Recently, I asked whether or not psychology is dead. Admittedly, the question seemed Nietzschean. Lest the psychologists think I’m picking on them, let them be aware that I’ve also asked whether or not philosophy is dead. Psychology dead? Philosophy dead? “What do you mean?” you ask.
Good question. I based that assessment of psychology on changes in the DSM, now standing at version number five. What, pray tell, does that number indicate about all those other DSM versions, that is, numbers one through four? Were they just guessing? Did the species undergo a significant change, a mutation that included alterations to the psyche? Have humans changed dramatically and rapidly enough that the first version of the DSM is no longer applicable to them?
And then, why say “Philosophy is dead”? Why pick on poor philosophers whose goal is simply to explain the “why” of it all, why, for example, we are present in this Cosmos and what are the natures of humanity, reality, and morality? Have you read any physics book lately? Seems to me that the philosophers have turned over some of their obsessions to the physicists, who, by the way, have offered some pretty convincing answers.
I’m not trying to start an interdepartmental war between philosophers and physicists as you might think. Anyway, if conflict did break out, what are the philosophers going to use for weapons? Syllogisms? And if psychologists are well-adjusted because they understand motivation and behavior as they claim, then there’s probably no chance of a hot war started over an insult to their profession. “He’s crazy,” they’ll simply claim, and then coin a new term for DSM VI or VII or XIX to define the special type of craziness. The point? Psychology has apparently changed with the times. Do I insult the discipline when I point out changes in the DSM, such as the use of terms like “gender dysphoria” to replace “gender disorder,” the former more indicative of “dissatisfaction” than the latter’s 1950’s type of labeling that, in the UK, led to the persecution of Alan Turing. What the heck were the psychologists thinking back then? If psychology were truly a mechanism for understanding humans today, if not the humans of 250,000 years ago, wouldn’t it have from the get-go been founded on underlying principles and laws? Look at physics. Newton discovered the underlying laws of macroworld physics. After hundreds of years and a new explanation of gravity by Einstein, Newtonian physics still enables NASA and artillery companies to land a projectile on an intended distant and moving target. You can still use Newton’s work to understand why your bathroom scale reads as it does.
But I’m not so sure that my next intellectual coroner’s report will be met with peace banners, or dismissive reactions, or new numbers in a catalog. I think I’m about to offend sociologists, social workers, and social service employees. At the very least, I expect a robust response from them as I proclaim that sociology is dead. Why should I expect withers to wrinkle as I beat this dead horse? Well, there are hundreds of thousands of people employed in social services and social work, not to mention all those university sociologists who write articles on “trajectory guarding,” “the intersectionality of precarity,” and “value chains.”
Saying “sociology is dead” implies that it was once alive. Oh! No! Stepping on powerful toes here, Donald. Okay, not “dead.” Stop huffing, sociologists. But certainly if not dead, then subject to some scrutiny for tautologies even grandma could point to. And speaking of grandmas, I’ll relate a criticism made some time ago by Stanislav Andreski (Andrzejewski). In his Social Sciences as Sorcery, he criticizes the “pretentious nebulous verbosity” found in the writings of his fellow sociologists. * Almost 40 years after reading his assessment of his discipline, I still remember his proffering an example: Sociological research filled with neologisms and formulas might end with a conclusion, such as “humans are gregarious.” Andreski says something like “which I can well believe because my grandmother told me so.”
Yes. Reams of research papers dedicated to stating the obvious. And now the sociologists have teamed up with the environmental sustainability group, specifically over plastic bags. Yep, in 2019, plastic bags were anathema. Then COVID hit in 2020, and people were advised to keep their reusable, probably disease-ridden, COVID-carrying canvas grocery bags at home. Just before COVID hit, I was walking through the grocery store when I was given reusable cloth bags through a bank promotion. After COVID hit, the grocery store banned the reusable bags in favor of reinstated plastic bags. Sorry, that was a digression. Where were we? Oh! Sociology and sustainability. And for the record, I’m not opposed to sustainability in general. Earth has lots of mouths to feed, and it’s getting more every year.
Sociologists and environmentalists working together. Good combo. Both looking out for the good of humanity—I almost wrote “mankind” but caught myself—or if not specifically for humanity, then both are looking out for the good of this place, that, except for a few on the International Space Station, houses all humans. Or, as Shakespeare writes in Richard II, “This Earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by Natue for herself Against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea….”
