This special issue of Sociologisk Forskning contains 14 papers by distinguished Swedish sociologists on the development of sociology in Sweden during the last decades and the forming of their own academic habitus in relation to that development. Contributors are: Göran Ahrne, Boel Berner, Margareta Bertilsson, Ulla Björnberg, Thomas Brante, Hedvig Ekerwald, Rosmarie Eliasson-Lappalainen, Johanna Esseveld, Bengt Furåker, Staffan Lindberg, Gunnar Olofsson, Sune Sunesson, Göran Therborn and Karin Widerberg. The volume is edited by Gunnar Andersson, Thomas Brante and Christofer Edling.
How are we to understand causal relations and analysis in socialscience? This paper takes R. G. Collingwood’s writing aboutcausation as its point of departure for the answering of thisquestion. Two different kinds of causal relations are distinguishedfrom pseudo-causality; of the former, one is directly connected toreason, the other to our ability to manipulate the world. Theirinterconnection and significance are discussed and theconclusions are drawn that (a) causality belongs to the realm ofhuman praxis and that (b) causal analysis proper is well suited forthe social sciences. It is further showed that some importantexplanations are not causal in any of the above-mentionedsenses. These explanations could conceivably be calledinterpretative descriptions, but it is suggested that perhaps theycan be understood as examples of causa sui, of something selfcaused.
Hans Skjervheim was one of the most influential philosophers of social science in the Scandinavian countries during the twentieth century. This paper contributes to the understanding of one of his central meta-scientific distinctions – between the participant and the spectator – by relating him to surprisingly similar distinctions found in the works of Max Scheler. It is well-known that Skjervheim studied Scheler, but the latter’s direct (and partly unacknowledged) influence on Skjervheim’s central distinction has not been noticed. Through an examination of similarities between Skjervheim and Scheler, an interpretation of Skjervheim is reached, which renders, so the paper additionally argues, some contemporary criticism of his work less valid than might be thought.
This dissertation should be understood as an effort to provide a kind of critique of statistical reason. "A kind", since it has another focus as well: the question of sociality. It is argued that these two topics are closely interrelated, not only, as the short exploration into the prehistory of statistics shows, for historical, but also and mainly for systematic reasons. The first part of this thesis is concerned with methods; not, in fact, so much with different methods as with the idea of methods in general. The second part deals with statistics, its prehistory and structure. It is argued that statistics is inherently causal and always and only understands the world as means (for our power), as it is. The third part explores a socio-logic, a concept meant to capture both the essence of sociality and our understanding of this sociality. And sociality, in the last analysis understood as play or game, turns out to be what cannot be controlled or dealt with in a methodical manner; it can never be reduced to what it is. The fourth and final part discusses and tries to overcome the proposed antithetical relation between statistics (methods) and sociality, and discusses possible consequences of the analysis for the fields of sociology and social thinking. In sum: The dissertation contributes to our understanding of methods, statistics and sociality and their interrelations.
This essay attempts to distinguish and discuss the importance and limitations of different ways of being wrong. At first it is argued that strictly falsifiable knowledge is concerned with simple (instrumental) mistakes only, and thus is incapable of understanding more complex errors (and truths). In order to gain a deeper understanding of mistakes (and to understand a deeper kind of mistake), it is argued that communicative aspects have to be taken into account. This is done in the theory of communicative action, which adds to our knowledge of errors the notion of communicative mistakes: mistakes as obstacles for sincere communication. However, to overcome this still purely negative judgement of errors, two processes are examined in which mistakes are best regarded as developmental steps, that is, steps not only meaningful in their own right (as containing some truth), but also as necessary preconditions for further progress. This would suggest that truth is born out of errors. But if so, one has to understand the wrongness of such errors; how is it that they are erroneous if they (somehow) contain the truth? At the end of this essay, a tentative answer to this question is given.
Barbara Held (2020) discusses the claim that mainstream psychology tends to exert epistemic violence on so-called “othered” groups. Held shows, however, (a) that the idea of different epistemologies underpinning some such arguments is a difficult matter, (b) that folk notions (and theories) sometimes hailed as an antidote to the alleged othering might themselves at times be oppressive, and (c) that so-called mainstream psychology in fact can well serve progressive and critical purposes. Thus, Held problematizes the distinction made between psychology about (from above) and psychology of and from (from below); that is, she finds the distinction unconvincing and rather problematic as it stands. Yet, she does not seem to wish to do away with it all together. In this comment, I relate her discussion to a wider scientific debate on othering, and, by way of an ending, offer an alternative metaphor: psychology from the flank.