Civics as applied sociology.

• Date: 22 December 2003
• Author: Weinstein, Jay
• Published date: 22 December 2003
• Author: Weinstein, Jay

THIS ARTICLE EXPLORES THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN APPLIED SOCIOLOGY AND democracy. (1) Those who identify, at least in part, as practitioners are well aware that sociologists do many things in addition to teaching students to become sociologists who will in turn teach students to become sociologists. During the past several years, I have worked in a private consulting practice, taught non-sociology majors to be more sociological in their careers as engineers, school teachers, city planners, and the like, and have been active in the Society for Applied Sociology. Through this experience, I have learned that nonacademic sociologists actually pursue a wide, indeed an almost disorientingly diverse, range of activities. Nevertheless, underlying much of this diversity is a kind of commitment that distinguishes the practicing sociologist from his or her counterpart who may be involved in similar clinical, evaluation, or consulting work, but whose educational background is in marketing, health care, statistics, or other technical fields. This is the commitment to promote inclusiveness and to combat racism, sexism, and other forms of inequality in the contexts in which they work.

In a related manner, as I continue to deepen my understanding of the history of our field, it becomes increasingly clear that from the very beginning sociology was conceived as a technology as much as a science (Weinstein, 1981). The development of sociology and the related social sciences from the cradle of classic moral philosophy and political economy was clearly driven by an attempt to apply scientific knowledge to improve human relations. Indeed, the idea that sociological insight and method ought to guide social behavior in matters of democratic governance and in civil society generally is hardly novel. Comte and the other founders clearly had this purpose in view, as we will discuss presently.

The sociologist/planner Sir Patrick Geddes made this case as succinctly as anyone has ever done in a speech delivered in 1904 to the Sociological Society in London. In it, Geddes argued that when put into practice the findings of sociology provide the most rational and most democratic foundation for the conduct of human affairs. As stated in the title of his speech, which I have appropriated for this essay, we should therefore consider "Civics as Applied Sociology.'' (2) Moreover, it is no coincidence that the intellectual movements that propelled sociology from its philosophical roots to its status as a serious, albeit unusual, academic discipline in its own right occurred during the great age of democratic revolution in Europe and North America.

To avoid misunderstanding, let me quickly add that although the current and historical ties to be discussed here are not accidental, I am not attempting to argue that sociology is inherently pro-democratic. In many times and places, including our own, competent--even outstanding--sociologists have both pursued their craft and have supported totalitarian causes of the Right and the Left. In fact, the scientific side of sociology would be less than authentic if the methods and theories of the field could not fall into the "wrong hands" and function nevertheless. If there can be "evil" physicists and "evil" biologists, then there certainly can be "evil" sociologists; and, in a perverse way, we should be proud of this.

At the same time, however, there is a definite "pull" or orientation to sociological thinking and technique that can incline one toward pro-democratic partisanship. This is especially evident when we take this thinking and technique into the real world where, as Howard Becker (1967) so eloquently observed nearly four decades ago, we are simply forced to decide, "whose side are we on?" It is my goal in the following pages to explore the nature of this "pull."

Defining Our Terms

A few years ago, I published an article in the Journal for Applied Sociology (Weinstein, 1996) that argues in favor of a close connection between sociology and democracy. After reading an early version of the article, Peter Rossi e-mailed me a note with the comment, "I basically agree with you, but the devil is in the details." That observation has served as an important reminder as I have continued to explore the sociology/democracy interface over the subsequent few years. It is increasingly obvious that the claim (which is restated in this paper) that applied sociology does have a pro-democratic orientation--even a "mission"--is prone to all manner of foibles. These range from empty abstraction to meaningless minutiae. And it is apparent that the claim is capable of offending just about everyone across a wide ideological spectrum.

The word democracy has so many different denotations, not to mention emotional connotations, that it has become one of the most highly contested, most embattled terms in sociology. (3) Of course, part of the problem is that it does not belong to sociology, or at least not to sociology alone. As is true of numerous other terms used in the social sciences, democracy has a life of its own in ordinary languages throughout the world and, in this case, a life that extends back millennia. (4) Like Humpty-Dumpty in Alice Through the Looking Glass, people--including social scientists--thus appear to use the word in whatever way they choose.

In his discussion of this phenomenon, the widely cited student of democracy, Giovanni Sartori (1987), makes an especially relevant and interesting point. One source of the plurality of meanings of democracy today, he points out, is that no political leader, ruler, or ideologue now cares to be identified as antidemocratic. No longer do Draconian autocrats proudly proclaim their distaste for "mob rule." Rather, all appear to embrace democracy, including the closed Communist dictatorship of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, tribalist one-party states like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and blatant plutocracies such as the Republic of Singapore and the State of Texas. This, Sartori argues, may make the scientific study and application of democracy more challenging than ever, but it also attests to the virtually universal appeal of the notion of rule by the people (demos).

In a similar vein, at the Conference on Global Democracy held in Warsaw at the end of June 2000,

France stunned the other 107 participants by refusing to join them in endorsing a declaration setting universal standards by which mature and developing countries alike can measure their progress. ... The dispute was largely philosophical and centered on French criticisms that the conference was a prod to get non-democratic nations to adopt democracy--a policy French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine on Monday said usually backfires. He cited ineffective sanctions against Yugoslavia and Iraq. "The bottom line is that in Western countries the thinking is that democracy is like a religion and that all you have to do is convert people," Verdine told reporters in Warsaw Monday (Barry, 2000: 1). Commenting on this decision, the National Public Radio All Things Considered analysts characterized France's move as "a rejection of the diplomatic equivalent of apple pie and motherhood." And so it seems.

These kinds of issues underscore the need for discussions such as the present one to be as clear as possible about what is meant by democracy. In fact, if one is able to formulate an effective definition that is acceptable to a substantial number of sociologists, then the battle is at least half won. For in that case, the claim that applied sociology does have a pro-democratic orientation is capable of generating clear assent or dissent on a common ground, and in a manner in which disagreements can actually be resolved. Lacking definitional consensus, however, consideration of the validity of the claim and of the appropriateness of the illustrations brought to bear can never achieve closure.

With this in view, I preface this essay with the audacious undertaking of specifying exactly what I mean by "democracy." The operational definition employed here is drawn from several sources, especially Mannheim (1950), Lipset (1983), and--as noted above--Sartori (1987). I also refer the reader to an apparently simple-minded but deceptively pertinent statement recently posted on the Internet under the title, "True Democracy" (www.smart.net/~kaz/democracy.html).

Democracy is, first and foremost, an attribute of human aggregates. It is one way, among several possible ways, whereby the aggregate expresses its will and manages its affairs. It is distinct from other methods of collective expression and management in that each member who is minimally capable of such action (excluding, therefore, infants and those who are seriously mentally impaired) (5) has the same degree of access to and influence upon the process whereby pertinent decisions are made. In contrast, other methods such as autocracy, oligarchy, aristocracy, and plutocracy are based upon the principle that some members of the aggregate do and should have greater access to the decision-making process than others.

To understand this contrast better, consider the following thought experiment. In each of two aggregates, A and B, a project is to be undertaken (say, building a new road) that will affect every member. In A, the more democratic of the two, members have equivalent--if not absolutely equal--degrees of access to the authorities (e.g., the engineers) in attempting to alter the plans and to set the procedures in motion to consider such alterations. In B, the less-democratic aggregate, some members--the rich, the titled, or the otherwise favored--can have the plans altered without regard to what the non-elite may wish. In fact, in the case of B, it is unlikely that ordinary people will get a hearing at all, whereas members of the elite will get pretty much what they want. If the poorest person in town phones the mayor and asks for the road...