Abstract
This slim volume is written in the tradition of Mills’s (1959) famous introduction to the discipline, The Sociological Imagination. Like Mills, coauthors Haydn Aarons and Evan Willis invite students to take up sociology as a distinctive way to understand ourselves and the world in which we live.
Now in its sixth international edition, The Sociological Quest: An Introduction to the Study of Social Life encourages students to begin to think sociologically, in other words, understanding humans as fundamentally social beings. Sociological explanations of human life strive to situate individuals within different groups and then to systematically explore relationships among groups (p. 20). In this way, sociology can help us understand how “private troubles” are related to “public issues,” as Mills put it. How might the trouble of a “workplace accident” be understood sociologically, for instance, as the public issue of employers preferring lower production costs to more expensive but safer equipment (pp. 6–57)? Although Aarons and Willis do not claim that sociology is a uniquely valuable way of knowing compared to other disciplines like psychology and economics, they do argue that sociology offers distinctive insights into the relationship between personal experiences and broader public questions.
Organized into nine short chapters that are exceptionally clearly written, Aarons and Willis begin, in chapter one, with an introduction to the birth of sociology. In the now-familiar story, they write that sociology emerged as a discipline in Europe in the late nineteenth century when Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber developed different understandings of the social upheavals that marked Western modernity. They explain that Marx was interested in social change, especially the shift from feudalism to capitalism (p. 4), whereas Durkheim was concerned with social stability, exploring social cohesion rooted in mechanical or organic solidarity (pp. 4–5). For his part, Weber sought to understand how societies, once organized around traditional authority, rooted in custom and charismatic authority emerging from a leader’s extraordinary personal characteristics, now derived authority from formal rules, like the prime minister’s “rational-legal” authority guaranteed by electoral procedures (p. 5). Together, all three intellectuals established sociology as concerned with social life and how it changes, seeking to explain the origins of social transformation and social stability.
Next, in chapter two, Aarons and Willis consider the difference between social problems, which are aspects of a given society that some actors seek to change, and sociological problems, which demand explanation. High unemployment is a social problem, they observe, because it leaves many without the paid work they seek and need to live, but the sociological question it raises is: “What conditions give rise to unemployment? Why do some people, because of their race, gender or recent migration, face higher rates of unemployment than others?” (pp. 14–15). In answering, they advise readers to exercise their sociological imagination by asking how social facts, like varying rates of unemployment across different groups of people, come into existence. At the same time, they urge readers to ask, “How could it be otherwise?” (p. 6). If some people are strained by overwork and others are involuntarily unemployed, how might work be more fairly distributed (p. 15)?
After this introduction to sociological explanation, in chapter three, Aarons and Willis explore sociology’s place in the university. Sociology is a science, they maintain, because sociologists seek to carry out inquiry in a way that is “systematic, rigorous and based on the use of evidence” (p. 36). Positivistic approaches to sociology sometimes attempt to establish laws, as in the hard sciences. But just as often, Aarons and Willis argue, sociologists seek to understand the social meanings of “x.” An evening meal is merely a quick occasion for refueling in many North American cultures, for instance, but it is a serious social occasion, lasting many hours, in France. Similarly, the meanings of gender differences, sometimes assumed to be rooted in biological differences, have changed significantly in Western societies over the past 150 years, with enormous personal and social consequences for men and women (or people of all genders, to use a language Aarons and Willis do not). In contrast, other disciplines, like psychology, demonstrate a narrower interest in the individual, whereas political science has a more targeted concern for political behavior and government. The unique beating heart of sociological inquiry is the sociologist’s interest in the relationship between society and the individual, the regularities across social life, and the meanings we attribute to those patterns.
In chapter four, the focus is on the sociological imagination and how attentiveness to historical change and cultural differences can help to debunk naturalizing discourses. Only recently are same-gender couples, in some countries, allowed to marry, a reminder that what is considered allowable (and institutionally legal) varies over time and across nations and cultures. Social and legal understandings of marriage are neither constant over time nor universal, so the naturalizing of different-gender marriages and pathologization of same-gender marriages, for instance, can be challenged with a historical and cultural comparative analysis. In emphasizing that behaviors, relationships, and institutions differ across cultures and historical periods, Aaron and Willis argue the sociological imagination acts to free us from the “here and now,” opening possibilities to understand the contingency of social relationships (p. 84).
