Professionalism

Sociological research places considerable personal demands on sociologists. One set of accounts of doing research provides a catalogue of hazards from conflicts in research teams, stress of interviewing, being caught up in ethnic street-fighting, working under surveillance by prison officers, and being harassed and threatened with libel action. The sociological theory of ideology also ensures that their social position in professional, private or public life can never be discounted and sometimes they do not even feel it ethical to distance themselves. Negotiating this moral minefield is particularly arduous when research focuses on victims and the oppressed. This is an account by Lorraine Radford who researches violence against women:

The feminist critique of objectivity and distance in social science research had a profound influence upon my approach to research on violence against women. It is not possible, and probably not ethical, to have ‘distance’ as the top priority when researching a sensitive issue such as the experience and impact of abuse.

Distance seemed to imply that it was possible to switch one-self off emotionally from survivors’ accounts of their experiences, maintaining an ‘us’ and ‘them’ division between the ‘Researcher’ and the ‘Objects’ of study… I quickly learned however that there are limits to my capacity to ‘share the particular pain’ of abuse. As a counsellor or therapist, or as someone who can give long term emotional support, I am not up to the job. Distance has been relevant to the ways that I have coped with the personal consequences of doing this type of research and other people’s positioning of and responses to my work. Paranoia, fear, anger, aggression, depression, being haunted by memories or accounts of abuse or stalked and harassed by men (and once by a woman) are some of the most obvious personal costs associated with violence research.

Quite apart then from the theory, knowledge and intellectual skills of the discipline which sociologists acquire through university degrees, they need to be both thoroughly versed in the ethics of their work and possess the degree of moral courage which their chosen field of research demands. They have professional associations which draw up codes of ethics for research, provide moral support, a forum for discussion of research and good practice through conferences and journals. They also are useful adjuncts to the job market.

By far the most powerful and influential is the American Sociological Association. In spite of the early importance of Herbert Spencer the British Sociological Association was not founded until 1951. The International Sociological Association was helped into existence after the Second World War by the United Nations. It organises the World Congress of Sociology every four years, the fourteenth having taken place in Montreal in July 1998. The European Sociological Association was set up in 1993 and has a conference every two years.

Compared with many similar professions, these associations do not set the same kinds of tests for membership as say those for psychologists, nor validate qualifications as happens in medicine. Criteria for entry are more like those for a club than for a profession. Interest, contribution and achievement are more important than formal qualifications. There are a number of reasons for this, the main ones being that sociology does not have patients, the care of young and vulnerable people, and does not promise cures. In other words the risk to the public is less, which requires fewer guarantees as a result.

In this respect sociologists who work independently are more like consultants and when they take employment as sociologists they are regularly designated research officers, strategic planners, policy analysts, community development officers, project planners, etc. The result is that it is very difficult to say how many people are employed as sociologists. Indeed the explosion in media-related research, in service occupations of all kinds, in think tanks and the growing sophistication of the relationships between business and consumers, government and publics, coupled with the growth of autonomous non-governmental agencies where sociologists may often take the initiative, means that there is a constant flow of sociologists into work which draws on their expertise.

Thus, while sociologists may compare themselves unfavourably with economists and psychologists in the extent to which they have a recognised professional identity which takes them into a job, they are less likely to be handicapped by being treated as narrow specialists, employable in a restricted range of posts.

But politicians have equally found that sociologists can be useful sounding boards and policy advisers. Raymond Aron was a close confidant of President de Gaulle of France. Mikhail Gorbachev, the Russian leader who led the way in dismantling the Soviet system, was advised by a woman specialist in industrial sociology, Tatiana Zavlaskaya.

The Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping had a friend and adviser who persuaded him and the Communist Party to introduce the new system of agricultural production known as the ‘responsibility system’ in the 1980s. Fei Xiaotung had studied anthropology and sociology in the London School of Economics in the 1930s, and the new system was based on his studies over decades of peasant life. Since it broke with the previous ‘one communal pot’ ideology of Chinese communism it arguably has had the greatest effect on the greatest number of people of any policy inspired by a sociologist.

In the United States today the communitarian movement which has influenced politicians of both main parties is inspired by the sociologist, Amitai Etzioni. In Britain the call from Tony Blair to modernise beyond left and right picks up the message from Anthony Giddens, sociologist and Director of the London School of Economics.

Professional sociology can operate in the service of any section of society, for good or bad. However, when working with other professional groups sociologists are bound to be identified with and give expression to those who would not otherwise be heard, be they silent majorities, outcasts or what are now called the socially excluded.

In the late nineteenth century Sumner wrote an essay, ‘The Forgotten Man’, to draw attention to the hardworking unpraised breadwinner who asked for nothing of the state except to be left alone and in consequence was not heard.

A century later the British sociologist Ann Oakley wrote her book Subject Women to make them more than the ‘mere shadow discernible in conventional histories and sociologies’. The question she asks, ‘Are women people?’, could be seen as the rejoinder to Sumner (though he did say ‘The Forgotten Man is not seldom a woman’). Oakley and Sumner are each for their time equally driven by the sociological demon.

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