**3. The reflexive turn in sociology: Eembracing ambivalence and ambiguity**

Sociologies, like the other social sciences, are organized within a given society, that is, within a given technological order, solidarity structure, class or culture, in a certain historical epoch. Sociologists are part of the society that they theorize themselves, and not somehow 'outside'. This awareness of the social, cultural or public imbedding of sociologies and sociologists has been pointed out by reflexive sociologists. Sociologists like C. Wright Mills and Alvin Gouldner have shown how theories of society rest on ideological biases,

of a working class consciousness. Hence, bourgeois ideologies like (neo-) liberalism, nationalism and cosmopolitanism are denounced. For interpretive sociologists, theory consists of ideal types that enable sociologists to empathically interpret the cultural meanings of social experiences, and to make sense of phenomena via the application of ideal types. Interpretive sociology has emerged from Kantian idealist thought and,

In their approaches to societies, these sociologies tend to discern and stress diverse dimensions of social life, and evaluate them differently. Positivist sociologists focus, in their own materialist theory of contemporary society, primarily on the economic and technological aspects, which it perceives as determinants of (material) progress. Hence society is modelled as an industrial (either capitalist or socialist) nation, one in which positivist scientists, engineers, bureaucrats are powerful actors of social control, and machinery and policy are key institutions. For functionalist sociologists, it is especially the increasingly complex solidarity structure that is relevant. In the functionalist theory of contemporary society, society is perceived as an individualized (typically capitalist) nation, in which rights, contracts, commerce, interdependencies, trust, and reciprocities are key elements that make modern social bodies flourish. In Marxist sociology, the economic and technological dimensions of society are strong determinants, just as in the case of positivist sociology, but unlike the latter, it appraises them differently. Capitalism is the breeding ground for revolutions, which will only cease when a historical condition of absolute social equality has been reached, and the distinction between rich and poor has been abolished. As far as interpretive sociologists are concerned, it is culture that is of primordial importance for social existence in organizations. Hence, the cultural complex that is called society – typically a nation – is actually threatened by anti-cultural or nihilistic forces like technology, industry and bureaucracy. Contemporary society shows tendencies towards cultural regress, a condition that Max Weber grasps in the metaphor of the 'iron cage', which refers

correspondingly, rejects the materialist and realist ways of theorizing.

to the imprisonment of dwarfed individuals by systems of technical control.

Organism Uncovering Real types Individualized

**3. The reflexive turn in sociology: Eembracing ambivalence and ambiguity**  Sociologies, like the other social sciences, are organized within a given society, that is, within a given technological order, solidarity structure, class or culture, in a certain historical epoch. Sociologists are part of the society that they theorize themselves, and not somehow 'outside'. This awareness of the social, cultural or public imbedding of sociologies and sociologists has been pointed out by reflexive sociologists. Sociologists like C. Wright Mills and Alvin Gouldner have shown how theories of society rest on ideological biases,

Mechanism Explanation Causal model Technological

Theory of society Scientific goal Theory Society today

Fig. 1. The four sociologies

Positivism Functionalism Marxism Interpretive

Class conflict Criticism Social critique Global capitalist

sociology

Cultural complex Interpretation Ideal type Global culture

prejudices, and taken-for-granted truisms, which are often inherent to the social condition in which sociologists find themselves. The technological orders, solidarity structures, class conflicts and cultural complexes of the positivists, functionalists, Marxist and interpretive sociologists respectively typically rest on the nation or class conflict as immediate context. As long as sociologists are glued to their own research traditions, they will be incapable of transcending their prejudices. Ulrich Beck and Edgar Grande (2010) note that as most sociologists, through their prejudices and old routines, theorize society as a nation, which implies that they non-reflexively collect data at the national level, typically to be able to continue with their cross-national comparisons (Chernilo, 2011). Such un-scientific malpractices in scientific research enforce the national prejudice, and maintain established categories as well as dominant theories of society, as if they were the only possible ones.

