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6 and Social Practice in Post-positivist

Pekka Sulkunen

Scientific methods are not tool kits that How should we classify such styles of researchers can select to suit their tastes and reasoning in , and how could we preferences to compete with other techniques explain or understand the reasons for such contending to reach the . Research differences? In this article I argue that a major instruments in sociology are no more than in change in sociological styles of reasoning took other independent of concepts and place in the late 1970s and early 1980s both problematics from which they emerge, and in the way sociology began to conceptualise they in turn structure the kinds of questions the social world and in the way sociological and theoretical concepts that they can be used research was related to social practices or to deal with. Instead of a choice of methods -making. One apparent indication of it is more appropriate to talk about ‘styles of the new style of reasoning was the boost in reasoning’, like Ian Hacking, who has argued and the accompanying that although the social world is constructed ‘cultural’ or ‘linguistic’ turn in sociology (see differently by different styles of reasoning, Chapter 1). These changes reflect the that this is not to say that the constructions social sciences first had in the three post-war are arbitrary (1990: 6). It simply means decades and then lost when the state that, for example, an explanation/prediction construction period had attained maturity. formulated in probabilistic quantitative terms already implies a great deal about the world in its concepts which, in turn, are integrated REPRESENTATIONAL, EPISTEMIC with a statistical . The same AND POSITIONAL DIMENSIONS represented in another vocabulary OF and through a biographical or ethnographic methodology would look different but no Sociological studies tell about less true. in three different ways. First, they report

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knowledge about social . This represent the same reality, but within very knowledge depends on their conceptual different styles of reasoning and methods. framework and on their instruments of Secondly, the style of reasoning itself tells such as , media us about society. The three studies of social analysis or the , but exclusion, with their different methods and within the constraints of the concepts and concepts, involve very different problematics instruments, knowledge it is. This is the although their matter is at least representational dimension of knowledge. partly the same. The first probably would be For example, a study on the relationship built on communitarian hypotheses on how between and social relationships support people in their might be made with statistical methods, self-control, and integration into which require that the abstract categories educational and work life. The second would ‘social capital’ and ‘social exclusion’ are raise different kinds of questions concerning operationalised as measurable indicators the of the state, the basis of selecting that describe individuals or collectivities. some pharmaceuticals as legal and others Most likely, a fair amount of drug users as illegal, and the intended and unintended would be found among the most excluded. consequences of prevention efforts. The third Another study might compare Western would pay attention to the fact that social countries and come to the conclusion that capital may be of very different kinds, and that most of them apply strict prohibitions on it is not entirely an independent variable in a selection of pharmaceuticals – not all, the processes of social exclusion but depends, like alcohol, but many such as opiates, instead, on power relationships in society. cocaine, amphetamine or MDMA (‘ecstasy’). All three studies involve moral investments Possession, distribution, production and in the way they categorise their , import of the prohibited drugs are legal they represent not only the reality as facts offences with penal consequences. The role but also wider frameworks in which they of the system as the interface see society, the state, the individual and the between the state and the drug user in many interface between citizens and the public ways operates as a mechanism of exclusion. powers. In other words, they are motivated The term ‘prohibition’ is also an abstract by different interests of knowledge. category and describes at least part of the The interests of knowledge which define same reality as the quantitative study, but from the needs and dispositions to explain and a completely different angle. Finally, a third understand what happens in society determine study, made with ethnographic methods, the types of questions that can be asked could analyse the social relationships in the about social reality: the epistème, to use different types of public social and health ’s term. Let us call this the services offered to illicit drug users, and find epistemic dimension of sociological knowl- that at the low-threshold needle exchange edge. Epistèmes themselves are social facts clinic the (often voluntary) social workers that represent the relations of domination are allies of their clients, trying to help them in the given society. The master example to get medication and other help, whereas the is Foucault’s own account of the of workers at the substitution treatment clinic Western and its ways of relating require a great deal of ‘motivation’ and effort human and nature. It evolved from from their clients, often with the consequence classifying and representing the natural world, that they are felt to be part of the penalising including humans, in the natural history of the control system rather than a help. Again, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to the we are observing mechanisms of exclusion, study of exchange and utility in Mercantilist including social capital and the lack of it, but and Physiocratic , to the focus from a completely different angle than the on work in classical economic , and other two studies. All of them report facts that finally to the complete separation between

