ON BREAKING THE 11TH COMMANDMENT AND COMMITTING SOCIOLOGY

  

 

 

In 2014, Canadian First Nations teenager, Tina Fontaine was found murdered after being reported missing.  Once again, calls went out for a national inquiry into missing and murdered First Nations women.  Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper responded by claiming that this was not a “sociological phenomenon” but a “crime.”  Crime is an eminently social phenomenon, but this tragedy only caused Harper to recall his 2013 claim that “this is not a time to commit sociology.”  Statistics Canada has long documented the facts that First Nations people face more poverty, unemployment, and violence than other Canadians. Various studies have shown that indigenous women are three times more likely to be the victims of crimes and eight times more likely to be murdered than non-indigenous women.  For Harper, these statistics veil the simple fact that the issue is “crime.”  Harper’s views and words echo those of President Reagan’s vice present Spiro Agnew, who railed against “nattering nabobs of negativism,” and British prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s teaching that “There is no such thing as society.  There are individual men and women, and there are families.” The conservative political commentator George Will also urged that we follow the 11th commandment: Thou shalt not commit sociology.”  But Will has a PhD in political science from Princeton, and he seasons his learned and witty punditry with statistics gathered by many people committing sociology.  The problem from Harper’s perspective is that bad people commit crimes, evil people commit terrorist acts, and poor people are lazy and feel entitled to government handouts.  What is to be done? Catch the bad people and lock them up; track down the terrorists and kill them; and force the poor into the labor market.  Don’t commit sociology and ask “why” questions or try to get to the root of the problems.  The term “radical” is not a happy one for conservatives or liberals, Republicans or Democrats. But if we follow Tom Hayden’s conception of “the radical style” we can see that it comes close to if it doesn’t actually conflate with what we mean by science.  Writing in the middle of the ‘60s revolutions, Hayden defined being radical as a matter of penetrating social problems to their roots, their real causes.  Radicalism as a style means being constantly driven by the question, “Why?”  It is not dogmatic; it understands conclusions as provisional, always ready to be discarded in the face of new evidence or changed circumstances.  This is what we mean by science, whether physics, chemistry, biology, or sociology.  

 

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