Historiography of sociology, nr. 8

What's the use to study the history of sociology
or
A Classical dilemma?


If one assumes that a sharp distinction between the history of sociology and 
its current task - ie. the Mertonian History and Systematics of Sociological 
Theory- exists, then one ends up with a situation which the Systematic 
Neglect of the history of human social theory becomes the order of the day.  
Why?
Because what's the use to go so far away back into the dark corner of human 
un/pre-scientific thought and dig up a Bakunin or an Iqbal and try to make a 
classic of him or attempt to canonize the former or the latter? Why should 
one bother?  In particular, if one works with the Mertonian conceptual 
device which takes the current society as The Human Society, and theories 
provided in accordance to the logic of state-societal formation as The 
Social Theory.

There are some issues and some hidden agenda which needs to be ' opened up'. 
  Because, as I understand the problematic, the conventional 
White-European-Mainstream view runs as follows:

The religious thought would be replaced by ideological pattern of thinking ( 
which meant a desacralization of values) and ideology would soon be 
re-placed by


' science' and then a scientific sociology could bring an accumulated 
knowledge of the social world ( in historiographical debates, one can see an 
ongoing concern about the continuity vs discontinuity thesis and the obvious 
relevance of these debates on mainstream sociological historiography).  
Sociology in its scientistic cloak should be post-Classical, ie. 
post-ideological ( which is taken to mean: not to be engaged with morality 
and ' direction', but science. Because science is a ' directionless' 
activity and the aim of science is not a scientific aim.  It is a province 
of policy, regulated by the interest of Big Mega-companies and those 
financial sites which feed the scientists.); like the natural sciences that 
left the ' Classics' and their ideological inclinations behind.

In my view, this is the working-hypothesis of mainstream sociology and the 
state of  historical debate within the field.  Of course, I don't mean that 
we have forgotten the history of modernity, far from it.  However, one needs 
to take the ironical stance when revisits the conventional histories of 
modern time, based on monological civilizational logic.  Ironically 
speaking, we all know that Industrialism came along at a time when 
Philosophes produced Enlightenment - here again when one sees a Robespierre 
or a Napoleon, a Hitler or a political paattern like Fascism, but these are 
treated as exceptional cases which don't reflect the standard pattern, ie. 
anomalies which need to be explained- and the former, mainstream 
historiography of sociology claims, gave birth to anomical situation which 
made Whiteman nation-states so dislocated that they conquered the whole 
globe in less than sixty years ( and imposed so many treaties on other 
political formations).  There are so many


theoretical disparities and historical incongruencies.  So many revolutions 
and so many revolutionaries, but the grand result a reactionary World Order 
based on regressive pattern of thought: Racism, Systematic Slavery, 
Colonialism, Imperialism, Imposed International Labour Policies, etc.  It 
seems, at least in my view, there are issues unexplored and mechanisms 
uncovered.

Taking the problem to the sociological ground, one can easily discern the 
antagonism evident in mainstream historiographical accounts.  According to 
this antagonistic Story, Vico becomes a forgotten genius and Montesquie 
establishes sociology before sociologists produce the Rule- and Avekaldun ( 
Ibn Khaldun) runs before his time ( the question is whose timetable?) and 
the whole socio-anthropological studies of Biruni counts as ' Miracle' or ' 
Ahead' of his time.  The host of other thinkers from other parts of human 
civilization relegates to a mystic category called: pre-modernity.  The 
whole homo-sapinal civilizational attempts were supposed to end in this 
modernity which would able us to dispense with this prefix: pre!

Time and again, one sees some extra-sociological attempts to overcome this 
myopic historiography, but few attempts have been taken to ovecome the logic 
which produces such myopic histories or historiography. ( The vast 
literature on Vico or Montesquie, Ibn Khaldun or Chinese sociologically 
relevant thinkers are evident examples in this regard; nonetheless one 
cannot see the theoretical engagement with the logic of myopic 
historiography.)



