Critical Nexus or Pluralist Discipline? Institutional Ambivalence and the Future of Canadian Sociology

Abstract

While some scholars believe in a transdisciplinary future for the social sciences and humanities, we argue that sociology would do well to maintain its disciplinary borders, while celebrating the plurality of its intellectual, social, and political content. Although a pluralist position can threaten disciplinary coherence and increase fragmentation, we argue the counterbalance ought to be convergence around shared institutional norms of knowledge production. Establishing these norms is not easy, since there is a great deal of institutional ambivalence at play in the field of sociology. As such, sociology is pushed and pulled between two poles of at least four major continuums of knowledge production, which include the following: (1) interdisciplinary versus discipline-based research; (2) political versus analytical scholarship; (3) professional versus public/policy sociology; and (4) local/national versus global audiences. Since both sides of these ideal-typical continuums contain their own pathologies, we propose adopting a balanced position to correct for the shortcomings of each. Rather than imposing one philosophical or theoretical paradigm for the field, we suggest that embracing the "chaos" of our diverse forms of knowledge and centralizing and integrating findings will serve to strengthen our collective efforts in the long term.

The Missing Memory of Canadian Sociology: Reflexive Government and “the Social Science”

“…Recent arguments in favor of maintaining sociology in an academic disciplinary silo (e.g., Puddephat and McLaughlin ) commonly include concerns about domination of sociology by government in the absence of a university disciplinary base. In recent years, Canadians have had an object lesson in the obnoxious consequences of a government replacing systematic observation and analysis with fundamentalist Christian dogma and neoliberal ideology.…”

The Methodological Divide of Sociology - Evidence From Two Decades of Journal Publications

“…One result of these demarcations is that Sociology is a low-consensus discipline torn between rival camps. These camps align themselves epistemologically either to the natural sciences or the humanities (Leahey and Moody 2014;Puddephatt and Mclaughlin 2015;Turner 2006;Varga 2011). …”

“…This ultimately results in the inability of scholars belonging to different paradigms to understand each other and to exchange ideas. However the exchange of ideas is a necessary prerequisite for producing new sociological knowledge and for facing societal problems in their entirety.We focus on generalist interest publication outlets as they are increasingly important for the dissemination of sociological knowledge (Münch 2018;Moksony et al 2013;Puddephatt and Mclaughlin 2015). Moreover, general interest Sociology journals cover research from a wide range of subfields and therefore are relevant for a large body of the research community.…”

Framing the Game: An Architectonic Analogue for Meta-Theorizing Academic Activities

“…There is little doubt that the communication discipline is fragmented, multi-faceted and complex (Barnett, Huh, Kim, & Park, 2011, p. 467). In fields such as communication (Eadie, 2011;Salomón, 2010;Stanfill, 2012), sociology (Puddephatt & McLaughlin, 2015), political science (Blokland, 2015) and social psychology (Green, 2015), such fragmentation has been singled out as a threat to their disciplinary status and credibility. This analysis suggests an explanation for scholarly activities that provide the raw data for such variegated maps.…”