Is Another World Possible? Sociological Perspectives on Contemporary Politics
Intellectuals in the West have long believed that progress was inevitable, while having vastly different ideas about how and why progress would occur. Whether their confidence was in revolution or parliaments or technology, it was generally assumed that societies would become more just and more prosperous, and that this prosperity would be more widely shared. No more. Alarming trends are unfolding in the 21st century that threaten confidence in a better future, or even in any future at all.
Sociology emerged in the 19th century, as the very idea of society came into focus by thinkers attempting to understand the wrenching changes that accompanied industrialization and urbanization. These changes, and the large scale but also intimate miseries that often came in their wake, illuminated the importance of big social processes and the big institutional structures that gave rise to them. They also directed attention to the “social question,” the new patterns of inequality, hardship and disorganization that society was creating. The penetrating insights of Durkheim and Marx, Weber and Simmel, as well as the path-breaking empirical work of the early American sociologists who focused on social problems, reflected their immersion in the life of their societies, and their commitment to reducing the human suffering that societies can cause. Their work provided conceptual tools and data that contributed to the reform currents of their societies.
We live in tumultuous times again. In the United States , inequalities of income and wealth are increasing while our electoral system is degraded by money corruption, spectacle and propaganda. The numbers of poor are growing and their poverty deepening, while the public programs that once mitigated economic hardship are shrinking. What happens within the U.S. is of consequence to Americans and the world. Pollution and environmental destruction from unregulated production are escalating to the point where global warming may be irreversible. In Iraq, a continuing war tightly inter-braided with U.S. domestic politics brings more dead and wounded Americans, many more uncounted dead and wounded Iraqis, and threatens widening instability in the Middle East . The U.S. is alleged to be the most powerful nation in world history; its military and economic footprints determine the life chances of people everywhere. Tragically, that great power can and does produce policies that violate axiomatic sociological knowledge about social cohesion and stability.
What are the prospects for understanding, and reversing, these trends? How can sociologists, whose intellectual mission it is to understand the connections between everyday life and large social forces, and to communicate that understanding to wider publics, contribute to the strengthening of democratic forces on which the prospects for a better future depend?
Frances Fox Piven, President and Committee Chair, City University of New York Graduate Center
