Abstract
Reinterpreting two polyvalent, humorously dark parables about elephants could help us rethink the agenda of sociology. The first of these can be read as an allegory regarding the contemporary state of the discipline.
In the well-known story with origins in ancient India, blind people (in some versions, monks or religious scholars) who come across an elephant for the first time each feel one of its parts. They describe to the others what they are up against. Each insists on understanding the elephant based on what they experience. They ultimately fail to develop even a basic picture of the creature and come to blows with each other. The sociological community today similarly risks missing the whole and getting mired in unproductive brawls, rather than engaging the elephant properly.
Our blindness, which I expound below, has repercussions beyond the practice of social science because humanity is facing multiple crises that might combine into a terminal crisis. Now, the question is whether this would be the terminal crisis of a particular type of capitalism, of capitalism as such, or of civilization as a whole. There is no ‘objective’ answer to this question, since how we react to the crisis will shape what it is a crisis of. (This ‘we’ needs to be opened up too, which I will do shortly).
The list of palpable crises is daunting. Global warming, epidemics, and coming pandemics, financialization and looming financial collapses, automation/AI and the exploding ‘surplus population’, persistent inequality and domination, the rise of far right dictatorships, wars and the threat of nuclear devastation, the ‘loneliness epidemic’, deaths of despair, lack of connection, purposelessness . . . You could expand this list.
Governments, experts, and social movements tend to isolate these problems from each other and treat them piecemeal. Their understanding of the current world is comparable to that of the blind people in the elephant parable. Much of the discipline of sociology has been a solid part of such piecemeal treatment. In other words, sociologists are a part of a broader ‘we’ that has been perpetuating and deepening this crisis.
Handling problems in piecemeal fashion, and thereby denying the depth of the malaise, pushes us toward the terminal crisis of civilization, or perhaps even of the species. By contrast, putting the connectedness of these issues in the center of analysis would pave the way for treating the current conjuncture as the crisis of capital and of the existing system of states. This path would give us clues about how to build an alternative configuration of social forces as well, rather than fighting each other on which part of the elephant is more primary than the others.
Yet, this is easier said than done. The challenges are immense. Critical sociologists have already been pointing out that all of the problems listed above are connected. But no single book, no single sociologist, and even no single theory can address all of these. We therefore need teams of sociologists, and a uniting agenda, to probe into different parts of the elephant, but simultaneously have a vision of the entire elephant while doing so.
The Complex Whole and Sociological Schools
The tactile experience of different parts of the elephant is equivalent to the specialized expertise each of us needs to have. But without broader conversations with each other and a theoretical imagination – an updated and globally expanded version of Mills’ (1959) sociological imagination – we would remain forever blind to the entirety of the elephant. Like other metaphors, this one works only up to a point. Unlike a hypothetical non-blind person who can actually see the entirety of the ancient Indian elephant, none of us can really see the whole creature we need to engage with (contemporary capitalist-statist society). Now, to bring in poetical imagination, we need a thousand eyes, as Brecht said of the party: 1 Only the scholarly community, in sustained dialogue (i.e. not the sharp two eyes of an all-knowing scholar), can provide the vision.
Do the legacies of sociology prepare us for this task? The mainstream of old, structural functionalism, was at home with the idea that all serious crises worthy of the name are connected (Parsons, 1951). 2 But rather than handling such crises as the constitutive parts of the system, it treated them as malfunctions. In response, the old critical schools – from the left (such as Marxism) to the center (such as the sociology of Alvin Gouldner) – recognized both the integrative nature of modern society and studied challenges and disintegrating aspects as necessary parts of the whole (rather than as dysfunctions).
In comparison to these legacies, where is the mainstream and its critics today? Well . . . More than one mainstream, we have at least a couple today: bland positivism, institutionalism, one version of Bourdieu. The new mainstreams have interestingly appropriated the post-structuralist attack on both the mainstream and its critics, and combined the post-structuralist critique with the mainstream’s own micro-sociological legacies (such as Berger and Luckmann, 1966; Garfinkel, 1964; Goffman, 1959; Schütz, 1953). 3 Much of this new mainstream isolates issues and structures.
One exception to this is Bourdieusians. But Bourdieusian sociology is a riddle because one of its feet is in the mainstream, and the other foot is in critical sociology. I will come to this latter foot in a minute. We should also note that there is a recent further mainstreaming of Bourdieu that makes his theory less-integrative and/or less focused on domination.
