective and method should be subordinate to it. The enduring problem has been with the way the relationship between experience and social order has been interpreted in different camps. Although, in a sense, this is a form of the long-standing structure/agency problem, what is being addressed here is rather different. It has to do with what are taken to be the consequences of distinguishing between social order at the level of the individual and the immediate and a social order that in some manner is held to transcend those conditions. In short, various kinds of humanistic, interpretative sociology react with a kind of moral outrage at the suggestion that social order can be addressed in a way that takes it beyond the personal and immediate. This has frequently been described as a form of objectivist reification that is simultaneously dehumanizing. To recall McNay from Chapter 1: This replays a dilemma central to certain types of interpretive sociology, namely that by attributing an epistemological privilege to experience, any kind of sociological abstraction comes to be regarded as inherently alienating. Taken to its conclusion, this logic implies that sociology should limit itself to a faithful description of experience rather than any kind of objectifying analysis. (McNay 2008, p. 179) A number of examples of this were considered in the previous chapter. At the extreme, the concept ‘class’, for instance, comes to mean no more than what people who use the term ‘class’ experience discursively when they do so. Class is not a way of referring to something that exists independently of members’ usage within the form of life in which the term is current. This kind of reductionism abolishes the structure/agency problem by arguing that there is no structure in the first instance – rather, the focus should be upon processes of intersubjectivity and the negotiation of meaning between members within their forms of life (the programmes of ethnomethodology and social phenomenology, for instance). Basically, the humanist objection is that to study the social ‘objectively’ in a ‘scientific’ manner is to objectify people – to treat them as ‘things’. But the force of this objection depends upon how the key terms – ‘objectivity’, ‘thing’, ‘scientific’, etc. – are being understood. As has been demonstrated at numerous points earlier, this

Getting Real – in medias res

127

understanding has tended to be interpreted in a very particular way: that a ‘thing’ is a material object that has a definitive, corporeal identity and existence in time and space that can be captured in a scientific representation and is open to measurement, to prediction and to control by a detached epistemic agent. To be ‘objective’ is to picture an object in this manner. To treat the social scientifically is seen as treating people as ‘thing-like’ in this particular way: as like inanimate, objectively observable objects. It is in these terms that Durkheim has largely been interpreted when he talks of society as having a sui generis reality, of ‘social facts’ and as treating social facts as ‘things’. A reified objectivist metaphysics has been imputed to Durkheim on the basis of particular positivistic interpretation of his ideas associated with an absolutist epistemology and an empiricist model of ‘science’. However, as Sayer indicates, above, the realist notion of a ‘thing’ is very different and does not take a material thing as its model for ‘thingness’ in general. Durkheim It is important to understand at the outset that Durkheim, also, did not understand a ‘thing’ is this kind of way on the model of an external, inanimate material object. His definition was not in terms of the qualities of the thing ‘in-itself’, but in terms of how it is given in consciousness: A thing is any object of knowledge that is not naturally controlled by the intellect, which cannot be adequately grasped by a simple process of mental activity. It can only be understood by the mind on condition that the mind goes outside itself by means of observation and experiments, which move progressively from the more external and immediately accessible characteristics to the less visible and more deep-lying. (Durkheim 1956, pp. 58–9, my emphasis) What does Durkheim mean in the first sentence? What is the character of the distinction he is making? A good illustration is his discussion of the category of ‘time’ in the ‘Introduction’ to the Elementary Forms: We can conceive of time only if we differentiate between moments. Now, what is the origin of that differentiation? Undoubtedly, states of consciousness that we have already experienced can be reproduced in us in the same order in which they originally occurred; and, in this way, bits of our past become immediate again, even while spontaneously distinguishing

128

Towards the Sociology of Truth

themselves from the present. But however important this distinction might be for our private experience, it is not sufficient to constitute the notion or category of time. The category of time is not simply a partial or complete commemoration of our lived life. It is an abstract and impersonal framework that contains not only our individual existence but also that of humanity. It is like an endless canvas on which all of duration is spread out before the mind’s eye and on which all possible events are located in relation to points of reference that are fixed and specified. It is not my time that is organized in this way; it is time that is conceived objectively by all men of the same civilization. (Durkheim 1995, pp. 9–10) Durkheim is distinguishing between our individual, subjective experience of time and time as it is socially organized. We all participate in both simultaneously (and in this respect the distinction is analytic at the level of the person – Durkheim describes this as the ‘duplex self’). Durkheim’s point is that we can in various ways through introspection control our subjective ‘personal time’: in a lecture, for instance, we might be ‘carried away’, make a conscious effort to concentrate or may find the whole thing so boring that we drift off into a reverie – time might ‘fly’ or ‘drag’, ‘it expresses the momentary state of a particular consciousness. It is fundamentally individual and subjective’ (Durkheim 1995, p. 13). But we cannot, in the same way, ‘by a simple process of mental activity’, influence ‘social time’. Social time neither flies nor drags, it just ticks over – an hour is an hour is an hour. This distinction between the personal and the social aspect of the self is expressed as follows: ‘an individual being that has its basis in the body and those sphere of action is strictly limited by this fact, and a social being that represents within us the highest reality in the intellectual and moral realm that is knowable through observation: I mean society’ (ibid. pp. 15–16). The world of any individual alone is a very small one, but we all, as social beings, dwell in a world that is infinitely larger with much broader horizons: indeed, we often speak of education as a way of ‘broadening our horizons’. It is important to note the final sentence in the above: Durkheim is not prescribing universalistic forms of the basic categories: they vary by ‘civilization’ because the form they take is a matter of the specific relationship between symbolic organization and social structure at particular moments of historical formation in particular times and places. However, the basic categories as such are universal: ‘The other ideas are contingent and changing, and we can conceive of a man, a society, or an epoch that lacks them; but these fundamental notions seem to us as almost inseparable from the normal functioning of the intellect. They are, as it were, the skeleton of

Getting Real – in medias res

129

thought’ (ibid. p. 9). It is in this way that he sociologizes Kant’s rationalism and also makes nonsense of those who describe him as a ‘positivist’: ‘Classical empiricism leads to irrationalism; perhaps it should be called by that name’ (ibid. p. 13). A charge that in an equal way can be made against postmodernism and the constructionist tradition for the same reasons: both positivism and constructionism reduce Reason to, ‘mere verbal artifices’ (ibid.), whether of propositional logic or post-structuralist discourses, and in this manner are equally forms of ‘irrationalism’. Durkheim is pointing to an emergent level of social order that is extensive in time and space and which transcends the immediate and the particular: Collective representations are the product of an immense cooperation that extends not only through space but also through time; to make them, a multitude of different minds have associated, intermixed, and combined their ideas and feelings; long generations have accumulated their experience and knowledge. A very special intellectuality that is infinitely richer and more complex than that of the individual is distilled in them. That being the case, we can understand how reason has gained the power to go beyond the range of empirical cognition. (ibid. p. 15) Durkheim is pointing to two things. The first might be called the social in general (‘A very special intellectuality’) and the second a particular mode of sociality (the science of society) through which the social in general is made visible – particular forms of collective representation that have collective representation per se as, reflexively, their object. It is in this way that the mind ‘goes outside itself’, by participating consciously and in a systematic way in, ‘an immense cooperation that extends not only through space but also through time’. To know what the conceptions we have not made ourselves are made of, it cannot be enough to consult our own consciousness. We must look outside ourselves, observe history, and institute a whole new science, a complex one at that, which can only advance slowly and by collective labour. (ibid. p. 18)

Coalitions of the Mind As Bernstein’s formulation indicates there are three aspects to Durkheim’s ‘problem’: social structure, symbolic structure and consciousness. Another

130

Towards the Sociology of Truth

way of thinking about this is the relationship between the outer and the inner and this can be represented as follows: (Social structure/Symbolic structure) ↕ consciousness A major feature that distinguishes the realist from the constructionist approaches is that the former can define a complex ‘object’ that is extensive in time and space and not confined to the immediate and the local. At this level, the key questions are to do with how social structures and symbolic systems articulate, though it must always be kept in mind that the ultimate complexity, here, is that these are not two separate things but the dual aspects of one complex whole: the social. But this is also represented ‘within’ as the structuring of consciousness and its generative powers: the social self (habitus). The central focus of this book is on intellectual networks as a special type of sociality. These historical coalitions of the mind are also represented within as that which Collins terms ‘coalitions in the mind’ (Collins 2000, ch. 1). The relationship is illustrated when Collins writes as follows: To be oriented towards the writings of intellectuals is to be conscious of the community itself, stretching both backwards in time and forwards in time. Intellectual events in the present – lectures, debates, discussions – take place against an explicit backdrop of past texts, whether building upon them or critiquing them. Intellectuals are peculiarly conscious of their predecessors. And their productions are directed toward unseen audiences. Even when they lecture to an immediate group, perhaps of personal students, disciples, or colleagues, the message is implicitly part of an ongoing chain, which will be further repeated, discussed, or augmented in the future. (Collins 2000, p. 27) The account, here, is radically different from that of schismatic thinking that positions itself only in the here-and-now, the present and the particular and authorizes itself on that basis in terms of the authenticity of its ‘voice’. Collins suggests that, ‘Intellectuals are a peculiar combination of the intensely localistic and the detached and cosmopolitan, of Durkheimian mechanical and organic solidarity’ (ibid. p. 24). Collins is pointing to the nesting of levels within intellectual activity. This is not, then, to position the localistic against the cosmopolitan, mechanical against organic, but to acknowledge the way in which the one is always contained within the

Getting Real – in medias res

131

other – the interrelationships of communities at different scales. We are always in the here-and-now, but the here-and-now is always much bigger than the present-and-particular. At the opposite point from the network extended in time and place is: The intellectual alone, reading or writing: but he or she is not mentally alone. His or her ideas are loaded with social significance because they symbolize membership in existing and prospective coalitions in the intellectual network. New ideas are created as combinations of reframings of old ones; the intellectual’s creative intuitions are feelings about what groups these ideas are appealing to and which intellectual antagonists are being opposed. The network structure of the intellectual world is transposed into the creative individual’s mind. (Collins 2000, pp. 51–2, my emphasis) Bourdieu makes the same point when he says that, ‘A scientist is a scientific field made flesh’ (Bourdieu 2004, p. 41) and that a ‘twenty-year-old mathematician can have twenty centuries of mathematics in his mind’ (ibid. p. 40) – more on Bourdieu below. Collins’ intricate analysis moves backwards and forwards between levels and their transformations. The intellectual working alone is engaged in a, ‘conversation with an imaginary audience’ (ibid. p. 52). This audience becomes immediately embodied in the ritual of the lecture and those physically present there (though it also extends beyond those actually present, those particular individuals) and this is distinguished by its structuring of attention within which for, ‘a period of time . . . one individual holds the floor to deliver a sustained argument on a particular topic’ (ibid. p. 26, my emphasis) and listeners maintain their sustained attention on the development of the argument. But, Members of the audience in intellectual rituals are in a distinctively nonpassive situation. It is a deep-seated part of intellectual structures that questions are asked, debates take place; polemics and denunciations also often occur, in a circulating structure that resembles equally the kula ring, the potlatch, and the vendetta. Even when intellectuals sit silently in the audience, they are conscious of their own part as members of this ongoing community. Their own ideas have been formed by the chain from the past; the situation before them is merely one more link in that formation. (Collins 2000, p. 28) Such forms of sustained attention do not happen naturally however, they have to be learned and practised and are the outcome of ‘the disciplines’: habitus.

