Liberation Sociology

Joe R. Feagin, Hernan Vera, Kimberly Ducey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317264682
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Many people of all ages today continue to be attracted to sociology and other social sciences because of their promise to contribute to better political, social, and moral understandings of themselves and their social worlds-and often because they hope it will help them to build a better society. In a world of new movements and deepening economic inequality following the Great Recession, this new edition is vital. It features dozens of new examples from the latest research, with an emphasis on the next generation of liberation sociologists. The authors expand on the previous edition with the inclusion of sections on decolonisation paradigms in criminology, critical speciesism, and studies of environmental racism and environmental privilege. There is an expanded focus on participatory action research, and increased coverage of international liberation social scientists. Work by psychologists, anthropologists, theologians, historians, and others who have developed a liberation orientation for their disciplines is also updated and expanded.

CHAPTER 1

What Is Liberation Sociology?

In the spring of 1845 one of the founders of the liberation social science tradition, the young Karl Marx, wrote that “the philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.”¹ Sociologists centrally concerned about human emancipation and liberation take this insight seriously. The point of liberation sociology is not just to research the social world but also to assist in changing it in the direction of expanded human rights, participatory democracy, and social justice.

Liberation sociology is concerned with alleviating or eliminating various social oppressions and with creating societies that are more just and egalitarian. An emancipatory sociology not only seeks sound scientific knowledge but also often takes sides with, and takes the outlook of, the oppressed and envisions an end to that oppression. It adopts what Gideon Sjoberg has called a countersystem approach. A countersystem analyst consciously tries to step outside her or his own society to better view and critically assess it. A countersystem perspective often envisions a society where people have empathetic compassion for human suffering and a real commitment to reducing that suffering. It envisions research and analysis relevant to everyday human problems, particularly those of the socially oppressed. The countersystem standard is broader than that of a particular society or nation-state. Using a strong human rights standard, such as the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the liberation social scientist accents broader societal and international contexts and assesses existing social institutions against a vision of more humane social arrangements.²

The consequences of taking this standpoint are explored throughout this book. We are eclectic in our approach and influenced by Enlightenment, modernist, and postmodernist theorists. Neo-Marxist, feminist, and antiracist conceptions have had their impact on our thinking. Moreover, the liberation theology of Latin America and Africa and important developments in the way we think about the mind and the body no—longer a viable dichotomy—have also been influential (see Chapter 2).

We do not propose here another abstract or doctrinaire approach but rather an emancipatory way to practice good sociology. Taking sides with, and understanding the outlook of, the socially oppressed can have profound consequences for the stages of social research: on how we know what we know, on what we choose to research, on the nature of our scientific endeavor, on the methods we choose, and on the conclusions we can draw from research.

A sociologist’s, or a social research team’s, choice of what to study is consciously goal-oriented. This always subjective choice is not made in social isolation but according to personal and collective tastes and convictions and is often in response to enticements such as grant monies, career prestige, or job security. Thus, many sociologists choose to deeply research US society with an eye to changing it for the better, whereas others choose to narrowly research topics whose description or analysis is mainly sought by leading agents of the status quo. Some social scientists go into the field and critically examine the impact that powerful nation-states or large corporations have on people’s everyday lives and provide that information to proponents of change, whereas others limit their research to less critical descriptions of the views or attitudes of the general population for an establishment funding agency. Some choose to dig deeply into a society’s foundations, including its systems of social control and information distribution, whereas others choose to do only surface-level research that helps those who head dominant institutions perform their roles more successfully.

Some social science research emphasizes its policy relevance for those at the helm of the nation-state or corporations. In contrast, the research of liberation sociology is generally defined by its usefulness to those who are oppressed and struggling for their liberation. A contemporary example of a sociologist who exemplifies the liberation sociology message is Peyman Vahabzadeh from the University of Victoria in Canada. As a student in Iran, he supported the overthrow of the reviled Shah of Iran, who with US help deposed a democratically elected government. As a refugee, he found a new homeland in Canada. Through it all, Vahabzadeh remained haunted by the fate of his fellow Iranians, including his brother, who survived one tyranny (the Shah) only to face another (the Ayatollahs). His brother was one among many murdered by Iran’s leaders in the Islamic Republic.³

