Table Of Content

THE FUTURE OF SOCIOLOGY This book explores the shift in sociology away from the shared aspiration of the classical tradition, of transcending partiality through the construction of a “science of society,” in the face of challenges to the notion of objectivity. W ith the increasing subjugation of sociology to political ideologies and a growing emphasis on “policy,” which casts sociology in the role of a provider of intellectual content for political programs, this volume asks whether the situation is the result of an exhaustion of ideas or might perhaps be rooted in the failure in the very program of establishing sociology as a science. Taking seriously the challenges to the classical aspiration of constructing theories that both explain and are grounded in empirical reality, T he Future of Sociology asks whether the core idea of transcending ideology is still worth pursuing, and whether there remains scope for making sociology scientific. A s such, it will appeal to scholars and students of sociology, social theory, and social scientific methodology. R obert Leroux is Professor of Sociology at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is the author of H istory and Sociology in France: From Scientific History to the Durkheimian School, French Liberalism in the 19th Century, and Political Economy and Liberalism in France . He is the editor of The Anthem Companion to Gabriel Tarde and the co-editor of The Anthem Companion to Maurice Halbwachs . Thierry Martin is Professor Emeritus at the University of Franche-Comté and a researcher at the Logiques de l´agir laboratory and at the Institut d’histoire et de philosophie des scienceset des techniques, France. Stephen Turner is Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Florida, USA. His recent books include Cognitive Science and the Social: A Primer , The Politics of Expertise , Understanding the Tacit , and American Sociology: From Pre-Disciplinary to Post-Normal . Classical and Contemporary Social Theory Series Editor: Stjepan G. Mestrovic Texas A&M University, USA Classical and Contemporary Social Theory publishes rigorous scholarly work that re-discovers the relevance of social theory for contemporary times, demon- strating the enduring importance of theory for modern social issues. The series covers social theory in a broad sense, inviting contributions on both ‘classical’ and modern theory, thus encompassing sociology, without being confined to a single discipline. As such, work from across the social sciences is welcome, provided that volumes address the social context of particular issues, subjects, or figures and offer new understandings of social reality and the contribution of a theorist or school to our understanding of it. The series considers significant new appraisals of established thinkers or schools, comparative works or contributions that discuss a particular social issue or phe- nomenon in relation to the work of specific theorists or theoretical approaches. Contributions are welcome that assess broad strands of thought within certain schools or across the work of a number of thinkers, but always with an eye toward contributing to contemporary understandings of social issues and contexts. Titles in this series The Future of Sociology Ideology or Objective Social Science? Edited by Robert Leroux, Thierry Martin and Stephen Turner Masculinity from the Inside Gender Theory’s Missing Piece Bruce Fleming For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ sociology/series/ASHSER1383 THE FUTURE OF SOCIOLOGY Ideology or Objective Social Science? Edited by Robert Leroux, Thierry Martin and Stephen Turner First published 2023 b y Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN a nd by Routledge 6 05 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 R outledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Robert Leroux, Thierry Martin and Stephen Turner; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Robert Leroux, Thierry Martin and Stephen Turner to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, and © La Découverte, Paris, 2020 for chapter 3 has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. T rademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. B ritish Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library L ibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data N ames: Leroux, Robert, 1964– editor. | Martin, Thierry, 1950– editor. | Turner, Stephen P., 1951– editor. T itle: The future of sociology : ideology or objective social science? / edited by Robert Leroux, Thierry Martin and Stephen Turner. D escription: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2022. | Series: Classical and contemporary social theory | Includes bibliographical references and index. I dentifiers: LCCN 2022009152 (print) | LCCN 2022009153 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032045047 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032045054 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003193517 (ebook) S ubjects: LCSH: Sociology—Study and teaching. C lassification: LCC HM571 .F88 2022 (print) | LCC HM571 (ebook) | DDC 301.072—dc23/eng/20220223 L C record available at h ttps://lccn.loc.gov/2022009152 L C ebook record available at h ttps://lccn.loc.gov/2022009153 ISBN: 978-1-032-04504-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-04505-4 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-19351-7 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003193517 Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC CONTENTS List of Contributors vii I ntroduction 1 R obert Leroux, Thierry Martin, and Stephen Turner PART I What Is Sociology? 