This is just as relevant for this list, so I forwarded it. Reactions at
european-sociologist were generally hostile...
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 14:43:01 +0100 (MET)
From: Paul.Treanor <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Pinochet and academic culture of complicity
Many sociologists come from middle-class backgrounds, with no experience
of any injustice or opressionoppression: this in itself is a determinant of modern
sociology. The reason for this mail is that I had written a text
advocating the execution of Pinochet. I realise that the academic
community in general fully rejects this, but the ethics of this rejection
are interesting. Such a proposal is beyond debate in the academic world:
it is considered hysterical, dogmatic and old-fashioned. Yet the most any
subscriber to this list ever did about Pinochet was to send some money to
Amnesty International (so they could send him postcards).
Mass torture, kidnapping, ansand mass murder are certainly social phenomena.
So are extreme inequality and famine. But you will not find these in
current mainstream sociology, which is increasingly an annex of marketing
research. Concern with the crimes of Pinochet, for instance, is generally
considered the sign of a hysterical crank. Everyone on this list knows
that a sociology academic who advocated the execution of Pinochet, would
lose all academic status. The point is that the intensity of rejection,
for the idea of executing Pinochet, is greater than the rejection of
Pinochet himself. This morality is wrong in itself.
Particularly in Britain, sociology seems part of a general culture of
complicity. I mentioned in the text on Pinochet that Margaret Thatcher
had caused the death of hundreds, probably thousands of
people, in implementation of her free-market policies. British sociology
totally ignores this, perhaps the largest mass death in Britain since 1945.
Not only are political ideals seen as wrong, it is seen as an ideal
to be amoral, to actively oppose any sense of right or wrong, any sense of
justice. The ideal student is seen as the student who can walk through a
camp full of dying famine victims, surveying their preferences for third
cars. Much current sociology is the product of people with that kind of
mentality: no wonder it is impossible to research the Thatcher
demographic deficit, or the far larger mass deaths in eastern Europes
transition economies.
This exclusion of truth, in the service of the marketability of the
social sciences (and employability of sociologists) is complicity. I
often think of this example about the morality of the academic world: you
can get a degree for studying Auschwitz, but not for liberating it.
Perhaps complicity is inherent in science.
Paul Treanor
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