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History of the Human Sciences
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DOI: 10.1177/095269519701000307
1997 10: 87 History of the Human Sciences
Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose
In the name of society, or three theses on the history of social thought

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by Alonso Pelayo on October 18, 2014 hhs.sagepub.com Downloaded from by Alonso Pelayo on October 18, 2014 hhs.sagepub.com Downloaded from
87-
In the name of
society,
or three
theses on the
history
of social
thought
THOMAS OSBORNE and NIKOLAS ROSE
ABSTRACT
Who is
speaking
in the
history
of social
thought?
The
question
of the
authentic voice of social
thought
is
typically posed
in terms that tend
to be either
ambitiously
theoretical or
carefully methodological.
Thus
histories of social
thought frequently
offer either a résumé of
general
ideas about
society (say
from
Montesquieu
to
Parsons)
or a
survey
which
gets bogged
down in a rather
tedious,
nit-picking
debate about
empirical methodology.
This
paper
is
something
of a
preview
of a
pro-
jected attempt
on the
part
of the authors to
capture
the voice of social
thought
in rather different terms. Our three theses are:
(1)
that those
who
speak
in the name of
society
have
just
as
frequently
been doctors
and bureaucrats as
opposed
to social
philosophers
or
professional
sociologists; correlatively, (2)
that the creative voice of social
thought
has more often been
technical,
problem-centred
and tied
up
with
par-
ticular rationalities of
government
as
opposed
to
being
either exclu-
sively
theoretical or
merely responsive
to
objective problems
in
society;
and, (3)
that if
sociology today struggles
for a voice in which
to
speak
this
may
be in some
part
due to the
ways
in which the
past
history
of social
thought
has
typically
been conceived.
Key
words
empiricism, historiography, society, sociology
HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES Vol. 10 No. 3
© 1997 SAGE Publications
(London,
Thousand Oaks and New
Delhi)
[0952-6951(199708)10:3]
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88
Who
speaks in
the name
of society?
To ask this
question
is to
suggest
that
society
is not so much an
idea,
a
concept,
or a zone of
reality,
but a
way
of
giving
voice to a certain set of
problems
and
aspirations.
The idea of
voice,
here,
signifies
the
ways
in which
society
is
put
into
discourse,
and this is not
just
a matter of different
styles
of
thought
but of
styles
of articulation. A
history
of these social articulations would be a
history
of the
ways
in which
claims have been made in the name of
society; grievances
uttered,
expla-
nations
formulated,
blame
ascribed,
cures
pronounced.
It would also be a
history
of another sense of social
articulation;
of connections
established,
relations assembled between
issues,
parts,
zones,
organs
and
persons
in a
social
language.
But some obvious
problems
confront those who
try
to do the
history
of
this
voicing
of
society.
Who are the
subjects
of such a
history?
Whilst
pro-
fessional
sociologists may try
to claim a
monopoly
on the
right
to
speak
truthfully
in the name of
society, they
are
certainly
not the
only people
who
have
investigated, analysed,
theorized and
given
voice to
worldly phenom-
ena from a social
point
of view.
Perhaps
our concern should be less with
sociology
itself,
as a
discipline,
than with the birth of
particular styles
of
thought, types
of
articulation,
and
thought
collectivities that take what we
term a social
point
of
view; individuals,
groups,
movements,
writings,
investigations
that think of
particular aspects
of human existence -
morality,
poverty,
illness, crime,
culture - as social and that
speak,
write,
practise
in
the name of the social
or, sometimes,
in the name of
society.
On the other
hand,
might
the archive for our
history
not also consist of
the succession of theories of
society?
There are
many scholarly
histories of
sociology
written in such terms. But such histories often
marginalize pre-
cisely
those voices that articulate the
changing problematizations
that are the
conditions for the
history
of
sociological theory;
the
changing problem-
spaces
within which
sociological
theories can offer themselves as answers.
These
problematizing
voices tend not to be much concerned with
epochal
theories or
systems,
or with abstract
conceptions
of
society,
and
yet,
we
suggest,
it is these voices that have often
proved
decisive,
setting
the terms
under which
sociological
theories can
place
themselves in the true
or,
alternatively, shaping
the criteria which
strip
their truthfulness
away.
A further
question
confronts the historian attentive to this
question
of
voice. What kind of voice should the historians of
society
themselves
adopt?
Would it be
possible,
for
instance,
by
means of a certain
happy positivism,
to
articulate a
history
of
sociology
from an
entirely
neutral
vantage-point?
We
think not. It is inevitable that
any history
of
sociology
will be conditioned
by
some view about these
matters,
not least because
any
such
history
will
need to
clarify
its initial motivations in order to
identify
its
object.
Hence in this
paper
we
attempt just
such a clarification in the form of three
broad theses. These are meant to be correctable
hypotheses, suggestive
of
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89
future work - hence their
informal,
indeed
speculative
character.
They
suggest
not an
end-point
of research but
only
a
starting-point
for a certain
type
of historical work on
sociology,
one that
may
have
something
to offer
for the
present.
THESIS ONE
Social
thought
owes at least as much to the machinations
of people
like doctors
and bureaucrats as it does to the erudite
reflections of quasi-philosophers.
Who or what would be the focus of a
history
of the social
point
of view?
Michel Foucault once admitted to a certain
scepticism concerning
received
views on this matter: Countless
people,
he
said,
have
sought
the
origins
of
sociology
in
Montesquieu
and Comte. That is a
very ignorant enterprise.
