Clinical Sociology by Puspa Melati Wan & Abdul Halim Wan

Author:Puspa Melati Wan & Abdul Halim Wan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030490836
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Working with Values

Applied work, particularly of the clinical nature involves the presence of some clients who claim ownership of particular problems requiring inputs from a clinical practitioner. Accusations of selling-out to the wishes and demands of their clients are frequently hurled at the sociologists who are accused of transgressing the sacred rule of academic detachment. As early as 1951 , Merton and Lerner (1951) issued their warning to social scientists not to surrender their academic privilege as true professional social scientists by unwittingly aligning themselves with the interests of Big Business. They doubted the ability of the practitioners to be able to remain objective and professional in their dealings with their powerful clients since by doing so the former would stand to lose their resources and “the opportunities of getting their findings accepted” by the latter. Similarly, Mills (1959) expressed his fears that the direction, scope, methodology, and outcomes of a research effort would be “expropriated” (p. 106) by the paying clients. He believed that only if social scientists could exercise full control over the means of research could social science be truly autonomous and being able to maintain its credibility as a “publicly responsible enterprise” (p. 106). Berger (1963) shared this general anxiety concerning sociologists becoming too concerned with the practical applicability and consequences of their findings. By doing so, he considered them as automatically having left “the sociological frame of reference” and instead moved into the “realms of values, beliefs and ideas” (p. 19) of the non-sociologists.

Horowitz (1964) went even further to label applied sociology as sociology for sale where the sociologists were seen as pawns being manipulated by their pay-masters or research sponsors. In serving the interests of their clients the sociologists were seen as exploiting sociology for the purpose of gaining purely personal interests and greed, or as Spengler (1969) put it, by hubris. Spengler (1969) saw the growing trend where social scientists were participating in think tanks funded by wealthy and powerful corporations as the beginning of the emergence of “scientism in the guise of science” (p. 68). He labeled the practicing social scientists as promoting interventionism where social scientists discovered that since their wares “command good prices” they must make sales as a means of ensuring that their disciplines continue to flourish. Marshall (1963) was even less civil in his use of words when he warned sociologists not to prostitute their services. He warned that by doing so clients may get what they wanted but they would not, in his words “get sociology” (p. 16).

DeMartini (1980) used similarly harsh metaphors to describe the selling of sociological services to clients as being a form of intellectual prostitution. Some critics even labeled some forms of applied work as cow sociology, accusing the sociologists involved as trying to transform workers into happy cows which would benefit the management. The applied sociologists were seen as being powerless to contradict the interests of their powerful clients. Horowitz (1964) referred to this as establishment sociology where although in theory any

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