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human and natural sciences towards the end understand to see precisely what practical role of the nineteenth century. A similar example they potentially serve today. is Ian Hacking’s analysis of the discovery of probability and stochastic processes in the early nineteenth century. This opened PLANNED AND MODE 1 up whole new areas of scientific research concerning and mass phenomena. Such grand transformations of the epistème When the architect of the British welfare state, reflect society’s interests in itself and its Sir William Beveridge, envisioned the state’s in wide philosophical role in the post-war society he considered that terms, but as the three examples above point the ‘spectacular achievements of the war-time out, the kinds of questions society asks of planned economy’ (Beveridge 1944: 120) itself are also reflected in research designs in measured by the GNPand employment should a smaller scale, and the designs and questions be applied in the economy in , which themselves tell us something important about also could benefit from state , and society. not only by means of income redistribution. Third, sociological studies report through The state’s aim was no longer to minimise their form and scientific practice quite special public spending but to optimise all spending facts about society, namely facts about the in society, in regard to available relationship between sociologists themselves by means of ‘manpower budgeting’. The state and the object of their study. This we budget should be measured to maintain full can call the positional, or the sociology of employment but not to exceed the national knowledge dimension of sociological facts. manpower capacity. The Keynesian principle The division of sciences into disciplines in of full employment was translated into income itself is an important fact about the society equalisation in and growth was that engenders it. The fact that social sciences its primary objective. Thus planning was not are today separated from natural sciences, uniquely a Socialist idea; a plan designed and and split into sub-disciplines each with their supervised by the centralised national state own dominant styles of reasoning, is not was a generally accepted European model of simply a consequence of the accumulation of industrial development. knowledge but it is also a real factor which The planning did not only cover infras- has an impact on what new knowledge it can tructure, regional policy, monetary and fiscal produce. Another division, especially impor- policy, but also the ways in which people tant in sociology, is the way that scientific should lead their lives. The Swedish Alva and knowledge is entangled with but sometimes (1934) had in their famous also opposed to practical knowledge about policy programme proposed that society, held by ordinary people, by policy- the state should root out bad habits among makers, by the media and other significant its citizens and teach them good manners. . People had to be trained to take care of All these three dimensions must be their and bring up their children, accounted for when we discuss the rela- although the important and complicated task tionship between social science and social of should primarily be yielded practice. Sociological studies should not be up to professionals in nursery schools and read only as reports about their objects, but other institutions. The state had to make symptomatically, as manifestations of the people conscious of their real interests. power fields of knowledge in which they oper- Psychological research about happiness was ate, and of their relationships to these fields. needed to discover what makes life worth In all three respects the social sciences in living according to people themselves, and the advanced capitalist have undergone institutions of society should be formed on the a transformation which we must clearly basis of these observations.

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The sociology associated with the plan in absolute terms. The earlier consumer was an exemplary case of what Gibbons booms of the eighteenth century in et al. (1997) call Mode 1 science. Knowledge (McKendrick et al. 1982; Mukerji 1983) and production in Mode 1 takes place at a distance still in nineteenth-century Europe (Williams from the of application, as ‘pure’ 1982) were limited to small , but at the far end of the RD-continuum industry-based consumer society was a phe- from research to ‘development’. Mode 1 nomenon of the masses and encompassed the knowledge production respects rigorous disci- structural foundations of . plinary boundaries. Its canon of accountability In retrospect this change was so drastic that and quality control dictates that only intra- it has been given dramatic names, such as disciplinary expert authority is qualified to the European golden era (Therborn 1995), the judge the of knowledge, the merits golden years of (Hobsbawm 1994), of the and the of their work. the glorious thirty years (Fourastié 1979) or Mode 1 science is enclosed in the universities, even the second French (Mendras and – the authors claim in a second book – in 1988). It changed the make-up and technology fact not accountable at all in practical terms, of . It reconfigured both social such as outcomes in welfare or impact in structures and people’s way of thinking about policy effectiveness. themselves and about their relationships with Nowotny et al. explain that the posi- others. It brought to ordinary people a quantity tivist virtue of a completely self-controlling, and of goods, pleasures and uses of context-free science was