132

Towards the Sociology of Truth

Collins argues further that, ‘Intellectuals tend to feel that an idea has not fully entered into their reality until it is in the system of cross-referenced books and journals which constitutes the products of the intellectual community’ (p. 25). The intellectual working alone is positioned within an emotionally as well as an intellectually charged matrix of relationships and connections that unroll from the most intense and intimate, through the transformations of texts and ideas, the rituals of the lecture and seminar, through networks extended in space and canons extended in time, back into the past, but always orientated towards the future. Even when alone working on a text, the intellectual is imagining, indeed anticipating, speech of a particular kind and also the audience to be engaged: ‘thinking is conversation with imaginary audiences’ (p. 52). There is a final, crucial, element that is hinted at above in terms of the, ‘structuring of attention’. Collins argues that, ‘The crucial focus of an intellectual group is the consciousness of the group’s continuity itself as an activity of discourse, rather than the particular contents of its discussion’ (p. 28, my emphasis). Collins stresses that schools of thought that are intellectually active and creative are never unitary and static, but in a continual state of effervescence, thriving on debate and argument and splitting off into new positions and streams. It is this activity that is central and fundamental. It is important to note that a condition for this is that knowledge is held to be fallible not absolute. If truths were absolute, then knowledge production would grind to a halt – if truth is not revisable, then there would be nothing to do beyond a sterile scholasticism that simply protects the sanctity of the sacred works. Popper says that, ‘The critical tradition was founded by the method of criticizing a received story or explanation and then proceeding to a new, improved story which in turn is submitted to criticism. This method, I suggest, is the method of science’ (1994, p. 42). In the case of the Ionian school in Ancient Greece, ‘we find a school tradition which carefully preserves the teaching of each of its masters, while it nonetheless deviated from their teaching in each new generation’ (p. 43) (n.b. Collins’ massive global, world history of the sociology of philosophies demonstrates that Popper was mistaken to assume this a uniquely Western phenomenon. It was, however, in the West in the early modern period that this phenomenon became autonomized to an unprecedented degree and, together with a complex range of other factors, provided the launch pad of modernity). In reality (that is, in history as the activity of discourse), the modern realm of knowledge bears little or no resemblance to the absolutist, ‘dominant hegemonic’ discourse constructed by postmodernists and others as their bête noire – as the example of positivism and its history discussed earlier illustrated. Within this way of being sociological about knowledge, it is the

Getting Real – in medias res

133

activity that is important, not the beliefs: ‘The focus is on a peculiar kind of speech act: the carrying out of a situation-transcending dialogue, linking past and future texts’ (p. 28). It is through such ‘situation-transcending dialogue’ that the mind, in Durkheim’s words’, goes outside itself through, ‘an immense cooperation that extends not only through space but also through time’. However, it is important to acknowledge that such an ‘immense cooperation’ is also the case, in another way, for the mundane and the everyday, the presentand-particular. When I go to my local pub on a Saturday lunchtime and buy a pint of beer and a bacon roll, settle down to watch the football on the widescreen television and chat sociably with those around me, I am participating in something that, also, is there before me (in both the senses in which those words can be read – which precedes me in time, but is also immediately given to me in the moment: wrapped around me, as it were) – something ‘infinitely richer and more complex than that of the individual’. But, because it comes out of my culture (a particular, English, white, male working class culture), my tradition and my life, I participate effortlessly and artlessly (most of the time). If I talk to others, I simply chat – I do not, if I know what’s good for me, stand up and deliver a lecture or a sermon in the middle of the match! It is precisely for these qualities that I do this thing in the first place. It is telling that in England we commonly refer to our neighbourhood pub as ‘my local’: it is precisely that in a deep sense. Being in ‘my local’ is very different from when I lecture or write, and it is here that the, ‘peculiar kind of speech act’ of intellectuals in the production of truth is to be seen. In the first case I am relaxing, in the second I am ‘reflexing’. This distinction between ‘relaxing’ and ‘reflexing’ is indicated by Collins when he draws attention to the distinctive ‘structure of attention’ required in a lecture: The key intellectual event is a lecture or a formal debate, a period of time when one individual holds the floor to deliver a sustained argument on a particular topic. This is different from the give-and-take of sociable conversations, which typically cannot reach any complex or abstract level because the focus shifts too often. Intellectuals giving their attention for half an hour or more to one viewpoint, developed as a unified stream of discourse, are thereby elevating the topic into a larger, more encompassing sacred object than the little fragmentary tokens of ordinary sociable ties. (Collins 2000, p. 26) The key difference between ‘relaxing’ and ‘reflexing’ lies in what Bernstein (1990) terms the ‘orientation to meaning’. In the world of my local meaning

134

Towards the Sociology of Truth

is symbolically condensed and to a significant degree tacit – as we watch the football match on television we make various gestures and expressions and exclamations, but even if we do not all know each other personally, we all know what each other means. In the, ‘give-and-take of sociable conversations’ we (males) converse in the familiar and convivial vernacular of ‘Bloke’. Our orientation to meaning is condensed (it is generally acknowledged that Bernstein made a bad mistake when he chose to use the term ‘restricted’ for this). Because of the reliance upon shared tacit understandings, a great deal of information can be passed between those ‘in the know’ with a minimum of words and gestures and solidarity is expressed (and enjoyed) in the ritual of the sharing of the taken-for-granted – the rude interruption of an ethnomethodologist seeking to disrupt the routine assumptions of everyday life would not be welcomed. In the lecture, the orientation is expanded (Bernstein’s choice of ‘elaborated’ was a much better one in this case). It is not possible to give a lecture in Bloke. This is not for reasons of dialect or accent or social snobbery, but because Bloke is a type of discourse that is symbolically condensed. It is very important to recognize that the ‘restriction’ to this type of discourse is cultural, not cognitive; that is, access to meaning is restricted to those sharing a certain cultural habitus and, in particular, its tacit understandings and traditions. The exemplar of a code of this type is religious ritual in which the knowledge conveyed to those ‘in the know’, adepts or the cognizant, can be immensely powerful and of the highest degree of complexity. Capacity for cognitive complexity is not what distinguishes these two codes, but rather the orientation to meaning in terms of the degree to which meanings and their principles require explicit expansion or elaboration – a reflexivity that enables abstraction. The principle of the lecture, and intellectual work in general, is elaboration: the making of meanings explicit and principles visible. Didactically, it is concerned with elaborating upon the meaning of meanings, to explain what something ‘means’, to undergraduates for instance. There is no better way to come to understand, say, Durkheim, than to teach Durkheim to undergraduates. This is to successively unpack a term, to dig down (reflexively) into it and display it as a set of elements that students can reassemble and reconstitute as a whole in such a way that they can say, ‘yes, I know what that means’ – we often say at a certain stage of this process, ‘Yes, I am beginning to see what you mean’ – and in that it has become ‘theirs’: an aspect of their consciousness (upon which they will be tested in examinations!). This is to say that they ‘know’ it in broadly the same way that others know it within

Getting Real – in medias res

135

a scholarly community; they have acquired some of the common currency and the capacity (and right) to participate in its discourse. But it is also to explicate links between meanings because it is only through such linkages that meanings have meaning. These links are both positively and negatively charged. Some meanings hang together in families in particular configurations, but they are also valorized through the ways in which they oppose other families of meanings. Hence, the lecture, or for students, a course of lectures is an induction into the canon and matrix of textual interconnections that Collins describes. Teachers (unless they are very bad teachers) do not teach their students only the things they happen to like or support – they teach, as far as possible, ‘the field’ regardless of how they feel about certain parts of it. The teacher may be individually committed and involved as a member of a school within a field, but must remain professionally distanced and objective so as to provide students with an induction into the field rather than just to his or her particular school so that that at the end of the day the students can ‘make-up their own minds’ for themselves (this everyday phrase reveals its depth in this context). As education, this process is richer or poorer depending upon the extent to which the course reaches out across networks and how far back it reaches in time. Schismatic thinking that restricts that reach, constituting what Bernstein calls a segmented, horizontal knowledge structures with weak grammar, short-changes students – ‘you do not really need to know that much, only where you are “coming from”’. Perversely, progressive educators have tended to assume that working class children actually benefit from this! Finally, it is also hinted that the matrix is inherently unstable and, hence, dynamic, or perhaps better: alive. The positions and relationships within it are constantly in flux, elements realigning, schools waxing and waning. The matrix is defined not through positions that are given but by the flows of energy between positions that reorder and revalorize their relationships. This is at its optimum in knowledge structures that are vertical rather than horizontal and which aim for the integration of languages through progressive abstraction rather than their segmental and incommensurable separation. In his seminal paper on Classification and Framing Bernstein described this leading to ‘the ultimate mystery of the subject’: By the ultimate mystery of the subject, I mean its potential for creating new realities. It is also the case, and this is important, that the ultimate mystery of the subject is not coherence, but incoherence: not order, but disorder, not the known, but the unknown. (Bernstein 1977, p. 97)

136

Towards the Sociology of Truth

The key issue that Bernstein raised was how access to this understanding of knowledge, to the ‘ultimate mystery’ could be widened rather than being open only to a selective elite – this still remains the key issue today.

Summary A social realist approach to knowledge affirms three basic propositions: (a) that knowledge is socially produced, (b) that knowledge is objectively real in the sense that it is ‘about’ something other than itself (contra constructionism and discourse theory) and that this other (the real, both natural and social) provides the possibility of an independent test of knowledge claims, and (c) that this ‘testing’ takes place within the work of intellectual communities in the form of endless debate and contestation, innovation and creativity that is structured in a particular mode of sociality that is extensive in time and space. As adjuncts to these principles it is also held that all knowledge is fallible and open to revision and that what distinguishes different forms of knowledge production (e.g. the scientific and rational from the mythological, traditional or commonsensical) is not that one way produces knowledge that is certain truth where the others do not, but that some ways of producing knowledge are demonstrably more reliable than others (e.g. that knowledge established through experimental method or open dialogue within the public sphere or critical peer review within a scholarly community is more reliable than that proclaimed ex cathedra by a monarch, a messiah or a party leader or merely sanctified by tradition). It is the how that counts, not the who, the process not the person, the knowledge not the knower. In philosophy of science, these are known as the principles of ‘fallibilism’ and ‘reliablism’ (Niiniluoto, I. 2002). More specifically, social realism entails the recognition that z

z

Knowledge production takes place within intellectual fields that are extended in time and space and that these fields have distinctive structures – generative powers and liabilities – that shape their capacities as modes of symbolic production. In this respect, there is no radical distinction between material production and symbolic production – all production, as a humanly produced social process, is simultaneously material and symbolic. Such extended fields, their structures, principles, procedures and processes, their powers and liabilities should be the central object of a realist

Getting Real – in medias res

z

137

sociology of knowledge. Theoretically, the task is to explicate and to conceptualize the modalities of such fields in terms of their generative powers (e.g. as in horizontal or vertical knowledge structures): that is, in terms of their powers for abstraction and generalization or what Bernstein calls their ‘grammaticality’: their power to integrate languages and generate growth in knowledge. Although such fields are primarily concerned with producing contexttranscending discourses, they are also irrevocably anchored in the hereand-now of intellectual creativity, the condition for which is that the creative individual, who even when most alone, is nested within levels whereby the field structure is transformed between a structure of consciousness, a matrix of texts, the rituals of the lecture or seminar or supervision, publications and imagined audiences extended in the present and anticipated in the future and canons inherited from the past. A social realist sociology of knowledge in action is concerned with these transformations within the field and the conditions for this, ‘immense cooperation that extends not only through space but also through time; to make them, a multitude of different minds have associated, intermixed, and combined their ideas and feelings; long generations have accumulated their experience and knowledge’. Coalitions of and in the mind.