Today’s critical sociology is marked by two tendencies: First, there are various post-structuralism-influenced, molecular trends that focus on what are (sometimes misleadingly) called identity issues. And second, there is a resurgent historical materialism. As much as what the proper relationship among these trends is and should be, we are faced with the question of whether and how to connect criticism to the mainstream.
As a culmination of Alvin Gouldner’s (1970) interventions in sociology (among others), there was a post-1970s attempt to integrate the above trends: both the mainstream and the critiques. This was condensed in the journal Theory and Society’s subtitle: Renewal and Critique, but the attempt was not restricted to this particular journal. It was a broader search for the heart of the discipline in an era of pending crises (which were all less serious back then). In my judgment, the past few decades have been more successful in terms of critique and less impactful in terms of renewal. And now there is an attempt to scratch both Renewal and Critique, and go for Restoration. 4
While one wing of the discipline relishes in this sharp right turn, we have been also witnessing a ‘far left’ resurgence on the streets and in the discipline itself in the last decade and a half. This resurgence of the far left is both a potential and a problem. It is a potential because it can rejuvenate the discipline. It is a problem in so far as it has been quite disorganized, and as a consequence it can be disorienting, especially for the fence-sitters, whom we need to win. (In this part of the essay, I am shifting the meaning of ‘we’ from ‘sociologists as we are today’, to ‘sociologists as we should be’).
What we need is a united and uniting agenda to connect all of these pieces both in analysis and in building alternatives. But my vision of unification is not standardization: There should be space for the center, the right, and the left of sociology in this new agenda.
I could generate a very long list of what constitutes each, but for brevity’s sake I will identify what I call the reconstructive center with Bourdieusian sociology, Gramscian scholarship, and ecological world systems analysis; the non-reactionary right with varieties of institutionalism; and the critical left with post-colonialism, critical race theory, feminism, queer theory, and orthodox Marxism. 5
Three quick caveats: (1) Although I present the ‘wings’ of the discipline and the constituents of each as distinct from each other, you will see that my interpretation of each is colored by my reading of the others. For instance, for an ideal reconstruction of sociology, Bourdieusians would learn from orthodox Marxism, and vice versa, instead of treating each other’s works as disagreeable ‘other’s. (2) I do not imply that the work of any single scholar necessarily fits into any of these boxes (whether into the ‘wings’ or into their constituents), even though much of the work we produce tends to gravitate toward one or the other. (3) Left, right, and center in sociology do not map on to left, right, and center in Western politics, where the center has shifted way to the right of where it had been. Moreover, a sociologist whose work is situated to the right of others could possibly be situated to their left in terms of political preferences and involvement.
Now, let me open up why we need each of these approaches as integral parts of the new agenda.
Reconstruction in a Burning World
The reconstructive center consists of (1) Bourdieusian sociology, with its integrative analysis of multiple axes of domination in social space (Bourdieu, 1987 [1980]; Brubaker, 2004; Wacquant, 2008); (2) Gramscian sociology, with the analysis of hegemony and articulation (Burawoy, 2003; De Leon et al., 2015; Eidlin, 2018; Gramsci, 1971; Riley, 2010); and (3) an ecologically informed (Gellert et al., 2017; Moore, 2015) world-systems analysis (Arrighi, 1994) to situate both in a global, natural, and historical perspective.
Now I will say a couple of words on why particularly these three are central to the reconstructive center.
Bourdieusians offer the best analyses of the spontaneous generation and interlinking of multiple axes of domination through habitus and homologies (Bourdieu, 1990 [1979]). Bourdieusian sociology also offers a solid research orientation regarding the production and reproduction of domination by experts in ‘fields’ (Eyal, 2003). Gramscian analysis is complementary in that it explores how spheres of domination are linked to each other through civic (Tuğal, 2017) and political (Tuğal, 2016) activity as well. Bourdieusians focus relatively more on sub- and unconscious processes and unconscious links between spheres of action, while Gramscians focus more on the conscious attempts at expanding domination. And as a consequence, Gramscians have more to say on systematic and transformative challenges to domination, in which Bourdieusians are either less interested, or which they find to be part and parcel of games of domination. Bourdieusians are therefore less equipped to probe into alternatives to existing social systems.
Both Bourdieusian and Gramscian sociology suffer from insufficient attention to ecological and global structures. Notice that I am saying insufficient attention, not ‘neglect’. There have been many attempts to globalize Bourdieu (Buchholz, 2022), and Gramscian international relations and global geography have a long history. Owing especially to their links with the discipline of geography, Gramscians have paid more attention to nature than Bourdieusians (Ekers et al., 2013). Nevertheless, for sociology, global ecology is still mostly an uncharted territory.