Sociological knowledge
is formed rather in
practices
like those of the doctors.
For
instance,
at the start of the nineteenth
century Gu6pin
wrote a marvel-
lous
study
of the
city
of Nantes
(Foucault,
1980:
151;
cf.
Rabinow,
1989:
39-46).
Such a comment
is,
of
course,
polemically
useful but also a little mis-
leading.
Comte was
certainly
influenced
by
medicine;
for
example, by
the
physician
Broussais
(Canguilhem,
1989).
But
Gu6pin
himself was
actually
a
pupil
of
Saint-Simon,
which does not do much for Foucaults contention. It
would be better to
say
that the
practices
of the doctors were of a different
order from those of theorists of
society.
To be
sure,
there were
important
theorists of
society.
But,
aside from such
theorists,
there were also
practical
people
like doctors for whom social
thinking
was a matter of the
difficult,
piecemeal midwifery
of novel
ways
of
construing
the
practical problems
that
they sought
to understand and ameliorate in terms of a
space
of action and
determination that exceeded the individual - flows of
sewage
and
water,
cir-
cuits of attitudes and
opinions, practices
of
moulding
and
shaping
conduct.
What sort of
episodes might
such a
history
consider? Three
very
brief
examples may give
an illustration.
7.
Mortality, morbidity
and the
social point of
view
One
key
site for the birth of the social
point
of view was the realm of illness
and death. A whole
body
of
empirical thought surrounding
the
questions
of
disease and
morbidity began
to mushroom around the middle of the first half
of the 19th
century.
Foucaults doctor from
Nantes,
Gu6pin,
was
perhaps
one
of the first
(Rabinow,
1989:
39-40).
He
published
his
study,
Histoire de
Nantes au XIXe
sicle,
in
1835,
mapping
the
city by
social
class,
and
drawing
up
a kind of urban
morphology, taking
in
statistical, architectural,
historical
and moral elements in
1,500
pages
of text.
From the
perspective
of
English
social
thought,
the
peculiarity
of
Guepins
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project
is its
totalizing
character. He tried to
say everything
about Nantes. In
contrast,
when the doctors
Arnott,
Kay
and Southwood Smith
investigated
some of the
parishes
of London in
1837,
theirs was a
closely
defined
study
which was
pragmatically
motivated
by problems
with the
operation
of the
revised
poor
law
(Arnott
and
Kay,
1837-8;
Southwood
Smith,
1837-8a and
1837-8b).
Their brief was to see whether the
prevalence
of disease in areas
like
Whitechapel
and Bethnal Green
impeded
the
workings
of the
poor
law
system.
Their studies
place
them at the
beginnings
of a
particular conception
of the social
point
of view for
they argued,
in
effect,
that there were two kinds
of disease: those due to the natural course of
life;
and those that could be
ameliorated
through
social and environmental intervention. As is well
known,
the miasmatic
conception
of disease -
relating
to the diseases of
malaria as Arnott and
Kay
described them - was decisive here
(Arnott
and
Kay,
1837-8;
Southwood
Smith,
1837-8a:
83).
The fevers that were of inter-
est to Southwood Smith were
specifically
those which could not be amelio-
rated on the basis of the efforts of the
poor
to
improve
themselves,
that
is,
those cases where disease was not a matter of
improvidence
but was conse-
quent upon
social and environmental conditions alone
(Southwood Smith,
1837-8a:
83).
We think that with such modest little
studies,
a social notion of
disease was born: not
through
a
sociological theory
but
through
the inven-
tion of a new
spatialization
of disease in a collective
space
marked
by empiri-
cal characteristics such as
housing
conditions and habits of life. This social
point
of view was itself medical in format. Disease was not
just
conditioned
by
social
factors;
it was also a kind of barometer of the condition of
society;
for diseases are the iron index of
misery,
which recedes before
strength,
health and
happiness,
as the
mortality
declines
(Farr,
1838:
65;
cf.
Higgs,
1991; Szreter, 1991).
Much has been made of the statistical element of these
early
studies. The
new
thought-space
that
they opened up
was
certainly,
in
part,
collective
because it was statistical - that is to
say,
it worked in terms of the
regularities
in relation
amongst large
numbers.
However,
it was also collective because it
was clinical. The clinical
gaze
tends to be understood as
individualizing
in its
form;
that
is,
as the
bringing
of a
knowledge gained by practice
on the
many
to bear
upon
the case of a
particular
individual.
However,
these doctors
brought newly
discovered medical
principles
of
careful, detailed,
clinical
observation to bear
upon
a collective field
by
means of a kind of
case-by-case
description.
Detailed
reportage
was to the social field what
diagnostics
was
to medicine
(Southwood Smith, 1837-8b).
And the remedies
largely
acted
upon
the individual
through acting upon
collective
spaces,
forces and flows:
bring
in
sewerage
and
drainage systems, employ scavengers
to take
away
refuse,
create wider streets
and,
perhaps
above
all,
legislate
to
prevent
over-
crowded conditions in the
lodging-houses
of the
poor.
After this
point,
there
developed
a whole discourse centred
upon
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91
amelioration of the conditions of the
poor
in the
towns,
usually centring
upon questions
of
overpopulation
and
overcrowding (e.g.
Farr,
1838:
79;
Chadwick,
1842:
275; Duncan, 1844; Godwin, 1859).
