Theory in Sociology

Theory in Sociology Bryan S Turner, in the introduction to The New Blackwell Companion to Social Theory provided an interesting metaphor explaining the nature and work of social theory, including sociological theory (Turner, 2009). He said that we can imagine theory as a scaffold built around a building that is the social reality. This scaffold helps sociologists move around with some ease, take a look at the nooks and corners of the social building, and gain a better understanding of it. It also helps us gauge which parts of the social building we have no idea of, and for which parts we need to build further scaffolding to investigate¹. Social theories, including sociological theories, are basically concepts or ideas or sets of concepts or ideas developed by people to better understand and explain their social surroundings. At their simplest, they are regularly developed and used by all of us. The popular idea that shopkeepers and autorickshaw drivers charge more when they know that the customer is someone new in town and uninformed is a rudimentary social theory. Same goes for the ever present fear of many elders that society in the hands of the new youth is at the verge of collapse. We all observe our social surroundings (though often unsystematically) and draw conclusions from our observations. This helps us make sense of our extremely complicated and somewhat debilitating world. They provide order amidst chaos by categorizing and labeling social realities, and offer a range of predictions. They help us choose our everyday course of action in social settings. But good sociological theories, which are considered to be sociological theories in the social sciences, are developed through certain systematic methods. While there exists considerable debate regarding the specifics of these methods, it is largely agreed that theories should be able to match and explain at least some part of the empirical social world, i.e they should have validity in the world outside (Banerjee et al, pg 46; 2016). It is only then that sociological theories are able to fulfill their functions. What are these functions? Sociological theories perform a range of functions for people in general and sociologists in general. Some of those functions can be drawn from a list by M Francis Abraham in Modern Sociological Theory. Firstly, sociological theories suggest potential issues in the social world and suggest new areas of studies. Theories construct the social world in abstraction, and superimposing theories with existing realities can reveal areas that require research and understanding. We can take the example of the general demographic theory that male to female sex ratio in any region under normal conditions should be around 1:1. When this theory was superimposed on the demographic realities of various regions of India, the seriousness of the problems of female foeticide and infanticide was revealed. We knew that the much larger number of males from females in these regions was abnormal because of the theory and this led to the large number of government and civil society initiatives to ensure the survival of the girl child. Sociological theory also helps us in predicting facts. Good sociological theories usually work as good mental shorthands for predicting facts about unknown parts of our social world, or even our social future. Take the basic Marxist dictum regarding the presence of economic social classes with conflicting interests in all societies (Marx and Engels, 2015). While the exact nature of classes and their inter-relationships differ, economic inequality in some or the other form is found in most modern societies, and the have and have-nots have opposing interests. We might not know anything about the city Louisville, Kentucky in America, but thanks to theory we can predict with considerable certainty that there too, there will be the rich and the poor, and these two groups will have conflicting interests². We can go on to even say that unless there is a radical break between our current society and the recent future, society 20 years later will also have different economic classes with conflictual interests.1 Sociological theories help us systematize the social realities and relationships that we observe around us into convenient conceptual schema. Theories help us deal with society by providing us useful systems to view and understand complex social realities. We can take the theory of Avoidance Relationships by Radcliffe Brown as an example. The theory explains how relationships of mutual avoidance exist and is normalised among related people when there is a potentiality of conflict between them (Radcliffe-Brown, 1940). This explains the commonly seen relationships of avoidance between married men and their in-laws in several parts of India, which might otherwise seem confusing. Larger social phenomena like globalisation and digitization are also rendered more intelligible using sociological theories. Sociological theories also help us establish linkages between specific empirical findings and larger sociological bodies of work and orientations. Empirical observations which otherwise seem insignificant find greater meanings and importance when viewed through apt sociological theories. A few suicides of scheduled caste students in top educational institutions of India by themselves might seem like just further additions to state recorded statistics. Only when we see them under the light of sociological theories explaining largely invisible but crippling and continuing caste discrimination in modern Indian institutions do we recognise their full After predicting the above regarding Louisville, Kentucky, I found the research paper ‘Race Relations and Public Policy in Louisville: Historical Development of an Urban Underclass’ by Scott Cummings and Michael Price which discusses Louisville’s elites, black and white working and middle classes and their interrelations. The prediction seems to have been accurate. 