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Social Theory as a Field of Study | |
his document is an attempt to set down, as a starting point for discussion, some basic
features of the situation of a graduate level instruction in social and political theory, some organizational peculiarities of existing
programs, and some potential areas of common interests between the programs and more generally of the community, such as it is, of persons
with scholarly and intellectual interests in this area. One feature of the situation that is basic, and will run through the discussion,
is the rough division between two approaches or styles of social theory, which for convenience can be called "traditional" and "cultural
studies." (The term "social and political thought" will be used here for the overarching area that includes the topics that are more or
less shared, at least peripherally, by both). The rise of cultural studies has transformed social theory and attracted new interest to
social theory topics, as well as served to establish new major and canonical figures, such as Foucault and Nietzsche, and provided common
non-disciplinary ground on which writers of "traditional" social theory, itself divided within several distinct and longer disciplinary
traditions, are able to meet and share common interests and concerns.
The obvious feature of "traditional" social and political theory instruction at the graduate level is that instructions for the most part occurs within departments in which the topics are either marginal to the main activity of the department or (and usually and) taught in a way that is self consciously oriented to a particular discipline and disciplinary theory tradition. This pattern is most evident in political science, sociology, and philosophy, where the distinctive disciplinary traditions of political theory, sociological theory, and social and political philosophy make the teaching of these topics into quite different experiences with quite different sets of texts included in the canonical expectations of instruction. Someone trained in political theory in the US, for example, would be expected to know something about the federalist papers, Leo Strauss, and constitutionalism, all of which would be quite alien to classes in sociological theory, and unusual in departments of philosophy.
Nevertheless, there are a large number of thinkers who are taught in various "traditional" departments though doubtless in somewhat different ways, notably the two generations of the Frankfurt School, and there are other figures, such as Carl Schmitt, who have emerged as basic texts for advanced students in many fields. Similarly, students in each of these disciplines are routinely expected to be able to say something intelligent about Hegel, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein, such contemporary figures as Habermas and Foucault, and perhaps even about Derrida, Rawls and Searle. For "traditional" social theory, Weber is another thinker whose reach is transdisciplinary, and passing familiarity with Durkheim is probably an expectation across a variety of disciplines, albeit a different set of disciplines, as well.
The field of "cultural studies," has had an impact on that is not limited to English departments, composition programs, women's studies, or comparative literature departments, but plays a very large role in the discipline of sociology and to an increasing extent political science and philosophy, particularly by way of forms of feminism within each of these fields. On the one hand it has introduced new canonical figures; on the other it has reinvigorated and transformed the ways in which "traditional" thinkers have been understood, by focusing discussion on such topics as modernity, reflexivity, and forms of victimization and oppression. In addition, of course, the cultural studies side of social theory has its own domain of material to study, namely cultural artifacts understood as texts, a secondary concern at best for "traditional" social theory.
The rise of cultural studies has greatly expanded the number of students with the interest in these figures and in instruction in these thinkers. The figures are important for intellectual historians, management departments, and departments of communication, especially in the U.S., and provide important background to women studies and various ethnic studies departments, Geography departments, German and French departments, and so forth, for example, as well as in schools of education, the arts, and even in schools of law.
A student seeking to become knowledgeable about social theory might learn about thinkers in this general area by taking courses in all of these departments. Yet there is nothing approximating a standard form for the maximal use of the intellectual resources (not to mention the instructional resources) devoted to this material, and there are only a few degree programs that attempt to specialize in producing students with credentials in social theory.
Yet there are good educational grounds for developing such programs. The potential advantages of a combined committee or program utilizing and bringing together faculty from different fields with interests in social and political theory are great. Not only would students with an exposure to a variety of perspectives benefit enormously but the existence of a common endeavor is a source of esprit de corps, solidarity, and intellectual pleasure for participants in the program.
Why hasn't disciplinarization or the creation of specialized degrees happened? The situation is in many ways a paradoxical one. The main constraint is the existence of disciplinary markets. Clearly, it is highly advantageous for students pursuing an academic career to have a disciplinary credential in a traditional filed, such as English or Political Science, simply because academic jobs for the most part are disciplinary, and it is difficult to place students without disciplinary degrees. Interestingly, the grandfather of all Social Thought programs, the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, despite the stellar reputation of its faculty, had difficulty placing its students precisely because there were no "social thought" programs for them to go into, and students were placed for the most part through the intervention of and because of the eminence of members of the committee, and in the most successful cases, such as Stanley Rosen and R. W. B. Lewis and Alan Bloom, into disciplinary positions in conventional disciplines. Not only was this strategy not terribly successful for the program, since many of its products were unable to be placed in this way, it does not represent a pattern that other programs with a less stellar faculty could or would wish to emulate.
