I have often reflected on the role of ‘muckraking sociology’, invariably drawing the conclusion that it is a missing ingredient in contemporary sociology. The following quote from Gary Marx in 1972 defines muckraking sociology in the following terms:
‘such research uses the tools of social science to document unintended (or officially unacknowledged) consequences of social action, inequality, poverty, racism, exploitation, opportunism, neglect, denial of dignity, hypocrisy, inconsistency, manipulation, wasted resources and the displacement of an organisation’s stated goals in favour of self-perpetuation. It may show how, and the extent to which, a dominant or more powerful class, race, group or stratum tales advantage of, misuses, mistreats or ignores a subordinate group, often in the face of an ideology that claims it does exactly the opposite. In pointing out a state of affairs that strikingly clashes with cherished values, muckraking research may have an expose, sacred cow-smashing, anti-establishment, counter-intuitive, even subversive quality, for it grows out of and helps sustain social upheaval and questioning. Although sociology like any other intellectual undertaking always has this potential, it is often not realised.’
It has long been clear to me that sociological research on the likes of health inequalities has scrupulously avoided the approach that Marx commends here. In a way this is understandable: university tenure has all but disappeared, replaced by short-term contracts and a new level occupational insecurity (with teachers and researchers assimilated into Standing’s ‘precariat’). A further taming of the discipline has been ushered in via centre-government-prompted culls and the extension of a virulent metrics of institutional and individual accomplishment.
I used to have a friendly debate on health inequalities with Michel Marmot whose office was down the road from met UCL. He used to insist that he wanted to ‘make a difference’ by his research and engagement with policy makers. I respected that, but my riposte was: ‘you’re not making a difference Michael, and you need to address why this is’. I contrasted his ‘realism 1’ with my ‘realism 2’, my version focusing on capital buying power to make policy in its interests. For many years I referred to my ‘greedy bastards hypothesis’ (or ‘GBH’). This asserted that the UK’s growing health inequalities are as unintended consequence of decisions taken by an identifiable but tiny minority – less than 1% of the population – which I termed ‘capital monopolists’ (globally active financiers, bankers, major shareholders, asset managers and so on). I used the ‘GBH’ in academic papers in the hope of ‘provoking’ a debate with colleagues whose research I respected by found limited and unambitious. If we sociologists cannot delve into class, power and the like (and the structural mechanisms that give rise to them), who is going to? Well, only the odd muckraking journalist. Very few rose to take my bait. I must hold my hands up: I cannot claim to have engaged in much muckraking sociology myself, though I tried to get it put on the agenda. Nor is there much sign of it on the horizon.
I was reminded of all this by a recent essay by Benny Goodman, the focus of which, intriguingly, was on swearing. I was brought up in a staid middle-class family in which no swearing was ever heard, so I rarely swear myself (although I do recall my father commenting to me that ‘there are worse problems in the world than swearing’). Benny makes the point that swearing is a natural part of many people’s vocabularies, and as such has a wide and generalised salience. It’s also related to class. In short, to cleanse writing of swear words is in and of itself to proffer a class judgement of sorts. It’s a point I’d not considered. Another colleague, Alec Grant, agreed with Benny’s point and both went on to deploy words I still struggle to emit myself.
Maybe there’s some kind of linkage between a ‘meaningful and engaged sociological project’, ‘muckraking methods’ and ‘vocabularies of dissemination and debate’. A reasonable thesis would be that all three are currently frowned upon and subject to negative discrimination at a variety of different levels. Can we sociologists speak the language of class while ‘absenting’ the language in which people live it? So this short piece – which I address to myself as well as to my colleagues – commends a return to what was a mere experiment in the 1960s, namely, muckraking sociology, and a reconsideration of the means by which we sociologists both disseminate our work and, more importantly, engage positively and intelligibly with forces for change oriented by utopian realism.
Thanks to Benny Goodman and Alec Grant for swearing their way into my thinking.