Terrence Leahy - Humanist Realism for Sociologists

Flyvbjerg is right that the social sciences always come in for a battering from the right wing in the culture wars and his book is intended to rescue us. People like me who teach in universities must be aware that the pure discipline of sociology is hardly the flavour of the month with students, who think it cannot help them get a job. The radical students who used to populate Sociology departments are more likely to do Communications or Environmental Sciences or Development Studies. The Communications students are hoping to get exciting and creative jobs in the last days of affluence and the other radical students are hoping to do something about the disasters that plague us with something a lot more practical than sociology.

This may be a career problem for sociology academics but whether it is really a problem for social science is hard to say. After all, geographers and cultural studies academics, as well as anthropologists, all use the theoretical resources that sociologists use Foucault, the neo-Marxists, feminism and so on. Qualitative social research and surveys are used in social work, nursing and even architecture and town planning. It is almost embarrassing the way some of these people look to us as the parent discipline. You can feel like the emperor has no clothes.

Sometimes sociologists express their current disquiet like this sociology is facing a crisis; we need a new paradigm. Obviously there are a few contenders for this status, yet there is no general agreement. On the other hand, social research goes on and journals and books go ahead with fascinating research on every aspect of society. Is there really a problem?