If you recall, the ban on plastic bags and straws met resistance across the nation. So, the sociologists went to work to discover the reasons people were so adverse to fostering sustainability and so stuck on plastic bags. Now here’s where conclusions get, for want of a better word, grandma-like. Supposedly, at least according to the lead author of a study entitled “How do I carry all this now?: Understanding Consumer Resistance to Sustainability Interventions,” consumers resist such bans as the one on plastic bags because they “target” an individual behavior associated with or “embedded in” social practices. Remember that term.
Also, for a minute just forget that we’re not talking about the sustainability of plastic bags. Practically speaking, we won’t run out of polyethylene because it is made from fossil fuels, and as we decide to decrease our use of those fuels for driving around and making electricity, we’ll have more available for making plastic. You can try to corner the plastic bag market, but you’ll be overwhelmed just as Curtis Jadwin is overwhelmed in Frank Norris’s novel The Pit, when he tries to control the wheat market. The amount of ever-renewing wheat flowing into the Chicago Board of Trade is the analog of the number of plastic bags that could flow into grocery stores. We can keep making more bags for centuries. So, we’re not talking here about sustaining plastic bags. That makes me wonder what the sociologists are addressing. Do plastic bags destroy soils, making them less nutrient rich and less agriculturally productive?
So, what’s being sustained? The environment in general, I guess, however one wants to define it. Maybe ocean environments in particular. All those plastic bags floating in the ocean will choke fish and mammals, for example. That would mean a diminution in their numbers, and thus, a reduction in sustainability. At least, I think that’s the point. But here’s where Andreski’s grandma comes in. What is a “social practice”?
According to a summary article on the sociologists’/environmentalists’ work, social practices are “activities, materials, and meanings that are similarly understood and shared by a group of people.” ** I know that all new definitions require intellectual bronco-busting, but to include “materials” and “meanings” as “practices” is a bit of a stretch. And then, to make sure you and I can understand at least the fringe on sociology’s in-house terminology, the writer explains, “Eating, cooking, shopping, driving, and reading are examples of social practices shared by large groups.” ** Let me see whether my brain can grasp this highfalutin jargon. Groups of people share the experience of “eating, cooking, shopping, driving, and reading.” Who’da thunk it? I’m devastated by my previous ignorance in this. “I once was blind, but now I see. Hallelujah!”
According to the authors, using plastic bags is a “shared, habituated practice” that I assume falls into the category of “social practice.” And people resist changing a shared, habituated practice because they are concerned about 1) who gets to control the change in such practice, 2) unsettling emotions caused by the change, and 3) the loss of linked practices that together frame their familiar lifestyle. Linked? You use the plastic bags to carry home groceries and then use them to carry out the garbage or to pick up Fido’s doodoo on the streets of Manhattan. If we assume that we don’t change our habits for these three reasons, we have to ask what solutions the sociologists propose.
Before we consider one of their solutions, let’s offer our own suggestions to eliminate plastic bags. If Star Trek-like, we could beam our groceries to our homes, I suppose we could eliminate bags of any kind altogether. Unfortunately, teleportation doesn’t seem to work on cans of beans at this time. Or, if we make larger backpacks and cargo pants with deeper pockets, we could just walk into and waddle out of grocery stores. Yet another solution might be to widen grocery store aisles so that we can drive down each as store employees toss groceries through the open back windows.
But no, those suggestions aren’t going to work. So, what do the erudite sociologists suggest, and does their suggestion have anything to do with socialism, specifically with Mussolini-type fascism?
Yes, if no re-education system works, they want to eliminate the use of plastic bags by having a government entity dictate the control on bags. I can hear the pronouncement in the voices of Sargeant Schultz or Colonel Klink of Hogans Heroes: “You will not use plastic.” But in case a relative does use plastic bags, the government agent will no doubt exclaim, “I see nothing; I know nothing.” Okay, that’s unfair, and you sociologists out there should have reason to complain. I know you mean well. But, in fact, one of the conclusions by the researchers who wrote the paper was “to monitor and adjust practice-based interventions if consumer resistance emerges.” Think about those two words: Monitor and Adjust. The authors end by recommending three main strategies: 1) refocus sensemaking (Is that doublespeak for “re-education camp”); 2) encourage accommodation (That seems innocuous, right?); and 3) accelerate stabilization (whatever that entails) “if consumers are grappling with discomfort…”
Ah! There’s no solution like a government solution, especially one proposed by sociologists.
So, in the sense that there are numerous practitioners, sociology probably isn’t dead. But into what has it morphed?
Notes:
*Andreski, Stanislav. 1972.