Reflexive sociologists perceive the ideological bias in so many theories of society as fundamentally anti-sociological. There is no room for ideology in sociology; or, as Alvin Gouldner (1976: 19) puts it: 'sociology and ideology are competitors'. Beck and Grande (2010) seek to transcend the ideological bias of nationhood in sociological research – 'methodological nationalism; as they call it – in sociological conceptualization. Instead, they propose a 'methodological cosmopolitanism' that takes into account globalization processes at work to cosmopolitanize national existence in worldwide organizations, particularly transnational corporations, global media, NGOs and virtual networks like Facebook and Youtube. Methodological cosmopolitanism, they hope, should enable sociologists to reflect upon social processes – particularly globalization processes – that, precisely because of the dominion of the national categories, have been neglected in established theories of society. This cosmopolitan turn in sociology does not mean that the nation-state, or class for that matter, is no longer relevant in conceptualizations; but it does imply that the established sociological categories of social existence are insufficient to take into account globalizing processes that cut through, and undermine, all previously (historically) established collectivities. Society is re-theorized as a world society, which involves clashing cultures and rationalities and multiple modernities.

Methodological cosmopolitanism does try to transcend, to some extent, existing scientific demarcations, and in this sense, questions some existing ideological biases and (typically class-based) prejudices. However, even cosmopolitan theories of world society are not exempt from ideological commitment. Very much like their nationalist predecessors, they also have too little room for the ambivalence inherent to the theorizing about society. Reflexive sociologists emphasize that in theorizing society, ambivalence is to be embraced, as something inevitable because of the intricacies of social life. The uncomfortable possibility of having to assign a social experience to more than one category, be it nation, class or world, is thereby denied (Bauman, 1991: 1). On a more fundamental level, then, the task of sociology, as Robert Merton (1976: 54) puts it, is 'to lay siege to the problem of ambivalence', which is not the same as trying to conquer it. Rather, Merton sees it as an urgent matter to make the very problem of ambivalence a sociological issue. A class consciousness, for instance, insufficiently understands the wide variety of social experiences, and fails to see the paradoxical tendencies of various, clashing social processes at work in the becoming of societies. Prevailing theories of societies tend to reify, that is, objectify abstract concepts such as nationalism, socialism or cosmopolitanism; or else, they take these for granted. In sum, reflexive sociology rejects all ideologies as scientific obstructions or diseases of the mind.

Fulfilling the Promise of Sociology: Some Steps for Generating Reflexivity in Organizations 363

Such dialogue is an open form of communication in which sociologists refuse to impose their sociological cultures and ways of doing sociology on each other. According to such a dialogical perspective, sociology, as contrasted with ideology or sophistry, moves and evolves through a clash of minds, ideas, scientific languages and methods, in and through

In this way, sociologists from clashing, rivalling sociological positions are enabled to make contributions to the conversations of each other, and contribute towards moving beyond contradictions and fragmentations in the creation of newly envisioned social alternatives (Gouldner, 1976: 21). Sociological theorizing that has been informed in and through dialogical relationships of sharing and reconciling can better fulfil its social responsibility or its scientific vocation. Such theorizing through dialoguing assumes the scientific form of playful intellectuality (c.f. Agger, 2008: 429), a childlike, Socratic, playfulness that most great sociological theorizers and innovators manifest. The dialogue between sociologies is a kind of compensation or antidote to the fragmentation of sociological knowledge, by bridging sociologists and sociologies, without enforcing a dominant sociology, theory of society, method, or definition of science. Instead, dialogue has the potential of revealing the ambivalence of existent sociological knowledge, but also of overcoming deadlocks through patient questioning, exploration, and self-questioning, with the knowledge that absolute certainty of sociological knowledge is not possible and even not desirable. The dialogical sociologist is highly vigilant of abuse of power, which often rests on the claim to absolute