1 significance. Theories help us see that these individual empirical facts are a part of the much larger social issue of caste discrimination in India. Lastly, existing sociological theory makes it feasible to conduct further sociological research. Theory narrows down the range of facts to be studied and directs sociological research. It shows sociologists the gaps in the existing body of knowledge. It also provides them the tools and methods of research. Existing theoretical work on social movements, for example, would discourage sociologists from seeing the participants as mobs of enraged people just expressing their anger. It would direct them towards studying their rational motivations and existing movement organizations. A study of theory might also show the sociologist what hasn’t been studied, say, the functioning of digital social movement organizations in India, by revealing gaps in the body of theoretical work, and provide scopes of new research. Whichever methods the sociologist chooses to employ, be it survey and interviews of agitators or observing and participating in protests and demonstrations, there will be a body of theory informing their choice, administration of research tools and analysis. Theory along with systematizing social realities, also systematizes sociology. Every new sociological work uses concerts and tools drawn from existing theory. This places new works in a lineage of existing works and helps us understand them better. We can also test the validity of existing sociological work by applying existing theories to various social contexts. This lets sociologists change and build upon existing theories, giving sociology its much needed reflexivity. The Limits Sociology as a discipline wouldn’t probably be possible without sociological theories as they perform a myriad of essential functions. However, it is important to be aware of the limits of individual theories. Almost always, theories are intimately related to very specific contexts. They are often based on the data and observations from particular social circumstances. Theories built as such, might not be applicable where the social realities are vastly different. C Wright Mill’s theory of a country’s power elites being from the military, political and corporate arenas was based on observations from USA, it won’t be exactly applicable in a country like India where the military is under far more tighter control of the political arm of the state. This contextuality of theories is sometimes ignored in search of comforting grand narratives. Good theories, which have wide applicability, are forcefully applied everywhere in attempts to make them universal theories. Prathama Banerjee et. al provide the example of how social scientists in the 1970s and 1980s tried to ‘apply’ the Marxist mode of production theory to India (Banerjee et al, 2016). A theory made in the 19th century regarding certain Western European countries, was seen as universal, and was stretched and bent to fit the Indian case, which was empirically vastly different. Such preoccupation with supposedly universal theories reduces the chances of emergence of better theories which are context specific but more accurate. The dominance of and desire for universal theories can also reduce our ability to view social realities accurately. The hesitation to recognise and record cases of domestic abuse, by the police, individuals or public at large, stems from our discomfort at challenging the supposedly universal theory regarding happy and supportive families. Talal Asad tells us how several western scholars studying the Muslim world oversimplified relations between the ruling class and the ruled into one of only oppression, submission and antipathy under the influence of the then universal theory regarding barbaric Muslim rulers and apathetic Muslim subjects (Asad, 1973). The Way Should the attempt to build and find universal theories be abandoned then? We must remember that while there is probably no sociological theory applicable in absolutely all social situations, certain theories have very wide applicability. Durkheim’s theory regarding religion, where he says that all religions involve elements which are sacred and which must be kept away from other objects which are profane is a case in point. We can also take the example of the popular social theory that humans need the support of other human beings for their well being. This theory, not attributed to any social scientist, is so widely applicable that it is considered common sense. Similarly, there exists other basic theories about humans like that they don’t like to stay hungry, they like leading dignified lives, human groups desire recognitions, etc which are widely applicable enough to be called near universal. The search for universal theories might therefore not be completely vain. There are certain features which exist among almost all humans and therefore all human groups. These features can be studied and understood through theories which are near universal. When these near universal theories fail to be applicable in certain very particular circumstances, they still become useful by helping us understand those particular circumstances and why and how they stand out. The assumption of universal applicability of theories from the west due to the relationships of power has of course been harmful. But as Prathama Banerjee et al tells us, working across traditions might be a way to remedy that. Drawing evidence from the local and the global, from the colonized and the imperial, from the subaltern and the elites, and maintaining close relationships with practice and material realities along with abstraction, while developing theories might help us build newer theories with wider applicability. Such theories also might not be absolutely universal. But the quest for universal theories might provide us with more near-universal theories to accurately explain our increasingly complicated world and makes lives easier for both sociologists and the society in general. Bibliography Turner, Bryan S. (ed. 2009); The New Blackwell Companion to Social Theory, Wiley Blackwell: Oxford, Pp- 4-5 Abraham, M. Francis (1997): Modern Sociological Theory: An Introduction, Oxford University Press, Pp-12-13 Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. London: Penguin Books, 2015. Cummings, S., & Price, M. (1997). ‘Race Relations and Public Policy in Louisville: Historical Development of an Urban Underclass’. Journal of Black Studies, 27(5), 615–649. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2784872. Accessed on 11th September, 2023. Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. (1940). ‘On Joking Relationships. Africa’ Journal of the International African Institute, 13(3), 195–210. https://doi.org/10.2307/1156093 Banerjee, Prathama, Aditya Nigam and Rakesh Pandey (2016) ‘The Work of Theory: Thinking Accross Traditions’ Economic and Political Weekly; Vol 37 Pp- 42 Asad, Talal (1973) ‘Two European Images of Non European Rule’ Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter, Ed. Talal Asad. Ithaca Press and Humanities Press, United States of America. Pp103-120