We are always in the here-and-now, but the here-and-now is always in medias res. It is always bigger than the present and the particular. Break theories – The News, The Posts, The Afters – self-righteously inflate the hyper-situated present-and-particular within their schismatic proclamations: the endless hyphenations, ‘voices’, of post-structuralism. In contrast to the shallow eschatological excitations of schismatic thinking, thinking in medias res rides the crest of the wave of the ‘essential tension’: As Bourdieu says, ‘revolution implies tradition . . . revolutions are rooted in the paradigm’. The ‘essential tension’ is grounded in the transformational energy-flows that circulate within intellectual fields and the creative synergies produced when the present-and-particular is released via the here-and-now into the macrostructures of the fields extended in time and space, when they escape the limitations of the horizontal and ascend within the dimension of the vertical. Collins summarizes the situation well: To deny that anything exists other than the local is true in one sense, misleading in another. It is true that nothing exists which is not thoroughly local; if it did not exist locally, where could it possibly be found?

138

Towards the Sociology of Truth

But no local situation stands alone; situations surround one another in time and space. The macro-level of society should be conceived not as a vertical layer above the micro, as if it were in a different place, but as the unfurling of the scroll of micro-situations. Micro-situations are embedded in macro-patterns, which is just the ways that situations are linked to one another; causality – agency, if you like – flows inward as well as outward. What happens here and now depends on what has happened there and then. (Collins 2000, p. 21, my emphasis) The major difference between the social realist approach to knowledge and the dominant, reductionist way is essentially to do with ‘scope’. In the first instance, it opens up a space within knowledge itself, an emergent level invisible to reductionism. It excavates the irreducible surplus element of knowledge that makes it knowledge because it is underwritten by the principle of ontological realism – the recognition of the reality of the real. Secondly, it recognizes that this emergent level is a structured and structuring mode of sociality that is extended in time and space and which ‘scrolls’ through the transformations between the macro and the micro.

The Intrinsic Dualism A traditional problem for accounts of scientific and scholarly fields that depict them as being distinct from other fields is that such descriptions might appear to elevate them, and those working within them, morally above all other areas of social life by being in some special way nobly disinterested and, in this manner, such accounts appear as idealizations that do not stand the test of reality. When it is demonstrated (as it inevitably will be) that, in fact, actual scientists and scholars do not operate in the way they are ideally meant to (that they might be driven by self-interest, are competitive, envious and underhand, biased and lacking reflexivity), then it can be claimed that such fields are actually no different from others because of falling short of the ideal – that which Bourdieu calls the ‘tensions’ within the field are no more than the intrusion of ‘pressures’ from without. It is in this way that the concern with ‘truthfulness’ is made to conflict with the concern for ‘truth’ in Bernard Williams’ analysis. Essentially, this is the logic of the standpoint, debunking approach. Bourdieu addresses this problem in terms of what he calls the, ‘intrinsic duality of the universe of science’ (Bourdieu 2000, p. 111). He argues that the scientific field is like an ambiguous Gestalt

Getting Real – in medias res

139

figure that can be seen in two different ways and is open to, ‘two simultaneous readings’ (ibid. p. 110) such as with the well-known ‘duck/rabbit’ picture. One of these readings is the very familiar one where the concern for truthfulness expunges that for truth. In terms of Bourdieu’s analogy, it is rather as if some argue that the picture is really a rabbit (the picture is scanned from right to left), and others argue that, no, it is really a duck (scanning from left to right). It is, of course, always actually one figure that can be seen with equal validity in two different ways – the dual aspects of the one thing. Knowledge producing fields are driven by both self-interestedness and disinterestedness at the same time and the two drives are intrinsically connected; are, in effect, one and the same thing in different moments and guises. As Collins describes the intellectual ‘working alone’, he or she may be rabbiting away concerned to secure individual recognition in the field and the fecundity of his or her contribution, but must also think like a duck and fly with the flock in doing so because it is only the field that can bestow recognition. Bourdieu describes this complexity in this way: In reality reflexivity is incumbent upon all those who are engaged in the scientific field; and it is achieved through the play of competition which unites and divides them, when the conditions for this competition to obey the imperatives of rational polemics and for each participant to have an interest in subordinating his ‘selfish’ interests to the rules of dialogic confrontation. (Bourdieu 2000, p. 119) The intrinsic duality entails the intrinsic paradox that self-interestedness in the scientific field can only be advanced through disinterestedness – though Bourdieu stresses that this condition should not be seen as simply one of cynical opportunism. Integrity is inscribed in the habitus that is the condition for membership and participation; it is a condition of competence. A great deal of Bourdieu’s work has been concerned with exposing the ways in which claims to disinterestedness disguise an interest ‘under the surface’ in various forms of cultural capital and which generate ‘misrecognition’ and ‘symbolic violence’ (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977; Moore 2007, ch. 5). In Pascalian Meditations (see also Bourdieu (2004)), however, the concern seems more to be with recovering Truth and there is a realism (in the philosophical sense) that is lacking from, or, at least, not so explicitly principled or foregrounded in his earlier work (I am not a ‘Bourdieu scholar’ and am not pressing a claim that there might be a ‘radical break’ in Bourdieu’s later thinking. Here, I simply take these late texts at face

140

Towards the Sociology of Truth

value). Given this, it is of considerable interest, then, to read Bourdieu as follows: The fact remains that, despite everything, the struggle always takes place under the control of the constitutive norms of the field and solely with the weapons approved within the field, and that, claiming to apply to the properties of things themselves, their structures, their effects, etc., and therefore to have the status of truths, the propositions engaged in this struggle recognize one another tacitly or explicitly as amenable to the test of coherence and the verdict of experiment. So it is the simple observation of a scientific world in which the defence of reason is entrusted to a collective labour of critical confrontation placed under the control of the facts that forces one to adhere to a critical and reflexive realism which rejects both epistemic absolutism and irrationalist relativism. (Bourdieu 2000, p. 111) This quintessentially Durkheimian statement (redolent of the Introduction to the Elementary Forms) proclaims that ‘the struggle’ is (a) regulated by the constitutive norms of the field and its recognized principles and procedures, (b) that propositions advanced in ‘the struggle’ are subject to collective tests for coherence, evidence and measured against ‘the facts’, and (c) that the verdicts collectively produced are underwritten by the realism of, ‘the properties of things themselves, their structures, their effects, etc.’ – an, ‘appeal to the verdict of experience, “the real”, as a kind of ultimate referee’ (ibid. p. 113). The key point about the ‘intrinsic duality’ within fields of knowledge production is that the, ‘control of the constitutive norms’ is sufficiently autonomized to effectively regulate the necessary pursuit of individual self-interest (to advance a new theory, to be first to publish a groundbreaking experimental result, to gain personal recognition amongst peers, etc.) in such a way that knowledge is produced according to rationally objective principles and open to collective evaluations which, in aggregation, create an emergent realm of objective knowledge – ‘emergent materialism’ (Popper describes this as a ‘third world’, an ‘epistemology without a knowing subject’ (1972)). It is in this key respect that the field of knowledge production in general (including that of aesthetic and literary production (Moore 2007, ch. 4)) differs from others. This way of being sociological about knowledge, ‘critical reflexive realism’ (Bourdieu 2000, p. 111), ‘against relativistic reductionism’,

Getting Real – in medias res

141

shows that while it does not differ in an absolute way from the other fields in terms of the motivations engaged in it, the scientific field stands apart from them in terms of the constraints (for example, the principle of contradiction, implied in the necessity of submitting oneself to the test of controversy) which an agent has to accept in order to secure the triumph of his passions or interests, those of the censorship imposed by crosscontrol that is exercised through armed competition. The necessity is a quite specific one, itself arising from a quite specific history in the almost teleological logic of its unfolding. (Bourdieu 2000, pp. 115–16) Bourdieu’s critical reflexive realism resolves the ‘epistemological fallacy’ at the substantive sociological level by identifying the dynamic whereby knowledge is socially produced within historically developed fields and their structures, processes and modes of cognition. The realist sociologies of knowledge of both Bourdieu and Collins have their roots in Durkheim’s emergent materialism (as is also the case for Bernstein). Their accounts are strikingly similar in key respects, though neither refers to the other (though, perhaps, in the light of what Bourdieu says, this is not that surprising!).

Procedural Objectivity Those writing within this alternative, realist, way of being sociological about knowledge stress that the focus is upon the activity of knowledge production (within its structure as a mode of production), not upon the contents so produced and (objectivist) assumptions about a correspondence between those contents and ‘things-in-themselves’ – the fallibilist principle entails that these will always be up for revision. This approach necessitates a radical re-evaluation of the notion of ‘objectivity’ both as pursued by the positivists and also as projected by the dominant constructionist approaches in their fantasy dramas of the absolutist ‘dominant hegemonic discourse’. Brian Fay puts the situation thus: If objectivity does not characterize the outcome of research, what else might it characterize? Fallibilism suggests an alternative account of objectivity, one which construes objectivity not as a property of the results of inquiry but as a property of the process of inquiry itself. To fallibilists the method of scientific analysis, not its conclusions, is what is or is not objective. Required for a reconstructed construal of objectivity is a shift from substantive to procedural adequacy. (Fay 1996, p. 212)

142

Towards the Sociology of Truth

Such a ‘procedural’ model of objectivity engages with the structured and enduring mode of sociality (the mode of knowledge production) and in a major part a realist sociology of knowledge is concerned to theorize and investigate this mode of production: the conditions of its emergence in history, the conditions for its enduring existence, the range of modalities within it such as vertical and horizontal knowledge structures. In general: its powers and liabilities. For each of these, Bourdieu stresses the importance of ‘autonomization’ – the degree of relative autonomy of the field and its freedom from external pressures and, consequently, the power of the field to operate by its own rules in the regulation of its ‘intrinsic duality’. In this respect, the realist approach is the opposite of the dominant, reductionist one. The procedural model, understood as defining a distinctive, structured mode of sociality, provides social realism with an ‘object’ and a problematic. Against reductionism (which at the extreme continually denies the possibility of autonomy and the very existence of such an object), realism suggests that the really interesting question, the ‘big one’, is how is autonomization possible? This question is both epistemological and sociohistorical. Social realism attempts to bring these two aspects together within a single framework. The sociology of education has a major stake in this because another way of talking about the theoretical ‘object’ of the social realist sociology of knowledge is as ‘the education system’ in the broadest sense of that term. So far in this chapter, the emphasis has been upon knowledge production, beginning with the intellectual working alone, but always within the extended here-and-now of the network and the field: working, that is, at the edge of the ‘ultimate mystery of the subject’. But it is imperative to acknowledge that education cannot begin with the ultimate mystery (radical progressive educators sometimes have problems with this). The ultimate mystery has to be worked towards, and, for the few who decide to complete the journey in full in education, though it can also be done elsewhere, this is a long and difficult process from school, through the undergraduate degree, the liminal stage of the Masters degree to the final trail of the Ph.D. (apparently a more or less culturally universal model of apprenticeship in the disciplines and their mysteries, whether of craftsmen or scholars, priests or warriors or athletes). Bernstein’s point about the ultimate mystery being revealed only very late is an aspect of the ‘essential tension’, that revolution is always grounded in the paradigm (only those who have completed the journey can see why the mystery is a mystery). Within the long-term formal educational process, and elsewhere, the centre of gravity gradually shifts from the reproduction of knowledge (its assimilation – accumulated in the

