the problem here is that we will continue to disagree, fundamentally, on the potential (or not) of certain kinds of research practices to escape their disciplinary presuppositions. connected, _but not reducible to this_, is the issue of how one would work within such a discipline and institutional setting.
hence, the statement below is not a moral judgement, as you well know but for some reason feel it is, but a claim that, faced with the real question of working or not working in crappy jobs, as we all are, there are ways of working with that crappiness or against/around it. hence the statement which you cited explicitly says: _either_ one abandons the institutional and disciplinary setting, _or_ one continues to work there but with a decision to not ask or seek to answer the questions which the discipline sets forth as originary and necessary questions (of social control, cohesion and motivation), _or_ one places distance between the discipline and people's lives, which includes a consideration of what techniques are used and not..
which is exactly what is meant by (i'd written): "if you're a part of an institutional research agenda then you should either get the hell out of other people's lives or you should only do research which is _entirely_ useless from the perspective of social control, motivation, and social cohesion."
> the use of "should" here is a normative claim--a judgment--about what
> constitutes 'good' social research and what ought to be done and not
> done according to some theoretical/political vision.
ah, so here's the problem: it's not really that i'm making a moral claim (which i wasn't) but that i was making a judgement! enough with the whining, kelley... are judgements "according to some theoretical/political vision" not allowed? now there's a strange judgement.
> i'd like to say the same
> thing as you do about all kinds of social research
go ahead. but i haven't mentioned any folks on this topic other than sennett, connell, the church researchers and our esteemed govt. who do you think i've talked about?
> however, i don't say that they *should* get the hell out of that
> line of work or they *should* do what i think they ought to do simply
> because i say.
why not? everyone has the right to disagree with your 'shoulds', just as you have the right to decide what those 'shoulds' are. nothing here, including any statement by anyone on anything, finally decides between one set of 'shoulds' and another; and it certainly isn't me who makes that final judgement, though you keep complaining as if i do in order to then remove my ability to have an opinion or make a judgement (that diverges from your opinions and judgements). enough already!
> rather, i would try to offer some sort of nuanced internal
> explication and critique ... that is suggestive of
> something other than individual culpability or bad or ill-informed
> decision-making.
I'll repeat -- _either_ one abandons the institutional and disciplinary setting, _or_ one continues to work there but with a decision to not ask the questions which the discipline sets forth as originary and necessary questions (of social control, cohesion and motivation), _or_ one places distance between the discipline and people's lives. hence: a dilemma with two very broad ways of responding to that dilemma.
if -- for reasons which you continue to obscure by getting shitty at me for 'judging' -- you think it is important to do research which is 'useful do from the perspective of social control, motivation, and social cohesion', then you'll have to either explain the reasons why you want to do that (if you feel the need to confront my arguments and claims), or frankly, you'll have to drop these tantrums. your only response to this has been to say that 'everyone does it'. not everyone does, and not even everyone officially employed as a sociologist does (sociology), which i have already said. if you have no inclination to respond to this, then that's fine.
but don't not respond by deflecting it endlessly onto the issue of whether or not i'm reading your posts properly, allowed to make judgements, in short about how (apparently) i'm 'treating you'.
ps. if you want a more 'nuanced' analysis of sociology, which certainly does not mean pretending that contradictions are simply a means to salvage something from critique, then read the essay i posted to you offlist, which gives a very specific historical account of sociology.
pps. here's a quiz in the meantime: who came up with the phrase 'bad subjects'?
Angela _________