Hi Robert,
Thanks for your good-hearted statement! Some comments below [with snips].
On 04-Oct-03 [log in to unmask] wrote:
> [snip]
> Sociology is theory-driven and evidence-based - theorising makes one
> want to search out the data, and the data force one to theorise. This
> circular processing of theory and data is how it should be.
> [snip]
Scientific, in fact.
> [snip]
> Of late I have encountered some students and academics who reject
> the idea of valid knowledge or even the validity of asking the
> question about what knowledge could be valid. Some of these
> interlocutors claim to be interlocutors claim to be post-modernists.
> From such encounters one is relucantly drawn to the conclusion that
> post-modernism is profoundly anti-sociology.
Or, if you're right, perhaps anti any approach to investigation or
discovery which might have something in common with science. Indeed one
may wonder what in their way of thinking is the status of their own way
of thinking.
> On the question of 'race': I can see no reason for believing that there
> are human 'races', only ideas about race. The idea of human 'race' can
> be shown to be socially constructed, almost infinitely malleable, and
> to have no basis in biology. We don't need to go over all this yet
> again unless someone has come up with an earth-shattering discovery in
> human biology that overturns a century of scholarship. Perhaps the
> list can be informed if this happens.
Probably the antithesis which has plagued this discussion is a result of
overloading the word "race". Early on I cited both definitions and
examples from biology which showed that the word "race" refers to a
definite biological concept, which is applicable to man as well as to
other biological species (so long as one is prepared to admit that man
participates in the biological scheme of things). I don't see how this
idea is "socially constructed" (except in so far as any idea can in the
limit be described as such -- unless one is a solipsist, and even then
one can think of oneself as a society of 1). On the contrary, it has
arisen in biology precisely by the cycle you describe, of theory and
data; and the data have in many cases the extra strength of arising
from systematically designed experiment.
On the other hand, there have been many instances of adverse reaction to
use of the term "race", in this sense, in connection with human beings.
Now it is perfectly clear that the word "race", NOT in this sense, is
widely used for in contexts and for purposes which have indeed been
socially constructed; and it is also true that it is used also in the
biological sense in such contexts and for such purposes. Non-bio "race"
perhaps gets its semantics from the contexts and purposes; bio "race"
does not. Non-bio "race" may therefore perhaps be construed as a "social
construct" (though I know too little about the socio-linguistics of it
to have a definite opinion either way). Bio "race", however, has its
origins outside the domain of human sociology. Bio "race" is founded
in biology (and in fact has no need of data relating to humans), yet when
human beings are looked at -- phenotypically and genetically -- the same
phenomena can be discovered.
Perhaps it would have saved a lot of pointless confrontation about the
use of "race" if biologists had adopted a different word. It's common
enough to refer to "varieties" of potato or wheat or roses, to "breeds"
of dog or horse, etc., which are all in effect "races". If that were the
case, then I would not have vented my indignation at the apparent intent
of the QCA to declare that "race has no biological significance" -- in the
context of laying down norms for a curriculum in Biology.
What they no doubt meant was that "race (in its typical, often pejorative
usage) has no biological significance". I dare say they would not have
felt moved to declare that "variety has no biological significance" or
"breed has no biological significance". Unfortunately, "race" has a
biological usage just like the biological usage of "variety" or "breed"
and as such has a proper and important place in the teaching of Biology.
I suspect they simply overlooked this fact (which any reasonably
competent biologist could have pointed out).They therefore stepped
straight into a solecism.
> The 'ethnic' categories used in the censuses are not terribly
> well-thought out, combining as they do skin colour, nationality and
> culture. But the data are valuable in many areas of study concerned
> with inequality. I have used them (not uncritically, I hope) and
> published using them. This does not commit me to any notion of 'race'.
Except to the biological one (otherwise well said!). Since skin-colour
is heritable, so long as possession of what society considers the "wrong"
skin colour gives rise to prejudicial social consequences (such as being
turned down for jobs, attracting inadequate education, etc.), biological
race will have a direct causative influence on deprivation mediated by
the "social constructs" which lead to racial prejudice. Here,
_biological_ race leads to deprivation. You cannot deny the biological
phenomenon: black parents will have black kids. You wouldn't want (I dare
say) to attack deprivation by "breeding out" the black skin. But your
alternative is "educating out" the social constructs which mediate
the causal mechanism through which black skin gives rise to greater
deprivation.
Likewise racial (heritable) propensity to certain diseases such as
sickle-cell anaemia and thalassaemia, though here I'm happy to report a
case of favorable influence: near the University in Manchester is (or used
to be) a Thalassaemia Clinic whose existence was no doubt a response
to the concentration of Asians in the area (the disease is relatively
common in a band stretchg from the Mediterranean to the Far East; in its
major form it leads to early death and even in minor forms is not at
all nice; a quite mild form is also common in black races). As well as
being at the root of the disease, biological race is also useful
information: a GP in Manchester, seeing a patient with certain symptoms,
wouold be prompted to investigate for the disease on recognising that
the patient was Asian.
Surely such "racial" (in the biological sense) data are valuable in the
very way you decribe, yourself, above?
> [snip
>
> To finish on a lighter note; a friend with a second floor office when
> confronted with students who claimed that everything was socially
> constructed used to reply 'There's the window ... try gravity'
[nice one!]
There was a solipsist called Neil
Who said "Although pain isn't real,
When I sit on a pin
And it punctures my skin
I dislike what I fancy I feel."
Best wishes to all,
Ted.
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E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <[log in to unmask]>
Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 167 1972
Date: 04-Oct-03 Time: 19:58:30
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