It is a discourse that
continues - albeit with modifications - to this
day,
and continues to have a
critical
edge (Davey
Smith et
al.,1990) Nevertheless,
whatever its status as an
explanatory paradigm today,
the social
point
of view had to be invented
before it could become a more or less
present-at-hand
resource for critics of
the undue individualization of medical
practice.
2.
Urbanism,
criminality
and
government
Currently
there is a rather mean-minded
political
debate about whether one
should attack crime
by being tough
on the criminal or
by being tough
on the
causes of crime. But it was not
woolly-minded sociologists
who first
spoke
about crime in the name of
society.
In
Britain,
the
Inter-Departmental
Com-
mittee on
Physical
Deterioration had
reported
in 1904 that it was the
very
lowest
type
of class that was the cause of most of the
problems
in urban areas.
The
report
came in the midst of a debate about three different
ways
in which
one
might
understand this link: a moral
way,
which was bound
up
with
attempts
at the
philanthropic
reform of the habits of the
working
classes;
a
social
hygiene approach,
which
sought
to eliminate the social ills such as
overcrowding,
casual labour and
squalor,
which it believed to be crimino-
genic ;
and a
eugenic way,
which saw the matter as one of the inheritance of
physical,
moral and intellectual
capacities,
to be addressed
by
control over
breeding
from different classes and sectors of
society.
In
Europe,
it was
eugenic theory
that held
sway
over the
problematic
of crime and
criminality
at the end of the 19th
century;
whilst Britain tended to take the
path
of social
hygiene
and moral reform. But it would be
wrong
to attribute these debates
to
sociologists
as such.
Perhaps
the contributions that were most
sociological
came from statisticians concerned with
discerning
laws of the moral order.
In his Treatise on Man and the
Development of
his
Faculties,
published
in
1835 and translated into
English
in
1842,
Quetelet points
with
something
like
awe to the
terrifying
exactitude with which crimes
reproduce
themselves
and to the fact that We know in advance how
many
individuals will
dirty
their hands with the blood of
others,
how
many
will be
forgers,
how
many
poisoners,
and
famously proclaims society prepares
the
crime,
and the
guilty
are
only
the instruments
by
which it is executed
(Quetelet,
1842:
108;
quotes
are from
Hacking,
1992:
105).
But
Quetelet
was a member of a kind of infor-
mal
thought-collective
of statisticians which fostered and
strengthened
this
style
of
thought.
In
1839,
R. W.
Rawson,
honorary secretary
to the Statisti-
cal
Society
of
London,
read a
paper
on the statistics of crime before the sta-
tistical section of the British Association. His concern was with moral
statistics,
a term that
encompassed
all kinds of conduct in that moral domain
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92
where
morality,
conduct and conscience were
joined: prostitution,
suicide,
crime, madness,
vagrancy
and so forth. Rawson
argued
that the laws of
large
numbers
might
one
day
be as secure as those in the
physical
sciences;
laws
which the
legislator
will find ... far more safe and useful
guides
than the
mere
assumptions
and a
priori
theories of
speculative
moral
philosophers
(Rawson,
1839:
318;
cf.
Abrams,
1968:
28-9).
But Rawsons method was
not,
despite
these
anti-philosophical jibes,
some kind of raw
empiricism.
For if
moral
phenomena,
like
physical phenomena,
are
subject
to established and
general
laws,
then these are laws derived from external circumstances -
above
all,
the level of civilization attained
by
a
country,
and the social con-
ditions of different
genders,
classes,
or sections of different nations - that
influence the individual
(Rawson,
1839:
316-17).
Rawson seldom
speaks
of
society, though
he is
happy
to
speak
of social conditions. After
analysing
sta-
tistics of
criminality according
to the variables of
sex,
age
and
region,
Rawson
concluded
(1839: 344):
If these facts be combined with those
previously
noticed,
that larcenies
without violence are
by
far more
prevalent
in those
metropolitan
and
manufacturing
counties which contain a number of
large
and
populous
towns than in the
agricultural
counties in which such towns are com-
paratively
few,
and that those crimes are
principally
committed
by
persons
at an
early age,
we arrive at the conclusion that the collection
of
large
masses of the
population
in crowded cities conduces more than
anything
else to the creation of those
causes,
whatever
they may
be,
which stimulate the commission of crime.
A social
point
of
view, therefore,
even stated in this
apparently
familiar ter-
minology
of moral deviance and urban
conditions,
is not
really sociological.
One can talk of social conditions without
talking
of
society,
still less in the
name of
society.
In Rawsons
case,
as with that of Southwood Smith
above,
there is no
explicit
or
implicit
avowal of
sociological reasoning;
indeed,
in
some
respects
Rawson was
specifically
critical of it
(Abrams,
1968:
28).
But
what was at stake here was not the establishment of
sociology
as a disci-
plinary
vocation but the difficult invention of the zone that
sociology
would
later seek to formalize as
society.
3. The invention
of opinion
Perhaps
the Victorians were
particularly
inventive
empirically;
and the
English,
in
particular,
for all their other
limitations,
sought
to cultivate a fine
empirical style
of
thought.
But it is not too difficult to find others elsewhere
who
sought
to
speak
in the name of
society,
with characteristic voices of their
own. In
January
1937,
the Public
Opinion Quarterly
was established in the
United States. This marks the date at which
public opinion
research becomes
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93
irredeemably respectable -
if
hardly
without its critics - from an academic
point
of view.
