During the late 1960s and through the 1970s, led by Stuart Hall, The Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies began to incorporate sociology as a significant cultural study. Hall believed that sociology should be considered as a cultural study due to its wide-ranging spectrum of theories and methods which relate to other important disciplines, such as philosophy, history and politics. What also made sociology all-encompassing was its inclusion of everyday practices, rituals, social groups and all different kinds of media. One of the main concerns of the Center dealt with social structure versus individuality and how the two effect one another. The term functionalism refers to the argument that the social world constrains and limits the individual within certain parameters. Meanwhile, interactionism is the opposite, it argues that the individual can interact productively with the social world, without outside influence.
Sociology can be traced back to the 1830s when it was introduced by Auguste Comte and Emile Durkheim. Many of Hall’s decisions were influenced by Comte’s ideals regarding sociology. Comte believed “that all real knowledge was gained through empirical methods, and that the procedures of the natural sciences could thus be transferred to the social sciences” (60). This means that depending on how one approaches sociological studies, it can be grounded as more of a “hard” science based off of first-hand observation and analysis.
Moran claimed “the work of the Center under Hall thus steered clear of statistical, quantitative methods in favour of fieldwork-based research, interviews and ethnography: the direct observation of a social group over an extended period” (61). This form of research is much more reflective of observational studies and hands-on experiences. To me, Moran’s definition of ethnography makes me think of several authors that we have studied in class, one of which being Joan Didion. In her collection of essays Slouching Towards Bethlehem, she reports on the cultures and countercultures of the 1960s in California. She immerses herself in the events occurring, becomes a fly on the wall, and tells us about everything there is to know regarding her specific aim, such as one would do in ethnographic sociological studies.
I think social structure versus individuality is an interesting idea. In my opinion, social structure washes individuality eight times out of ten. You have the outliers, the hippies and the liars, but most times, any given person will cede eccentricity to fall on the side of functionalism as opposed to interactionism.
It’s funny that you brought up the application of the scientific method to sociology. It seems like everywhere I go there’s a different professor in a different discipline trying to make me apply the scientific method to my studies. Could it just be the plight of the liberal arts college to remain competitive as a hardcore learning institution in a world thats slowly turning it’s back on the liberal arts education?
I agree with your comparison between Didion and Moran with respect to ethnography. I think the choice to study the hippies and diggers of Haight-Ashbury was an important one to say the least. I hope there’s at last one ethnographer out there who has been studying the district from 1955-Present. I wonder of the underlying social forces that have remained or been replaced or displaced.
One of the advantages of the ethnographical practices used by the Center was publishing their findings in the form of novels, or in Didion’s case essays. which Moran asserted gave them a large amount of freedom in terms of how they approach it. This is an effective approach because it allows those being studied to speak for themselves; instead of being told by a detached, scientific voice that that hippies are mostly misguided children in a bad situation Didion allows them to voice their own story. We must be careful of the ever-present authorial bias, however, and remember that we are not treading in objective water anymore