That's why those who refuse the Westernization and get engaged with the 
Prefix and what lays beneath and beyond it, are wrongly classified as ( at 
least in Muslim case): Islamic Revivalism, Fundamentalism, and etc.  As 
though, people in this part of the world stopped practicing Islam for quite 
some time and then suddenly due to external reasons got back to their old 
pattern of thought which is pre-modern.  One of the great findings of modern 
social science is the study of indicators of substantial change in relation 
to pattern of thought.  If one wnats to assess the substantial scope of 
human intellectual change, the best indicator is the way he/she relates 
him/herself to Death.  In other words, how he/she or the culture in general 
reflects this relation to human body and the way one buries the human body.  
This is one of the fundamental indicators which should be taken into 
consideration when one talks about intellectual change in particular 
cultural formation.  The assumed revivalism in relation to Islam and Muslim 
intellectuals ( by Western Scholars in tradition of westernization equal 
modernization) is a bogus concept and is totally deprived of substantial 
consideration.  Because the people in these areas never stopped being 
Muslims in this substantial dimension and the assumed revivalism could be at 
best understood as a Realpolitik strategical frame of address than 
otherwise.  Because these categories, at worse, neglected, and , at best, 
were treated by textualists or security scholars who worked ( and still 
work) in accordance to a specific logic of approach ( that logic is best 
termed by McGeorge Bundy who said: It is a curious fact of academic history 
that the first great center of area studies... was in the Office of 
Strategic services... It is still true today, ... that there is a high 
measure of interpenetration between universities with area programs and the 
... agencies of the


government. See Sigmund Diamond: 1992, 10; or Bruce Cumings: 1997, or 
Chalmers Johnson: 1997.)

Going beyond these ironies, one can find another aspects of these mainstream 
mythological accounts in various ways sociologists present themselves, ie. 
archetypal images.  In time, sociologists try to be historically accurate by 
describing the descipline as engaged with ( and born within) modernity as a 
project; and in other times one hears that sociology is a revolutionary body 
of knowledge but produced, ironically, by Evolutionarists or Conservatists.  
On other time, one hears that sociology in its critical cast is engaged with 
' Big Ideas' like Human Emancipation and Freedom, but others who have 
arrived late on the scene, deny the whole business of ' Big Ideas' and with 
that human emancipation stuffs ( and all other things in that package).

There is, in my view, an irony in the whole sociological enterprise which 
makes you feel how anti-historical those big sociologists of today were ( 
have become or are).  Then when you get critical ( ie. believing in the 
possibility of understanding and reaching the nub of other intellectuals' 
message cross-culturally and cross-temporally, regardless the modern dogmas 
of relativism and modernist myth of exceptionality; in one word knowing and 
feeling the sanctity of pen.  It is an ironic coincidence that the word pen 
comes from the Latin penna which means feather.  Because the ancient used 
the feather as the instrument of writing, but it is of importance to know 
that the feather is the part which enables birds to fly.  the same


does penna with the human thoughts.  It enables us to fly via our thoughts 
and overcome our temporality.  By critical, I have this aspect in mind which 
is a rare mode in critical approaches today.) you come to see that it could 
not be otherwise due to modern organization of knowledge.  Sociologists have 
worked within the departments of sociology which belong to faculties of 
social sciences.  The latter are an integrated part of university-system 
which in turn is a part of Educational System- and charted by ministry of 
Education.  Again, this latter organ is run by government in 
state-nation-system.  Then the critical reader would ask: how could it be 
different? How could sociology be a revolutionary subject and include in its 
pantheon a Bakunin who repudiated the very existence of state ( let alone 
his rejaection of the idea of Nationalism)?

He, in my view, should have been dismissed by more so-called sophisticated 
theoretical social thinkers who understood the very logic of science and 
established the Rules of scientific sociology at the Republic sponsored 
university.  Regardless the substantial relevance of these Rules ( which 
have occupied the best minds of the century in how to improve the 
reliability and scientificity of these rules), there was one significant 
point which Bakuninains understood better than those Republican Sociologists 
and was unfortunately missed at a very crucial point in the history of 
modern European system formation.  That idea is a very simple but humane 
cornerstone of Anarchism, ie. the idea that society should not be divided 
into order-givers and order-takers. It, instead, should be organized in a 
non-hierarchical way. ( It is another story, and beyond my current concern, 
how significant could be the


ideas of Mazdak who proposed such a non-hierarchical society which resulted 
in his annihilation during the Sassanid Dynasty in fifth century in Persia.)

