Three Theses on Methodology

Sociology is Philosophy-Neutral

Philosophers helps us in two ways. Their primary import is to provide guidelines on how one should live one’s life and what one must privilege in one’s routine existence. Kierkegaard, Sartre and Nietzsche are exemplars of this aspect of philosophy. Leaps of faith, honesty to oneself and readiness to rebel are the kinds of exhortations these philosophers exclaim in ringing tones.

Additionally, philosophers also instruct us on how to access meanings of things that are ultimately subjective. The questions such as ‘What is beauty?’ ‘What is the essence of things?’ and ‘Why live if we must die?’ have bothered Kant, Hegel and Heidegger, among others. Yet, in spite of their absorbing arguments, their conclusions are, at best, beliefs and lack objective standards.

This does not take away from the fact that philosophy helps us live fully and arrive at life choices that are fundamentally our own. Philosophers respond to issues that worry and disturb humans everywhere. Religion, at least its spiritual side, also asks questions that bother us all, but as they are premised on an afterlife, or what happens after we die, sociologists can easily skirt around them.

Thus, while we have little difficulty in separating religion from social science, we are often seduced by philosophy. This happens when we use philosophical aphorisms or statements to buttress what is strictly a matter of science. In all sciences, social science included, propositions must have an empirical bearing because they are proof-demanding.

Objective truth in science aspires to the status of statements like ‘wood floats’ or ‘earth revolves round the sun’ regardless of what a ‘higher authority’ might advocate. Scientific propositions are demonstrable and communicable projections of phenomenal reality. As communicability is essential, scientific language cannot be rhetorical and rich with meaning.

The unit of a scientific fact is datum, and that datum should be accessible to all. When a healer sees an aura around a patient, this separates that specialist from the rest on a supranatural principle, for others, less gifted, cannot see that glow. A modern doctor, however, looks at the thermometer, hears through the stethoscope and examines scans, and so can any other interested person.

If the body temperature is 98.4°F, it will be the same no matter who reads the thermometer. It will not budge if the language of communication is English or Hindi, or if the doctor is an existentialist or a Hegelian. If a person has pneumonia, the stethoscope will pick up the bubbling heave of the lung, which again would be a culturally neutral experience.

This ability to communicate facts objectively is the strength of sociology as a science. An existentialist may ‘laugh’ with Kierkegaard at established custom, or condemn it as ‘bad faith’ like Sartre did, but where is the proof? A Kierkegaard or a Sartre stands out for the ability to express a sentiment elegantly and well, not for objective verification.

If along comes Hegel and objects to Sartre or Kierkegaard, asserting instead that institutionalisation is essential to prevent ideas remaining in the air, how can that be proven? If Sartre says, ‘hell is other people’, but Emmanuel Levinas is convinced that ‘ethics is other people’, whose argument should one side with? Is there an objective marker? No.

Just because Sartre mocked institutional structures does not mean peasants are justified in revolting. Just because Hegel said that one should adhere to institutions does not mean peasants should not revolt. How does one prefer one over the other? At the end, we remain enraptured in the realm of beliefs and predispositions, both alien to scientific method.

I can choose to be Hegelian or Kierkegaardian, and I do not need facts to tell me if I am right or wrong. If Nietzsche recommends we must live dangerously to know what life is, it must resonate with my subjective experience, not objective proof. Philosophy helps one gain wisdom, while science adds to phenomenal knowledge; the two need not tread the same path.

At the same time, philosophers can sometimes be methodological watchdogs. A Sartre or a Nietzsche may tell us how to lead a good life, but some philosophers, like Kant and David Hume, also alert scientists about errors they often commit. Hume, for example, warns us against accepting causation too quickly, and Kant cautions us to keep enquiries into science away from religion.

It is, therefore, necessary to know when to quote philosophers, for they rarely provide scientific advice. One can use them, but only playfully, as embellished footnotes, or else sociology runs the danger of becoming excessively connotative in its language. Science flourishes on clear, denotative communication with ‘show it to me’ facts, where there is no ambiguity of meaning.

Undeniably, philosophy is a storehouse of inspiration, just as religion is. Yet, just as we should not use Sartre or Hegel to justify our sociological conclusions, we should not quote from the Gita, or the Bible either. After all, neither religion nor philosophy is concerned with factual proof as much as with belief. That philosophy is not about the afterlife does not make it scientific.

True, Vedanta inspired Jagdish Chandra Bose, but only laboratory work helped him make a scientific breakthrough—a fact that both Tagore and Vivekananda appreciated. Samkhya may provide an analogy between prakrit and energy, but to understand the first law of thermodynamics, we must go beyond the sage Kapila to Rudolf Clausius and William Rankine.

