On the Geopragmatics of Anthropological Identification by Allen Chun

Author:Allen Chun [Chun, Allen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781789202038
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Berghahn Books, Incorporated
Published: 2019-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

Theory as Narrative: The Birth of Society and the Norm from Durkheim to Foucault

An assumption that drives the social “sciences,” notably anthropology and sociology, is a firm belief in their epistemological and methodological objectivity, or the sui generis nature of “social facts,” as Durkheim phrased it. However, objectivity here can refer to many things that have been confused in actuality. First, it refers to a belief in the inherent neutrality of its methodology of observation and modes of systemic analysis. Second, this neutrality is predicated on the assertion that its object of study is considered external to the observer. Ultimately, this sense of distance (between observer and observed) contributes to the sense of detachment (of the values of the observer from their own cultural milieu) that is necessary to the analysis.6 In this regard, it is interesting to note that functionalism has its “natural science of society” (as coined by Radcliffe-Brown) and that structuralism has its “science of the concrete” (as coined by Lévi-Strauss), both of which reiterate from different (if not opposing) methodological perspectives the same “gaze” that underscores all social scientific epistemologies. Moreover, I argue that the epistemological and methodological assertions that are essential to the social scientific enterprise, ideally stated as they are, are themselves based on a mythical narrative about the nature of “society” (as both external social facts and systemic reality). In other words, the sociological “imagination” is just that: a set of fictions whose hypothetical assertions have never been proven, except in other logical terms. In this regard, Michel Foucault’s impact is clear, especially when juxtaposed against classical sociological narratives of modern society, by showing how the scientific claims about society made in this “imagination” are themselves a peculiar historical-cultural product of a broadly defined Eurocentric modern imagination. From Foucault’s narrative of the birth of the social sciences as a function of modern society’s disciplinary will to power emerge the epistemic conditions that give rise to the curious illusion that culture and social organization (or ideology and praxis) are analytically distinct, when their fates are in fact intertwined.

The notion that society exists in and of itself (independent of individualistic rational, calculating action) is a relatively recent discovery in the history of sociological thought. Just as modern sociology distinguished itself in contrast to other disciplines through its monopoly over what is now called the “sociological imagination,” anthropology was also no less founded in reaction to the anthropocentric illusion of humankind’s control over civilization (see, e.g., Mills 1959; White 1948).7 The extent to which Durkheim was able to sanctify the reality of society among individuals reflects the extent to which society as an analytical construct has become an unquestioned reality in the minds of social scientists.8 Viewed in this light, Durkheim’s works are in essence attempts to articulate a “myth” or ideological proof about the reality of society in opposition to what was the prevailing utilitarian rationale of the day. However, continued ambiguities in his definition of key concepts then paved the way for divergence in

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