Getting Real – in medias res

143

self) to productive innovation (original creativity – accumulated in the field) – in just the way that the athlete begins by embodying skills in the self in order to end up displaying them on the field. In a straightforward way, we need to know stuff before we can do stuff. However, if Fay’s ‘procedural’ model is applied to the reproduction of knowledge, in the school for instance, then it is the case that pupils are not only acquiring content – that which is in the curriculum – they are also acquiring the procedures: in the critical liberal tradition, for example, the capacity for rational autonomy. This, in effect, was precisely Bernstein’s point and his major concern in developing concepts such as classification and framing, the distinction between visible and invisible pedagogies and the concept of the pedagogic device. The procedures are embedded within the ‘structure of pedagogic discourse’ (Bernstein 1990, 2000).23 It is useful to consider how Fay goes on to describe ‘procedural objectivity’: Objectivity conceived in this way is best termed critical intersubjectivity. It is intersubjective because it consists of an ongoing dialogue among rival inquirers each of whom attempts to understand the others in a manner genuinely open to the possibility that their views may have merits (indeed, more merits than their own). It is critical because it involves the systematic examination of rival accounts and methods in a careful, probing, and open-minded way. Objectivity is thus a feature of co-operative conversations bent on collectively exploring the worth of various theories and modes of inquiry from a detached (but not necessarily disinterested) perspective. (Fay 1996, p. 213) The possibility of these collective, ‘co-operative conversations’ requires two things: (a) something to talk about, and (b) a way of doing so. In a sense, the ‘procedure’ is the way of taking through what is there to be talked about: ‘the activity of discourse’ in the extended way that Collins describes. The message becomes the medium when rewritten as the structure of pedagogic discourse in the conceptual move from the what that is being relayed to the modality of the relay (Bernstein 1990, 2000). There is a further, important implication of the procedural model of objectivity that runs parallel to Bourdieu’s ‘intrinsic duality’. Because objectivity is a procedure structured within the norms and practices of the network and its collective rules, it is not required that it is a property of individuals in the sense of their adopting a ‘value-neutral’ or ‘impartial’ approach in the traditional, ‘objectivist’ sense (are ‘nobly’ disinterested). The vexed problem of ‘reflexivity’ is, as it were, being continually worked through

144

Towards the Sociology of Truth

(it can never be fully resolved for reasons given earlier) in the process of critical intersubjectivity in the way that Fay puts it above: ‘co-operative conversations bent on collectively exploring the worth of various theories and modes of inquiry from a detached (but not necessarily disinterested) perspective’. Bourdieu makes a similar point: ‘there are socially instituted and guaranteed forms of communication which, like those which in fact prevail in the scientific field, give their full efficacy to mechanisms of universalization such as the cross-controls which the logic of competition imposes more effectively than any plea for “impartiality” or “ethical neutrality”’ (Bourdieu 2000, p. 110). No individual claim to ‘reflexivity’ could ever be substantiated because of the problem of epistemic regress. Reflexivity is better understood as a constitutive property of the collective working (the ‘cross-controls’) of the field and is built into procedural objectivity – it is a criterion of its adequacy – and disinterestedness a principle of the field, not necessarily a characteristic of the practitioner: ‘A truth that has undergone the test of discussion in a field where antagonist interests, and even opposing power strategies, have battled over it is in no way undermined by the fact that those who discovered it had an interest in discovering it’ (Bourdieu 2004, p. 84).

Habitus and the Conditions of Entry The above should not be seen as implying that either the ‘intrinsic duality’ of the intellectual field or the model of ‘procedural objectivity’ means that individual practitioners are then exempt from principled restraint in their scientific or scholarly activities – that ‘the field’ sorts it out. The issues have important implications for the idea of professional vocation and commitment, of the relationship between self and a humanistic and politically engaged involvement in the work of teaching, and also for the ways in which these things might be regulated by the state through educational policy. The ‘cross-controls’ of the field provide an external constraint, in Durkheim’s terms, but there must also be an inner ‘compulsion’; that is, a discipline within the self that comes from assimilation to the discipline without, the field of study – the field as habitus. Each of the individual thinkers being considered in this chapter is concerned with the way in which the outer, the disciplinary matrix, its networks and canons, becomes represented within as a structuring of consciousness and of self, and this is the basis of competence, of the capacity to participate, produce and contribute. The key relationship, then, is between the manner in which knowledge has developed within an intellectual field and the manner in which individuals

Getting Real – in medias res

145

become members of fields, of how it is that, as Bourdieu puts it, the scientist becomes the scientific field ‘made flesh’. It is in John Beck’s work (2008) that this aspect of the matters being considered here has had its most thorough investigation in relation to educational policy in the UK and the regulation of the professional role of the teacher and the education system. Beck contrasts Bernstein and Bourdieu’s primary concerns with ‘the field’: ‘Bernstein’s main interest, unlike Bourdieu’s, is not the analysis of positional struggles within and between such fields, but more in their implications for identity formation’ (p. 70). The key issue for identity formation lies in the relationship between institutional structure and knowledge structure: ‘as deriving from the historically particular character of the linkage between the organizational forms of such professions and their knowledge base’ (p. 72). Beck summarizes the major factors as follows: Of crucial importance here would be the following: z

z

z

z

that established professions historically achieved an exceptional measure of collective collegiate autonomy over their conditions of professional training, certification of professional competence, and conditions of work and practice . . .; that such professions themselves largely defined the boundaries of their own knowledge base, which in most cases was eventually institutionalized in the form of a curriculum taught by a ‘professional school’ based within institutions of higher education . . . and which therefore partook of the liberal educational ethos associated with such a location; that as a condition of maintaining trust on the part both of their clients and the state, such professions were constrained to develop and implement a code of ethics through which individual professionals could be held to account by the profession itself; that professional training typically involved more than the imparting of specialized expertise; it also involved intensive socialization into the values of a professional community and its standards of professional integrity, judgement, and loyalty – in other words, the creation of a professional habitus. Such conditions operated not only to insulate such professions from the profane pressures of unrestricted free market competition; they also insulated professional knowledge and values, at least to some degree, from external interference and contamination. (Beck 2008, pp. 72–3)

146

Towards the Sociology of Truth

Beck’s overriding concern has been with not only how such conditions can be generally understood, but how in recent years government policy has reduced the autonomy of the educational field and weakened the relationship between the teaching profession and its knowledge base with significant implications for the sense of an inner commitment to teaching as a vocation.

Education and the Reality of Knowledge From an educational point of view the significance of the realist approach is that it affirms that knowledge actually is real and not merely a constructed arbitrary serving the interests of various dominant social groups. In epistemological terms, this means that knowledge is about something other than itself. To recall the Durkheimian/realist model of a ‘thing’ from the beginning of this chapter, symbolic productions (humanly created ‘social kinds’ such as literary canons, codified sports or musical traditions – social facts) are as much ‘things’ as natural kinds in the physical universe. The extensive, structured fields of knowledge production are ‘things’ in this manner and are the ‘object’ of a realist sociology of knowledge (which, of course, is then itself a ‘thing’ in the same way! In that it might be seen as the reflexive activity of such things, as what Bourdieu (2004) calls ‘the science of science’, it a sort of thing within a thing: the convoluted complexities of which will not be unravelled here – I happily surrender this to Bourdieu (2000, 2004)). But in just the way that knowledge is an engagement with something outside itself, so education is an engagement with knowledge (as real) and the manner in which knowledge is constituted (in the form of procedural objectivity) and specialized through its engagements with specific objects or domains of the real (the disciplines). These things, in turn, are associated with the formation of self, the development of habitus. How this is so is suggested by Fay when he describes another aspect of procedural objectivity: Such an investigation is ‘objective’ not in the sense that its results mirror the objective world, but in the sense that its practitioners in their epistemic activity transcend their narrow subjective attachments and preconceptions. Objective inquiry is one in which inquirers must forsake wishful thinking, discard agreeable interpretations when they cannot stand up to scrutiny, bracket their own perspectives in order to enter sympathetically into the perspectives of rivals, and critically examine the perspective which comes most easily to them. Objectivity thus construed is a process

Getting Real – in medias res

147

of de-parochialization in which investigators transcend the congenial, the personal, and the conventional. Objectivity does not consist of emptiness or disinterestedness, as objectivism would have it; rather, it is the property of being detached from one’s commitments sufficiently to subject them to examination, of being sufficiently open to the possible merits of other viewpoints. (Fay 1996, pp. 212–13) Procedural objectivity does make principled demands upon the person. Not least, it demands the willingness to abandon an idea, however cherished, if the evidenced as balanced within the collective conversations of critical intersubjectivity, subject to the cross-controls of the field, seem reasonably to require it. Again, it can be seen how social realism moves in the opposite direction from constructionist reductionism. Realism is concerned with ‘de-parochialization’ – to move beyond the present and particular (verticality): Culture. Reductionism is a kind of ‘re-parochialization’ that reduces knowledge to nothing but the present and particular (the horizontal): culture(s). What Fay calls ‘de-parochialisation’ requires that individuals interact within (or are always positioned between) different levels or orders: the immediate present and particular and the extended here-and-now. In the sense that we say that education ‘expands our horizons’ it moves us away from the parochial and it does so by connecting us with bodies of knowledge that are, in effect, structured realities, domains of the real as social kinds. They are realms into which we can ‘enter’ in the way that the 20-year-old mathematician with 20 centuries of mathematics in his head, could be said to have ‘entered’ the realm of mathematics (and has done so in a way that he comes to call himself ‘a mathematician’ – in the same way that a skilled craftsman will call himself ‘a carpenter’ or ‘stone mason’ by virtue of the apprenticeship that leads him to the mystery of his craft). What the mathematician and the carpenter and mason acquire is a recognized, collectively endorsed, competence in their trades, the confirmations or accreditations of their fields. Basically, this is what the concept of habitus is about. De-parochialization is the context transcending dialogue moving in the dimension of the vertical. In the way in which Fay’s account of procedural objectivity makes principled demands upon the individual, so Bourdieu argues that competence must be accompanied by ‘propensity’: ‘the belief not only in the stakes, but also in the game itself, the idea that the game is worth the candle, that it is worth playing. Being the products of education, competence and propensity are statistically linked because they develop in correlation (essentially in the course of education)’ (Bourdieu 2004, p. 50).