At what moment had it become
possible
to
problematize public opinion
as an
object
of
positive
research?
Many
dates
suggest
themselves.
Roughly
between 1920 and
1930,
in the United States and
elsewhere,
and in several
distinct
ways,
the
prediction
of
popular
desires became a field of concern and
research. There were
certainly
some
quasi-philosophers;
Walter
Lipmann,
for
example,
who
published
his
pathbreaking
Public
Opinion
in 1922.
Lipmann
argued
that
democracy
is
governable only
on the basis of a
knowledge
of the
opinions
of the
masses;
one has to know what
people
think before one can
govern
them,
hence
personal representation
must be
supplemented by rep-
resentation of the unseen facts
(Lipmann,
1922;
cf.
Lowell, 1919;
Qualter,
1958:
20-3).
But
Lipmann
was not
just
concerned with
public opinion
as a
matter of democratic
principle.
On the
contrary, public opinion
must be
made an
object
of
knowledge
because it is so
dangerous.
The
danger
here is
one of the
crowd,
the
mob,
the
mass,
the
collectivity
that is
labile,
suggestible
and hence a source of
insecurity.
Hence a
knowledge
of
public opinion
will
not
only
ensure democratic
legitimacy
to acts of
government,
it will also
secure those who
govern against
unwelcome
surprises: Insecurity
involves
surprises.... Every
democrat feels in his bones that
dangerous
crises are
incompatible
with
democracy,
because he knows that the inertia of the masses
is such that to act
quickly
a
very
few must decide and the rest follow rather
blindly (Lipmann,
1922:
271-2).
This was not
simply
a reiteration of an older concern with the
dangers
of
collective mentalities. For the collective was no
group
mind,
no
supra-
individual
consciousness,
but the
aggregation
of the
opinions
of all the indi-
viduals who made it
up.
This was to enable the
philosophical
concern with
the
representation
of the
opinion
of the
public
to be made technical and
empirical: public opinion
as a kind of social fact. One
exemplary
date here
would be
1935,
the
publication
of
George Gallups
Pulse
of Democracy
(Gallup
and
Rae, 1935). Opinion,
here,
still related to the
question
of the
gov-
ernability
of
democracy,
but
Gallup
also took the view that
democracy
needs
public opinion
to
function;
not that
public opinion might
undermine democ-
racy
but that
regular monitoring
is
actually
constitutive of
democracy.
The
rather
hazy
idea of
public opinion
was made technical in the methods devised
by Gallup; public opinion polling
was to force into
reality
a new collective
space,
which could be the
object
of a
positive knowledge -
not a
sociological
but a
political knowledge.
Obviously
neither
Gallup
nor
any
of these other
opinion pollsters
can be
described as a
sociologist
in
any straightforward
sense. But that is
really
our
point.
If our model of a social thinker is Saint-Simon or
Comte,
then
talking
about
Gallup
in the context of a
history
of social
thought
looks a little ridicu-
lous. But
Gallup
was more like one of Foucaults
doctors,
engaging
with
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particular problems
and
devising empirical contraptions
to realize
possible
solutions to them. He contributed to the
opening
out of a social
field,
in our
sense of that
term,
because his
message
was that there were certain measur-
able
regularities
that
pertained
across collectivities of
persons, regularities
that could be observed across different times and
places.
And
after Gallup,
came the avowed
sociologists.
Personae
Can we
say
more about the characteristics of the
people
who have these
ideas? Were there characteristics in common
amongst
those who
sought
to
give
a voice to the social
perspective?
There have been some
indispensable
archival studies in the
history
of
empirical sociology
in recent
years (for
example,
Bulmer et
al., 1991;
Con-
verse, 1987; Platt, 1991; Oberschall, 1972). Typically,
these studies are con-
cerned with the historical task of
uncovering
networks of
particular persons
in order to illuminate
affiliations,
innovations and
influences;
that
is,
with
mapping
the
epistemology
of the social sciences on to
personal relationships.
This
perspective undoubtedly
works well for certain
periods
of
study,
for
example,
the second half of the 20th
century.
But,
as we have
seen,
those who
have
sought
to
speak
in the name of
society
have not
always
been sociolo-
gists
in that sense. But
who, then,
is it that
speaks?
We have
already
referred to Michel
Foucault,
and
he,
of
course,
is remem-
bered as one of those who
proclaimed
the
unique
voice of the author to be a
dead letter. But what Foucault was
trying
to do was to show that at each
moment a
precise
set of
problems
were the
target
of
thought
and
action,
within certain
specific practices,
and that a
given problematization
was first
of all an answer
given by
definite individuals in
specific
texts,
although
it
may
later come to be so
general
as to become
anonymous (Foucault,
1988:
17).
In
the cases we have
discussed,
the individuals who
spoke
in the name of the
social were
obviously
real
people.
The
history
of social
thought
is full of such
figures:
Southwood
Smith, Chadwick,
Florence
Nightingale,
Charles
Booth,
Beatrice
Webb,
Patrick
Geddes,
Paul Lazarsfeld. Their
significance
is that
they embody
a
particular style
or stance towards a set of
problems,
articulate
them in a
particular
orientation,
act as models or
exemplars
for those who
come after them. We can call these
figures, adapting
Deleuze and
Guattari,
conceptual personae:
thinkers whose
personal
features were linked
very
closely
to the intensification of certain
aspects
of
experience
in the form of
facts,
to the inventiveness and
experimental
attributes of
concepts,
to the dia-
grammatic capabilities
of
thought.