Again back to our main concern; some would condemn sociologists ( under the 
banner of political correctness without mentioning the ethical soundness) 
who stayed and worked for Fascism or Nazism and their respective ( though 
not respected) governments but forgetting that how much - not just in degree 
but in substance- different is the Patron Relation in contemporary 
sociology?  As Stephen P. Turner rightly argues ( 1992, 10) - but does not 
develope it in great details as Chalmers Johnson does ( 1997, 1-6)- 
sociology and social research is a subsidized activity which cannot get away 
from Patronship as such but just can hope for a new Patron.  So, it is 
obvious that a Bakunin should be counted as sociologically muddled but a 
Weber methodologically correct.  Why?  What is the hidden logic in this 
sociological verdict?

Because, in my view, the former condemns the very way things are run in 
modern state-society, but the latter just mourns and becomes an officer in a 
state-nationalistic war.
In this dramatic situation to accuse those big sociologists ( who are 
supposedly the theoretical deans of sociological field) who never ever, even 
once, talked about sociology and sociological enterprise out of their own 
White-European Domain- thanks to Nazism and Stalinism which forced some of 
these Europeans run to U.S.A. and talking a little bit about something 
non-European; but again their Whiteness


conflated the situation by prefering the political and hence confusing the 
geographical issues by introducing the most enigmatic historiographical 
concept, ie. West in the language of social theory: a remnant of racial 
propensity- to be anti-historical or even intellectually myopic, it requires 
Andersonian's bravery.  How many contemporary or the so-called big 
sociologists have talked about the substantial social relevance of Tagore 
and his theory of human society?

Of course, most of us know about Tagore, Iqbal or Afghani, but these names 
do not ring any sociological ( or even social theoretical) bell.  There are 
some reasons which are mostly related to the theoretical bias inherent 
within western sociological theoretical enterprise.  The aforementioned 
authors and their works do belong to the domain of either anthropology or 
orientalism.  The ideological justification for this approach is the assumed 
role of belief in thier thought-system against over science in the Western 
paradigm of thought.  It is of importance to note that the recent research 
in various fields of sociology of science and anthropology of Western 
society has brought about new insights in regard to the scope of science in 
belief and the role of belief in science.  ( However, it should be noted 
that the recent scholarship in these fields has not all been a good omen for 
intellectual activity as such; because the end-result, at least by some 
ultra-relativists, has been argued would be the death of universal cognitive 
dimension as such.)  To go back to Tagore and the problem of non-Western 
social theory, it is of importance to note that these people are treated as 
the subject of anthropology ( or orientalism) which rests on the Western 
ontological frame of reference.  In other words, they ( Iqbal, Afghani, ... 
) are not debated but


collected as raw material and studied textually in order to be understood in 
terms of their openness to Western mode of universalism ( not Homosapinal 
frame of universalism which does not get stuck with reified form of 
intellect or reason as Western Man or alike).  Why is that so?

They cannot contribute, mainstream sociology helds, to the White Mainstream 
Social Theory.  What is the logic of these Big Sociologists' reluctance to 
take issue with non-White social thought ( other than the pure and plain 
linguistic ignorance)?  Most of them are either monolingual or in case of 
bi/multi-linguality master European languages like German, French, English, 
... .  It seems the current language policy goes the same route as political 
ideology, ie. the Third World languages do not shed any light on our modern 
issues as their political ideology does not offer anything substantial on 
current global issues ( except global disturbances like Terrorism and Energy 
Crisis by OPEC).  The current attitude is in simple terms as follows: 
Unless-you-speak-English-or-write-German-we-won't-read-your-work-or-heed-your-thoughts-ideology.
 