Alongside an appreciation for historical change and cultural differences, both social structures and critique are important to the sociological quest. In chapter five, we are invited to consider how “structures” or patterns of social organization shape our lives. Populism reflects anxieties about changing world economies, Aarons and Willis argue, where full-time blue-collar jobs in manufacturing are replaced, for some workers in Western nations, by precarious, part-time, insecure employment. Feelings of loss and frustration associated with these changes, in a context of great inequality, lead to anti-elitist, populist politics (pp. 90–91). Structural changes to the world economy thus help explain the rise of populism and figures like Donald Trump in the United States. If (good) sociologists think structurally, they also think critically, asking, “How do you know?” (p. 99, italics in original): What evidence do you have, and does this evidence justify your argument? This demands sociologists go beyond taken-for-granted understandings, like the law protects the weak, to more rigorous, evidence-based analysis. Asking “Who benefits?” is likewise a key question: Laws may protect powerful actors, “keeping the poor and the powerless in line,” because they are written by the powerful, in their own interests (p. 103).
Chapter six looks at the nature versus nurture debate, observing that sociologists are characteristically skeptical of biological explanations for social phenomena. Femininity and masculinity may be linked in the popular imagination to biological differences between men and women, but using a historical and comparative approach will quickly reveal enormous variations in what is socially understood as feminine or masculine. This unmasks as social and contingent what is purported to be a biological and fixed aspect of human societies.
Chapter seven examines the role of theory in sociological explanation. Functionalist explanations of the social world tend to see successfully filled social roles, for instance, as contributing to a harmonious, organically unified society (pp. 135–36). In contrast, conflict theories understand societies as filled with tensions and opposing interests, given that some actors lose from existing social arrangements (pp. 139–40). Sociological theory and associated assumptions about the fundamentally harmonious or conflictual nature of social relationships shape sociological explanations. For functionalists, individual role failures explain disharmony, whereas for conflict theorists, alienation from prevailing social norms is a consequence of social relationships that exclude meaningful participation by many actors. These are examples of the ways that theories matter for sociological interpretations of similar evidence.
In chapter eight, Aaron and Willis ask, “How do we know?” (p. 148), explaining how rigorous quantitative evidence or statistical data and qualitative evidence from interviews, ethnographies, and more are critical to answering questions about the social world. They explain that quantitative evidence is helpful for understanding broad patterns across large social groups, whereas qualitative data is useful for understanding social meanings. They observe that sociological analysis does not end with the discussion of what is. Instead, the sociological imagination enables us to ask how the social patterns and meanings revealed in data could be otherwise. The concluding chapter looks at career pathways for those with sociology degrees, from journalism to marketing to public policy, as sociologists put their imaginations and quantitative and qualitative analytical skills to (paid) work.
Overall, The Sociological Quest is an ambitious and elegantly presented introduction to sociological thinking, which will be most useful for Introduction to Sociology classes at the undergraduate level. Because sociology graduate schools do not exclusively draw from sociology undergraduate degrees, the book will helpfully recall what is distinctive to the discipline for graduate students new to sociology. In fact, I have recommended The Sociological Quest to my graduate students as they embark on their PhD dissertation as a reminder of the kinds of questions that sociologists ask, the variety of evidence that we mobilize, and how we move beyond the evidence in our discussions to imaginatively inquire into different possible social worlds. The book may be helpful for multidisciplinary studies, too, where instructors seek to explain what is distinctive about sociology as a discipline. Finally, the physical volume is slim and easily portable, which is an attractive feature because it can be easily pocketed while traveling from home to university, a handy reference for what questions sociologists need to ask as we seek to understand our social world.