And if we want to
capture
the voices of
empirical
social
thought,
we need to
stay
close to the
singularities captured
by
such
personae.
It is not that social
thought
is reducible to the
biographies
of thinkers such as these but that we can indeed
approach
its
history
as a kind
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of
conceptual biography
because these
personae
are
themselves,
as it
were,
conceptual (cf.
Deleuze and
Guattari, 1994: 68-9;
cf.
Hacking,
1992:
8).
And
the most
important
and inventive
conceptual personae
are those
who,
staying
very
close to a
particular
zone of
problematization,
articulate a novel
way
of
answering
the
questions
it
poses.
Thus,
for
example,
Edwin Chadwick forced into existence a whole new
way
of
problematizing, investigating
and
seeking
to act
upon pauperism
and
sickness, and,
in his
doing
so,
his actual existence embodied a kind of
politico-
conceptual synthesis.
We have
already briefly
encountered Thomas South-
wood
Smith,
the fever
physician
who found himself almost
captured by
the
necessity
to
speak
in the name of a social
point
of view in relation to disease
(Pelling,
1978);
and his was a
style
of
conceptualization
that was
highly
dependent upon
his
specific make-up
as a
psychosocial type -
his medical
background
as a fever
physician,
his
early
association with the
Utilitarians,
his
practical
relation to the
poor
law commission and so on.
Similarly,
the
name of Charles Booth
exemplifies
a whole
style
of social
investigation
in
combination for a
project
of social reform and the best
government
of
conduct. Or one could
speak
of William
Beveridge,
whose earliest
empirical
investigations
forced
unemployment
into existence as a social and
systemic
phenomenon,
and whose
proposals
from then on
exemplified
a
key linkage
between the social
point
of view and the invention of
devices,
from labour
exchanges
to social
insurance,
that would
embody
a social view of the fates
of individual citizens. Personae are
epistemological exemplae
of different
kinds of authorization to
speak
in a social
voice; and,
perhaps
more often
than
not,
personae
have no idea that
they
are such.
Such
people
are not
sociologists,
or even
sociologists
before
sociology.
They may
be
doctors,
sanitary engineers,
statisticians, novelists, reformers,
feminists,
philanthropists,
or revolutionaries - all those for whom the social
claim was a
weapon
in a
dispute
about
power,
about
justice,
about
poverty,
about
sickness,
about
danger
and about
progress.
These are the inventive
figures,
because
they
are
struggling
to
speak
in the name of the social in the
course of a
practical
and social
ethics;
struggling
for the social to be accorded
a truth in order that it
may
be accorded a
power
to set
against
other
powers,
be
they
the
powers
of disease or the
powers
of
procreation,
the
powers
of
vice or the
powers
of international
competition.
Government
We are not
suggesting merely
that what is
good
about the
early writings
in
social
thought
is that
they
were hard-headed and
practical,
or
sensibly
related to
policy.
That would be
misleading.
Such contributions were not
just
reactions to
particular
social
problems
and events but involved a creation
of
concepts
and hence a creation or
reconfiguration
of
problems.
This
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creativity
and this
practicality
went
very
much
together.
It is not a matter of
application
of
theory
to
policy,
for neither
pre-exists
the other.
Rather,
it is a
question
of inventions for the
government
of
conduct;
the
imagination
of
novel
ways
of
regulating
some kinds of
conduct,
and
forestalling
or
promot-
ing
others.
From the 19th
century
onwards the notion of
society
was constituted
by
a tension between two ideas:
society
as a zone with its own laws and
rights,
and
society
as a medium and instrument of
government.
One finds an
obvious
example
of this in the last decades of the 19th
century.
Thus in the
1880s,
writers like Herbert
Spencer
in
England
and William Graham
Sumner in the United States
polemicized against
the extension of
govern-
ment into the
spontaneous
affairs of
society -
the state had
historically
achieved
nothing
for the
growth
of individual and collective
welfare,
which
had
always
been assured
by
the
spontaneous
activities of individuals or
groups
of citizens and their interaction in the natural
space
of
society
(Spencer,
1888; Sumner, 1881). Yet,
on the other
hand,
Spencer
and Sumner
were
objecting precisely
to all those zones and
practices
where
govern-
mental
thought
had become social:
regulation
of food and
drinking
and
compulsory
vaccination in the name of
health,
inspection
of business
premises
in the name of the
safety
of
workers,
educational activities of
poor
law
guardians
and taxes to
support
libraries in the name of education and
moralization of the
labouring poor,
and so forth
(Polanyi,
1944:
135-50).
And whilst the abstract
conception
of
society might
have been formalized
in the
philosophers
armchair,
the
thinkability
and
plausibility
of
society,
even in the terms understood
by Spencer
and
Sumner,
depended upon
the
work that was carried out in these social laboratories - the
quotidian
problem-spaces
of drains and
diseases,
crime and
punishment,
madness and
security,
labour unrest and
factory
reform,
the
city
and the schoolroom.
And these
practical
and
governmental
social rationalities would
provide
the
material for their formalization in the first three decades of the 20th
century,
within a different view of
society
linked to a different
politics:
that of soli-
darism in
France,
of social liberalism in
England
and of the New Deal in the
United States.
THESIS TWO
?he
key
moments
of sociological
inventiveness arise in the encounter
of
tech-
nical innovations with
specific practical problematizations.
