Sociology: Proscience or Antiscience? Author(s): Randall Collins Source: American Sociological Review, Vol. 54, No. 1 (Feb., 1989), pp. 124-139 Published by: American Sociological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2095666 Accessed: 02/06/2009 08:18 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=asa. 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American Sociological Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Sociological Review. http://www.jstor.org SOCIOLOGY: PROSCIENCE OR ANTISCIENCE?* RANDALL COLLINS Universityof California-Riverside Criticisms of the scientific status of sociology possess some validity when applied against narrowlypositivist interpretationsof sociological methodsand metatheory, but do not underminethe scientific project offormulating generalized explanatory models. (1) Critics allege that sociology has made no lawful findings; but valid general principles exist in many areas. (2) Situational interpretation,subjectivity, reflexivity, and emergence are alleged to undermine explanatory sociology, but these topics themselves can be explained by a widened conception of science that allows informal procedures in theorizing aimed at maximizing explanatory coherence. (3) Thefact that intellectualdiscourse itself is a historicallychangeable social product does not invalidate objective explanatory knowledge. (4) The historicist claim that there can be no principles that hold across particular times and places is invalid and rests upon a confusionof underlyinggenerative principles with the complexities of the empirical surface of history. (5) Metatheoretical criticism of the concept of causality does not underminea sophisticatedconception of scientific sociology. Sociological knowledge can and does advance, but it depends upon building the coherence of theoretical conceptions across different areas and methods of research. In recent years there have been a variety of sociological knowledge. But the overall thrust assaults on the conception of sociology as a of the criticisms, that sociology has and can science. These include the following themes. have no scientific validity, I believe is wrong. (1) Sociology has failed to produce valid To be sure, science is not the only valid mode findings or lawful generalizations. (2) Deter- of discourse, or of knowledge. Sociology, ministic laws do not exist because social like many other intellectual disciplines, can action consists of situational interpretation, be concerned with empirical descriptions based on human subjectivity, reflexivity, and including both contemporary social condi- creativeness. (3) We are locked in a world of tions and historical sequences; it can discuss discourse; society itself is a kind of text that moral issues, propose or excoriate policies for we read in different ways at different times. practical action, and compare existing condi- (4) The foregoing position is often connected tions against ideals; its can discuss founda- to historicism, the claim that only historical tional, methodological, and other metatheo- particularsexist, and no general laws can be retical issues. But the core activity that gives found that apply at all times and places. (5) the field of sociology its intellectualjustifica- Finally, there are various technical criticisms tion is the formulation of generalized explan- of scientific methods and metatheory, espe- atory principles, organized into models of the of the conception of causality. The cially underlyingprocesses that generate the social philosophy of science today is in a postposi- world. It is these that determine how tivist mode; and a scientifically oriented particularconditions result in particularkinds sociology, it is said, is intellectually out of of outcomes. It is these generalized explana- date. tory modes that constitute a science. The various criticisms are not necessarily I will attempt to show that none of the united. Some of them include important difficulties raised the points that contribute to the widening of by antiscience argu- ments prevent sociology from formulating valid generalized explanatory modes. We * I am indebtedto Paul DiMaggio, Richard have the basic structures of several such Campbell, Robert Hanneman,Arthur Stinch- models already, in areas ranging from micro- combe, and JonathanTurner for commentson an sociology, through formal organizations, to earlierdraft of this paper. macrosociology. It is not inevitable that 124 American Sociological Review, 1989, Vol. 54 (February:124-139) PROSCIENCEOR ANTISCIENCE? 125 sociology must be a scientific failure, nor has vided that they are not unequals in power or it failed. Those who attack scientific sociol- competitorsfor scarce resources. Variations ogy typically fight against a caricature of on this principle have been formulated "positivism" at its narrowest. On the other numerous times, based on a wide range of hand, many practitionersof allegedly scien- research. Homans (1950) stated the basic tific sociology have assumed just those point, drawing upon studies of informal narrowconceptions of method and substance groups in industrial settings, as well as that make them vulnerableto the antipositivist anthropological research and experimental attack. small groups. Durkheim ([1912] 1954), in In what follows, I will deal in turn with the analyzing the central dynamic of religious major criticisms of sociological science but rituals, seized on the similar principle that also suggest what we can learn from the intensely focused interactionproduces moral antiscience critiques. The flux of situational solidarity and conformity to the group's interactions,human subjectivity and reflexive- symbols; Goffman (1967 pp. 1-136) extended ness, the dynamism and episodic movement this model to sociable conversations. The of macrostructures,are all part of sociology's famous Asch (1951) experiments demon- subject matter. It has been the merit of some strated the effect of group cohesion upon of the antiscience positions to bring these to pressures for conformity even in visual our attention, and even to explore their perception. Symbolic interactionist theory pattern; but this exploration has made it converges on the same point: if a person's possible to formulate these processes more concepts are derived from the stance of a generally and hence to widen the realm of generalized other based on his or her social explanatory models which are the core of experience, then what individuals think must scientific sociology. be influenced by their patternsof interaction. Research on self-conceptions (M. Rosenberg THE ALLEGED FAILURE OF 1979; R. Turner 1978) can be regarded as a SOCIOLOGICALRESEARCH variant on this principle, demonstratingthe influence of group membershipand solidarity One line of attack dismisses sociology upon beliefs about oneself; in another appli- because we have no findings. After almost cation, expectation states research (Berger, 100 years of research, we still have come up Wagner, and Zelditch 1983) shows the effects with no valid generalizations, no laws of of group pressuresupon task performance(as sociology. This criticism is often made by did W.F. Whyte's famous Street Corner outsiders to our discipline; for instance, Society, 1943). Studies of networks (Bott Alasdair MacIntyre(1984) uses it as grounds 1971) provide the equivalent formulation: for his argumentthat there can be no secular, network cohesion results in homogeneous nontraditionalbasis of morality; Alexander attitudes. The coherence among these various Rosenberg (1980) argues that since the social kinds of theory and research constitutes sciences have, and can have, no laws, any strong evidence that the interaction- sociological explanation must come from a density/solidarity/conformity principles are sociobiological level of determinism. Sociol- true. ogists themselves sometimes also make the (ii.) Human cognitive capacity is limited; same dismissal, usually in the context of a accordingly, the more complex or uncertaina discussion of alternative metatheories (e.g., situation, the more that participantsfall back Spencer 1987). upon a taken-for-grantedroutine and focus But the charge that sociology knows on the particular area that presents the most nothing, that we have no valid generaliza- dramatic problems. There has been a great tions, is patently untrue. Let us review a few deal of convergence on this principle from of these, starting from the microlevel and very different points