148

Towards the Sociology of Truth

What in this book I have termed ‘schismatic’ discourses, or what Bernstein more formally describes as ‘horizontal knowledge structures with weak grammars’ (Bernstein 2000), are locked in the parochial because they use the principle of the parochial (a ‘voice’) as their principle of legitimation (Maton 2006) – their authenticity, as in hyper-situated feminist standpoint theory. This results in the segmentation of the knowledge field, in a proliferation of languages rather than in an integration of languages through what Collins calls ‘abstraction-reflexivity sequences’ that drive up the cognitive power of knowledge, its power for universalization and transposability and the subsumption of earlier work (rather than ‘breaking’ with it). As Bernstein says, segmented structures of this type, ‘cannot think beyond the sensibility which initially formed them, a sensibility embedded in a knowledge structure and on an experiential base, local in time and space’ (Bernstein 2000, p. 167). The condition for modes of thought to think ‘beyond the sensibility which initially formed them’ is that the mind can go outside itself by engaging with an extensive collective labour that we encounter in its most systematic form in education and in the disciplines. But the further removed a discipline is from the parochial, from the present and particular, the more demanding are its ‘entry conditions’ (Bourdieu 2004) in the sense that, by virtue of autonomization, it constitutes a realm with its own laws and rules, its particular language and conventions. It also is a field in which knowledge has been accumulated and the assimilation of that knowledge and the capacity to work with it is a major part of what membership of the field ultimately entails. This cannot be achieved simply on the basis of the parochial and vernacular. It requires a progressive and systematic transformation of the self – education. Succinctly, the difference between horizontal knowledge structures and vertical knowledge structures is that for the former what matters most is who you are, whereas for the latter what matters is who you have become. The ‘price of entry’ Bourdieu tells us, is ‘competence’ (2004, p. 50) which in turn is understood as the formation of a habitus enshrined within the structure of a field and converted into a structure of consciousness and effectively embodied: a sensibility and abilities (powers and liabilities). Bourdieu describes competence in the scientific field as follows: This means not only mastery of existing knowledge, of the resources accumulated in the field (mathematics in particular), but also the fact of having incorporated all the theoretical-experimental (that is to say, cognitive and material) resources resulting from previous research, transforming them into a practical sense of the game, converting them into reflexes (Kuhn’s ‘essential tension’ being inscribed in the fact that the

Getting Real – in medias res

149

tradition to be mastered in order to enter the game is the very condition for the revolutionary break). So the price of entry is competence, but competence as a theoretical-experimental resource ‘embodied’, turned into a sense of the game, in other words the scientific habitus as a practical mastery of several centuries of research and gains from research – in the form, for example, of a sense of what are important, interesting problems, or an arsenal of theoretical and experimental schemes that can be applied, by transfer to new domains. (Bourdieu 2004, p. 51) Finally, on account of the above, it is necessary to briefly consider the interrelationship between symbolic capital, habitus and field in Bourdieu’s work. Consider the difference between a prize-winning physicist and a championship winning darts player. Each has a well-formed habitus congruent with their field and the capital that goes with it within their fields. Each would have acquired that habitus through a prolonged process of inculcation (training) over time. Where they differ crucially is in the internal structures of their fields or social microcosms in terms of complexity – of positions and possibles (think of the difference between noughts and crosses and chess). Pre-eminently, the scientific field has a built in dynamic towards increasing complexity. Bourdieu also makes this point in relation to the field of art: ‘Thus, of all the objects offered for consumers’ choice, there are none more classifying than legitimate works of art, which, while distinctive in general, enable the production of distinctions ad infinitum by playing on divisions and sub-divisions into genres, periods, styles, authors, etc.’ (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 16). In part, this capacity is a function of the historical ‘autonomisation’ of fields (Bourdieu 1988). Within the microcosm of the field of art, as in that of science, the ‘space within the space’, through a kind of fractal division, gets bigger and bigger and, in doing so, both mints more and more capital, but also constantly devalues its lower forms forcing an upward inflationary intellectual spiral in the form of permanent innovation and also increasing the ‘price of entry’ – simply, there gets to be more and more to have to know. The forms of symbolic capital and the relative values of such capitals are valorized by the capacities of fields to generate internal complexity in the vertical dimension (as opposed simply to horizontal segmentation). The general rule appears to be that the greater the internal complexity of a field, the greater the cultural capital of its habitus (because of the greater difficulty and duration of the inculcation required to embody and master its principles and techniques). The field of darts is extremely limited in this respect and the champion darts player remains a ‘big fish in a small pond’ (though winning darts championships might be more economically

150

Towards the Sociology of Truth

lucrative than winning prizes for physics). In the final analysis, the forms of symbolic capital are given by and valorized by the structure of fields in terms of (a) relations within them – internal complexity and (b) relations between them in the social space – their relative status. Individuals will possess cultural capital in proportion to the status of their specialized field in the social space and their position within their specialized field. Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic capital can be explicated in a way that can be summarized as follows: agents possess types and degrees of transposable symbolic capital to the extent that they embody a ‘well-formed’ habitus inculcated by an appropriate agency and incorporating the principles of the field into which they are inducted and the powers it endows, and in proportion to the complexity of that field and the status accorded to it in society. But it is important to note that the more complex an intellectual field, the further it is removed from any domestic or primary habitus, from anyone’s ‘local’. It is probably fair to say that Bourdieu’s work is most often used in the sociology of education within the framework of reproduction theory; that is, with how the concepts of ‘capital’ and ‘habitus’ can be employed to account for social differentiation and the perpetuation of inequalities in education. There is certainly strong justification for this, especially given the early use of ideas such as ‘misrecognition’, ‘symbolic violence’ and the ‘arbitrary’ (e.g. in Bourdieu and Passeron 1977). In this chapter I have drawn upon his late work for the opposite purpose because it appears (to me at any rate) that his concern is very different, it is to establish, through a form of ‘rationalist historicism’ (Bourdieu 2000, p. 106), the basis of the genuine autonomy of knowledge underpinned by the principle of ontological realism – it is striking how often and how he uses the term ‘realism’ in Pascalian Meditations (the key chapter is number 3, ‘The Historicity of Reason’). The autonomy of the realms of knowledge opens up what Bourdieu calls the ‘margin of freedom’ (2000, p. 234) where the link can be broken between objective probabilities (statistically determined), expectations (intuitively conditioned) and destinies (fatalistically accepted). It is in the recognition of this possibility that Bourdieu’s later thinking seems to depart from his earlier position (e.g. Bourdieu and Passeron 1977; Moore 2007, ch. 5). In educational terms, this possibility is crucial.

Conclusion There are two immediate implications for education of the fact that knowledge is real – it is a fact. First of all, this means that the curriculum is not

Getting Real – in medias res

151

simply an arbitrary, plastic, construct. Some knowledge is better than others and all children have an equal right to the best. Secondly, because knowledge is real, the transmission of knowledge and the manner in which it is acquired (taught) should take account of the structure of knowledge, in, for instance, its sequencing (Muller 2006). It is in this way that education can been seen as involving a, non-reducible ‘knowledge effect’ in addition to the ‘culture effect’ that has for so long preoccupied the sociology of education. To recall, then, Maton and Muller from the Introduction, ‘Simply put, one is effectively presented with a choice: change the underlying structuring principles of the school, curriculum or classroom to match the code already possessed by these pupils, or develop ways of providing those pupils with the key to the code enabling success within those contexts.’ The key to the code that enables access to worthwhile knowledge lies in part (though by no means exclusively) in knowledge itself. Culture effects are not being disregarded, but compared with what we know about culture effects, we know relatively little about ‘knowledge effects’. This is not to imply, however, that we know nothing at all. At the most general or abstract level, the realist argument provides, in my view, an unassailable defence of the reality of knowledge and critique of the relativist constructionism associated with culturalism. Below that, the work such of those examined in this chapter provides sophisticated conceptualizations of the structures and procedures of intellectual fields of symbolic production. But it is also the case that there is a robust body of work that has been developing momentum since the last decade of the twentieth century that translates this conceptual work into empirical research at the level of the school and the teaching/learning process and which directly addresses the question of the knowledge effect. There are two primary sources of this work that are historically entwined. One is that with its roots in the work of Basil Bernstein (Muller and Gamble 2008) and is represented in the volumes associated with the International Basil Bernstein Symposium that since the year 2000 has convened every two years at various sites across the world (e.g. Moore et al. (eds) 2006). The other is that of the Sydney-based Systematic Functional Linguistics school with its roots in the work of Michael Halliday (e.g. Christie and Martins (eds) 2007). This work demonstrates the manner in which the ‘knowledge effect’ can be identified and also put to work in the classroom in ways that have measurable effects on pupil learning.

Conclusion

The more obtuse, abstract or theoretical, issues in the sociology of knowledge, translated through the sociology of education (epistemological issues translating into theories of fields, translating into studies of and within education systems and into the teaching/learning process and the classroom), at the end of the day have very practical implications and consequences ‘in the world’ in terms of how education ‘works’ and the kind of work it can do and how it can best do that work. Social realism attempts both a conceptual and a substantive resolution of the ‘epistemological dilemma’ that has haunted our thinking for so long: that the only choice available is between absolutism or relativism. Central to how the relationship between what Bernard Williams terms ‘truth’ and ‘truthfulness’ is reconciled is the position of the notion of ‘certainty’ in knowledge. Realism qualifies certainty in particular ways: first, it does recognize that we certainly have knowledge, but in the place of absolute certainty it substitutes the principles of ‘fallibilism’ and ‘reliablism’. It stresses procedure not product. It also recognizes that relativism is not a solution, it is as much a problem (and potentially as dangerous) as absolutism. Our knowledge always operates within a range of tolerance – a quantum – between the absolute and the relative. Because it is science that has tended to have taken the brunt of the postmodern attack upon Truth, it is fitting to give the final word to a scientist. In 1972 the BBC broadcast, in 13 one-hour episodes, a groundbreaking series called The Ascent of Man, devised and presented by Dr Jacob Bronowski (still considered by many to be television’s greatest achievement). The eleventh episode is tellingly entitled Knowledge or Certainty. He travels to the University of Göttingen where so much important work in physics took place in the first half of the twentieth century and talks of Heisenberg’s ‘uncertainty principle’ in particle physics. Yet the Principle of Uncertainty is a bad name. In science or outside it, we are not uncertain; our knowledge is merely confined within a certain

Conclusion

153

tolerance. We should call it the Principle of Tolerance. And I propose that name in two senses. First, in the engineering sense. Science has progressed step by step, the most successful enterprise in the ascent of man, because it has understood that the exchange of information between man and nature, and man and man, can only take place with a certain tolerance. But second, I also use the word passionately about the real world. All knowledge, all information between human beings can only be exchanged within a play of tolerance. And that is true whether the exchange is in science, or in literature, or in religion, or in politics, or even in any form of thought that aspires to dogma. It is a major tragedy of my lifetime and yours that, here in Göttingen, scientists were refining to the most exquisite precision the Principle of Tolerance, and turning their backs on the fact that all around them tolerance was crashing to the ground beyond repair. (Bronowski 1976, pp. 365–6) Bronowski concludes the broadcast in the grounds of Auschwitz. This is why truth matters, but Bronowski’s final sentence also indicates a tension: that the Principle of Tolerance requires that intellectuals in following their own special pursuits do not ‘turn their backs’ on the wider world.

Notes

Introduction 1

2

3

This is not to fail to acknowledge the fact that logically it is possible to consistently produce mutually contradictory statements (or that there are, say, consistent noneuclidean geometries). The point is that these things are products of the higher degree of abstraction developed in logic and mathematics in the late nineteenth century where they became freed from the ontological constraints of material reality as human beings generally experience them. Mathematical logic talks, as it were, only about itself and not about ‘the world’. The fact that we can consistently say mutually contradictory things in logic does not mean that we similarly meet such conditions in ‘the world’ – it simply cannot be simultaneously both day and night at the same time in the same place on planet earth. The argument to be developed later is that a fallibalist position can accommodate an inescapable degree of inconsistency and incompleteness within a certain range of tolerance. The logical demand that knowledge be consistent and complete does not act as a material limit to the possibility of knowledge production. It is the material sociality of knowledge that is important, not its propositional form. The term ‘social realism’ has various cognate meanings in the social sciences. The particular sense in which I am using the term in this book emerged from a cumulative dialogic exchange of ideas between John Beck (2008), Karl Maton (2000), Johan Muller (2000), Michael Young (2008) and myself; the catalyst being Moore and Muller (1999). The texts just cited include those early papers, but they are also, now, collected in, Maton and Moore (eds) (2009), Social Realism, Knowledge and the Sociology of Education. Basically, ‘social realism’ draws upon critical realist epistemology to provide a basis for a strong theory of knowledge both within the sociology of knowledge and within the sociology of education. The ‘realism’ in social realism replaces ‘constructionism’ in ‘social constructionism’ (or ‘constructivism’) and is concerned with the social ‘production’ of knowledge in a materialist rather than an idealist manner. This book is, in effect, an exposition and advocacy of social realism in the sociology of education. In the course of this collaborative project a number of other scholars and researchers have become involved and are producing work within its problematic. An initial international seminar, that brought many of these people together, was held in Homerton College, Cambridge, in July 2008 and further, more extensive symposia are planned for the future.

