What is sociology?

• In Event: Theory Section Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 7

Abstract

Sociology stands at a crossroads, caught between its modern foundations and a postmodern reality. At the heart of this juncture lies a deceptively simple question: What is sociology? How we answer it will determine whether the discipline plays a meaningful role in shaping 21st-century society or retreats into a self-referential academic system speaking only to itself.

This article argues that defining sociology primarily as a science is a limiting and outdated legacy of its Enlightenment-era origins, one that neither accurately describes what contemporary sociologists do nor provides adequate guidance for what they should be doing. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari's tripartite framework developed in answering What is Philosophy?, I contend that sociology is better understood as encompassing three distinct yet equally necessary modes of creation: philosophy, which creates concepts; science, which constructs functions that measure and test reality; and art, which produces percepts and affects that engage lived experience and emotion. Together, these components provide the ontological framework needed to create new realities, describe and test their operation, and decide which we wish to actualize.

While this framework not only addresses fundamental problems created by defining sociology within the limited confines of science and more accurately describes the full spectrum of what sociologists actually do, there is a greater urgency. The concept of sociology as a science was developed to serve the priorities of a modern era, where the primary concern was mastery over the natural world. But this conception renders it incapable of addressing the priorities of our current postmodern era, which is guided more by reality construction than explanation. Without an appropriate metaphysical framework capable of engaging in this endeavor, we are left to cede the vital questions of our era to the powerful, nefarious forces operating today that will answer them for us.

Author

• Robert Freeland, Appalachian State University