The world is burning and the response to each issue right now needs to have an ecological dimension. Capital’s and states’ onslaught against nature connects localities in many unexpected ways, but it expectedly shifts the costs of ecological collapse to disadvantaged segments of world society: indigenous peoples, colonies, minorities, working classes, the global south, and peasants. The suffering and struggles of these groups is the proper turf of environmental sociology. But we need something much more comprehensive than environmental sociology traditionally understood.
Take the example of outdoor workers. When heat waves kill those who work outside, this is not simply an issue for the sub-discipline of environmental sociology. When these workers protest the lack of water breaks, it is not simply an issue for the sociology of labor. When mainstream parties do not make the mass organization of these workers a priority, this is not just a topic for political sociology. The concentration of non-White people in outdoor work 6 should not only be the concern of critical race theorists. 7 Studying why people cannot understand that the ecological deprivation of these workers foreshadows what the great majority of humanity will ultimately be forced to experience cannot be left solely to sociologists of knowledge or culture. A global, geographical, transnational imagination is always needed to remind us that even when some outdoor workers win limited victories, the costs are likely to be shifted to the peripheries of the world system, or to the rural backwaters of core nations (Angelo, forthcoming; Fraser, 2022). And one does not need to identify either with World Systems Theory or with the Global and Transnational section of the American Sociological Association (ASA) to make that a fundamental part of the analysis. One need not self-identify as a ‘feminist theorist’ to recognize that the gendered locations and positionings of these workers (and the journalists/commentators who speak about their resilience, suffering, sacrifice, essential-ness, bravery, etc.) are vital to the reproduction of these workers, and therefore to the sustainability of the labor power they exert. Analyses of how businesses, states, politics, and civic activity generate the incentives and interests that go hand in hand with local and global regimes of accumulation – regimes that keep these workers in their place – cannot be confined to economic sociology, sociology of development, or orthodox Marxist niches within the discipline. I could go on and on, but I reckon you already get my point. We need an integrated approach to tackle all dimensions of this apparently very simple, but actually quite condensed experience.
The news cycle reduces the issue of water breaks to a dispute between Republicans and Democrats. 8 Democratic politicians use this opportunity to picture themselves as pro-labor and their leader as ‘the most pro-labor in history’, 9 without any serious historical discussion. By contrast, sociological research would explore the structural roots of these workers’ predicament and lay bare the world-historical, racial, gendered making of their conditions, as well as discuss the forces that confine this deeply socio-ecological issue to the extant narrow framings. It is only through sociological imagination that the broader public would come to appreciate the need for these workers to self-organize and engage in broad coalition-making with ecological, racial, and other social struggles, rather than count on the allegedly most pro-labor president in history (or his heir).
It is true that immediate policy change is adamant to save lives on the ground, and the most pernicious political forces in the United States are blocking that. 10 Mainstream venues 11 can certainly help, 12 as long as the broader structures that systematically destroy our earth remain unleashed. However, those venues will not help build a world with alternative structures and behavioral tendencies.
Here are some of the questions to be answered: Who are the primary groups of people invested in our collective annihilation? What are the forms of resistance and organization advanced by those targeted firsthand? How do habitus, fields, and everyday practices shape these coalitions of interests and struggles against them? How can activists, scholars, and community leaders articulate local, national, and ultimately global interests and identities as alternatives to existing hegemonic blocs? What will it take to spread the 21st-century sociological imagination that would empower self-organizing people to also fight cost-shifting, which would eventually come back to bite them, even after apparent victories?
So much for the ‘reconstructive center’.
Necessary Companions to Reconstruction: The Cautious Right and the Critical Left
The non-reactionary right-wing of the discipline is still crucial in building this new agenda, since it will provide an arsenal of cautions and an awareness of limits. Institutionalisms of various kinds (Dimaggio and Powell, 1991; Hall and Taylor, 1996) – and intersecting with that, the legacies of Weberian sociology – are crucial. These schools will be beneficial especially in analyzing how institutional inertia would spread over into the process of reconstruction, certainly starting with the organizations of current struggles, as well as with the limits of scholarship itself.
