Department of Sociology, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK.
Br J Sociol. 2020 Jan;71(1):4-18. doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12715. Epub 2019 Nov 28.
While description is a valuable aspect of meaningful sociological work, this paper takes issue with Mike Savage's argument that the social sciences, and sociology in particular, should seek to prioritize description over practices of explanation and analysis, and attention to questions of causality. The aim of this paper is not to take issue with descriptive forms of sociology in themselves, but to argue that the answer to the problems identified by Savage and Burrows in their landmark paper "The Coming Crisis of Empirical Sociology" is not to follow commercial forms of research by prioritizing practices of description and classification at the cost of asking fundamental questions about the "why?" and the "how?" of social life and politics. Rather, this paper argues that it is imperative that sociology does not simply describe inequalities of different types, but questions, explains, and analyses the structures and mechanisms through which they are created, reproduced, and sustained. The argument will be developed in three stages. First, this paper will restate the main points of Savage's call for descriptive sociology; second, it will address his critique of "epochalist thinking" and subsequent opposition to the idea of neoliberalism; and third, it will respond to his use of Thomas Piketty's work as a model for developing sociological descriptions of class and inequality.
虽然描述是有意义的社会学工作的一个有价值的方面，但本文对迈克·萨维奇的论点提出了质疑，即社会科学，特别是社会学，应该优先考虑描述而不是解释和分析实践，以及关注因果问题。本文的目的不是对社会学的描述形式本身提出质疑，而是认为，萨维奇和伯罗斯在他们具有里程碑意义的论文《即将到来的经验社会学危机》中所指出的问题的答案，并不是效仿商业形式的研究，将描述和分类的实践置于优先地位，而不提出关于社会生活和政治的“为什么”和“如何”的基本问题。相反，本文认为，社会学不仅要简单地描述不同类型的不平等，还要质疑、解释和分析造成这些不平等的结构和机制，并使其得到复制和维持。该论点将分三个阶段展开。首先，本文将重新阐述萨维奇呼吁描述性社会学的主要观点；其次，本文将探讨他对“时代主义思维”的批判以及随后对新自由主义观念的反对；最后，本文将回应他对托马斯·皮凯蒂的作品的使用，将其作为对阶级和不平等进行社会学描述的模型。
