The Role of Symbolic Boundaries in the Social Stratification of Intellectuals

• In Event: 545 - Section on Sociology of Culture Roundtable Session.
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 07. Symbolic Boundaries

Abstract

Merton proposed an approach to the social stratification of scientists that was predicated on a distinction between the social processes of science and the “content” of natural scientific knowledge, which led him to a question-begging, meritocratic view of stratification (the best scientists get the most rewards). Merton's view has been criticized for overlooking the contingent and practical ways that scientists struggle to control meaning—not just of scientific texts but of all of the cultural means by which they interact with the world, including how they view the purpose of science or how “rationality” or “interestedness” is identified. An alternative view of stratification is promoted which draws on the work of Bourdieu and Gieryn to explain how the evaluation of scientific claims derives in part from the stratified distribution of material resources. In this view, the practical work of inscribing and defending boundaries can be considered a property of a stratified field that serves as a means by which stratification is reproduced. With practical cultural reasoning in the foreground, it is argued, approaches to the stratification of scientific fields can serve as a starting point for examining stratification in other intellectual fields where knowledge is less easily mistaken as absolute, such as social science and journalism.

Author

• Will Keats-Osborn, University of British Columbia