Rather than ask the question, "What if sociologists had influence?", the author should ask, "What does sociology need to change as a discipline in order to earn influence?"<p>The answer would be rigor. A huge problem with sociology is the dependence on the story. Unfortunately, since the sociologist is often a human with their own biases, they are going to see what they want to see.<p>For example, I purchased the Kindle version of the book the author recommends ("Coming Up Short"). I turned to the appendix, where the author describes her research methodology. And sure enough, the research involves open-ended questions ("Walk me through a typical day at work." "Is there a time you lost a job? Could you describe it?") that could lead the interviewee to respond in any way they want.<p>There are <i>many</i> problems with this, such as : 1) the interviewee may inadvertently invent convenient narratives that provide comfort but aren't accurate, 2) the interviewer may mis-interpret the answers, etc.<p>How are we supposed to develop policy off of this? Sure, it's a great starting point for <i>starting</i> research, but the narrative- or story-based approach should never be the <i>conclusion</i>.<p>This is why economics is so much more trusted. Although economics has flaws, and the study of econometrics can sometimes lead to incorrect conclusions, it at least uses objective data and metrics, which are less susceptible to error, providing a much more grounded approach to policy decisions.
Sociologists have had a very large impact on policy in the last century. For example, the hundreds of billions spent on public housing was based on ideas that came out of sociology -- <a href="https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/dvPJvrleZI_wckWhjsRNPPRl4xU=/1000x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4432835/LOC02hr.0.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/dvPJvrleZI_wckWhjsRNPPRl4xU...</a> It just didn't work.<p><i>And a large body of sociological research touches on the idea of stigmatization, including of the poor and of racial minorities.</i><p>Many school reforms ideas (desegregation, elimination of corporal punishment, reducing emphasis on rote learning, etc) were based on this theory. The Brown versus Board of Education decision cited sociological research along these lines, for example. But the theories were wrong, so the solutions did not work. Professor Raymond Wolters has two exhaustive (if depressing) histories of these reforms and their failures. See <i>The Long Crusade: Profiles in Education Reform, 1967-2014</i> and <i>The Burden of Brown: Thirty Years of School Desegregation</i><p><i>It’s one thing, for example, to outlaw housing discrimination based on race. But if real estate agents and would-be home sellers subtly shun minority buyers, the effect can be the same. Professor Gans of Columbia has argued for decades that the stigmatization of poor Americans fuels entrenched, persistent poverty.</i><p>Sociologists haven't been ignored -- this was the theory behind Section 8 Vouchers which is a very large program. But again, the theory was wrong and the solutions did not work. See <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/american-murder-mystery/306872/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/america...</a> and <a href="http://devinhelton.com/historical-amnesia.html" rel="nofollow">http://devinhelton.com/historical-amnesia.html</a>
<i>For starters, while economists tend to view a job as a straightforward exchange of labor for money, a wide body of sociological research shows how tied up work is with a sense of purpose and identity.</i><p>Amusingly, I've noticed that most HR managers have psychology degrees. I've wondered: What if HR managers had economics degrees. Would we be paid more?<p>When I was a manager, I received some training from the HR department, and we were constantly reminded that our employees didn't really want to get paid more. This was based on "research." I wondered if this was the result of the researchers simply delivering the result that their patrons wanted to hear.<p>I've decided to favor an economic view over a psychological one: Be nice to people, of course, but treat them as <i>homo economicus,</i> behaving rationally in regard to their own self interest. While this view isn't proven, I think it's better than making assumptions about their psychological motivations that are likely to be biased by factors such as social class, age, gender, and possibly race and ethnicity.
I've found sociology and its approaches to be profoundly insightful. Even though I'm a trained philosopher, one of my favorite thinkers is not a philosopher, but Max Weber, the founding father of sociology. Economists probably have more influence due to the fact that economics is perceived to be a "hard science". The irony, of course, is that it isn't.
You're assuming economists have influence. The truth is, the best economic policy is almost always politically unpopular, and thus never gets realised, and the most predictive economists often have reason to not share their opinions. Economics as a science is in fine shape, it's politics which is the problem.
Both areas of study are basically looking at human nature on the macro level, it strikes me as interesting that they are different fields of study at all. While I think they're both worth studying and listening to, neither seem to be totally correct on any one particular subject since the elusive "average person" doesn't appear to exist. Take anyone who might fall into an average category and they will always have outliers in other areas. How many people do you personally know are just following the average human life pattern and never do anything outside of it? People are just inherently unpredictable and irrational.
In my experience sociologists would like to do the work of the statisticians without working with big scale data and without understanding even the most simple statistical models. Thank's god they do not have more influence.<p>This statement is based on a study I made by myself using a representative sample: I have 3 sociology PHDs in my team.
Maybe this is just relative to my area of work, but I often feel that the sociologists I work/am friends with are in a dangerous balancing act of attempting to influence policy while also conducting unbiased research inquiries. While this isn't completely unique to sociology, I would argue that the area of study can make it difficult to form research questions and studies which are not confounded by current public policy or personal opinion.<p>To me it would seem intuitive to have an additional field or area of focus that emphasizes applying sociological findings to public policy.