Notes

155

Chapter 1 4

5

6

7

8

9

Bourdieu’s model may appear to get around this by employing the concept of ‘delegated authority’. However, this begs the issue of what it is that the ‘subordinate fraction of the ruling class’ are doing when they are engaged in their work of symbolic production. These issues will be returned to in later chapters. I should emphasize that this argument is the opposite of Bourdieu’s. Bourdieu, in a sense, argues back-to-front; that is, he argues that Culture is seen as such because it is the culture of the ruling class. In fact, it is the case that the ruling class, by virtue of their position, can both recognize the independent authority of Culture and dominate access to it. This book is an extremely thorough and accessible survey of its field, though I must stress that the kinds of problems I identify through this extract from it are in no manner restricted to feminism and, of course, not all feminists or forms of feminism adopt this particular approach. It can be speculated that this interpretation is based on an over-reliance on certain aspects of The Communist Manifesto where it is argued that the proletariat is driven down into a common condition of misery. But that work is, in the first place, an early work, and in the second intended as a polemic and is not a work of systematic theory. It cannot be treated as representing ‘classical Marxism’ in any theoretically sophisticated sense. But in the absence of citations, this is no more than a speculation. In fact the term ‘theory’ in this instance is a misnomer because in its basic proposition that knowledge can never be anything other than ‘local’ or micro it denies the very possibility of theory that is, by its nature, context-transcending and intercultural. Gellner makes this point in relation to linguistic philosophy which, he argues, is not really a ‘philosophy’ at all; but a theory of language that shows that philosophy is impossible (1998). See Andrew Sayer (2000), Part 2 for an excellent critical review of the issues that have been addressed here.

Chapter 2 10

Bourdieu indicates an interesting issue with the way in which Kuhn was recontextualized in sociology and in which the term ‘paradigm’ has tended to be used since. He says that, ‘Kuhn in fact introduces, though without developing it as such, the idea of the autonomy of the scientific universe . . . one of the paradoxical properties of very autonomous fields, such as science or poetry, is that they tend to have no other link with the social world than the social conditions that ensure their autonomy with respect to that world’ (Bourdieu 2004, p. 15). Within sociology, however, Kuhn’s ideas were recontextualized in terms of a tradition of interest theory and standpoint reductionism in which the ‘truth’ of science (and knowledge more generally) was held to lie externally in power relations – the exact opposite of the situation described by Bourdieu.

156 11

Notes

The work of Karl Maton represents a significant, systematic approach to the more fundamental issues being discussed in this paper. Building upon Bernstein, Maton has developed a conceptual framework that makes possible the formal modelling of the knowledge relations of intellectual fields along various dimensions of the social and the epistemological.

Chapter 3 12

13

14

15

16

17

18

Inspecting the bibliographies of representative texts in this field can make a quick independent test of this claim. Carey informs us that it, ‘. . . was Kant in the Critique of Judgement who first formulated what were to remain the basic aesthetic assumptions in the West for two hundred years’ (Carey 2005, p. 8). Nowhere in his book does he present anything even remotely resembling a defence of the latter part of this assertion. One way of testing this is to consult some introductions to the philosophy of science – the kinds of texts that would be recommended to undergraduates as foundations for their ways of thinking about science. For instance, neither rationalist nor positivists have argued that the ‘individual confronts an independent reality of objects’. For rationalists knowledge is always mediated by fundamental cognitive categories and for positivists it is grounded in sensory experience and does not warrant any further claim about an independently existing reality. It can be noted that this coincided with the period in which sociology was establishing itself in American universities and it can be suggested that, in part, the adoption of logical positivist arguments legitimated this ‘new’ discipline as real (i.e. ‘scientific’) knowledge on a par with the natural sciences. It is probably fair to say, and the papers brought together in Rationality (Wilson 1970) bear this out, that the philosophers were actually not really that much interested in ‘the idea of a social science’ as such but with a very particular way in which issues of interpretation allowed them to focus on certain problems in linguistic philosophy (Gellner is the major exception). In fact, social science (with the exception of Evans-Pritchard) is noticeably absent. But it did, nevertheless, have an elective affinity with a number of other key texts around the same time: Young, Filmer, Kuhn, etc. that collectively constituted a powerful zeitgeist. There is a certain injustice in this in that the positivists themselves were committed and active on the left and like the members of the Frankfurt School had to flee Nazis Germany.

Chapter 4 19

I am extremely grateful to my friends John Beck, Michael Young and Mike Hickox for the advice and information they gave me for this chapter and for opportunities to reflect upon that period in our lives.

Notes 20

157

While working as a ‘radical’ social education teacher in a south London comprehensive school, I attended their courses on the London University Academic Diploma and M.A. in sociology of education in Goldsmiths College. Later, Ian Hextall supervised my Ph.D. The early 1970s, especially in the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) were heady times for progressive and radical teachers – there was a strong sense of struggle in education and of education being in the struggle. This sense was manifest in Ian and Madan’s inspirational course – I will do my best to avoid nostalgia in this chapter!

Chapter 5 21

22

23

Collier (1994) and Sayer (2000) provide excellent, accessible introductions to critical realism. Bernstein was extremely sparing in his use of references and citation. It is not always obvious from the text where he is ‘coming from’. To a degree I am relying upon conversations with him about these issues. This is fundamentally different from the idea of the ‘hidden curriculum’. The hidden curriculum concept is concerned with what might be termed a second, subliminal’ content within the educational process. Bernstein’s concern was with the structural relations of the educational transmission process.

Bibliography

Abbott, A. (2001), Chaos of Disciplines. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Ahier, J. and Flude, M. (eds) (1974), Educability, Schools and Ideology. London: Halsted Press. Alexander, J. C. (ed.) (1990), Durkheimian Sociology: Cultural Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —(1995), Fin de Sicle Social Theory: Relativism, Reduction and the Problem of Reason. London: Verso. Apple, M. (1976), ‘Curriculum as Ideological Selection’, in Comparative Education Review, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 209–15. Archer, M. (2004), ‘Objectivity and the Growth of Knowledge’, in M. Archer and W. Outwaite (eds), Defending Objectivity: Essays in Honour of Andrew Collier. London: Routledge, pp. 117–28. Arnot, M. (2002), Reproducing Gender? Essays on Educational Theory and Feminist Politics. London: Routledge/Falmer. Arnot, M., David, M. and Weiner, G. (1999), Closing the Gender Gap: Post-war Education and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press. Beck, J. (2008), Meritocracy, Citizenship and Education. London: Continuum. Benton, T. (1977), Philosophical Foundations of the Three Sociologies. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Berger, P. and Luckmann, T. (1966), The Social Construction of Reality. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Bernstein, B. (1973), Class, Codes and Control, Vol. 1, Theoretical Studies towards a Sociology of Language. St Albans: Paladin. —(1977), Towards a Theory of Educational Transmission: Class, Codes and Control, vol. 3 (2nd edn). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. —(1990), The Structuring of Pedagogic Discourse: Class, Codes and Control, vol. 4. London: Routledge. —(2000), Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity: Theory, Research, Critique, (Revised edn). Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield. Boudon, R. (1977), ‘Education and Social Mobility: A Structural Model’, in J. Karrabel and A. H. Halsey (eds), Power and Ideology in Education. New York: OUP, pp. 186–96. Bourdieu, P. (1986), Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge. —(1988), Homo Academicus. Cambridge: Polity.

Bibliography

159

—(2000), Pascalian Meditations. Cambridge: Polity. —(2004), Science of Science and Reflexivity. Cambridge: Polity. Bourdieu, P. and Passeron, J.-C. (1977), Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture. London: Sage. Bowles, S. and Gintis, H. (1976), Schooling in Capitalist America. London: Routledge. Bronowski, J. (1976), The Ascent of Man. London: BBC. Carey, J. (2005), What Good are the Arts. London: Faber & Faber. Christie, F. and Martins, J. (2007), Language, Knowledge and Pedagogy. London: Continuum. Collier, A. (1994), Critical Realism: An Introduction to Roy Bhaskar’s Philosophy. London: Verso. Collins, R. (1980), ‘Weber’s Last Theory of Capitalism: A Systematization’, in American Sociological Review, vol. 45, no. 6, pp. 925–42. —(1990), ‘The Durkheimian Tradition in Conflict Sociology’, in J. C. Alexander (ed.), Durkheimian Sociology: Cultural Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 107–28. —(2000), The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cosin, B., Dale, R., Esland, G. and Swift, D. (1972), School and Society: A Sociological Reader. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul/Open University. Dawe, A. (1970), ‘The Two Sociologies’, in British Journal of Sociology, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 207–18. Dearden, R. (1982), ‘Philosophy of Education’, in British Journal of Educational Studies, vol. 30, no. 1 (Feb. 1982), pp. 57–71. Douglas, J. (ed.) (1974), Understanding Everyday Life. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Douglas, M. (1970), Natural Symbols. London: The Cresset Press. Durkheim, E. (1956), Education and Sociology. Toronto: The Free Press. —(1995), The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. New York: The Free Press. Edmonds, D. and Eidinow, J. (2001), Wittgenstein’s Poker: The Story of a Ten-minute Argument between Two Great Philosophers. London: Faber. Fay, B. (1996), Contemporary Philosophy of Social Science. Oxford: Blackwell. Filmer, P., Philliposon, M., Silverman, D. and Walsh, D. (1972), New Directions in Sociological Theory. London: Collier-Macmillan. Gellner, E. (1974), Legitimation of Belief. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —(1992a), Postmodernism, Reason and Religion. London: Routledge. —(1992b), Reason and Culture. Oxford: Blackwell. —(1998), Language and Solitude: Wittgenstein, Malinowski and the Hapsburg Dilemma. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —(2005), Words and Things. London: Routledge. Goldthorpe, J. (2000), On Sociology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gorbutt, D. (1972), ‘Education as the Control of Education: The New Sociology of Education’, in Education for Teaching, vol. 89, pp. 3–12. Green, A. and Sharpe, R. (1976), Education and Social Control: A Study in Progressive Primary Education. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Halsey, A. H. (2004), A History of Sociology in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