19 1 Sociology: Before the Origin 21 Dominique Raynaud 2 Sociology in Search of Grounded Knowledge 38 S imon Langlois 3 Sociology Today and the Classical Legacy 58 G erard Delanty PART II Unity and Disunity 67 4 Human Sciences and Natural Sciences: Which Unity? 69 Thierry Martin 5 The Lessons of Rational Choice 77 J ames B. Rule vi Contents 6 Middle-Range Theories and the Unification Problem in Social Science 91 Alban Bouvier 7 Running From Madness?: Sociology’s Dread of the Irrational 116 Alan Sica PART III Objectivity or Ideology? 133 8 Sociology as a Profession in a Post-Truth World 135 Martyn Hammersley 9 From Luhmann to Esser: On Changing Intellectual Dominance in German Mainstream Sociology 155 Philipp Korom 10 Rationalization, Science, and Politics: A Sociological Fable 175 James J. Chriss 11 The Two Parts of Sociological Objectivity 195 Stephen Turner Index 215 CONTRIBUTORS Alban Bouvier is both a philosopher and a sociologist. He is “Agrégé de philosophie” (a national competition) (1980), PhD Sorbonne (1991), and was an Associ- ate Professor of sociology and philosophy of the Social Sciences at the Sorbonne (1992), and then Director of the Sorbonne Center for Sociological Research. Since 2003, he has been a full professor at Aix-Marseille University and a member of the Institut Jean Nicod (Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris—EHESS, PSL University). He taught at the London School of Economics, the University of California at Santa Cruz; Tianjin Nankai University, Rome, Lausanne, etc. He is Member of the Editorial Board of P hilosophy of the Social Sciences. He has published several books at the Presses Universitaires de France (on cognition and argumentation) and papers in P hilosophy of the Social Sciences, Episteme. A Journal of Social Epistemology, European Journal of Sociological Theory, Ethics and Economics, L ’année sociologique, Revue française de sociologie, Revue Internationale de Philosophie, R evue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger. James J. Chriss is Professor in the Department of Criminology, Anthropology, and Sociology at Cleveland State University. He received his PhD in Sociology from University of Pennsylvania in 1994. His main areas of interest are social control, policing, law and society, and theory. His latest book is S ocial Control: An Introduction, 3rd ed. (2022). Gerard Delanty is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Sussex, Brighton, UK. His most recent publication is Critical Theory and Social Transforma- tion (Routledge 2020). His other publications include T he Cosmopolitan Imagina- tion (2009), Formations of European Modernity , 2nd edition (2019), C ommunity 3rd edition (Routledge 2018), and The European Heritage: A Critical Re-Interpretation (Routledge 2018). viii Contributors Martyn Hammersley is Emeritus Professor of Educational and Social Research at The Open University, UK. He has carried out research in the sociology of education and the sociology of the media, but much of his work has been con- cerned with the methodological issues surrounding social enquiry. His books include (with Paul Atkinson) Ethnography: Principles in Practice (Fourth edition, Routledge 2019), T he Politics of Social Research (1995), T aking Sides in Social Research (Routledge 2000), Q uestioning Qualitative Inquiry (2008), Methodology Who Needs It? (2011), The Myth of Research-Based Policy and Practice (2013), T he Radicalism of Ethnomethodology (2018), The Concept of Culture (2019), and Troubling Sociological Concepts (2020). Philipp Korom is currently Principal Investigator of a research project funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). Previously, he worked as Senior Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies at Cologne. His research focuses on elites, intellectuals, and wealth inequality. He is about to finish a book entitled S tar Sociologists. Anatomy of a Disciplinary Elite (Palgrave Macmillan). Simon Langlois is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology at Laval University (Quebec), Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada , and Member of La Société des Dix . He is the author of Refondations nationales au Canada et au Québec . Robert Leroux is a sociology professor born in 1964 at St-Jérôme (Québec). He holds a postdoctoral