Sociology as Bullshit Detector
July 5th, 2010 by SocProf and tagged Social Theory, Sociology
Via my Twitter stream, I discovered this older post by Sam Sladner (who proves that there is life outside of academia for social scientists, no really) offering some advice rooted in sociology on how to detect bullshit from so-called, self-appointed social media experts (although I think this works for other kinds of behavior “experts” as well).
- They skate over the tension between structure and agency.
- They use the same social research methods every time (I might add, that is, when they actually use research methods, often they invoke anecdotes and experience).
- They see no paradoxes. Ever.
- They don’t know what social capital really is (which is kind of funny since they’re all about networking and connections).
Now, as an academic, I have been subjected – by administrators jumping on the latest fad bandwagon in corporate and management thinking – to all sorts of “consultants” on a variety of topics more or less related to education, and invariably, they ALL do all four.
One could add a few others:
- They love to borrow concepts and throw them around without any reference to the original context where these concepts were crafted.
- They love generational generalizations based on shallow polls and surveys.
- Not only do they never see paradoxes, they never see nuances either.
- They are completely ignorant of class dynamics and issues when discussing behavior, and hardly ever take race and gender into consideration.
Add your own.
Like Sam says, these peoples do not necessarily have to be sociologists, but it would be nice, and much more helpful, if they had at least some vague sense of sociological perspective, rather than some unrecognized amorphous white, American, middle class male perspective (yes, even when these “experts” are women).
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