160

Bibliography

Halsey, A. H., Floud, J. and Anderson, C. A. (eds) (1961), Education, Economy and Society. London: Collier-Macmillan. Hamlyn, D. (1970), The Theory of Knowledge. London: Macmillan. Hoggart, R. (1995), The Way We Live Now. London: Chatto & Windus. Husén, T. (1979), The School in Question. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jencks, C. (1972), Inequality. New York: Basic Books. Jenks, C. (ed.) (1977), Rationality, Education and the Social Organization of Knowledge. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Karabel, J. and Halsey, A. H. (eds) (1977), Power and Ideology in Education. New York: OUP. Kermode, F. (2000), The Sense of an Ending, 2nd revised edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kuhn, T. (1970), The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakatos, I. and Musgrave, A. (eds) (1970), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Luntley, M. (1995), Reason, Truth and Self: The Postmodern Reconditioned. London: Routledge. Masterman, M. (1970), ‘The Nature of a Paradigm’, in I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave (eds), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 59–90. Maton, K. (2000), ‘Languages of Legitimation: The Structuring Significance for Intellectual Fields of Strategic Knowledge Claims’, in British Journal of Sociology of Education, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 147–67. —(2006), ‘On Knowledge Structures and Knower Structures’, in R. Moore, M. Arnot, J. Beck and H. Daniels (eds), Knowledge, Power and Educational Reform: Applying the Sociology of Basil Bernstein. London: Routledge/Taylor & Francis, pp. 44–59. Maton, K. and Moore (eds) (2009), Social Realism, Knowledge and the Sociology of Education. London: Continuum. Maton, K. and Muller, J. (2007), ‘A Sociology for the Transmission of Knowledges’, in F. Christie and J. Martins (eds), Language, Knowledge and Pedagogy. London: Continuum, pp. 14–33. McHugh, P. (1974), ‘On the Failure of Positivism’, in J. Douglas (ed.), Understanding Everyday Life. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, pp. 337–54. McHugh, P., Raffel, S. Foss, D. and Blum, A. (1974), On the Beginning of Social Inquiry. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. McNay, L. (2008), Against Recognition. Cambridge: Polity. Moore, R. (2004), Education and Society: Issues and Explanations in the Sociology of Education. Cambridge: Polity. —(2007), Sociology of Knowledge and Education. London: Continuum. Moore, R. and Hickox, M. (2006), ‘Making the Difference: The émigrés, Relativism and Enlightenment’, in 21st Century Society, vol. 1, no. 1, 1–14, pp. 59–72. Moore, R. and Maton, K. (2001) ‘Founding the Sociology of Knowledge: Basil Bernstein, Intellectual Fields and the Epistemic Device’, in A. Morais, I. Neves,

Bibliography

161

B. Davies, and H. Daniels (eds), Towards a Sociology of Pedagogy: The Contribution of Basil Bernstein to Research. New York: Peter Lang, pp. 153–82. Moore, R. and Muller, J. (1999), ‘The Discourse of ‘voice’ and the Problem of Knowledge and Identity in the Sociology of Education’, in British Journal of Sociology of Education, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 189–206. Moore, R., Arnot, M., Beck, J. and Daniels, H. (eds) (2006), Knowledge, Power and Educational Reform: Applying the Sociology of Basil Bernstein. London: Routledge/ Taylor & Francis. Muller, J. (2000), Reclaiming Knowledge. London: Routledge/Falmer. —(2006), ‘On the Shoulders of Giants: Verticality of Knowledge and the School Curriculum’, in R. Moore, M. Arnot, J. Beck and H. Daniels (eds), Knowledge, Power and Educational Reform: Applying the Sociology of Basil Bernstein. London: Routledge/Taylor & Francis. —(2007), ‘The Essential Tension: An Essay on Sociology as Knowledge’; Paper presented to Colloque enjeux sociaux, savoirs, langage, pe′dagogie. Actualite′ et fe′condite′ de I’ œuvre de Basil Bernstein, Lyon, 31 May to 2 June 2007. Muller, J. and Gamble, J. (2008), ‘Curriculum and Structuralist Sociology: The Theory of Codes and Knowledge Structures’, in B. McGraw,. E. Baker and P. Peterson (eds), International Encyclopaedia of Education. London: Routledge. Murdoch, I. (2003), Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. London: Vintage. Nicholson, N. (1995), Introduction, S. Benhabib, J. Butler, D. Cornell, N. Fraser, and L. Nicholson (eds), Feminist Contentions. New York: Routledge. Niiniluoto, I. (2002), Critical Scientific Realism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Poggi, G. (1972), Images of Society: Essays on the Sociological Theories of Tocqueville, Marx, and Durkheim. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Popper, K. (1972), Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach. Oxford: Clarendon Press. —(1994), The Myth of the Framework. London: Routledge. Porpora, D. (2004), ‘Objectivity and Phallogocentrism’, in M. Archer and W. Outwaite (eds), Defending Objectivity: Essays in Honour of Andrew Collier. London: Routledge, pp. 48–60. Potter, E. (2006), Feminism and Philosophy of Science: An Introduction. London: Routledge. Rosenberg, H. (1994), The Tradition of the New. Cambridge MA: Da Capo Press. Sarup, M (1978), Marxism and Education. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Sayer, A. (2000), Realism and Social Science. London: Sage. Sharrock, W. and Read, R. (2002), Kuhn: Philosopher of Scientific Revolution. Cambridge: Polity. Stedman-Jones, S. (2001), Durkheim Reconsidered. Cambridge: Polity. Usher, R. and Edwards, R. (1994), Postmodernism and Education. London: Routledge/ Falmer. Walcott, D. (1998), What the Twilight Says. London: Faber & Faber. Walsh, D. (1977), ‘Science, Sociology and Everyday Life’, in C. Jenks (ed.), Rationality, Education and the Social Organization of Knowledge. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, pp. 39–54.

162

Bibliography

Ward, S. (1996), Reconfiguring Truth: Post-modernism, Science Studies and the Search for a New Model of Knowledge. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Whitty, C. (1977), ‘Sociology and the Problem of Radical Educational Change’, in M. F. D. Young and G. Whitty (eds), Society, State and Schooling. Lewes: Falmer Press, pp. 26–58. Williams, B. (2002), Truth and Truthfulness. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Wilson, T. P. (1974), ‘Normative and Interpretive Paradigms’, in J. Douglas (ed.), Understanding Everyday Life. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, pp. 57–79. Winch, P. (1958), The Idea of a Social Science. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Young, M. F. D. (1998), The Curriculum of the Future. London: Falmer Press. —(2008), Bringing Knowledge Back In: From Social Constructivism to Social Realism in the Sociology of Education. London: Routledge. Young, M. F. D. (ed.) (1971), Knowledge and Control. London: Collier-Macmillan. Young, M. F. D. and Whitty, G. (eds) (1977), Society, State and Schooling. Lewes: Falmer Press. Zimmerman, D. and Wieder, D. (1974), ‘Ethnomethodology and the Problem of Order: Comment on Denzin’, in J. Douglas (ed.), Understanding Everyday Life. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, pp. 285–98.

Index

Abbott, Andrew 14, 45, 50, 59 absolute knowledge 1 absolutism 68–71, 79, 152 actors 24–6, 27 aesthetics 67–8, 111 agent of history 22 Ahier, John 105 Alexander, J. C. 3 All-or-Nothing Fallacy 72 Althusser, Louis 23, 124 Althusserians 104 Altizer, Thomas 40 analytic perspective 109–13 androcentrism 8 anti-racism 4 anti-sexist education 4, 6 Apple, Michael 105, 106–7 approach/direction mode 51 approach paradigms 42–3, 45, 47, 49, 50–1, 103 Archer, Margaret 32, 82 arts 67–8, 149 Ascent of Man (TV series) 152–3 autonomisation 149 Banks, Olive 111 Beck, John 14, 145 Becker, Howard 101 Benton, Ted 99, 123–4 Berger, P. 101 Bernstein, Basil 14, 22, 34, 41–3, 45, 50–1, 54–5, 57–60, 62, 80, 92–3, 97, 99–100, 125–6, 135–6, 148, 151 Bhaskar, Roy 123 Bourdieu, Pierre 4, 14, 18, 42, 46–7, 51–4, 56, 62, 72–3, 82, 100, 123, 131, 139–41, 143–4, 148–50 break theories 73–4, 85–6, 89, 120 Bronowski, Jacob 1, 152–3 Carey, John 67–8, 111 causality, in education 5

Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) 91 class 103, 112, 126 class differences, in educational attainment 5–6 classical Marxism 22–3, 25–6, 76, 110, 111, 155n7 class theoretical position 23 clerkly scepticism 60 coalitions of the mind 129–36 cognitive asymmetry 35–6 Collins, Randall 14, 41, 60–1, 77–8, 81, 83–5, 91, 108, 120–1, 125, 130–3, 137–8 colonialism 35 commonsense reasoning 109–10 communities 26–8, 37, 65, 111, 130–1 competence 148–9 complex objects 122–3, 130 comprehensivization 4 conditions of entry 144–6, 148 connectivity 10 consciousness 130 constructionism 3, 87–8, 106, 116, 130 constructionist perspective 17–18 constructionist relativism 64 constructivist sociology 24 continuity 42–4, 60, 89 conversion 47–9 correspondence principle 4 cosmic register 69 critical analysis 21, 64 cultural capital 18, 150 culturalism 26, 151 culturalist feminism 26, 87–8 cultural turn 17 Culture 18–20, 34–7, 39, 78–9, 120 culture knowledge 34 science of 2–3 culture effects 7–8, 11, 151 culture(s) 18–20, 34, 36, 39, 79, 120 culture wars 2, 43

164

Index

curriculum hidden 157n23 middle-class 8, 116 NSOE 105–9 subject-based 4 Dearden, Richard 94–5 deconstructionism 29 deconstructive analysis 64 dehumanisation 1, 126 delegated authority 155n4 de-parochialisation 147 Derrida, Jacques 86 Descartes, René 69, 84 deviance studies 101 devices 24–6 disadvantaged groups 8–9, 10–11 discontinuity 42, 44, 60, 99–100 discursive constructionism 87–8 dominant discourse of science 67, 68, 71–2, 110–11 dominant groups 9–10, 28, 29 dominant hegemonic discourse 69–71, 74, 76, 85–6, 89, 111, 141 Douglas, Jack 101 Douglas, Mary 125 dualism, intrinsic 138–41, 143, 144 Durkheim, Emile 25, 99, 124–6, 127–9, 134 education causality in 5 cultural aspects of 7–8 gender revolution in 6 institutional field of 90–2 philosophy of 95 problem field of 90–2 reality of knowledge and 146–50 social differentiation in 8 social order of 3–4 sociology of 2–7, 17, 38–9, 42–3, 63–4, 92–5, 99–100 vocational 4 see also New Sociology of Education (NSOE) educational attainment, class differences in 5–6 educational reform 4–5, 114–15 culturalist 8, 9 limitations of 5–7 educational systems, expansion of 93

education studies 94–5 Edwards, R. 67, 110–11 elaboration 134 Eliot, T. S. 18 engagement 88 entry conditions 144–6, 148 epistemic actors 24–6, 27 epistemic agents 23–8, 31, 67, 110 epistemic communities 27, 37 epistemic regress 13 epistemological dilemma 89, 152 epistemological realism 123–4 epistemological relativism 9 epistemology 3, 24, 67 Esland, Geoff 97 essentialism 27–8, 67–8, 83 essential tension 56–7, 60, 138 established knowledge 55 ethnocentrism 65 ethnomethodology 17, 97, 101, 102 Eurocentrism 8 exclusiveness 65–6 experience 9, 65, 126 extra-linguistic context 88 factionalism 59 fallibilism 136, 141, 152, 154n2 Fay, Brian 64–7, 72–3, 75, 141, 143, 146–7 female education 6 feminism 65–6, 71, 87–8 feminist standpoint theory 19, 20–8, 65, 67, 110, 111 Filmer, Paul 108 Flude, Mike 105 forms of life 111, 119 Foucault, Michel 46 foundationalism 2–3, 66, 68–70, 74–6, 83, 87 fractionation 59 fragmentation 53, 57, 59, 107 Gellner, Ernest 34–6, 41–2, 60, 69, 70, 76–7, 79, 80–4, 87, 112 gender revolution 6 General Certificate of Education (GCE) 91 genetic fallacy 17 globalization 36 Gödel, Kurt 77–8, 83 Goldsmiths College 91, 98, 108 Gorbutt, David 96