**Weingarden, Matt. 2 April 20211. Consumer resistance to sustainability interventions. Phys.org. Online at https://phys.org/news/2021-04-consumer-resistance-sustainability-interventions.html Accessed April 7, 2021.
Good question. I based that assessment of psychology on changes in the DSM, now standing at version number five. What, pray tell, does that number indicate about all those other DSM versions, that is, numbers one through four? Were they just guessing? Did the species undergo a significant change, a mutation that included alterations to the psyche? Have humans changed dramatically and rapidly enough that the first version of the DSM is no longer applicable to them?
And then, why say “Philosophy is dead”? Why pick on poor philosophers whose goal is simply to explain the “why” of it all, why, for example, we are present in this Cosmos and what are the natures of humanity, reality, and morality? Have you read any physics book lately? Seems to me that the philosophers have turned over some of their obsessions to the physicists, who, by the way, have offered some pretty convincing answers.
I’m not trying to start an interdepartmental war between philosophers and physicists as you might think. Anyway, if conflict did break out, what are the philosophers going to use for weapons? Syllogisms? And if psychologists are well-adjusted because they understand motivation and behavior as they claim, then there’s probably no chance of a hot war started over an insult to their profession. “He’s crazy,” they’ll simply claim, and then coin a new term for DSM VI or VII or XIX to define the special type of craziness. The point? Psychology has apparently changed with the times. Do I insult the discipline when I point out changes in the DSM, such as the use of terms like “gender dysphoria” to replace “gender disorder,” the former more indicative of “dissatisfaction” than the latter’s 1950’s type of labeling that, in the UK, led to the persecution of Alan Turing. What the heck were the psychologists thinking back then? If psychology were truly a mechanism for understanding humans today, if not the humans of 250,000 years ago, wouldn’t it have from the get-go been founded on underlying principles and laws? Look at physics. Newton discovered the underlying laws of macroworld physics. After hundreds of years and a new explanation of gravity by Einstein, Newtonian physics still enables NASA and artillery companies to land a projectile on an intended distant and moving target. You can still use Newton’s work to understand why your bathroom scale reads as it does.
But I’m not so sure that my next intellectual coroner’s report will be met with peace banners, or dismissive reactions, or new numbers in a catalog. I think I’m about to offend sociologists, social workers, and social service employees. At the very least, I expect a robust response from them as I proclaim that sociology is dead. Why should I expect withers to wrinkle as I beat this dead horse? Well, there are hundreds of thousands of people employed in social services and social work, not to mention all those university sociologists who write articles on “trajectory guarding,” “the intersectionality of precarity,” and “value chains.”
Saying “sociology is dead” implies that it was once alive. Oh! No! Stepping on powerful toes here, Donald. Okay, not “dead.” Stop huffing, sociologists. But certainly if not dead, then subject to some scrutiny for tautologies even grandma could point to. And speaking of grandmas, I’ll relate a criticism made some time ago by Stanislav Andreski (Andrzejewski). In his Social Sciences as Sorcery, he criticizes the “pretentious nebulous verbosity” found in the writings of his fellow sociologists. * Almost 40 years after reading his assessment of his discipline, I still remember his proffering an example: Sociological research filled with neologisms and formulas might end with a conclusion, such as “humans are gregarious.” Andreski says something like “which I can well believe because my grandmother told me so.”
Yes. Reams of research papers dedicated to stating the obvious. And now the sociologists have teamed up with the environmental sustainability group, specifically over plastic bags. Yep, in 2019, plastic bags were anathema. Then COVID hit in 2020, and people were advised to keep their reusable, probably disease-ridden, COVID-carrying canvas grocery bags at home. Just before COVID hit, I was walking through the grocery store when I was given reusable cloth bags through a bank promotion. After COVID hit, the grocery store banned the reusable bags in favor of reinstated plastic bags. Sorry, that was a digression. Where were we? Oh! Sociology and sustainability. And for the record, I’m not opposed to sustainability in general. Earth has lots of mouths to feed, and it’s getting more every year.
Sociologists and environmentalists working together. Good combo. Both looking out for the good of humanity—I almost wrote “mankind” but caught myself—or if not specifically for humanity, then both are looking out for the good of this place, that, except for a few on the International Space Station, houses all humans. Or, as Shakespeare writes in Richard II, “This Earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by Natue for herself Against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea….”
If you recall, the ban on plastic bags and straws met resistance across the nation. So, the sociologists went to work to discover the reasons people were so adverse to fostering sustainability and so stuck on plastic bags. Now here’s where conclusions get, for want of a better word, grandma-like. Supposedly, at least according to the lead author of a study entitled “How do I carry all this now?: Understanding Consumer Resistance to Sustainability Interventions,” consumers resist such bans as the one on plastic bags because they “target” an individual behavior associated with or “embedded in” social practices. Remember that term.