I think this is a false premise. Politicians/decision makers merely listen to people they want to listen to speak. There are "schools of thought" in economics that really only exist because someone wants to hear that viewpoint.
> For starters, while economists tend to view a job as a straightforward exchange of labor for money, a wide body of sociological research shows how tied up work is with a sense of purpose and identity.<p>This is precisely why handing the reins over to sociologists would be dangerous. The concept of "identity" is massively over-valued in our society, with very little coherent critical commentary available. Somehow it's seen as an unassailable, unquestionable truism: every person has an identity, and they build on it throughout their entire life. Giving sociologist-types more power to shape policy will lead to an increase in the acceptance and enforcement of this erroneous thought process.<p>Erroneous because one's "identity" is, in reality, of extremely limited utility and the source of much suffering: does my identity properly reflect who I really am? Are others being respectful to my identity? Are they behaving correctly toward me considering my identity? Is my identity subject to systematic oppression? Should I change my identity or keep it the same? How many people know about my current identity vs. my precious identity that I promoted for many years?<p>Spending time ruminating and basing policy on this concept of identity is a huge waste of resources, and what's the outcome? Pure, unadulterated suffering.<p>Identity has its place as a tool for conducting transactions and working in groups, but sociologists and their ilk have elevated it to an all-encompassing life-defining concern, and that's just not reasonable. Given how much we're already burdening ourselves here in the West with identity politics and other massive wastes of resources, I cringe at the thought of sociologists having MORE power over our lives.
I find it interesting that the article doesn't mention actions that might be taken if sociologists had more influence. Not a word about what we might do differently.
As someone with a strong background in economics, I think this would be a wonderful idea (reasons scattered through comments in this thread).<p>I do have a question though: What is the central organising question or theme of sociology?<p>For economics, I would answer "the allocation of scarce resources to greatest effect". I'm not sure I can come up with a simlar statement for sociology, and online searches over the past few minutes aren't turning up anything strongly resembling such a statement.
A sampling of comments, by economists, on economics. This is a longish listing, but I'll point out that there are mentions here from multiple Nobel prize laureates and from across the spectrum of political inclinations (Piketty and Galbraith on the left to Hayek and Mises on the right). There's long been a strong critique of economics from within the profession, and this listing only <i>touches</i> the surface.<p>The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.<p>― Joan Robinson<p>Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.<p>― John Kenneth Galbraith<p>The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.<p>― John Kenneth Galbraith<p>…the discipline of economics has yet to get over its childish passion for mathematics and for purely theoretical and often highly ideological speculation, at the expense of historical research and collaboration with the other social sciences.<p>― Thomas Piketty<p>Too large a proportion of recent “mathematical” economics are mere concoctions, as imprecise as the initial assumptions they rest on, which allow the author to lose sight of the complexities and interdependencies of the real world in a maze of pretentious and unhelpful symbols.<p>― John Maynard Keynes<p>We move from more or less plausible but really arbitrary assumptions, to elegantly demonstrated but irrelevant conclusions.<p>― Wassily Leontief<p>Existing economics is a theoretical system which floats in the air and which bears little relation to what happens in the real world.<p>― Ronald Coase<p>The economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth.<p>― Paul Krugman<p>Economics has become increasingly an arcane branch of mathematics rather than dealing with real economic problems.<p>― Milton Friedman<p>Modern economics is sick. Economics has increasingly become an intellectual game played for its own sake and not for its practical consequences for understanding the economic world. Economists have converted the subject into a sort of social mathematics in which analytical rigour is everything and practical relevance is nothing.<p>― Mark Blaug<p>Economics has never been a science – and it is even less now than a few years ago.<p>― Paul Samuelson<p>For far too long economists have sought to define themselves in terms of their supposedly scientific methods. In fact, those methods rely on an immoderate use of mathematical models, which are frequently no more than an excuse for occupying the terrain and masking the vacuity of the content.<p>― Thomas Piketty<p>In my youth it was said that what was too silly to be said may be sung. In modern economics it may be put into mathematics.<p>― Ronald Coase<p><a href="https://unlearningeconomics.wordpress.com/tag/economists/" rel="nofollow">https://unlearningeconomics.wordpress.com/tag/economists/</a><p>If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses. They’d sit in their studies and say to themselves, “what would I do if I were a horse?<p>― Ronald Coase<p>Any man who is only an economist is unlikely to be a good one.<p>― F. A. Hayek<p>The study of economics has been again and again led astray by the vain idea that economics must proceed according to the pattern of other sciences.<p>― Ludwig von Mises<p>The use of mathematics has brought rigor to economics. Unfortunately, it has also brought mortis.<p>― Robert Heilbroner<p>An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today.<p>― Laurence J. Peter<p>When an economist says the evidence is “mixed,” he or she means that theory says one thing and data says the opposite.<p>― Richard Thaler<p>The First Law of Economists: For every economist, there exists an equal and opposite economist.<p>The Second Law of Economists: They’re both wrong.<p>― David Wildasin
The fact that a field misses one prediction doesn't invalidate the entire field. Would you declare climate science invalid because it didn't predict the hiatus?