Index grammaticality 57, 137 Green, Tony 97–8 habitus 37, 131, 134, 144–9 Halliday, Michael 151 Halsey, H. 97–8 Hamlyn, D. W. 107–8 Harding, Sandra 19, 20 hegemonic 29, 68 hegemonic discourse 46, 69–71, 76, 85–6, 111, 141 Heisenberg, Werner 152 Hempel’s Paradox 83 hermeneutic relativists 34–5 hidden curriculum 157n23 hierarchical knowledge structures 57 Hirst, Paul 25, 111, 112 historicism 18 strong 33, 34–7, 39 weak 19, 20, 33–6, 38–9 Hitler, Adolf 16 Hoggart, Richard 37–8 horizontal discourse 57, 59–60 horizontal knowledge structures 41, 53, 54–5, 57–60, 89, 103, 135, 148 Humanities Curriculum Project (HCP) 115 Hume, David 69 hyper-situatedness 28–32 ideology, NSOE 105–9 imaginary universe 34–5 inclusion 62 inclusive knowledge 9 incommensurability 47–9, 54, 55, 65, 66, 97, 100 indexicality 109, 110 inequalities 3, 5, 8, 9, 19, 39, 64, 103 innovation 42, 44 institutional field 90–2 integrated studies 4 intellectual activity 130–2 intellectual fields 46–7, 55, 90 conditions of entry into 144–6, 148 development in 57–8 framing of 49 segmented 55, 57 structuring of 40, 49–53 intellectual innovation 42, 44 intellectual movements 84 intellectual production 90–1

165

interaction ritual chains 91, 108 International Basil Bernstein Symposium 151 interpretative anthropology 41 interpretative paradigms 101–5, 118 interpretative sociology 24–5 intersubjectivity 115 intrinsic dualism 138–41, 143, 144 irrationalism 129 Jenks, Chris 95, 108, 110 Kant, Immanuel 69 Karabel, J. 97–8 Keddie, Nell 108, 111 Kermode, Frank 41, 44, 45, 48–9, 52–4, 59, 61–2, 74 knowers 19, 22, 24–6, 30–1, 36, 48, 62, 65–7, 73, 75 knowledge aboutness of 30 absolute 1 debates about 2–3, 12, 92 differential status of 8–9 educational 3–4 established 55 externalistic 2 inclusive 9 lay 109–10 learning and 8 local 49–52 making visible 11–14 organization of 4, 64, 103 privileged access to 9–10 reality of 146–50 reclaiming 63 scepticism toward 116 school 105–7, 115 scientific 109–10 social construction of 12–13, 33, 52 socio-historical context of 20, 36–7 sociological approach to 1–3, 11–14, 107, 120–3 sociology of 103–4 sociology of education and 2–7 stratification of 10–11 structure of 151 theory of 8–11, 108 universal 56 women’s 65–6 knowledge culture 34

166

Index

knowledge effects 7–8, 9, 151 knowledge production 38, 39, 98, 103, 122, 142 knowledge structures hierarchical 57 horizontal 41, 53–5, 57–60, 89, 103, 135, 148 vertical 54–5, 57, 63, 135 Kuhn, Thomas 43, 47, 50, 56, 83, 101, 118, 155n10 labelling theory 101 Laing, R. D. 40 language of legitimation 62 language theories 81–2, 112 lay knowledge 109–10 Leach, Edmund 125 learning 8, 92, 115 Leavis, F. R. 37–8 left politics 21 liberal theory 31 linguistic philosophy 82, 101, 155n8 linguistic turn 112 Local Education Authorities (LEAs) 93, 118 local knowledge 49–52 locations 20, 21, 28, 29, 30 logical positivism 76, 77, 83, 86 logicism 87 London Institute of Education 91, 108 London School of Economics 91, 93 London University 91, 108 Luckmann, T. 101 Luntley, Michael 69 Mannheimian problem 2 Marx, Karl 25 Marxism 71, 76, 99, 103–4, 110, 111, 124, 155n7 Marxist standpoint theory 22–3, 25–6 Maton, Karl 8, 11, 14, 62, 151, 156n11 Mauss, Marcel 125 McHugh, P. 110 McNay, Lois 21, 22, 24–5, 31–2, 38, 87–8, 112, 126 meaning, orientation to 133–4 medias res 120, 137 middle-class curriculum 8, 116 Mills, C. Wright 106 mind, coalitions of the 129–36 mixed ability teaching 4 modernism 44 modernization 36

Moore, Rob 14 Muller, Johan 8, 11, 14, 18, 19, 37, 151 multiculturalism 4, 116 Murdoch, Iris 84, 86, 87 narcissistic reflexivity 59, 62 natural sciences 47, 66 nature, science of 2–3 New, banality of the 53–6 ‘New’ movements 40, 42, 44, 79, 95–6 New Right 4 New Sociology of Education (NSOE) 89–119 analysis 109–13 context 92–5 criticism of 97–8 curriculum and ideology 105–9 inception of 96–9 normative and interpretive paradigms 101–5 possibilitarianism 113–14 relevance and 114–17 Nicholson, Linda 29, 30 Niinilluoto, I. 72, 136 normative paradigms 101–5, 112 novelty 53 NSOE see New Sociology of Education (NSOE) objectivism 66–8, 71–4 objectivity 33, 64–6, 122, 126–7 procedural 141–4, 146–7 old/new dichotomy 42–4 ontological realism 122–3, 124 Open University 97 orientation to meaning 133–4 Other 65–6, 74, 85–6, 89, 116 paradigm change 44, 47–8, 97, 100 paradigms 42 approach 42–3, 45, 47, 49–51, 103 interpretative 101–5, 118 new 42, 47, 51–2 normative 101–5, 112 paraphrasing 55 pedagogy 11 performativity 67 perpetual transition 48–9 perspectives 20–1, 28 perspectivism 49–53, 75 Peters, Richard 95, 111 phenomenology 17, 97, 101

Index philosophy of education 95 Popper, K. 30, 72–3, 77–8, 132 Porpora, Douglas 29–30, 33 positivism 2, 66–71, 74–85, 107–8, 110, 111 possibilitarianism 113–14 post-foundationalist 74–6 postmodernism 1, 3, 17, 34–5, 41, 44, 61, 70–6, 82, 86 post-structuralism 17, 31, 38, 53, 112 post theories 40–1, 45–6, 49, 62, 63, 73, 78 Potter, E. 19, 20, 22, 26, 28, 32, 37, 65, 66 power relations 4, 41 Principia Mathematics (Russell and Whitehead) 77, 85 Principle of Tolerance 153 problem/explanation mode 51 problem field 90–2 procedural objectivity 141–4, 146–7 progressivism 4, 116 proletariat 22–3 radical breaks 49, 53, 56, 89–90, 97 radical politics 21 radical reflexivity 13–14 raising of the school leaving age (ROSLA) 91, 114 rationality 67 rational man 31 realism 130, 147, 150 epistemological 123–4 ontological 122–4 social 136–8, 152, 154n3 reality, social construction of 115 reality of knowledge 146–50 recognition theory 31–2, 38 recontextualization 45–6 reductionism 1–2, 39, 41, 50, 121, 147 reference points 45 reflexivity 13–14, 44, 59, 62, 109, 110, 144 reform movements 4–5, 8, 9 reification 126 relational field theory 4 relativism 2, 9, 12–13, 16, 32, 41, 45, 64–6, 72–3, 78, 79, 110, 152 relativist constructionism 3 relevance 114–17 reliablism 136, 152 repetition 62, 89–90 reproduction theories 4 reverse discourse analysis 29 revolution 44 tension between tradition and 56–7

167

revolutionary theory 23–4 Rosenberg, Harold 46–7, 48, 56 ruling class 19 Sarup, Madan 113, 119 Sayer, Andrew 66, 75, 88, 122 schismatic modernism 60 schismatic perspectivism 49–53 schismatism 42, 44, 49, 54–6, 60–2, 120–1 Schooling in Capitalist America (Bowles and Gintis) 4 school knowledge 105–7, 115 Schools Council 4 science of culture 2–3 dominant discourse of 67, 68, 71–2, 76, 110–11 of nature 2–3 science wars 2, 43 scientific communities 65 scientific knowledge 109–10 scientific revolutions 47 scientific texts 53 scientific world view 19, 68 segmentation 53, 55, 57, 59, 62 sensory experience 2 Sharp, Rachel 97–8 social constructivism 26, 32, 33, 46, 115, 121–2 social differentiation 8 social inequality 3, 5, 8, 9, 19, 39, 64, 103 social justice 5, 9 social locations 20, 28, 29, 30 social movements 45 social order 3–4, 8, 126, 129 social realism 136–8, 152, 154n3 social sciences 66 social stratification 10–11 social theory 82 socio-historical context 20, 36–7 sociological knowledge 107 sociological reductionism 50 sociologists 80 sociology constructivist 24 of education 2–7, 17, 38–9, 42–3, 63–4, 92–5, 99–100 interpretive 24–5 of knowledge 103–4 see also New Sociology of Education (NSOE) sociology departments 92–3, 118

168

Index

speaker 54–5 standpoint theory 20–8, 30–3, 37, 49, 54, 65, 67, 110, 111 Stedman-Jones, Susan 25, 124 Stenhouse, Lawrence 115 strong grammar 58, 60 strong historicism 33, 34–7, 39 structure effects 7 structure of attention 132, 133 student radicalism 94, 99, 118 subject-based curriculum 4 subjugated groups 28–9, 32 symbolic capital 149–50 symbolic forms, internal ordering of 11–12, 14, 16 symbolic interactionism 97, 101, 115 Systematic Functional Linguistics school 151 teachers 93 textism 53, 82, 87 see also postmodernism theory of knowledge 108 thinkers of recognition 31 Tractatus (Wittgenstein) 69, 70, 76, 85 tradition 61 rejection of 44 tension between revolution and 56–7 transitionalism 49 truth 12–13, 63, 82, 88, 122, 152 scientific version of 1 sociology of 16 Truth and Truthfulness (Williams) 15–16 truthfulness 14–16, 21, 31, 106, 152 truth making 31

uncertainty principle 152–3 understanding, shared 32 Understanding Everyday Life (Douglas) 101–3 universalism 50, 57, 104 universal knower 22–3, 26 universal knowledge 56 Usher, R. 67, 110–11 vanguardism 104 vertical knowledge structures 54–5, 57, 63, 135 Vienna Circle 77–8, 81, 83, 85 vocational education 4 vocationalism 116 Walcott, Derek 56 Walsh, David 108, 109, 113–14 weak grammar 58, 60, 63, 89, 103, 148 weak historicism 19, 20, 33–6, 38–9 Westernization 36 Whitty, Geoff 108–9, 114 Wieder, D. 102 Williams, Bernard 1, 15–16, 21, 106, 138, 152 Wilson, T. P. 101–2 Winch, P., 79 112 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 69, 70, 76, 78–80, 82, 85, 101, 112 women’s knowledge 65–6 working class children 8 Young, Michael 10, 14, 39, 98–100, 103, 108–9, 113–15, 121 Zimmerman, D. 102