Sociology as Revolution

    Here is my argument. Sociology is the most revolutionary discipline on earth. Use its concepts and insights and, like a passenger in an air balloon, you get to see self and society from utterly unique perspectives. You get to see why people think and act as they do; and, still in the balloon, you get to decide if you want to come right back down to earth, or, before descending, create better and more just ways to think about 300 million Americans; or, in a more ambitious mood, the earth’s almost seven billion inhabitants.

     Let’s start with a “fresh” example. I recently came into a summer class wearing a very loud, flowered shirt, new shorts, and some snappy sneakers. They were checkered Vans for those in the know and I felt pretty sharp, or at least conspicuous. It was an 8AM class so, after the students sleepily surveyed their professor, one said “fresh”, and another said “fly”.

      I immediately looked down at the zipper in my shorts. Was I was literally exposed? I saw no problem and I also saw no flies in the room. So, what was Paul talking about? And why had Marcus used the word “fresh”.

   Ultimately the students explained to Professor Rip Van Winkle that I had just received a compliment. Used in this fashion, “fly” and “fresh” meant that I looked good. I was initially confused because I had no idea that the students had already exercised their inalienable right to create and recreate social reality. They had taken two old words –fly and fresh-, they had attached a new meaning to those words and they had then achieved a consensus among themselves that fly was a compliment. My problem was that I was not part of the new consensus. In essence, I was “fresh” to the kids, but, stuck in traditional meanings, my mind was stale, or at least out of the loop when it came to the latest meanings of everyday English words.

      While my students never put it in sociological terms, what they did was engage in the social construction of reality. Admittedly they only redesigned the tiniest part of the social universe, yet, in the process of freshening up the language they underlined one of Sociology’s most important insights: People are in charge. Only women and men produce the beliefs, values and practices that make up any human society; and, as an additional asset, people actually have the mental muscle required to recreate social reality whenever they wish. My classroom examples focused on everyday changes but, at times, even two pintsize letters and a period can demonstrate our power to consciously create even revolutionary social change.

      Think of the word Ms. It did not exist until the 1960’s and women’s desire to achieve equality with men across the social spectrum. To activists, words like Miss and Mrs. pointed backwards, toward the sexist world that already existed. So, to find a storehouse for a radically revised set of beliefs about women and men, a group of women decided to invent a new word. Again, it is two lousy letters and a period but the ripple effects of this change are still with us. For example, if women and men are equal, then women’s work no longer exists. And a man who says that he is willing to “help” with the dishes may catch flak because using the word help implies that the sink and suds are still a women’s preserve. Offer to wash your fifty percent of the dishes and we can talk; otherwise Ms. Smith may have a few very pointed words for a man who is stuck in time.

          People are in charge. They can create and recreate social reality whenever they wish. It is a marvelous gift but, if people actually have all the power I claim, why does the contemporary world experience such persisting and ugly manifestations of violence, injustice and inequality. Are we masochists? Do human beings have, as Freud once argued, a biologically based instinct to death? Or, is there another explanation for why people often fail to exercise their power to create and recreate social reality?

      Sociology makes this argument. People never inherit a clean slate. On the contrary, each of us is always heir to a mountain of already accepted beliefs, values and practices. At home and at school, at places of worship and on the streets, adults and adolescents teach us what to think; and, as children, it is exceedingly difficult to challenge the legitimacy of received wisdom. We learn to think like our parents and our teachers; and it is even possible to passionately embrace nonsense, plus pass that nonsense on as truth to our children and students.

        Consider the word Caucasian. In roughly 1795, this was the very human creation of a German named Friedrich Blumenbach. He invented a typology of so called races and, for whatever reason, he said that the best looking people on earth came from the Southern slopes of the Caucasus Mountains. He could have said the Andes or the Rockies but he chose a nearby Christian standard and 213 years later otherwise intelligent people unknowingly use a word invented by a man who argued that the beauty ideal for everyone on earth is to look like folks from contemporary Armenia, Azerbaijan and Iran. It’s silly once you think about but, if you are a young or older adult and you never knew until now the origin of the word Caucasian, why would you challenge the received wisdom? Caucasians exist; it is a scientific fact or at least that is what my teachers told me.

             All people, at all times, in all nations experience the same Catch 22: We have the inalienable right to create new versions of social reality but, before we get a chance to create ourselves, others create us -by, for example, telling us about Caucasians. To freshen up the world, we need to work with the beliefs, values and experiences we already accept and share with the members of our society. It is a dilemma unless you have the conceptual tools offered by Sociology. Then you can act like the magician Houdini. He was once locked in a cell and struggled for hours to escape. Nothing! Frustrated, he pushed the door and it opened because it was never locked.

   That is the promise of Sociology. Use its conceptual tools and you see self and world from unique and energizing perspectives. We can destroy the social construction called race. We can stop using skin color as a crucial axis of identity.

       Since we are in charge, we can recreate any society we wish. All we have to remember is that the gate that leads to the air balloon is open, if we push it.