cultivated in a con- time that either had never existed before or had text that had an unlimited appetite for meaning only been accessible to the very privileged. and certainty already from the eighteenth Luxury was democratised and became part of century, when Western society was experi- everyday life. The pleasures of consumption encing an enormous wave of modernisation and sensuality became publicly presentable, (2001: 63). The same explanation holds even in everyday life as well as in the media and more emphatically for the post-war decades in , whereas they had earlier been in Western countries where , change excluded from public and left to for the better, lurked in the future the private sphere. The Weberian values of of not only the elites but of the great industrial society – frugality, industriousness majority of people. Post-war and achievement orientation – were replaced was particularly dramatic for Europe which, by post-industrial or post-modern values that with the exception of England and Belgium, stress pleasure for its own sake and cherish was still a continent dominated by small- its public presentation as much as they spurn holding agriculture on the eve of the Second its public control. The Romantic ethos of World War. Germany, Denmark, Netherlands capitalism seemed to get the upper hand. and Sweden all had well over one-fifth of their At the same time parliamentary institutions labour force employed in agriculture; Spain were consolidated in all Western countries. and the eastern countries including Finland Europe only gradually recovered from quasi- had well over one-half. Thirty years turned totalitarian war-time regimes, the USA from first the west and then the central and eastern an era of ultra-nationalistic anti-communist part of Europe to dominated suspicion. Value conflicts over , numerically by the industrial , nationalism, the , sexuality and many the peaks reaching up to almost half of the forms of consumption and culture gained total (civilian) labour force (48.5 per cent in political platforms and turned into protests West Germany in 1970)1. and counter-protests or moral panics (Cohen The post-war industrialisation produced a 1972). phenomenal growth in consumption possi- The appetite for meaning and certainty was bilities with no parallel in , not only of a psychological nature. The plan not relatively speaking and certainly not was a central instrument in progressive

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national industrial , and the plan elements in human social conduct, it does not required reliable and impartial matter who participates in the production of for its material. Also the moral ambivalences that knowledge, and from what point of view. needed to be formulated in a Instead of engaging in the question and described more systematically than with of standpoints of knowledge, there was anecdotal accounts by journalists and writers a strange between ‘’ or movies. The appetite was not only for and ‘Abstracted ’ (Mills 1959) meaning and certainty; it was also for prevalent in sociological texts of that era. information. The highly technical vocabulary of the former Population had already a solid and the bureaucratic ethos of the latter foundation from the late nineteenth and appear quite distinct from each other, theory early twentieth century. To a lesser extent representing ‘basic’ or pure science with this was true also for economic and labour disinterested motives (beyond the interest statistics. However, consumption in of the discipline itself) data only began to become available in the while the empirical researchers apply their 1950s. Income and mobility surveys have measurements and methods to practical social an even shorter history, and individual data issues of integration, cohesion, equality, on specific consumption patterns (such as prevention, youth work, health promotion etc. alcohol), sexual behaviour, political opinions Neither theory nor empiricism left much and attitudes about this or that aspect of every- room to human , with understandable day life, which today are routinely provided aspirations, goals and hopes. For empiricist as by Eurostat, European Science Foundation, well as theoretical sociologists, Mills argued, and national statistical offices, or which are the object of knowledge is social action – what industrially produced and commercialised by makes members of society act in a meaningful private ‘research’ companies, were still in the and orderly way from the point of view of 1960s a rarity provided by specially funded society. According to Mills, it was the task of academic research programmes. All this emancipating social science to help out people information required a conceptual portrayal of who ‘need, and feel they need … a quality of society – a language to describe its direction that will help them to use information of change, and to interpret its relevance. and to develop reason in order to achieve Even though the epistemic dimension of lucid summations of what is going on in the the sociology associated with the plan was world and of what may be happening within strongly – preparing the good life themselves’ (p. 5). That quality of mind, the for all – any was an Sociological Imagination, is offered to them alien, if not hostile, idea to Mode 1 knowledge by the critical sociologist who is capable of production. Science that speaks with the voice using the classical to translate private of disciplinary authority does not highlight its problems to public issues and vice versa. subject and its relationship with the reality it speaks about. To take an example from the natural sciences, the mapping out of the THE NEOLIBERAL TURN AND MODE 2 human genome is a project which SOCIAL SCIENCE advances at every new step independently of who makes that step and independently of By the 1970s social research in accordance what the consequences of the genome project with Mode 1 knowledge production was crit- will be for diagnostic practices, for treatment icised increasingly often. One of the objects methods, for the lives of people with known of critique was the problematic assumption genetic disorders, and for the lives of many about objective knowledge independent from other people who live with them. In the same the viewpoint of the knower. One solution way, one might think that if basic social has been to make explicit ‘whose side we are science research could detect the determining on’, as Howard Becker, the famous American

