Just seen an account on Twitter that describes himself as a “heterodox sociologist”. Umm, marriage matters, moral agency exists? That sort of heterodox?
Just seen an account on Twitter that describes himself as a “heterodox sociologist”. Umm, marriage matters, moral agency exists? That sort of heterodox?
Probably means sandal wearing bearded hardline Marxist.
And if he’s a bloke, has a pony tail.
It would amuse me greatly if it meant they’re Thatcherite. However, remembering the sociologists from my days in academia it probably just means they’re just n-th level revisionists, spouting the same bullshit but quoting different “authorities” while slagging off the prior ones.
I mean, there should be a right wing (if you want to call it that) sociology. It’s a legitimate subject.
The collective Western right wing leaned far too heavily into reductive bow-tied economics wonkery and basic bitch lawn order stuff for far too long. Obvs they were right, but markets and criminals and whatnot are a social construct so perhaps a science of human relationships, communities and civilisations doesn’t need to be soft shitey arts degree wank. Mibbe it could have been useful in figuring out how to maintain our golden legacy of freedom and prosperity.
In general terms, ceding the academy to the Left was an unforced strategic error with predictable consequences resembling the Massacre of Elphinstone’s army as they retreated from Kabul, but with even more Pathans.
Now we have no choice but to lionise the academy.
There have always been right-wing sociologists, albeit in a minority. Google the term to find out. The founding fathers of the discipline were frequently conservative. It started out as a genuine attempt to understand societies before it got hijacked by the Marxists and Rad Fems.
sam Vara
Max Weber springs to mind, who was a conservative deputy in the Bavarian parliament. Also Pareto, who developed a theory of elites that is very relevant today, was an advisor to Mussolini.
To be is to choose. Parties, countries and so on can be heterodox, but individuals can’t. You might get away with some diversity of view; economic liberalism, social authoritarianism; fundamentalist religion, transgender rights. But that’s not heterodoxy because they are different subjects.
Of course you can change your mind. But if you do so every Thursday people might begin to think you’re an idiot.
Ottokring:
Yes, I studied elite theory for my Masters degree, and did my thesis on Pareto, Mosca, and Michels. And there are plenty of others. Durkheim was hardly a radical.
Among the moderns, Thomas Sowell is particularly noteworthy, although more strictly an economist. Very useful because his ideas are particularly irritating to the left as they come from a black man.
The term “heterodox” is used in the social sciences primarily to denote opposition to “neoliberal” public doctrine – i.e., the “orthodoxy” of the status quo. Steve Keen often refers to himself as a heterodox economist, for example. It doesn’t mean much more than that.
Sociology in Britain has always leaned towards the left, with the LSE and Fabian Society acting as its main nerve centres until the 1960s. Those few sociologists of an explicitly right-wing stamp who emerged during the Thatcher era were often disillusioned social democrats – David Marsland and Julius Gould being two such examples. Many right-wingers with a sociological bent today now work outside of academia for think tanks such as Civitas (still chaired by the ex-IEA staffer David George Green, who as a young man was a Labour councillor in Newcastle).
Needless to say, Sam, when I was forced to study Sociology as part of my history degree in the 1980s, Weber was tolerated but Pareto & Mosca were dismissed out of hand.
Ottokring, I have a ponytail which I started growing in March 2020.
I call the hairstyle the “triple unvaccinated”, because of the length of time one needed the (shortly to be WHO-adopted) cleanliness pass to go to places like hairdressers.
Has anyone ever described himself as homodox?
Is that one that says “Hello, sailor!” to anyone getting off a boat?
BiFR
Also because of Covid madness, I started cutting my own hair. Does that make me a radical feminist ( I also don’t shave my legs ) ?