Presently, Vahabzadeh’s research emphasizes the constitutive role of social movements in Iran. From the women’s movement, to the student movement, to the workers’ movements and trade unionism, to ethnic and environmental movements, he studies emerging secular politics. His path to liberation sociology makes clear an agonizing fact of society: the prevalence of violence in countless forms that coexists with innumerable injustices. He has dedicated his research, teaching, and activism to nonviolent alternatives for social change, while exposing systemic and frequently hidden forms of violence. But “most rewarding,” for Vahabzadeh, “is training a new generation of activists.”⁴

Radical phenomenology has become a guiding theory and method that informs Vahabzadeh’s work on human collective action and social movements. A contemporary addition to the tradition of phenomenological sociology, radical phenomenology situates thinking and acting in epochal frames, presenting truth as temporal and conditioned by diverse periods and offering dissimilar and shifting possibilities for thinking and acting. Vahabzadeh reassesses democratic discourse, the notion of rights, liberal democratic regimes, time and epochs, oppression, and the practice of sociology itself.⁵ As he told us,

Radical phenomenology offers a glance into the epochal frames in which Truths become dominant and matters-of-fact. By showing that Truth has a temporal character and thus rises and falls, radical phenomenology cultivates an approach that is always in search of, and attuned to, the new. The new always reveals itself through action and as such the sobriety of the actors will decide the common future of humans and nonhumans in terms not imposed by regimes of truth.⁶

Another influential Iranian sociologist is Sarah Shari’ati Mazinani at the University of Tehran. She is a public intellectual and regular commentator on women’s status and social justice. She is the daughter of Iranian liberation sociologist and theorist Ali Shari’ati—one of the most important Iranian intellectuals of the twentieth century. Shari’ati offered a liberationist reading of Shi’i Islam and is said to have influenced the younger generation that participated in the 1979 revolution. He supported the Algerian Front de Libétion Nationale and had correspondences with Frantz Fanon and Jean-Paul Sartre.⁷

Like her father, Shari’ati Mazinani is a defender of social justice and insists that sociologists be interested in practical questions. Mohammad Amin Ghaneirad, a sociologist for the National Research Institute for Science Policy, an Iranian think tank, has explained Shari’ati Mazinani’s position well. According to Ghaneirad, she endorses what some Iranian sociologists call “clinical sociology.” Clinical sociology suggests that theory have an applied purpose, namely, to determine the most effective means for healing society. As Ghaneirad puts it, “The clinical sociologist enters the society and experiences various social phenomena and analyzes them with theoretical tools available to her/him rather than making judgments based on his/her theories from a distance.”⁸

Commitments to alleviating human suffering or to peace, human rights, social justice, and real democracy, as evidenced in the research, teaching, and activism of Vahabzadeh and Shari’ati Mazinani, politicize the practice of sociology no more than the social science commitments that assert indifference and supposedly value-free methods or neutral knowledge.

One of the exciting developments over recent decades has been the emergence of an array of critical social theories in the humanities and social sciences. These include, among others, feminist theory, postmodern theory, queer theory, antiracist theory, and a variety of Marxist theories. Numerous sociologists have joined progressive social science organizations. Since the 1960s, critical social theory and research have frequently been published in books and certain social science journals.⁹ As sociologist Berch Berberoglu has noted, “This new generation of critical scholars—envisioning a society without exploitation, oppression, and domination of one class, race, sex, or state by another—helped provide the tools for analysis for the critical study of social issues and social problems that confront contemporary capitalist society.”¹⁰

In their research and analysis, most critical social analysts press for the liberation of human beings from oppressive social conditions. Most research the larger institutional contexts and macrostructures of oppression, domination, and exploitation and yet also view such structures as crashing into the everyday lives of human beings. The daily experiences of oppressed and subjugated peoples are a central focus and concern. Moreover, as a rule, critical social theorists do not focus only on the negative realities and consequences of oppression but often target issues and strategies of human liberation from that oppression (see Chapter 7). These theoretical frameworks generally see resistance to oppression and domination as beginning “at home, in people’s everyday lives—sexuality, family roles, workplace.”¹¹ These critical social thinkers support the agency and action of human beings in their own liberation.