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sociologist of deviant minorities, asked in their society – obviously, in order to go to 1966, and argued that it is the task of the school, to be employed or be an employee, sociologist to side with the ‘underdogs’, the to be husband and wife, to make one’s way in drug users, prostitutes, ethnic minorities or modern traffic, to be a consumer, a political extremely poor people. The voice of such or a social citizen, one has to know a very people is not heard in the media; they are not complicated of rules and norms – but that seen in the halls of power, thus information the whole is based on such about their lives must be produced by shared knowledge. Thus the proper approach professional sociologists who are explicitly to the analysis of social structure is not abstract equipped with to make that measurement such as statistics on income information available (Becker 1970). But as distributions or class divisions but sociology (1970) remarked in a famous of knowledge. and influential debate with Becker, such Once it was recognized that people know a position does not solve the problem itself, a great deal about social life, and that created by the between social scientists’ knowledge is part of the pure academic science and applied research. same ‘stock of social of knowledge’ in on the side of the underdog is in which other people also live, it is easy itself an ambiguous position. What is an to dismiss Mode 1 science as an illusion. underdog? There is always somebody above There is no pure social science, independent every overdog, and thus if we study drug of the context of application, because the users, for example, even the local police scientists’ knowledge is itself part of the officer – an obvious overdog to the addicts – is context: it serves to define situations, to under the authority of the police headquarters, conceptualise social issues and to establish of the municipal council, the President of selections of feasible policy options, to the local Lions Club, and many others, exclude others and so on. Social sciences not least the who decided that are permanently challenged by everyday drug use is illegal and thus a police affair. , they cannot in actual fact justify Moreover, Gouldner argued that even when themselves only with disciplinary canons, sociologists take the underdog point of view and their academic authority is constantly they, knowingly or not, serve a constituency questioned. Such a view stresses the positional on whose interest their career possibilities or sociology of knowledge – dimension of depend. social science: scientific concepts, methods A major blow to Mode 1 social science and language which produce and express came from , which facts also reflect the relationship between pointed out that there cannot be any pure the scientists and their object, the people social science knowledge independent from they study. Sociology committed to this view ordinary people’s everyday knowledge about always faces what is called ‘the reflexivity society. (1979: XXX) problem’. If social reality is significantly gave this point a famous formulation in influenced by what people think or believe his state-of-the-art review of about it, and these beliefs are influenced by saying that the twentieth-century trend by the believers’ interests, social scientists in social science has been to increasingly contribute to the shaping of this reality in account for the fact that people always a way that also is infected with their interests. already, without any interference from social In what way, then, can sociologists claim scientists, possess enormous amounts of that their knowledge is superior or somehow knowledge about society. A landmark volume less influenced by their situation than other to realize this had already appeared in 1966: knowledge? Berger and Luckmann said that The Social Construction of Reality by Berger sociology of knowledge is ‘like trying to push and Luckmann (1987). They had argued that a bus in which one is riding’ (1987: 20). not only do people know a great deal about To pretend that disciplinary social science is

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somehow neutral and virtuously outside of of the principles of governance. Nikolas social reality, even in its basic theoretical part, Rose and Peter Miller (1992) have associated is to make a fallacious claim of this change with the Foucauldian idea of and a rather dubious attempt to cover up its governmentality, the internalisation of power partiality. by its subjects in modern society, and When Giddens made his observation that found its locus in the changing role of the social sciences tend towards a recognition of state. Since then, an extensive literature has the importance of everyday knowledge, he demonstrated that essential reforms in public was in fact pointing at a major change in (itself a new term signalling the relationships between social science and the change) have taken place in advanced social practice that was occurring in all its capitalist states, at times to a point where three dimensions: representational, epistemic the state seemed to be withering away from and sociology of knowledge in the post- capitalism altogether. Luc Boltanski and Ève positivist transition. In representational terms, Chiapello (1999), on the other