The Wall Street Journal recently ran an op-ed by Jukka Savolainen of Wayne State University. He is responding to the removal of sociology from Florida’s list of college courses that can be taken as a general education requirement. In the op-ed, Savoleinen accuses sociology of being overly political and peddling dysfunction:
Through the decades, I have watched my discipline morph from a scientific study of social reality into academic advocacy for left-wing causes.
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In 2020 I started teaching a general-education course on the sociology of sports. Having never taught the subject before, I relied on a popular textbook. It didn't take me long to discover that the book provided few interesting findings or persuasive arguments. Instead, it was peppered with tendentious grievances against capitalism, masculinity and "white privilege.”
This is a bit exaggerated but essentially is correct. While sociology remains a general science of human communities, we have increasingly focused more and more on inequality for political reasons.
Savolainen notes that the American Sociological Association openly adopts a progressive and Left stance in its activities:
Each year, the association's president chooses a theme for its annual meeting. Next year's theme is brazenly political: "Intersectional Solidarities: Building Communities of Hope, Justice, and Joy." The ASA sums it up as follows: "The 2024 theme emphasizes sociology as a form of liberatory praxis: an effort to not only understand structural inequities, but to intervene in socio-political struggles."
While I believe that people should be comfortable stating their political opinions, sociologist too often allow scholarship and activism to freely mix, which opens them up to these sorts of political attacks. Op-eds like this are stating the obvious.
Bottom line: If you say science and politics should mix, don’t be surprised when your science is politiccized.
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I am not qualified to comment on the op ed and your comment. However a fundamental mistake made by the WSJ author, and the ASA, is that sociology is still only what is taught/discussed in sociology departments. Time to take note to the sociology diaspora.
• As an esteemed sociologist of sport, who has been teaching and researching the subject for decades, not someone who simply picked up the subject to fill some gen ed seats, I could not disagree more with your characterization. Your critique seems as lacking in empirical evidence as the claims you are making about the textbook you utilized. Like many sub-disciplines in sociology, sociology of sport has become increasing critical of systemic structures of inequality and elucidates the myriad ways these structures shape the lived realities of people who work and play in SportsWorld as well as those who consume it. Critical does not mean it is not empirical or evidence based nor does it imply a political motive. What it does mean is that SportsWorld is examined with a critical lens that challenges the assumptions that come from scholarship that has, for too long, been built on accepting (or at least not being critical of), the foundations of white supremacy and heteropatriarchy on which all social institutions in the US are built. I would urge you to read some of the leading scholarship in the sub-discipline, attend the annual conference, and engage in dialog with those of us producing the scholarship of which you are so critical.