EMPOWERING PEOPLE

One Effort at Liberation Sociology: Project Censored

Let us briefly examine an example of another sociological effort toward societal liberation—a research project called Project Censored that has had a significant impact in the United States. Carl Jensen, a Sonoma State University sociologist, launched this national research effort in the 1970s to explore whether there was systematic omission of important and newsworthy events and issues in the mainstream US media.

In discussions with us, Jensen has noted that his quest was stimulated in part by bewilderment over the reelection of Richard Nixon by a landslide only months after the news of the Watergate break-in, one of the more sensational political crimes in US history—in which Nixon’s campaign organization was then known to be involved.¹² Jensen’s knowledge of the mainstream press was useful in explanation: “While there was substantial information available tying the administration in with the Watergate burglary, the media did not put the issue on the national agenda until after the presidential election in November 1972.”¹³ Therefore, the American people who went to the polls in that fateful November were generally “uninformed about the true significance of Watergate.” In effect, the mass media fostered the reelection of a criminal politician, Richard Nixon.

Jensen’s bewilderment is an attitude toward events that has propelled the research of many generations of scientists. Galileo, Albert Einstein, Karl Marx, W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and many others also refused to accept what was happening before their eyes as unproblematic, routine, or natural. They asked, “Why?” “How?” and “Under what conditions?” As in other countersystem sociology projects, this attitude was coupled with a desire to change a problematical society, to make a difference. Jensen imagined a world with more democracy and one with a freer flow of honest and accurate information.

An attitude of concern about what happens in the social world is not easy to translate into research. Many other people may be looking at the same happenings and seeing something ordinary and not worth significant research. Jensen had come to understand an important issue but learned as well that “no one else seemed to share that knowledge.”¹⁴ He queried sociology departments at universities, seeking advice, yet received no response. Alfred McClung Lee, a past president of the American Sociological Association, whose work we examine later, was one of the few who encouraged this innovative media project.

Interestingly, Jensen’s main support came from the lower-middleclass and working-class students who took his annual seminar on media censorship issues. In 1976 this seminar began to conduct the research he had in mind, and Project Censored was born. This project became “a personal crusade” that led him to cut back his teaching activities in the mid-1980s. Sociology departments seldom have resources or the inclination to finance internal research projects, particularly those with such a progressive intent. It was not until 1989 that Jensen got a grant from the CS Fund, one of the few foundations that support innovative boat-rocking research projects. This breakthrough allowed him to better produce and disseminate the media research results. In the twenty-first century, Project Censored continues to have an impact on domestic and global public access to mass media information. After Jensen retired from the project, sociologist Peter Phillips was brought in to shepherd the operations of Project Censored. In 2010 Mickey Huff, a historian, became the director and has labored with others to expand their affiliates program to include hundreds of faculty and students at many colleges and universities to help uncover important news stories.

According to Project Censored’s mission statement on its website (www.projectcensored.org), “Project Censored educates students and the public about the importance of a truly free press for democratic self-government. We expose and oppose news censorship and we promote independent investigative journalism, media literacy, and critical thinking.” To identify the news stories, Project Censored relies on numerous researchers, especially college students participating in the annual Project Censored seminar at Sonoma State University. These students analyze the news story nominations received from journalists, educators, librarians, researchers, and the general public. They examine the nominations and after a critical discussion decide which can be considered censored in the mainstream media. The research offers students an opportunity to learn by participating in field research.

Every year, Project Censored then publishes a list of the twenty-five most censored or ignored news stories. By ranking the serious news stories and disseminating the details about them, Project Censored better informs the public. For example, in 1995 the media ignored a story about sixty-eight elderly men and women who were dumped in a mass g...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Dedication
• 1 What Is Liberation Sociology?
• 2 Improving Human Societies: Reassessing the Classical Theorists
• 3 US Sociology from the 1890s to the 1970s: Instrumental Positivism and Its Challengers
• 4 Sociology Today
• 5 Sociology in Action
• 6 Doing Liberation Social Science: Participatory Action Research Strategies
• 7 Liberation Theory and Liberating Action: The Contemporary Scene
• 8 Sociology, Present and Future: Two Sociologies
• 9 Epilogue: The Challenges of Teaching Liberation Sociology
• Notes
• Index
• About the Authors