hand, have the so-called cultural, semiotic or linguistic studied business management doctrines and turn drew sociologists’ attention to critical found that a similar reorganisation has taken analyses of meaning in peoples’ everyday place in the private sector even earlier. In life, in the media, in cultural products fact, the new style of governance has shifted and also in social science itself. In Erik from business to public management with Allardt’s terms (2006), the hermeneutic pole more or less success. Michael Power (1997) in social science gained dominance vis-à-vis has confirmed this phenomenon and used its complementary opposite, the positivist the term The Audit Society to describe the vision. It was observed that beyond what essential change that has occurred to the role was taken for facts there is a complex web of social sciences in the new mode of power: of , from statistics collectors’ , of which auditing is one especially concepts and classifications, to respondents’ important part. Using the term coined by interpretations and responses to them, to Gibbons and associates (1997), it depicted the statistical analysis and interpretation of results change from Mode 1 to Mode 2 knowledge by researchers and by their readers. No part in production. In contrast with Mode 1 ‘pure’ this web can be taken for granted as evident science, Mode 2 knowledge production takes and obvious. In cultural and place in the context of application; it is trans- the same ambiguity of meaning appeared disciplinary and it is directly accountable in many forms. Semioticians talked about also on grounds of its practical usefulness the ‘referential fallacy’ (Greimas and Courtès (Nowotny et al. 2001: 220). 1979), media researchers focused on the Boltanski and Chiapello concluded that by user perspective i.e. the between the mid 1970s industrial life had entered the media and the audience (Sulkunen a deep management crisis in all Organisation and Törrönen 1997; Alasuutari 1999), and for Economic Co-operation and Develop- followed ment (OECD) countries. The bureaucratic (1977: 142–48) in believing that the ‘author is management structures that had been copied dead’ – the ‘meaning’ of literary texts escapes from the military were inadequate for per- the intentions of their authors, in the extreme formance and unacceptable from the point case it even escapes the text itself. Meaning of view of the increasingly educated labour became a problem, the object of study, the force. The response was to create more referent, instead of being simply the medium democratic participatory work organisations, of facts. flexible employment schemes, subcontract- Why? It has by now become established ing, autonomous quality circles or teams, that the end of the 1970s marked an end outsourcing and within compa- of a historical period in advanced capitalist nies. The new organisational form was no countries if we look at it from the perspective longer the hierarchy but the network, and its

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node was the project: a task-based uniquely There is no willingness to prescribe norms of funded team with autonomous leadership, how and what we should or should not do. targets and a deadline. Control was no Nevertheless, the political responsibility has longer directed from central management to be attested and the officials have to be down to the divisions, departments and given grounds for decisions about how to the shop-floor stewards; from now on it direct the state’s money to different purposes, was not only internalised in the employees’ among other things. Frame and pro- own individual interest but also externalised grammes that define goals, recommendations to peers and to competitive relationships for programmes and criteria for standards are between operational units and profit centres. needed to achieve the purposes mentioned The public management doctrines that were above. In very many areas supra-national adopted in a short time-span in the mid bodies define the targets. For example in 1980s in the OECD and its member countries European Union framework programmes are applied the same principles to state and local formulated on many issues: development government. Similar problems of bureaucratic of technology, employment, prevention of management were to be eliminated as in the exclusion, regional development, promotion private sector, but a moral dimension was of health, prevention of drug problems and also important: citizens should no longer be harmonization of education and many other seen as subjects of the state; they were put things. These are again translated to national in the position of clients, and the public strategies, policy programmes and eventually service-providing agencies were re-organized to short-term action plans. Local and regional to meet requirements that are often called governments insert these to their own objec- the three Es: Economy (ensuring the best tives and action plans. The formulations of possible terms for endowed resources, imply- these goals are of very general nature in the ing competition between service producers), programmes and their accentuations usually Efficiency (producing more value for money) correspond to those of the general public and Effectiveness (ensuring that outcomes administration thinking: in alcohol and drug conform to intentions) (Power 1997: 50). programmes the goal is the responsibility The central government is no longer autho- of citizens themselves, initiative, networking rized to issue norms to local officials and and relying on the support of neighbourhood service producers such as hospitals, schools, , to name just a few. day care services etc. but only information and From the epistemic point of view, advice, and resources now measured to output governance by programmes and frameworks rather than needs. rather than plans means that society asks itself different kinds of