Marx played ‘coquettishly’ with Hegel’s formulaic rendition of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. However, when demonstrating the significance of socially necessary labour in capitalist economies, the dialectic was nowhere in the picture. Aristotle felicitously claimed that society was like an organ, but Durkheim’s thesis on the division of labour stood independent of him.

Culture too can muddy the waters for science. Imagine a Zambian, Indian or Korean scholar searching for the relationship between law and society being told that the Greek myth Antigone provides the key. The job of science is precisely to free itself from cultural infractions, yet many contemporary sociologists and anthropologists ignore this dictum quite merrily.

By now, it should be easy to multiply such instances. While Western scholars tend to provincialise social sciences and make them European, many Indians do their own version of the same process. They Indianise sociology or social anthropology, even political science, by drawing chunks from Hindu or Islamic texts, even shlokas and nagmas, rhymes and couplets.

Numbers Do Not Always Count

The second piece of caution I have in mind relates to numbers and to the use of statistics in social science. Sociologists and allied disciplines must learn from numbers, but statistics is an instrument and not a substitute for science. The fact that tables and charts have an aura about them is undeniable, but when they are used, they must be used with discretion, and always as tools.

In particular, we must be careful not to begin an argument based solely on GDP figures, inflationary trends, wage differentials, capital output ratios, etc. Very often, while brooding over these numbers, a correlation springs to our mind, or a clever mathematical play appeals to our intellect. That is not how quantitative data should be used in social science, or any science.

Before we let numbers enter, we must have an intellectual argument, fully armed with propositions that relate to one another empirically in an explanatory schema. Numbers often come in at this point to test the validity of the overall propositional package. If numbers do not help, the argument, attractive though it may seem, would have to be modified, or even abandoned.

The beginning, however, is the intellectual argument. For example, there may be a strong propositional connection between low division of labour and the dominance of penal law, but do numbers justify the claim? Or, can numbers support the Marxian argument that links business cycles to competitive capitalism’s hunt for profit aided by abstract labour?

That an intellectual argument should precede numbers becomes significant even when we contemplate our current post-COVID-19 efforts to restore our society and economy. Numbers tell us of job loss, so should one hand out cash to push up buying power? Numbers tell us inflation is rising, so will not giving out money spike inflation? Can numbers alone help us decide?

Further, how should we interpret the numbers of labourers heading to their rural homes post the COVID-19-induced lockdown in India? After all, only a small proportion of the total workforce was on the highways. Was this then a social fact of little import? Or, should the same figures be seen as an index of something grave and systemic? Clearly, we need an intellectual argument first.

Numbers also tell us that if exports go up, the GDP goes up; should we thus continue with the sweatshop conditions under which most of our exported garments are produced? Numbers tell us that if the exchange rate is lowered, then exports would go up, but what if this raises the price of the imported machinery we use to manufacture our export items? Will we not then lose out in the price war?

If the intellectual argument is that good working conditions lead to better products, then sweatshop environs are a bad idea; instead, we should harvest skills and increase R&D. If the intellectual argument suggests that parents want their children to have a better life than their own, then investment in education becomes more critical than encouraging exports.

Numbers tell us that literacy rates have risen, but then why are we so far behind in fundamental research? Numbers tell us that private hospitals and schools have better outcomes; should we hence privatise these services? But if an intellectual argument suggests that without universal health and education for all, even elite services would suffer, where would we stand on privatisation?

If in India the average consumption of eggs per week rises from 1.00 to 1.75 eggs, would this mean poverty has been dented? What is the tipping point when we can confidently say that poverty is on its way out? Poverty has many correlates that play a significant role in its perpetuation, and therefore, getting rid of it must also take multi-pronged efforts.

This is why the qualitative positioning of the intellectual argument must take precedence over quantitative assertion using numbers. Likewise, statistics should not be used for trivial purposes. We all know poverty is rampant, or that informal labour dominates our economy, or that millions suffer from malnutrition. Why then play mathematical games with these figures?

Intersubjectivity and Fieldwork

My third methodological thesis concerns the way we consider the subjects of our research. There is no doubt that sociology’s strongest suit, one that it inherited from social anthropology, is first-hand fieldwork. Unlike other social-science disciplines, such as economics, history and traditional political science, sociology is incomplete without primary research.

Economists can get by with already published statistics, historians can profit from archival offerings, and political scientists too can gainfully browse through constitutions and laws. But for sociologists, of all kinds, data emerge only from live interaction with people at the ground level. This is why sociological data collection, through fieldwork, is such an intense, personal exercise.

What then forces sociologists to introspect on how they should relate to those they interview, and often live with, over long periods? As ‘subjects’ of research, they stand outside one; yet, are they primarily exterior objects? A fieldwork relationship may start that way, but for a true understanding of ‘others’, we must step out of our skins and see them as ourselves.

