Theory-Work
Theoretical work should strive, among other things, to improve the precision, clarity, and coherence of our ideas.
This involves cultivating good habits.
For example,
One important habit for theorizing is just the following: as one writes a period at the end of the sentence, to stop and ask oneself “am I sure this is true? Let me entertain the opposite. Do I have any reason to reject it other than my desire to go forward with my own argument?”
Martin (2014, pp. 10–11)
Sometimes it involves avoiding common traps—e.g., the three “nuance traps” described by Kieran Healy:
First is the ever more detailed, merely empirical description of the world. This is the nuance of the fine-grain. It is a rejection of theory masquerading as increased accuracy. Second is the ever more extensive expansion of some theoretical system in a way that effectively closes it off from rebuttal or disconfirmation by anything in the world. This is the nuance of the conceptual framework. It is an evasion of the demand that a theory be refutable. And third is the insinuation that a sensitivity to nuance is a manifestation of one’s distinctive (often metaphorically expressed and at times seemingly ineffable) ability to grasp and express the richness, texture, and flow of social reality itself. This is the nuance of the connoisseur. It is mostly a species of self-congratulatory symbolic violence
Healy (2017, pp. 120–21)
Relatedly, sociologists will sometimes stretch their concepts to fit new cases in such a way that brings about the careless redefinition of important terms. For example, Martin (2014) cites Niklas Luhmann saying that “All meaninglessness… has meaning again through its strangeness.” The statement is only true if we accept a new definition for the word meaning. But why should we?
Most generally, whenever we find ourselves rushing to claim that “things outside of any set are themselves in the set” we may be changing our terminology in ways we do not understand. And if we make a habit of it, we’ll end up using meaningless statements.
Martin (2014, p. 13)
In short, good theory-work should give us the tools to avoid common traps. It should enable us to tell apart good nuance (e.g. getting important details correct, avoiding oversimplifications) from bad nuance. It should enable us to tell apart good empirical tautologies (e.g., “people try to be good, and good is what ever people say is good”) from bad argumentative tautologies (i.e., assuming at one place what we are claiming to prove at another).
Deepities
Good theory-work should also prevent us from saying deepities.
A deepity is a proposition that seems both important and true —and profound— but that achieves this effect by being ambiguous. On one reading it is manifestly false, but it would be earth-shaking if it were true; on the other reading it is true but trivial. The unwary listener picks up the glimmer of truth from the second reading, and the devastating importance from the first reading, and thinks, Wow! That’s a deepity.
Dennett (2013, p. 56)
In other words, good theory-work should constrain our thinking so that saying stupid things becomes much harder.
Constructionist arguments are not deepities
Deepities are found all over social science and the humanities, in the sense that ambiguous statements will get rewarded if they seem profound. A lot of constructionist arguments, for example, become deepities when they take the form “\(X\) is socially constructed, therefore \(X\) is not real”.
But most sociologists often take the opposite perspective: “\(X\) is real because it is socially constructed”.1
The logic behind constructionist arguments is fairly straightforward.
Social constructionists about \(X\) tend to hold that:
- \(X\) need not have existed, or need not be at all as it is. \(X\), or \(X\) as it is at present, is not determined by the nature of things; it is not inevitable.
Very often they go further, and urge that:
- \(X\) is quite bad as it is.
- We would be much better off if \(X\) were done away with, or at least radically transformed.
Hacking (1999, p. 6)
This kind of argument is not trivial when \(X\) is taken for granted—i.e., when \(X\) appears to be inevitable. Take the notion of racecraft, which is used to describe how social hierarchy gets projected into “nature” in the form of “race.”
Consider the statement “black Southerners were segregated because of their skin color”—a perfectly natural sentence to the ears of most Americans, who tend to overlook its weird causality.
Fields and Fields (2014, p. 17)
How can skin color cause segregation? How can skin color cause a stop-and-frisk incident?
In a way, this is the opposite of Dennet’s “deepity.” It is a statement that looks trivial and true at first glance. But, upon closer reflection, it has no well-formed meaning. And if it were true, it would have earth shattering consequences to our conception of causality. Which begs the question: why did it originally seem so unremarkable?
At their most ambitious, social constructionist arguments are an indictment of folk social theory (or “the culture”). They remind us that many arbitrary things come to be seen as “natural” or “inevitable” in the course of everyday life.
References
Footnotes
This is what drove Durkheim to speak of social facts and it’s what drives contemporary sociologists to speak of institutions.↩︎