questions than before. Social sciences that were attached to the plan FROM THE GOOD LIFE TO GOOD were expected to say what happens if we do X, PRACTICES and what should be done to make Y happen. Now the questions are: in regard with the three Governance – or management, borrowing Es, which of the projects A, B, C … N meet again the language from the business world – best the objectives of the Programme? For by information is often used to describe the example, the objective might be to minimise new power structure. A better term to high- alcohol-related problems. The central light the moral dimension of the change government does not have the means at would be ‘governance by programmes’ or its disposal to reduce alcohol consumption ‘frameworks which have replaced the plan’. in the country, or is reluctant to use such The moral and political authority of the policy instruments (price increases, permitted state does not suffice to define what the hours of sale and other of the good society is, what kind of life is good ); instead it asks local communities, or bad or how to solve the problems. non-governmental organisations (NGOs),

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businesses, labour unions, churches etc. complicated factors, that the practical social to establish innovative projects and have work in , for example, cannot commit them evaluated for economy, efficiency and only to one or a few explanation models effectiveness (Sulkunen 2006). and their conclusions concerning clients. It is The central concept in goal and framework more useful to observe the effects of the management: ‘’, has been used in existing methods of itself and the science and already choose the methods that seem functioning for a long time. The administration cannot and cost-effective. The innovation thinking is predetermine the results of the researchers dressed in the rhetoric of good practice, and or the direction of the development interests it leans to a sort of new social . of companies, but it can take a stand Clients and employees are given free hands to on the direction of the development in invent new kinds of action models, mutations, general and make strategic policy definitions. and eventually the most fit among them are New ideas come from the ‘grassroots level’, chosen for additional refining on the basis of from field workers and citizens themselves. expert reports. Evaluation is then considered Transferred to social policy, the pattern of the unbiased and unemotional mechanism of ‘innovation thinking’ has assimilated traits of social and natural selection. romantic : people are thought to The other side of pragmatic thinking be creative and the solutions have to be given is moral neutrality. Assumption that the space to develop and grow upwards from methods of social work or the alternatives down under. The researchers should evaluate for control policies could be evaluated only and strengthen these tendencies instead of in regard of their functionality and effec- planning. The primary tasks of evaluation tiveness, presupposes a strong unanimity of are surveillance of expenses and ensuring goals – the employment, health and security quality and supervision of observance of rules of the population being considered good and regulations: tasks which used to belong objectives and repeated offences a bad one, to inspectors and superintendents of state for example. In programme rhetoric neutrality governance. Often they include, though, more leads to abstracticism and definitional – and ambitious goals of generalisation, which are at the same time administrative – ambiguity. called recognizing good practices. Promotion of health is a good example of The expressions ‘good practice’ and ‘what this. Another is management of security. This works’ originate from administration rhetoric calls the acts of officials with a general (Garland 2001), and from there they have name that has a morally neutral flavour. It is spread to social work and public adminis- easy for everyone to accept, but at the same tration in general. This manner of speech is time it expands the range of goals of the an application of solution-oriented therapy officials and experts and blurs the boundaries or pedagogy, which detaches itself from of their actions.The other moral point of views analysing reasons of problematic behaviour related to the matter – the customers’freedom and instead concentrates on the recognition of choice or the sense of justice of many of the effects of alternative action models. citizens demanding more severe punishment The search for reasons is, according to this per- for criminals, for example – can be forgotten spective, not only a waste of time but it might from the standpoint of effectiveness. also have negative implications. When crimi- nals learn about the causes of their behaviour, those causes become ‘vocabularies of THE FICTIONS OF EVALUATION motive’, justifications and rhetoric for escap- RESEARCH ing responsibility (Sykes and Matza 1957). The recognition of good and working From the point of view of the sociology practices is an effort in pragmatic thinking. of knowledge, governance by programmes The behaviour of a person is a sum of such positions the sociologist in a new relationship