This is not an easy task, for the subjects of a sociologist’s research can often span vastly different cultures. Yet, if the ‘other’ remains the ‘other’, the book view will dominate the field view, and cultural virtuosos will be heard more intently than actual, everyday human beings. People, no matter how foreign, become intimate only when you see them in you.

One does not have to come from an alien setting to be different; even our neighbours are not us. Fieldwork allows us sociologists to know ourselves better, but only after we begin to see the ‘other’ in us. When you place yourself in the shoes of the ‘other’, what seemed remote, or inaccessible, loses its exotic and wondrous features and becomes a ‘normal’ phenomenon.

Beware, a host of famous sociologists have advocated special lenses to study India because, according to them, India’s uniqueness renders universal concepts meaningless. They believe India is exceptional, for only here is the adherence to hierarchy so complete that lower castes consider it morally correct, and proper, to participate in their own subjugation to upper castes.

This ‘exceptional’ vision of India will, however, change once the researcher willingly trades places with the ‘subjects’ of the study. One might use the term ‘intersubjectivity’ to define this method. So, instead of special lenses to study India, why not place oneself intersubjectively into the study and ask what one would have done in such a situation?

It is almost certain that the sociologist undertaking this task would resist bowing down to somebody because the other person is supposedly made of superior substances. It is not difficult to internalise that some other people may be stronger, wealthier and so on, but to believe that they are essentially superior to you in their very being is very hard to acknowledge.

If the sociologist finds this difficult to accept, should not then this privilege be extended to the ‘subjects’ of the study too? Once this is done, data begin to appear in the shape of caste-origin tales that contest the idea of ideological submission to a single hierarchy. We now see that caste status is built not on consensus but on power and wealth. Hurray, India is normal!

This compels us to add the prefix ‘so-called’ whenever we use terms such as ‘upper caste’ and ‘lower caste’. True, contestations over ritual hierarchy may not always be in the open, but they exist subjectively all the time, as origin tales abundantly testify. Intersubjectivity, as a method, can alert the researcher to look for this data which might, otherwise, be missed altogether.

We often hear complaints that Indians prefer to be graduates and stay jobless rather than learn vocational skills. However, when we look at employment data, we find that vocational-diploma holders are jobless too, in which case, why not be a jobless graduate? That way, at least one’s social ranking is higher than that of a vocational-diploma holder. Would you not do that too?

Farmers in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan are advised not to grow cotton next to paddy because parasites can switch from one crop to the other and wreak havoc. If this advice is not observed, it is because the cotton crop is too delicate, its market price is too variable, and paddy is a good standby with a minimum support price. If you were in the place of these farmers, wouldn’t you also shun the same advice?

Most qualified allopathic doctors are urban-based and expensive. One posted in a primary health centre looks at the job as a punishment posting and has little time for poor people; besides, the line outside the allopathic counter is always very long. Under these circumstances, if an indigent person seeks help from an unregistered medical practitioner, would they be irrational? Ask yourself.

This kind of methodological intersubjectivity takes away the strangeness in others, and what seemed exotic now appears normal. This exercise too works within limits. What will remain difficult to fathom are the innermost emotions of people—what makes them laugh or cry. We can write about them, but we cannot laugh or cry with them. But then, we are not gods.

This should also tell us that intersubjectivity is more than participant observation. One can spend hours, days and months in the field and not engage in intersubjectivity because those being studied are still the ‘other’. Fieldwork can harbour hubris and a sense of superiority which intersubjectivity easily quells. Imagine somebody studying you. How would you feel?

Science and Freedom

These methodological considerations become relevant only when one is free to think and investigate. Prosperous countries like China and Russia are woeful in the social sciences because they lack freedom. Interestingly, not just philosophy and science but religion too needs freedom; otherwise, the dominant belief becomes theocratic and spirituality gives way to rituals.

Without freedom, science quickly degenerates into mere technology and imitation, and eventually, it becomes just about control. Toss freedom out, and you would spell the ruin of philosophy, for all thought would turn fascist. Mannheim said that secularism meant the freedom to think freely and not just to think independent of religion. Secular thought can, therefore, go against an irreligious state as well.

When there is freedom, philosophers can explore, unhindered, preferences and basic assumptions outside empirical verifications. With freedom on its side, science can win votaries to objective, empirical statements, without the backing of the church or the state. Existentialist or Hegelian, everybody can plainly agree that our world is heliocentric.

With freedom comes the liberty to investigate and objectively verify empirical reality, regardless of one’s political or religious persuasion. Sadly, this freedom, which is such an essential condition for social science, is something that academics cannot enforce; only politicians can do so. Yet, without this freedom, social science will wither away, and so will wisdom.