How does social inventiveness occur? Not so much out of
responses
to
objective problems
or crises that beset a
country
or a
community
but rather
out of
styles
of
problematization,
and out of the
specific
technical inven-
tions that
get
linked
up
to such
problematizations.
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Problematization
To
analyse problematizations
is to
investigate why
certain
things
(behaviour,
phenomena, processes)
become articulated as
problems,
how
they
are linked
up
with or divided off from other
phenomena,
and the various
ways (con-
ditions and
procedures)
in which this
actually happens.
This
is,
in
part,
a
matter of
events,
such as the series of cholera outbreaks that hit
European
cities in the middle decades of the 19th
century,
events like wars or events like
particular
celebrated or infamous
murders, disasters,
strikes and so forth.
These events are not
exactly
causes.
Obviously,
one can
always say
that con-
cepts
like civil
society
were conditioned
by particular processes
such as the
emergence
of a certain kind of
capitalist society
in the later
part
of the 18th
century.
We would not
argue
with that at all. But such
processes
are
really
only
the conditions for the articulation of
particular
events,
they
do not
determine them.
No,
the status of events in our account is rather different
from
this;
their function is
focal
rather than causal. The
problematizations
that take
shape
around such foci
consist,
in each
case,
of a
questioning
of a
particular
dimension of
experience; poverty,
urbanism,
the
family
and so
forth.
Styles
of
reasoning
do not confront
experience directly
but
through
reducing experience
to,
or
articulating experience
as,
a series of
problems.
Hence
problematizations
are not
merely
derivative of their
subject-matter:
they
are creative events in their own
right.
In this
context,
we
might
be able to learn from a whole tradition of French
thought
on the
history
of science. This tradition has
taught
that those activi-
ties that we know as science
entail,
in their
very
nature,
a connection between
representation
and intervention.
Science,
in the case of those
practices
we
have come to know as the natural
sciences,
is what Gaston Bachelard -
reflecting
on the
particular
state of the sciences of his time - called a
phe-
nomeno-technical
activity.
Such science seeks to
conjure up -
to make
per-
ceptible -
in
reality
the
things
it has
conjured up
in
thought,
and to reflect on
its errors
by
means of a kind of
applied
rationalism
(Bachelard, 1949:168-9).
Like other veridical
knowledges,
then,
should one not
argue
that social
knowledge
is inventive when -
perhaps only
when - it is the moment of
reflection,
formalization and abstraction in a
practice
on
existence;
when it is
oriented
by
a norm of truth and hence
open
to
correction,
when it celebrates
error and internalizes it in its own
history? Only
thus,
perhaps,
can social
thought
be
open,
not
closed;
that
is,
be a normative
knowledge,
not a reflec-
tionist sub-branch of
philosophy.
Techniques
Recent studies in the Social Studies of Science have
shown,
with
regard
to the
history
of the natural
sciences,
the extent to which technical
problems
in
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such sciences have social
origins (Shapin
and
Schaffer,
1985:
Shapin,
1992;
Latour,
1987).
But it
might equally
be said that social
problems
have techni-
cal
origins.
What counts in the elaboration of a
particular problematization
are certain technical
procedures (such
as
surveys, reports,
statistical method-
ologies, procedures
of
observation)
that make
things
visible.
Making
some-
thing
visible can often be a rather
important
feature of the
assemblage,
which
enables it to be
given
a voice.
Take
early practices
of the
survey.
In the
early
1840s Chadwick elaborated
particular practices
of social observation
by mobilizing
his
battery
of medical
officers of
health,
engineers
and others to document the
experience
of
sanitary
degradation
across the
country.
Chadwick was not
particularly
well
disposed
towards the doctors.
Still,
he
thought
that the
2,300
poor
law medical officers
were an
indispensable
tool of
inquiry
with the means of
carrying investigation
precisely
to the
place
where the evil is the most rife
(Chadwick,
1842:
343).
Since that time
many practices
of
making
a
survey
have been
developed.
Tech-
niques
have to be devised to make the information thinkable. The first tech-
niques, perhaps,
are the classifications and
categories
themselves,
which
actually shape
the form of the
reality
that is
represented: dividing
activities
up
into
trades,
persons up
into
races,
time
up
into
years
or
decades,
and so forth.
Perhaps
the next
technique
for
making
numbers thinkable is the
table,
which
was much favoured
by
moral statisticians such as
Quetelet
and
Rawson,
and
by keepers
of the census such as Farr.
Everything
was tabulated into
rows,
columns, totals,
averages, percentages
and much more. But even with this sim-
plification,
tables had to be
accompanied by fairly large quantities
of text in
order to
give
the
lay
reader instructions for use.
Hence the invention of the social
map
was a rather
significant
moment.
Bulmer et al.
(1991)
provide
some
very
nice
examples
of these
maps. Early
statisticians of disease had drawn town
maps
and identified the areas of inci-
dence and the rates of incidence with colours and intensities. Police statistics
charted the town into a
topography
of crime and marked rates of incidence
of different
types
of crime on the
map, providing
a
very
material visualiza-
tion of social
space
in a form that meets all Latours criteria for the immutable
mobiles that allow
thinking
with hands and
eyes:
a
single
visual
field,
easily
scanned and
compared,
stable, two-dimensional,
mobile and
reproducible
(Latour, 1987;
cf.
Jones
and
Williamson, 1979).
