This
article was originally published in The Chronicle
of Higher Education, March 31, 2000, p. A68.
From
Sociological Illiteracy to Sociological Imagination
By Judith Shapiro
At
one point in the mid-1980's, when I was teaching
at Bryn Mawr College, I started paying attention
to a common phrase, repeated like a mantra by students
there and elsewhere: ``racism, sexism, and classism.''
I had heard the phrase so often that I had become
quite used to it, but it suddenly struck me as odd.
The
terms racism and sexism seemed unproblematic enough,
referring to discrimination based on what we take
to be physical differences of one kind of another.
But what did classism really mean? Although my 1960's
ears were expecting to hear students talk about
class, instead I was hearing about classism. Had
the students been talking about class, they would
have discussed the structure of our society, and
how socioeconomic inequalities were built into it.
In fact, talk of that kind was relatively rare in
students' political conversations. Rather, they
seemed to be concerned about individuals--prejudice
against individuals belonging to less-privileged
socioeconomic groups.
That
discovery led me to wonder how the students saw
race and gender. Were they also viewing racism and
sexism exclusively in terms of individual identities
and interpersonal relationships? If so, what did
that say about the students' chances for improving
the world? Had the goal of creating a more just
society dwindled down into a matter of sensitivity
training?
I
realized, however, that I was being unfair to the
students. For one thing, they were living in a far
more diverse community than I had known in my undergraduate
days; navigating a culturally complex universe of
fellow students was for them a significant task.
Although some were retreating from that project,
and spending most of their time with those who were
most like them, others were reaching out, realizing
that the reason a college assembles a diverse group
of students is to extend their horizons.
Moreover,
our success in transforming the liberal-arts college
into a kind of utopia was insulating our students
from certain realities and decisions. To give them
the freedom to explore intellectual, professional,
and social options, we were housing and feeding
them, and providing them with health care.
And
yet, those students of the 1980's were missing something
important, something we should have given them during
their college years. Too many of them were deficient
in the skills needed for analyzing society in economic,
political, and structural terms. They seemed unable
to move beyond their immediate experience to see
how that experience was shaped by larger social
and historical forces. They were suffering from
a lack of what the eminent sociologist C. Wright
Mills called ``the sociological imagination''-which
is in short supply among today's students as well.
I
have come to refer to that condition as sociological
illiteracy. Just as a person may be illiterate in
the most literal sense (unable to read or write),
or scientifically illiterate, or innumerate (as
we have come to call someone who lacks quantitative
skills), so a person may be uneducated in the social
sciences, and thus unable to make use of the insights
and tools that those disciplines provide.
When
people are ignorant about quantum mechanics or medieval
literature, they are generally aware of their ignorance,
readily admit it, and understand that the remedy
for their ignorance is serious and systematic study.
When, however, the subject is how societies operate,
or why people behave the way they do, the situation
is different. Confusing their folk beliefs with
knowledge, people typically don't realize their
ignorance.
We
all walk around with theories in our heads about
the social world in which we move-indeed, we could
not operate without them. In that sense, we are
all social scientists. But most of us are bad ones.
Furthermore,
some of us aspire to be anthropologists, in the
broad sense of the term. That is, we seek to understand
the workings of human societies. To do that, we
must engage in certain kinds of study and research,
and we must be willing to question our assumptions.
An obvious point perhaps, but one that is too easily
forgotten-or suppressed-when it comes to matters
that touch upon our deepest values, desires, and
interests.
Because
they question familiar assumptions, and also because
they sometimes seem to be making heavy weather of
things we all think we understand already, social
scientists are the folks that people love to hate.
Anthropologists get blamed for the fact that culture
now refers not only to Paradise Lost and Beethoven's
Ninth Symphony, but also to nose rings and televised
wrestling. Sociologists generally fare even worse
in public esteem, because they lack the redeeming
features of being exotic and entertaining. Besides,
they have a habit of trying to get us to think about
unpleasant matters, such as urban poverty and teenage
pregnancy.
Political
scientists are a mixed bag, because they can be
found talking about anything from Plato's Republic
to the most recent election returns. Their stock
rises and falls with attitudes toward politics itself,
which these days seem decidedly bearish. As for
economists, although they have been seeking to pass
as mathematicians for some time now, their inability
to predict economic trends breeds a certain cynicism
about the value of economic analysis altogether.
(As the joke goes, when economists don't know your
phone number, they give you an estimate.) Political
science and economics especially suffer from the
popular expectation that they should function as
a form of divination.
Given the level of estrangement between social scientists
and the public, it is not surprising that sociological
illiteracy is revealed in a number of the major
policy debates currently engaging our national attention-for
example, affirmative action. Whenever I hear the
policy described as a form of reverse racism, I
know that I am in the presence of someone who is,
at best, semiliterate-sociologically speaking. There
is, in fact, no form of discrimination against white
people in our society that mirrors the systemic,
pervasive, and often unconscious discrimination
that persists against black people, despite the
considerable progress we have made since the end
of slavery.
Another
particularly likely place to encounter sociological
illiteracy is in cultural-studies programs populated
by faculty members trained as literary critics,
who seem to be reinventing the social-science wheel
with several spokes missing. But that is a story
for another day.
Returning
to our students: Many undergraduates today demonstrate
impressive levels of civic engagement in the form
of community service. They serve meals in soup kitchens,
work in homeless shelters, and staff AIDS hot lines.
They work as interns in a variety of social agencies.
Too few of them, however, are able to raise their
eyes to the level of policy and social structure.
They need the sociological imagination to see how
their on-the-ground activities fit into a bigger
picture, so that more of them can cross the bridge
from serious moral commitment to effective political
participation.
As
teachers, we must admit our share of responsibility
for that state of affairs. We need to adjust the
focus between what we want to teach and what our
students need to learn. Those of us who are faculty
members in the social sciences must be sure that
we are providing to all of our students, majors
and nonmajors alike, basic tools of social and cultural
understanding, as they have evolved over time in
our various disciplines.
At
Barnard College, we have taken steps in that direction.
We have just revised our general-education requirements
to include the following: a course in social analysis,
to introduce students to theoretical, analytical,
and methodological approaches to the study of society;
a course in historical studies, to give students
some chronological perspective and to teach them
how historical understanding is constructed; and
a course on cultures in comparison, to demonstrate
both the diversity and commonalities among human
societies, as well as their interconnectedness.
Students have some choice among courses that meet
those requirements, but the course must fulfill
the general purposes I've outlined.
As
faculty members, we must remember that our responsibilities
extend beyond the academy. Sociologists such as
Mills wrote with a force and grace that enabled
them to reach a wide audience. We have not seen
their like in years-too many years. More of us must
follow their example and write for the general reader.
And we should encourage our students-so full of
energy, intelligence, and commitment-to move beyond
the personal to the political.
Link
to the Chronicle of Higher Education
Judith
Shapiro is a cultural anthropologist and the president
of Barnard College.
.jpg)