A flourishing sociology, then, depends on the availability of the appropriate social form – the dialogue – that enables sociologists to sustain reflexive scientific discourses about social worlds (Gouldner, 1973: 96). The establishment of dialogue is therefore a precondition for genuine (that is, reflexive) sociological existence, one that is devoid of ideological bias, as far as this is possible. Originally, in ancient Athens, (Socratic) dialogue was conceived as the social form most appropriate for developing scientific insights. It was through dialoguing that science could come to flourish. For Plato, the Socratic dialogue is the opposite of the oration, which he identified as a social form in which ignorance and bias comes to be publicly represented (Voegelin, 2000: 66). In other words, science, and hence sociology, is best organized in dialogues. Science comes to flourish through dialoguing, and it is destroyed through the destruction of dialogue, either from within (via scientific tribalism) or from without (via the invasion of non-scientific forces). Through the establishment of dialogue, sociology can develop as a genuine conversation, sociological otherness can be accepted, and sociologies can provide a liberating perspective on each other. Sociological freedom is optimal when neither of the sociologies is insulated from others, when no sociology is repressed or marginalized, when all are allowed to provide critical perspectives on each other, and when all are brought into a dynamic, vitalizing tension with each other

Such dynamism, Alvin Gouldner (1973: 96) emphasizes, is socially created through the dialogizing activity of sociologists; the latter are called 'to create tension, conflict, criticism and struggle against conventional definitions of social reality, to extricate oneself from them, and to undermine their existential foundations by struggling against the social conditions and institutions that sustain them.' Through dialoguing, Gouldner asserts, sociologists not only reveal the ambivalence in dominating theories of society, but they also contest the

dialogues (Levine, 1995: 327-328; Ossewaarde, 2010a; Ossewaarde, 2010b).

knowledge.

(Gouldner, 1973: 361).

Ideologies simplify reality and illegitimately fail to embrace ambivalence as a side-product of theorizing society (Bauman, 1991).

Reflexive sociologists not only embrace ambivalence in the theorization of society, but, correspondingly, they also emphasize that social existence is fundamentally ambiguous. Donald Levine (1985: 8; 17) stresses that, for sociologists to become reflexive, they are called to grasp the imprecision and multiplicity of meanings of social experiences. Embracing ambiguity implies recognition that sociological concepts, such as nation, anomie, alienation, bureaucracy, freedom, and so forth, that are designed to represent specific social experiences, are essentially contested. And their contestation must be embraced because social existence is ambiguous, that is, social life is filled with opposing tendencies in everything that ties and divides people (power, ideologies, beliefs, religions, classes, ethnicities, education levels, salary scales, and so forth), makes that society is perpetually moving, with arbitrarily fixated categories, false certainties and bygone hierarchies dissolving in random contingencies (Bloch, 1983; Bachika and Schulz, 2011). According to Levine, embracing ambiguity, and thereby be reflexive, is to disentangle the multiple meanings of concepts and to represent experiences through plurivocal modes of representation, using parables, allegories, metaphors, and so forth.

Reflexive sociologists have made use of, and radically criticized, the four sociologies. They point out the danger of reification, of imprinting a particular theory of society on social reality. They criticize the objectification of social existence, whereby so many dimensions and so many movements are left out. They demolish theories that ignore the very ambiguity of social existence, as, for them, social existence cannot be defined by a few, arbitrarily selected, social processes or phenomena. They reject one-dimensional thinking in sociology. They reject the idea of society as a coherent entity, be it a nation, class or world society, in which a presumed whole society comes to determine which processes, phenomena or experiences are to be perceived as relevant. The message of reflexive sociological voices, which are not necessarily fully developed sociologies, is critical: they stress the need to unmask the distortions of existing theories and judgments of sociologists. Hence, reflexive sociologists often restrict themselves to formulating the fragmentation of social experiences, and unceasing disruptions that undermine any social stability, in the scientific form of sociological fragments. Through speaking and writing about society in fragments, and hence treating data as interesting splinters of social existence, reflexive sociologists attempt to deal responsibly with issues of ambivalence and ambiguity, against all attempts of simplification that they consider to be fundamentally biased (c.f., Levine, 1995: 7; Agger, 2008).
