A lesson learned over the years is that sociologists – and others – should not be seduced into, or restricted to, debating on terms already laid down by others. Often these terms constitute a kind of widely accepted orthodoxy. Economics is a prime example which I will come to later.
Another example among many, and one that impacted on me personally, is the research literature on health inequalities. I grew quickly depressed at the prevailing empiricist – socio-epidemiological – fixation on variable analysis. With a very few exceptions, mostly from outside the UK, papers and publications were theoretically unambitious and, in so far as they followed the methodological prescriptions of empiricism, limited. For example, those who relied on secondary data sets could only ask questions that the data set could answer. Colleagues who relied in NS-SEC as a way of operationalising class were quite unable to raise and respond to queries about that globalised ‘rentier’ fraction of the 1% that comprise what I came to call the ‘capital monopolists’; and it was this tiny fragment of the population, I contended, and contend, were, and are, the principal ‘corporate agents’ responsible for the post-1970s widening of material, psycho-social and health inequalities in the UK.
I always understood why this state of affairs existed and was perpetuated. It had to do with colleagues forging careers, achieving and maintaining job security and bidding for promotion; and this in an increasingly fractured and uncertain university environment. And it’s getting worse year by year, with frequent cuts in funding, whole-department culls and individualised micro-management via crude metrics of accomplishment. But this all adds up to a taming of the discipline of sociology. I know it’s tough but I’ve long argued that sociology is nothing if it’s representatives can be, and are, subdued and tamed, if it follows acceptable ‘orthodox’ lines of theory, enquiry and methods. My mantra was: ‘take out sufficient insurance to keep your bosses off your back, and use what’s left of your time to study and write about what you think is important’ (I accept of course that this was easier for me as a baby- boomer than it is today).
As for economics, I take my lead here from the argument of Clara Mattei advanced in her ‘The Capital Order’ and ‘Escape From Capitalism’. In the latter she writes:
‘most of us listen to economists and financial leaders with a mix of distraction and resignation. Economic decisions such as interest rate hikes feel like distant scenarios, too technical to directly concern us and over which we can do very little anyway. But is it really so? Or is this ability to ‘depoliticise’ the economy – that is, the ability to deny our participation in economic decision-making – precisely the key to the success of a system that ties out hands and silences our voices? The language economic experts use compels us to think that we don’t have the knowledge to partake in fundamental economic decisions that affect our lives. However, when we examine their actions closely, we see that they are engaged in a deeply political project: preserving our economic system – which they regard as the only one possible’ (pp.6-7).
It’s little wonder that ‘the capital order’ is presented as something ‘natural’ and ‘external’ when you consider the power its principal defenders and beneficiaries enjoy via capital ownership and asset management. Many economists, like sociologists striving for promising paid opportunities, find themselves – ‘understandably’ – either passive or active proponents of capitalist ideology in one form or another.
When I briefly led an ultimately thwarted effort to establish an ‘Institute for Sociological Studies’ at UCL, a rogue UCL economist stood up at a preliminary town meeting to say that UCL badly needed a group of sociologists willing to stand up against the neoliberal orthodoxy that characterised his department.
Mattei is right. The set of criteria deployed by economists and governments alike to assess the strengths versus weaknesses of the global or national economies require to be analysed and appraised. Sociologists of all people should be alert to this. Economic criteria of putative import, encompassing concepts like growth and rates of inflation, interest and unemployment, are essentially political criteria that reflect the interests of capital over labour. Maybe because job opportunities are more available and salaries better, economists are more easily recruited as propagandists for capitalism than sociologists. But there are lessons for both.