degree from the C.N.R.S. (Centre national de la recherche sci- entifique, France), a doctoral degree in Sociology from the Université Laval (Can- ada), a master’s degree in Sociology from the Université de Montréal (Canada), and a bachelor’s degree in History from the Université de Montréal (Canada). Leroux is interested in epistemology, the history of social sciences and liberal thought. The French version of his book Political Economy and Liberalism: The Economic Contribu- tion of Frédéric Bastiat was rewarded with the “Prix Charles Dupin” by the Acadé- mie des Sciences Morales et Politiques of Paris, Economics Section, in 2008. The English translation was published in 2011 at Routledge. He also published the first book in French entirely devoted to the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises in 2009. In most of his works, he wants to show that social sciences can achieve a level of scientific rigor that compares to natural sciences. Thierry Martin is Professor Emeritus at the University of Franche-Comté and Researcher at the Logiques de l´agir laboratory and at the I nstitut d’histoire et de philosophie des sciences et des techniques . His research focuses on the epistemologi- cal problems generated by the application of probability theory and statistics to social phenomena, from both a philosophical and historical perspectives. He has published several studies on scientists and philosophers, such as Buffon, Cramer, Lambert, Cournot, Tarde, Borel, Vauban, and Nicolas-François Canard. He is a vice-president of the Cournot Center (Paris), a member of the Scientific Board of The National Network of Houses for the Social Sciences and Humanities, an elected Contributors ix member of the I nternational Institute of Philosophy , an elected member of the French National Committee of History and of Philosophy of Sciences and Techniques (Academy of Sciences, Paris), and a founding member of the Société de philosphie des sciences . Dominique Raynaud is a sociologist and historian of science at Université Grenoble Alpes (France). Although most of his research focuses on geometric sciences (geometry, optics, perspective) and technology, he also publishes studies in comparative epistemology. His publications include the following: Sociology and its Scientific Vocation (2006), Optics and the Rise of Perspective. A Study in Net- work Knowledge Diffusion (2014), Scientific Controversies. A Socio-Historical Perspective on the Advancement of Science (2015), Qu’est-ce que la technologie? (2016), and Soci- ologie fondamentale. Étude d’épistémologie (2021). He is the founder and director of the book series “Épistémologie comparée” at Éditions Matériologiques (Paris). James B. Rule is a sociologist and writer based in Berkeley, California. He is Distin- guished Affiliated Scholar at the Center for the Study of Law and Society, part of the UC Berkeley School of Law. He did his A.B. degree in psychology at Brandeis and his PhD in sociology at Harvard. He has held research and teaching appointments at MIT; Nuffield College, Oxford; the University of Bordeaux; Clare Hall, Cam- bridge; and Stony Brook University, where he was Professor of Sociology. He has also held fellowships from the Guggenheim, MacArthur, and Rockefeller Founda- tions, and one-year appointments at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford; the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton; and the Russell Sage Foundation in New York City. He is an author, a co-author, or an editor of nine books and monographs. The latest books are Privacy in Peril; How We Are Sacrificing a Fundamental Right in Exchange for Security and Convenience (2007) and G lobal Privacy Protection; the First Generation, co-edited with Graham Greenleaf (2008). Other scholarly writings address a variety of subjects including the role of social inquiry in social betterment; the causes of civil violence and militancy; and cumulation and progress in social science. His latest book is T aking Privacy Seriously: How to Create the Rights We Need, While We Still Have Something to Protect? (forthcoming). Alan Sica is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Social Thought Program at Pennsylvania State University. He was Editor-in-Chief of the journals H istory of Sociology (1983–1987), S ociological Theory (1989–1994), and C ontemporary Sociol- ogy (2008–2014), and has published books on theoretical topics for nearly 40 years. Stephen Turner is currently Distinguished University Professor at the Depart- ment of Philosophy, University of South Florida, where he is also Director of the Center for Social and Political Thought. He holds a PhD in Sociology and an MA in Philosophy from the University of Missouri. His areas of specializa- tion include the history and philosophy of social science, social and political theory, and science studies. His books include The Social Theory of Practices (1994), The Impossible Science: An Institutional History of American Sociology (with Jonathan