And finally, the left of the discipline – feminism (Chodorow, 1978); post-colonialism (Decoteau, 2013); critical race theory (Fanon, 2008 [1952]; Omi and Winant, 2014; Robinson, 2020); queer theory (Butler, 1998) – are necessary to highlight the felt experiences (Hill Collins, 1986), the sufferings, the voices which cannot always be reduced to the making or unmaking of global accumulation regimes, of hegemonic blocs, or to the destruction or reconstruction of the earth. 13 Each of these experience and voices have their uniqueness. Orthodox Marxism, which I see as the counterpunctual node of the left resurgence in sociology, is always necessary to remind us of the material determinants of and stakes in identity struggles. In that, it is (for some) an unwelcome but sociologically unavoidable companion to the discipline’s new left.
These pieces of the discipline will not happily coexist without tensions and fights. But for an effective new sociological agenda to orient and unite research on the unmaking of the world’s social order, and the possible birth of a new way of being in the world, we need to keep them in dialogue and exchange with each other.
I see Critical Sociology and similar journals as one necessary venue in this critique and reconstruction. Even all of these journals together constitute merely a beginning, but we have to start somewhere.
Now back to the elephant, through the example of the outdoor worker. I emphasize: no single article or book, or even the career of a single scholar, would be sufficient to exhaust all layers of that experience. To become adequate professionals, we specialize. Yet, one needs to remain engaged in broader, theoretical, and methodological debates – and in intellectual circles, journals, and conferences – to remind oneself, one’s students’, and one’s readers of all the connections one is not covering.
Confronting the Elephant in the Room
The second parable is from an era of rising and falling empires, when state-making spread elephants to corners of the world where they were naturally not meant to be. The legend is that during his Anatolian campaign against the nascent Ottoman state, Tamerlane befriended a religious scholar by the name Nasreddin Hodja, who is also the ‘wise fool’ in many Eurasian jokes (Arvas, 2019). Gracious for their deep conversations, Tamerlane gifted an elephant to the Hodja’s village as his soldiers retreated. The villagers were at first honored, but the elephant was an exceptionally greedy one. It kept getting bigger and the village could no longer feed it. They begged the Hodja to give it back to the emperor. Nasreddin set up a team of village elders, who, on the long walk to Tamerlane’s headquarters, silently left his side one by one. Frustrated and abandoned, the Hodja thanked the emperor, complained of the elephant’s loneliness, and requested a mate.
One standard interpretation of this joke is that human beings are ungrateful. A wise person should not care for others, and instead properly take care of themselves when faced with wrathful powerholders and challenging situations. Especially scholars, the reasoning goes, should avoid advocating for causes – unless such advocacy is requested by very powerful or rich people. Some scholars still share and propagate this wisdom, despite conditions much more favorable to emancipatory scholarship when compared to the times of Tamerlane. But this is wisdom as filtered through the lenses of tradition: a call for a pragmatic adjustment to the fall and rise of empires and emperors, in a universe where such back-and-forth is imagined to be circular and inevitable. With a little sociological imagination (an imagination with roots in heterodox traditions of pre-modern times), we can reconstruct our understanding of this joke, too, for potentially post-imperial times, when human collectivities, rather than state-makers, can decide the future of societies.
Reinterpreted, the moral of the joke is that no single scholar should be burdened with the elephant. This needs to be a collective endeavor, for the load is too heavy to carry on one’s own. This elephant metaphor, just like the ancient Indian one, has its limits: unlike the medieval emperor’s elephant, global capitalist structures are human-made. They are extremely complex and deeply ingrained in our practices and habitus. Unlike the elephant’s finite, natural, and ultimately balanced and earth-bound gluttony, which is amplified and distorted by the emperor and the villagers’ missteps, modern voraciousness is infinite and shoots for Mars, and is unnatural but has become a second nature so strong that it has gained the capacity to destroy most of earthly nature. 14 Unlike the elephant in the joke (the natural nature abused by states and empires for millennia), the elephant in the room today – the bourgeoisie, along with the social structures and bourgeois human nature it has created and naturalized – intentionally perpetuates the exploitation of humanity and the earth, and is a co-creator of states and empires rather than merely their tools.
Due to their complexity and their deep internalization by broad populations, even in an ideal situation capitalist and imperial structures and behavioral tendencies would not disappear soon. Yet, if sociology’s practitioners can coordinate their research, teaching, and public engagement in the pertinent way, the discipline can indeed make a significant contribution to the building of a new world. If fragmented and disoriented, the discipline will be crushed under the weight of the gluttonous elephant. If it combines its forces with other disciplines and popular struggles, sociology can help subdue and coax the elephant and its master, the emperor, to surrender to liberating social dynamics.