This book might be usefully paired with TRAILS activities that, similarly, seek to stimulate the sociological imagination among undergraduate students. In his teaching, Deb (2016) invites students to think about personal reasons for deciding to marry or not to marry. He then provides students with a range of resources that show how marriage rates vary, for instance, by class so that working-class people marry less than better off people. Students are invited to compare and contrast personal rationales and sociological explanations for marriage, which show that broader structural factors, like class, are important determinants of who is married and who is not. In a similar vein, Ghidina (2017) organizes her classes into small groups, where students are invited to link a range of apparently personal troubles to broader public issues. Each group is given a topic, like credit card debt, the bullying of trans youth, and opioid addiction. Short YouTube videos with first-person accounts of individuals experiencing debt, bullying, and addiction are shared, followed by analyses by sociologists about these concerns. Then, students are asked to compare and contrast sociological explanations with individual accounts, thus putting personal troubles into a broader sociological perspective.
Another activity that students might be invited to carry out to simulate their sociological imagination is to ask who is named in sociological texts, who is not, why, and how it could be otherwise. Turning to the index of The Sociological Quest, for instance, generates quick statistics, showing that of those individually named, 30 (81 percent) are men, whereas just 7 (19 percent) are women. Of the 30 men individually named, 21 are sociologists or intellectuals, and the others are male politicians, sports heroes, and similar. Of the seven women named, only three are intellectuals: Fran Baum, Margaret Mead, and Margaret Sargant. Sargant is quoted in a remark about Talcott Parsons (p. 135), as if women intellectuals only matter if they are talking about a man! (The other named women are Anne Frank, Julia Gillard, Margaret Thatcher, and Queen Elizabeth). We might ask our students:
Similarly, we might ask: How are Indigenous peoples portrayed in social science introductory texts? What larger social patterns can explain how they are portrayed? Unfortunately, one of the only passages about the world’s original peoples in The Sociological Quest is an extended discussion about alcoholism among the First Nations peoples of Australia (pp. 96–98). Aarons and Willis explain that if individuals remain responsible for their behaviors, alcohol abuse among Aboriginal peoples in Australia is exacerbated by structural factors, including profound hardship and alienation given the occupation of their lands and their situation as a tiny, racialized minority in a majority White, and often racist, society (pp. 97–98). If the intention is “progressive,” we might invite our students to read, for instance, Indigenous sociologists Maggie Walter and Chris Anderson. Among others who critique colonial tendencies built into mainstream social science, they unpack the ways that social scientists and policymakers routinely reproduce “deficit” narratives about Indigenous peoples (Walter and Anderson 2013). Notably, as Walter and Anderson (2013:101) point out, mainstream social scientists, including sociologists, rarely consider, for instance, “how Indigenous children grow up strong” despite colonial history and the ongoing context of colonial oppression. If Aaron and Willis provide a contrast with more activist Maori communities in Aotearoa/New Zealand (pp. 97–98), we might nonetheless ask if we could imagine the portrayal of Australia’s First Nations “otherwise” outside of long-standing, harmful stereotypes of Indigenous peoples as alcoholics and abject.
Unfortunately, an exercise about Africa, the continent, will show that it is similarly stereotyped in The Sociological Quest, where it is presented as an undifferentiated, homogeneous space rife with misery. Notably, Africa is only mentioned in the context of HIV/AIDS (pp. 91–93), “the relative powerlessness of [African] women” (p. 92), and how some people “of African origin” practice the “circumcision” of baby girls (p. 4). As readers, we are warned, however, to be careful to be culturally relativistic and sensitive in the last case. In contrast, students will note that North American and European societies are mentioned in the context of social problems but also more banal concerns, like varying dinner habits (see above). We might wish these portrayals “otherwise,” including a more nuanced view of the African continent as a differentiated space, economically, politically, and culturally, and as something more than a concentration of disease, patriarchy, and associated harmful practices.
Overall, The Sociological Quest is a clear, well-written, and accessible volume, covering a wide range of sociological concerns. Nonetheless, I find myself looking forward to the seventh edition, one more attentive to how women, Indigenous peoples, and the continent of Africa are represented. Ironically, and to the authors’ credit, the tools that they share when inviting students to analyze and imagine sociologically can be used to lay bare the text’s own critical areas for improvement.