  This ideology is based on a misunderstanding and unjustified 
self-congratulation.  Briefly could be formulated as modernity.  This term 
denotes a mythical belief which the Big Sociologists have repeated it as a 
faith article for so many years and decades.  It denotes both a mode of 
seeing and a social organization: a mode of seeing insofar as the modern 
consciousness turns on a scientific outlook as against the mythical: and a 
social organization insofar as modern society rests on a market economy that 
progressively devolves into international corporation. ( O. George: 1995, 
71)  This, in my view, is the central core of this


mythical belief.  What the Western epistemology calls mythical outlook 
against scientific one is more like a caricature than an accurate historical 
rendering.  Besides this account is based on a mistaken notion of Western 
against Restern.  This Restern is a mythical creature born out of mainstream 
historians and anthropologists.  Here, I am not concern with the notion of 
Knowledge among various Restern Contexts, but I take the Islamic notion of 
knowledge ( ilm) as primary example.  Without exploring the infrastructure 
of this concept most mainstream historians attempted to put this 
mythical/scientific straitjacket on other Restern Frame of Knowledge ( and 
in this case ilm).  The second part of the pillar of modernity is not a 
resultant from the assumed scientific ( as against ideological device of 
mythical attributed wrongly to the Restern) outlook but has to do with 
military ruthlessness and the application of more inhumane warring method ( 
which gave access to more land resources and human resources: Colonialism 
and Slavery).

However, looking at the issues of language, social theory and mainstream 
sociology ( and the systematic negligence of Restern Societal theories), one 
can comprehend that if a Said or the host of post-Colonial theorists are 
discussed today or sensed as a threat to mainstream sociology is not, in my 
view, just due to their substantial contributions, but their use of English 
as a medium.  As far as their epistemology and ontology is concerned, I 
cannot see any substantial difference between post-colonialists' discourse 
and the mainstream's.  To be honest, what the former represents is a bad 
practice of a good modernist ( westernist) set of ideas.  In addition, one 
should be aware that the ideological message of this recent post-


colonial theorists is not substantially different than their anti-colonial 
predecessors
( except they were, unlike this modern post-colonialists, more conscious of 
their own tradition's epistemology and the ontological differences which 
prevailed between materialism and spiritual corporalism, ie. the ontological 
foundation of Islamic philosophy which rests on a premise which does not 
deny the materiality of thing in order to embrace the extreme idealism but 
on the contrary takes the materia as the crystalization of spiritual realm) 
but there is an ideological indifference inherent in this change of 
attitude.  The mainstream sociology or what I called big sociologists chose 
to ignore anti-colonial discourses because they spoke in ' wrong' language: 
Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Azeri, Tatarian, Urdu, Mandarin, etc.  Besides, 
those who rendered ( or even render today) this body of knowledge ( 
mysteriously called anti-colonial, which means even their scant relevance 
has been formulated in relation to Cultivation Project of Western in the 
Territory of Restern.) ie. orientalists, worked with wrong outmoded 
conceptual frameworks.

These Orient specialists either condemned the religions of Orient in their 
various ways by putting forward their evangelic Christianity or put the 
Orient on an idyllic pedestal by building a romantic edifice which could not 
be even recognized by the zealous children of Orient.  The results of these 
attempts gave birth to a kind of literature ( Translating Industry) in 
Oriental countries with a pedagogic tone and is aimed to instruct the people 
of Orients how they have actually been.  Another aspect of this highly 
politicized literature is the ideology of reactionary politicians based on 
this distorted literature which aims to inculcate to people how actually a 
Muslim ( and


Muslim society) really was or should be.  ( The prime example of this 
literature re-view aimed at a political view is the host of revolutionary 
politicians of Iranian Revolution of 1979.)  They, in a more distorted way, 
perpetuate the paradigmatic belief of Western Scholars ( who consider the 
recent intensification of Muslim awareness as Revival of Islam; as though 
Islam and Muslims were dead and now again back to the Viva!) by imposing an 
external pattern ( conceived as Islamic) on the societal consciousness of 
Muslim society.

In concluding this section which was supposed to look at the use of history 
in sociology, one should be reminded about the unheard voices which could be 
irrelevant to mainstream sociology, but not insignificant to the very moral 
reason responsible for the birth of so-called modern social theory: To 
Create A Humane Social Life For Humans. Not a social organization for 
running humans.  This is where facts stop and values enter and make up new 
social facts.

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