Nevertheless, the disadvantages for students in pursuing degrees within traditional disciplines are very significant. To choose an extreme example, a student attempting to get a degree in sociology in a major department in the US would be expected to take a years worth of statistics courses as well as other courses in fields of sociology in addition to whatever training in social theory the student might attempt to acquire. Programs in Social Thought that have attempted to combine disciplinary Ph.D.'s with theory training at an advanced level after disciplinary requirements have been met, such as Penn State, have successfully produced students, and the existence of a formal Social Thought Program has made them more marketable than they would otherwise have been. But the demands of disciplinary program in themselves may be very considerable, and discouraging to prospective students with primary interests in social theory.
The effects of disciplinary market are themselves complex. Obviously most of the potential students have and interest in an academic career and must weigh the career implications of a path of study which restricts their access to jobs. On the other hand, there clearly is a pattern of students from targeted interdisciplinary or supradisciplinary programs getting jobs in either interdisciplinary departments with somewhat different titles and traditions, such as, in the United Studies, American Studies, as well as cases of students with interdisciplinary degrees getting positions in traditional departments teaching theory, for example the recent employment of Doug Aoki, a product of the University of British Columbia Department of Interdisciplinary Studies program and a Lacan scholar, to a position teaching sociological theory at the University of Alberta. If there was in fact a pattern of successful employments of this sort, it might be sufficient to sustain programs in social and political thought at the Ph.D. level.
A model for the development of social and political thought as an academic area might be science studies, although this is a model with some cautionary implications. Science studies programs developed out of the increasingly close relationships between history of science, philosophy of science, which together had in the sixties especially combined into history and philosophy of science departments, and subsequently the sociology of science, which, combined with history and philosophy of science has produced science studies programs, for the most part dominated by persons whose interests are in the sociology of science, though not sociology of science as traditionally practiced within American sociology departments. Growth in these programs has essentially stopped, and the likelihood that science studies can sustain itself as a discipline in the sense of creating a closed market which recruits first from individuals with degrees in science studies is an unlikely outcome. The present members of these departments are primarily persons trained in other fields, and growth in appointments from one program to the other has not been one science studies to another has not occurred, partly because of a slowdown in growth in the field itself and partly because the existence of conflicts and style between the existing science studies programs. Whether this will change on its own is an open question, and in fact very few science studies Ph.D.s have actually been granted.
Nevertheless there is an interesting pattern in the appointment of these Ph.D.s. Some have successfully been appointed to science studies-type positions in such programs as schools of engineering, but several others have been appointed in departments of philosophy and sociology. This suggests that students whose primary advisors were well-regarded in one of these areas and whose interests were congruent with disciplinary science studies interests can hope to be appointed in a traditional disciplinary departments, when there is competition between persons with traditional degrees and persons with interdisciplinary degrees. That this seems to be the case even in the present job market is extremely interesting. On the other hand, it is doubtful that this market could support a significant increase in science studies placements, and in fact many very good science studies students have experienced serious difficulties in placement, though it is not clear that their difficulties are markedly more severe than persons with traditionally disciplinary degrees and an interest in science.
This is extremely suggestive with respect to the area of social and political thought. It may be that a similar pattern involving an even larger range of disciplinary programs and also interdisciplinary programs might be open to Ph.D.s in social and political thought if their interests were compatible with these programs. To the extent that there is growth in interdisciplinary programs and opportunities especially at the undergraduate level such programs might serve to provide opportunities for a high proportion of social and political thought PhDs if they existed in any number.
Another straw in the wind is the suggestion that disciplinary boundaries generally are breaking down in the present job market as a consequence of diminished disciplinary based research funding and the general collapse of strong core identities in disciplinary departments. Something similar has taken place in the biological sciences and disciplinary labels of the traditional sort mean very little when primary funding and affiliations are in institutes for biomolecular science and degrees are in such areas as molecular biology. In this setting, departmental identities mean little and recruiting is done on the basis of research specialties and the needs of institutes of biomolecular science for collaborators with particular research skills. Departments become sets of research specialties rather than disciplinary. To the extent that this pattern emerges in the humanities and social sciences, there will be greater opportunities for programs such as social and political thought and their graduates.
Clearly there are some students with an interest in social and political thought, as such, who are for one reason or another students in particular departmental programs and would prefer to study social and political thought rather than these disciplinary subjects. Opinions obviously vary on such matters as a quality of students, one suggestion being that students in cultural studies presently are the best students and students of traditional social and political thought topics are presently the worst. So one question might be whether these students would be better served by a program with a different focus and label.