Thus habits of the
population
become
simultaneously placed
in a social
space
and woven into the
particu-
lar circumstances of
specific
localities within this
topography.
This form of
moral
mapping
continues
throughout
the 19th
century up
to the work of
Booth: the facts are ascertained
by
house-to-house
surveys charting
the moral
and
physical
state of each
dwelling
and charted on a
map
where
they
can be
overlain
with,
and
compared
with,
the
chartings
of other moral
phenomena
such as disease or crime. The
eye
becomes the
principal organ
for
grasping
the social realm.
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Let us take another
example;
that of
public opinion,
as mentioned earlier.
The
practicable problematization
of
public opinion depended upon
a
quite
limited technical invention. In
1906,
A. R.
Bowley,
in his
presidential
address
to the
Royal
Statistical
Society,
advocated the
usage
of the
representative
sample (Bowley,
1906;
cf.
Bowley, 1913
and
Bowley, 1915;
Desrosi~res,
1991).
This is a nice instance of a technical invention that is much more than
just
a
fitting
of means to ends.
Rather,
this kind of
sampling
entailed the emer-
gence
of a new
object
of intervention.
People
like Booth had relied for their
data not
upon
the direct accounts of those in
poverty
but
upon
the
testimony
of those
deploying
a
practical authority
over the circumstances of
poverty:
school board visitors. In contrast to this kind of
investigation,
the
represen-
tative
sample
reduced the
scope
of the
investigation
and enhanced what
might
be called its
intensity.
Yet the advent of
sampling techniques
was sur-
rounded
by
debate;
and its
proponents
treated it not as a more or less obvious
and neutral
surveying
device but as an
imaginative discovery
of some moment
in its own
right.
Indeed,
it seemed to some as if
sampling technology
would
bring
the social sciences
finally up
to date with the natural sciences
(Cantril,
1944: 129).
Bowleys plea
is
something
of a landmark moment here. It is
frequently
impossible, Bowley says,
... to cover a whole
area,
as the census
does,
or as Mr Rowntree here
[in York]
and Mr Booth in London
successfully accomplished,
but it is
not
necessary.
We can obtain as
good
results as we
please by sampling,
and
very
often
quite
small
samples
are
enough;
the
only difficulty
is to
ensure that
every person
or
thing
has the same chance of inclusion in
the
investigation. (Bowley,
1906:
553)
Bowley emphasized
that
samples
could be reliable
tools;
that the
accuracy
of
a
sample
is
dependent
not
upon
the size of the
sample
relative to the size of
the
whole,
but
only
on the absolute
magnitude
of the
sample
itself
(ibid.: 673).
Samples
are
good
on
depth
as well as
scope;
because of their
scale,
samples
allow for the
possibility
of measurement rather than mere surveillance. One
can introduce
controls,
one can even measure intensities. In
short,
one intro-
duces the
possibility
of
something
like an
experimental
ethos with the intro-
duction of a
sampling approach;
and with the
sample,
the social world can be
known as a new kind
of,
as it
were,
virtual
depth.
Now,
at one
level,
this seems
simply
like a technical
innovation
applied
to
a
particular
field.
Perhaps
it could be
interpreted just
as a
short-cut,
a
quicker
way
of
sampling
than
previous
methods.
Yet,
the
representative sample
was
not
just
a technical innovation of this sort.
Rather,
it
opened up
a new
space
at two
levels,
a sort of molecular level of
discerning
individual
differences,
and a molar level of a more
general
surveillance. New forms of
visibility
and
new forms of intervention were thus created. In the 19th
century,
social
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science had been dominated
by
a
very
different kind of
survey. Quetelet,
for
instance,
had deduced the laws of
large
numbers from the
manipulation
of
averages.
Le
Play similarly, though
he had used
qualitative
methods,
used
research
assumptions involving essentially purposive
selection. Such methods
lead to
aggregations
and
generalizations
rather than a
sensitivity
towards
individual
differences;
whereas
representative
selection
produces
difference
and distributions of the kind associated with the work of Galton or
Pearson,
but with wide
implications
over
large populations (Desrosieres,
1991:
221).
In
short,
the technical innovation of the
representative sample
was also an
advance at the level of
government
in that it facilitated a
government
of all
and -
continuously -
of each.
These
examples
could,
of
course,
be extended. For
instance,
we
might
con-
sider the role of the attitude
survey
in the
government
of institutions and
organizations,
from the US
Army
onwards. Or we could
point
to the
impli-
cations of the
redeployment
for social ends of the
techniques
of confession
in the form of the research interview as a
way
of
rendering
the invisible into
a form in which it can be recorded and
manipulated. Similarly,
one could con-
sider the
way
in which the focus
group
is invented as a means of
forcing
into
existence
previously ungraspable aspects
of human motivation: these are
indeed
phenomeno-technical
moments when social researchers seek to
summon
up
in
reality phenomena
that have
already
been summoned
up
in
thought.
The
eye gives way
to the ear as the
pre-eminent
technical form for
a certain kind of social
investigation,
and in
doing
so reinscribes
subjectivity
into the social field in the form of an ethic of
interpretation.
But our
point
is
a
very simple
one: when
seeking
the conditions of inventiveness in the
history
of social
thought,
one should look to the
technique
of the social
map
as much
as to Comtes
laws,
to the
techniques
of the attitude
survey
as much as to the
structural functionalism of
Parsons,
to the focus
group
as much as to the
Frankfurt School.