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with social practice, exactly like Nowotny ‘best practices’ reflects what we have called et al. (2001) describe it as characteristic the Ethics of Not Taking a Stand, quoting of Mode 2 knowledge production. Social a fieldworker we interviewed on how she research operates in the context of application; advises parents to behave in the drug issue: it is not constrained by disciplinary boundaries ‘The most ethical stand is not to take a stand and the criteria of its accountability are less at all, the parents should decide this for academic than practical: tell us what works, themselves’ (Määttä et al. 2003). and we shall be pleased not to know why has also another legitimating something else might not work. function. It protects the sphere of intimacy, If the idea of ‘pure science’ in the posi- which was the historical goal of the wel- tivist Mode 1 knowledge production was an fare state: the self-responsibility of citizens, illusion, but an illusion in a real context with individual agency and commitment to good real consequences, are the ideals of Mode 2 choices to promote a person’s own health, social science more realistic and convincing? security and well-being. This is not limited to To some extent the answer is positive: social rhetoric or ideological speech, but it is part science that operates in a context and is aware of the everyday life of advanced capitalist of its own vested interests is more honest about society. For example the health care expert itself and potentially also more relevant than system is relatively helpless if the patient is social science built on the fiction of basic unwilling to co-operate: ‘only the medication science and applied research. However, also that is taken will help’. But you cannot Mode 2 science attached to the programme force anyone to co-operate. You cannot get rather than to the plan has its illusions, overweight under control unless consumers as real as the fiction of Mode 1 science eat less. Disciplining consumers’food choices but in a different context and with different directly would be felt as unacceptable pater- consequences. The first illusion arises from nalism. They will have to take responsibility the logic of governance by programmes itself: for their own choices. abstract objectives. In programmes with very concrete targets Programme and evaluation rhetoric make such as weight loss the outcomes are easily politics look rational, and hierarchical measured. However, in many cases standards decision-making, just like business of performance are more ambiguous, and management. But what does state need the audit or evaluation of efficiency and this rhetoric for? Why is it impossible for effectiveness is in fact a process of defining example for a ministry to decide on its strategy and operationalising them, often with perverse in alcohol policy and follow that strategy in effects on the actual operation of the system. financing and other solutions? One reason for A good example is research evaluation. this is the pursuit of political neutrality already In theory, university departments and research discussed above. The ministry does not want institutes are expected to produce relevant to decide or it considers itself incapable to good quality research, but the auditing crite- dictate how municipalities, organisations, rion: articles published in refereed journals, companies – or other ministries – should leads to an increase in the number of such act in order to decrease problems caused journals, with the consequence that fewer by alcohol consumption. To preserve the people read them and the social relevance autonomy of those actors the policy goals of research results declines. Nevertheless, are defined with abstract concepts, of which money is invested in them because the employment, health and security are the effective alternative, such as taxing food or most central ones. It is always possible to alcohol, is not included in the repertoire of reach unanimity concerning those goals, even acceptable policies. though the moral or power resources would Governance by programmes and frame- not always suffice to make concrete policy works thus supports what Nowotny et al. decisions. The rhetoric of ‘what works’ and (2001) consider the key features of the

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Mode 2 science. Abstract objectives of eval- effect is a part of the equipment of science, uation research in the context of application as well as of everyday thinking. We light the encourage transdisciplinarity and pragmatic lamp, roast the ham, start the car, give an division of labour. When the interest is not advice to another person or call a meeting directed at explaining behaviour nor even at assuming on the basis of our prior experience, the mechanisms of effects of the measures that a certain state of affairs will follow. We do taken, but only at the effectiveness of the not usually ask why it results from that action. alternative action models, there is no need Only when the lamp does not get lighted, the for the research of alcohol problems, youth ham does not roast or advice or invitation culture or deviant behaviour but for skil- are not followed, do we start investigating ful evaluation researchers who can flexibly the error. Even then we don’t have to know move from one substance area to another. much about the mechanisms of the causal Corresponding abstracticism is visible in the chain, but we can lean on our prior experience. training of fieldworkers and their division of We routinely change the bulb, check the fuse work. As the French sociologist Robert Castel and the position of the ignition key or whether (1981: 135–44) has claimed, the profession- our advice or invitation has actually been alisation of social work has not actually led received. Only in very exceptional circum- to the often anticipated medicalisation nor stances do we have to lean on expert support, specialisation of other kind. Instead there has that is to say we utilise research-based knowl- developed a paraprofessional mixed type, the edge to explain the mechanism between the general task of which is . cause and the effect and this directs us to look The abstracticism of goal and framework for the error in the different parts of the chain. management has resulted in efficiency and In evaluation research the primary interest effectiveness becoming passkey concepts that of knowledge is similar to our everyday causal are applied everywhere. Sometimes, however, thinking. The interest of knowledge is to they misrepresent the