Also, for a minute just forget that we’re not talking about the sustainability of plastic bags. Practically speaking, we won’t run out of polyethylene because it is made from fossil fuels, and as we decide to decrease our use of those fuels for driving around and making electricity, we’ll have more available for making plastic. You can try to corner the plastic bag market, but you’ll be overwhelmed just as Curtis Jadwin is overwhelmed in Frank Norris’s novel The Pit, when he tries to control the wheat market. The amount of ever-renewing wheat flowing into the Chicago Board of Trade is the analog of the number of plastic bags that could flow into grocery stores. We can keep making more bags for centuries. So, we’re not talking here about sustaining plastic bags. That makes me wonder what the sociologists are addressing. Do plastic bags destroy soils, making them less nutrient rich and less agriculturally productive?
So, what’s being sustained? The environment in general, I guess, however one wants to define it. Maybe ocean environments in particular. All those plastic bags floating in the ocean will choke fish and mammals, for example. That would mean a diminution in their numbers, and thus, a reduction in sustainability. At least, I think that’s the point. But here’s where Andreski’s grandma comes in. What is a “social practice”?
According to a summary article on the sociologists’/environmentalists’ work, social practices are “activities, materials, and meanings that are similarly understood and shared by a group of people.” ** I know that all new definitions require intellectual bronco-busting, but to include “materials” and “meanings” as “practices” is a bit of a stretch. And then, to make sure you and I can understand at least the fringe on sociology’s in-house terminology, the writer explains, “Eating, cooking, shopping, driving, and reading are examples of social practices shared by large groups.” ** Let me see whether my brain can grasp this highfalutin jargon. Groups of people share the experience of “eating, cooking, shopping, driving, and reading.” Who’da thunk it? I’m devastated by my previous ignorance in this. “I once was blind, but now I see. Hallelujah!”
According to the authors, using plastic bags is a “shared, habituated practice” that I assume falls into the category of “social practice.” And people resist changing a shared, habituated practice because they are concerned about 1) who gets to control the change in such practice, 2) unsettling emotions caused by the change, and 3) the loss of linked practices that together frame their familiar lifestyle. Linked? You use the plastic bags to carry home groceries and then use them to carry out the garbage or to pick up Fido’s doodoo on the streets of Manhattan. If we assume that we don’t change our habits for these three reasons, we have to ask what solutions the sociologists propose.
Before we consider one of their solutions, let’s offer our own suggestions to eliminate plastic bags. If Star Trek-like, we could beam our groceries to our homes, I suppose we could eliminate bags of any kind altogether. Unfortunately, teleportation doesn’t seem to work on cans of beans at this time. Or, if we make larger backpacks and cargo pants with deeper pockets, we could just walk into and waddle out of grocery stores. Yet another solution might be to widen grocery store aisles so that we can drive down each as store employees toss groceries through the open back windows.
But no, those suggestions aren’t going to work. So, what do the erudite sociologists suggest, and does their suggestion have anything to do with socialism, specifically with Mussolini-type fascism?
Yes, if no re-education system works, they want to eliminate the use of plastic bags by having a government entity dictate the control on bags. I can hear the pronouncement in the voices of Sargeant Schultz or Colonel Klink of Hogans Heroes: “You will not use plastic.” But in case a relative does use plastic bags, the government agent will no doubt exclaim, “I see nothing; I know nothing.” Okay, that’s unfair, and you sociologists out there should have reason to complain. I know you mean well. But, in fact, one of the conclusions by the researchers who wrote the paper was “to monitor and adjust practice-based interventions if consumer resistance emerges.” Think about those two words: Monitor and Adjust. The authors end by recommending three main strategies: 1) refocus sensemaking (Is that doublespeak for “re-education camp”); 2) encourage accommodation (That seems innocuous, right?); and 3) accelerate stabilization (whatever that entails) “if consumers are grappling with discomfort…”
Ah! There’s no solution like a government solution, especially one proposed by sociologists.
So, in the sense that there are numerous practitioners, sociology probably isn’t dead. But into what has it morphed?
Notes:
*Andreski, Stanislav. 1972.
**Weingarden, Matt. 2 April 20211. Consumer resistance to sustainability interventions. Phys.org. Online at https://phys.org/news/2021-04-consumer-resistance-sustainability-interventions.html Accessed April 7, 2021.
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