THESIS THREE
If
social
thought today
lacks inventiveness it is in
part
because
of
the deni-
gration of
the
empirical
moment that characterizes so much
contemporary
sociological theory:
a
history of empirical styles of reasoning
thus
might
have
a
diagnostic effect.
The notions of
society
that solidified and were formalized at the turn of
the 19th and 20th centuries are
beginning
to
fragment.
It seems to
many
that
a new
experience
of our collective
being
is
coming
into
existence;
one in
which
society
is no
longer
social, or,
at
least,
not social in
quite
the same
way.
At the same time the
discipline
of
sociology
is
questioning
its
very
object:
for
example,
two of the most inventive areas of the
discipline today -
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the
sociology
of science and historical
sociology -
seem to be marked
by
their
rejection
of
any single, unifying
notion of
society.
Of
course,
this
ques-
tioning
can have
very
different
consequences.
For
some,
it
seems,
it mandates
a
style
of
weightless writing
on culture that substitutes limitless
redescrip-
tion of the
given
for the kinds of ethical inventiveness that we have tried to
capture
in this
paper.
For
others,
it leads to a kind of
sociological philosophy
that substitutes a simulation of moral
philosophy
for the kinds of
practico-
critical
experiments
in
applied
ethics that characterized those who once
spoke
in the name of the social.
If,
for
us,
there is a
purpose
in
writing
the
history
of the
voicing
of
society,
it is
only
to
suggest
that the loss of self-evidence of
the social nature of
society
that we
experience today might provoke
a differ-
ent kind of attention to the work done
by
these technicians of ideas who
articulated their
experience
in social
terms,
and made
knowledge-power
an
agent
of transformation of human life
(Foucault,
1978:
143,
quoted
from
Rabinow,
1996:
x).
Such a
history might provide
a
vantage point
from which
we
might produce
an historical and critical
understanding
of that inventive-
ness that was central to the
rationality
of
early
social
thought.
For if we can
diagnose
the
styles
of
thought
that made inventiveness
possible,
and be a little
clearer about what constituents of our troubled
present they
invented,
we
might
learn some lessons that can be turned to use in
inventing
our future.
We have no reason to believe that our own
age
is less inventive than
any
other
when it comes to
joining practical
criticism and ethical
experimentation,
or
that we lack those ethical technicians who can invent new
practices
that
reconfigure
the relations that human
beings
have to themselves.
A
history
of social
thought
that
might
contribute to such a task would be
neither a
history
of the
discipline
of
sociology
nor a
history
of ideas about
society.
If one writes ones
history
in these
ways,
it
appears
as if the inven-
tiveness of social
thought
has come at the
edges,
in the
margins,
because of
the fact that
practical
issues of
regulation
and
government
stimulate social
theorists and
equally
because academic
sociology
can be
applied.
We think
these cheerful
diagrams
of centres and
margins,
with their
reassuring
vectors
of
conceptualization
and
application,
are flawed. One learns more about the
conditions under which we have come to be able to understand our
experi-
ence as social
by attending
to the multitude of more modest
examples
of a
kind of
applied
ethics of
investigation
and intervention than
by narrating
a
story
of individual
biographies
and
schools,
or
by reconstructing
a theoreti-
cal canon.
Bachelard,
in his
writings, sought
to
capture
a
living thought
that was the
product
of a
conquest
over inert forms of
thought.
For
him,
the
story
of the
sciences was not the sum of
everything
that had
happened
but the
story
of
how,
with successive
breaks,
living thought
had broken free from
dead,
inert
counter-thought (cf. Canguilhem,
1968:
180).
Far too much of
todays
soci-
ology
is burdened
precisely by
such forms of
counter-thought
whether in the
by Alonso Pelayo on October 18, 2014 hhs.sagepub.com Downloaded from
102
realms of
theory
or
empiricism.
Hence,
in
fact,
the
very necessity
of the
encounter with the
empirical
moment,
an encounter that should mean the
opposite
of an
empty-headed empiricism
but one that - however
pragmatic,
however affiliated with the demands of
power -
is
always something
of a
step
into the unknown.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This
paper
arises from a
project
on the
history
of
empirical
social
thought sponsored
by
the Economic and Social Research Council. Our thanks to Patrick
Joyce
for his
comments on an earlier version.
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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
THOMAS OSBORNE is lecturer in
sociology
at the
University
of Bristol. He is
currently completing
a book on theories of truth and the
politics
of contem-
porary
social
theory,
as well as
collaborating
with Nikolas Rose on an ESRC-
sponsored project
on traditions of
empiricism
in the
history
of British and
American social
thought.
Address:
Department
of
Sociology, University
of
Bristol,12
Woodland
Road,
Bristol BS8
1UQ,
UK.
[email:thomas.osborne@bristo1.ac.uk]
NIKOLAS ROSE is Professor of
Sociology
at Goldsmiths
College, University
of London. His most recent books are
Inventing
Our Selves:
Psychology,
Power and Personhood
(1996)
and Foucault and Political Reason:
Liberalism,
Neo-Liberalism and the Rationalities
of
Government
(1996)
with Andrew
Barry
and Thomas Osborne. He is
currently working
on In the Name
of
Mental Health - a
study
of
20th-century psychiatry.
Address: Pro-Warden
(Research),
Goldsmiths
College, University
of
London,
New
Cross,
London SE14
6NW,
UK.
[email:n.rose@gold.ac.uk]
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