twelve - Imagining social science

Summary

The stories we tell ourselves and each other about our lives are a mixture of edited memory and constructed narrative. The effort after truth is an effort after meaning, so the relationship between the stories and ‘what actually happened’ can sometimes be quite complex.

Today I think of myself not as a sociologist but as a social scientist. Over the last 30 years I have become convinced that the study of the social has so much in common with the material sciences that we ought not to see it as a special case. The task of all science is better to understand the place in which we find ourselves, with understanding being a pathway to prediction, control and improvement. Although I have spent most of my professional life in academia, I have never been interested in the life of the academy as such: the reason for being in this business of social science has always for me been a matter of public welfare, of trying to be part of that struggle whose broad underlying aim is a society based on what is essentially a moral vision of equality, peace and justice. As the social scientist and public servant, Barbara Wootton, pointed out, whatever one’s commitment to science, judgements about the work that matters will derive ultimately from personally held principles and beliefs (Wootton, 1950).

‘Becoming a sociologist’

Wootton also said, reflecting on her own professional life, that serendipity had played a much larger part in its direction than had informed choice (Wootton, 1967, 278). There was no moment when I decided to become a sociologist/social scientist. On the contrary, from very early childhood my ambition was always to be a writer (perhaps this is still the case). As an only child in an academic family, I spent a lot of time on my own, and the rest of it observing other people. There is a great deal of overlap between the qualities needed for effective writing, and those which are called into play doing social science (Oakley, 2009). In both cases, one must have the capacity to distance oneself from personal social context and circumstances, the ability to shift perspective and take on other points of view, and, above all, a passionate (but non-prurient) interest in the fabric of other people’s lives.