reality that they are establish general laws about social life and to supposed to evaluate. For example, every verify whether the action causes the desired society will need to take care of addicts effect or not. This could be called clinical in some way. For the clients’ welfare as causal thinking. Its objective is not to explain well as for the institutions – the police, the mechanisms of effects, but only to test social offices, penal and medical institutions – pragmatically if they are there, how much they the most relevant questions relate not to vary and are there possibly some ill effects. outcomes in terms of recovery but to the that is based on and the division of labour between controlling and medicine-influenced social policy of the same helping professions. This, however, is not type are examples of clinical causal thinking2. an issue of performance but of ethics and Still, clinical causal thinking has similarly values. Constrained to evaluating efficiency limiting logical conditions as the and effectiveness, Mode 2 social science may tests of the research laboratories. The cause in fact sustain inefficient responses instead of and the effect have to be logically independent asking pragmatically relevant questions about and empirically dependent on one another; their rationale. the cause factor has to be adjustable in an unambiguous and measurable manner; and the effect of other variables has to be eliminated THE RETURN OF CAUSALITY AND ITS experimentally or statistically.Also there have OLD PROBLEMS to exist unambiguous means for measuring the effect, which has to follow the cause The second illusion of the new mode of practi- temporarily. cal social science arises from the requirements Some clinical medical research is able to of efficiency and effectiveness. Both are based come up with these expectations. The medica- on the notion of causality. The concept of ment will stay the same in spite of who it is

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given to and who hands it out, and the human This shift has had implications at three body is approximately the same in different levels: referential (what is studied), epistemic circumstances. Usually it is possible to control (what kinds of questions are asked) and the effect of differences with the reliability sociology of knowledge in a narrow sense that meets the expectations of the practice. (position of scientists in relation to the In social work and social policy the conditions object of their research and to those whose of clinical research can be measured up only knowledge needs they serve). in exceptional circumstances. As Tom Erik I have also argued that Mode 1 social Arnkil and Jaakko Seikkula (2005: 60) have science was a deviation rather than a long claimed, a psychosocial work does not move tradition in modern social science. It was from a certain place, actor or situation to associated with governance by plan in the another remaining the same, as medication. post-war decades of state-driven industri- No ‘method’ or ‘model’ can be independent alisation and construction of the welfare of the agent who delivers it, who receives it, states. It had important functions in providing or that would be conceptually independent of a conceptual portrayal of society and the the effect it aims at. theoretical framework for growing needs for Evaluation is usually performed in a sit- monitoring and information, which now are uation, where a test or even comparative mostly covered by information systems other configuration of any kind is not possible. than the social sciences. However, Mode 1 Ordinarily the evaluator is contacted when social science was also an illusion, and the funding of the project has already been many social scientists and critics were aware granted, its staff and principal idea are of this. decided, and the fieldwork of the project The shift to Mode 2 science was a reaction has already partly started. Some vested to internal developments within the social interests have already been created, the good- sciences but more importantly it reflects the willing mission is an inspirational source for epochal change in the logic of governance action, and there is no time or resources in capitalist societies from the plan to for comparison presupposed by a real eval- programmes and frameworks. This change is uation of effectiveness. The expectation deeply rooted in the structure of capitalist of establishing causality turns into a thin societies which stress individuality and auton- fiction. omy of agents. Fixity on abstract targets, good practices and causal relationships in Mode 2 science are fictions too, but on the other hand, CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION science which is aware of its own context has a greater critical potential and capacity to act In this article I have discussed the relationship as ‘’ than a discipline that of social science to social practice, and argued is divided between pure science and applied that a radical shift occurred in the research. 1980s in all advanced capitalist countries from the positivist mode associated with the idea of the plan to a more context-based science NOTES attached to governance by programmes and frameworks. The change reflects the new practices of governance that were introduced 1 Therborn 1995, table 4.4, p. 66, and table 4.6, at the same historical period in the business p. 69. world as well as in public management. 2 The so-called Cochrane-library collects the results In social science knowledge production the of clinical treatment research, evaluates their validity and draws conclusions on the probabilities of the shift corresponds to a transition from what effects of the methods. Corresponding work has been Gibbons et al. (1997) call a transition from done in social policy under the name of Campbell- Mode 1 to Mode 2 science. cooperation.

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