Some Prerequisites for Internationalisation of Sociology

Author(s): T.K. Oommen

Source: Sociological Bulletin, Vol. 63, No. 3 (September-December 2014), pp. 432-437
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.
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 Sociological Bulletin
63 (3), September - December 2014, pp. 432-4
© Indian Sociological Society

PROFESSION

Some Prerequisites for Internationalisation

of Sociology*

T.K. Oommett

By common consent the purpose of International Sociological Asso-

ciation (ISA) is to foster international sociology, and ISA has been
engaged in this for the past several decades. However, there is no
consensus on the scope and content of the elusive concept of inter-
national sociology, although it could be conceived as an aggregation of
'national sociologies' to begin with. But, in terms of sheer demography,
the 'nations' vary from a couple of one-billion-plus countries (China and
India) to over fifty per cent countries with five million or less population.
More complicating is the fact that the social structures and cultural
patterns of the 'nations' vary vastly; if African nations are multi-tribal,
those of the New World - Americas, Australia, New Zealand - are multi-
ethnic. While some nations are multi-national, quite a few are nation-
states, either in reality or in terms of their aspirations. To treat these
disparate units as building blocks of international sociology is a tough
calling. And yet this is precisely what sociology should do.
As Zygmunt Bauman reminds us,

. . . with hardly any exception all the concepts and analytical tools currently
employed by social scientists are geared to a view of the human world in
which the most voluminous totality is a 'society', a notion equivalent for
all practical purposes, to the concept of the 'nation-state' (1973 : 78).

The first prerequisite for internationalisation of sociology is to abandon

nation state as a unit of sociological analysis not only to avoid the pitfalls
of 'methodological nationalism' (Smith 1979), but also because the ideal
of nation-state is hardly realised even in West Europe, its cradle (Tilly
1994). And yet sociologists cannot abandon 'society', the fulcrum of

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 Profession 433

their discipline, and

(Castells 1998), or
some have advocat
anchored.
The second prerequisite for internationalisation of sociology is to
overcome the conventional but irrational division of labour between
sociology and social/cultural anthropology which crystallised in Europe.
The implication of this is that human societies are categorised into
superior and inferior. If anthropology analysed the inferior Others -
Savage, Black, and Ethnographic - sociology was to study modern,
industrial, or programmed societies (Gellner 1964; Heller 1987; Touraine
1971), which had and continue to have demoralising effect on the
peoples of 'non-modern', 'non-industrial' societies. As H. Fallding rightly
claims, '... cultural and social anthropology comprise neither more nor
less than the sociology of simpler peoples' (1968: 71). To recognise the
inhabitants of a society as simpler or different is not to stigmatise them
(see Oommen 2013).
To insist that sociology is an offspring of modernity is not only to
subject non-modern societies to cognitive blackout but also to ignore the
notion of multiple modernities. If, conventionally, modernity was con-
ceptualised as a spatial notion, in that it was mistaken for westernity, the
idea of multiple modernity transforms it to a temporal notion recog-
nising the possibility of Asian, African, and Arab modernities. Further,
modernity need not always be subjected to the process of displacement,
but it can also be the product of accretion.
The imagined inferiority and superiority couched in terms of a series
of dichotomies during the colonial period was transformed into a tri-
chotomy during the Cold War era. The classification of the three worlds
was based on politico-economic factors and had nothing to do with social
or cultural structures. The Third World was characterised by under-
development, overpopulation, and political chaos. The Second World
was technologically modern, but politically authoritarian. The First
World was modern, technologically efficient, democratic, and econo-
mically advanced (Pletsch 1981). Society and culture are missing from
this trichotomous construction of the world and hence it is non-
sociological. To unfold this, one must underline the fact that the Third
World consisted of three entirely different entities viewed in terms o
social structures and cultural patterns. They were all ex-colonial, but th
type of colonialism to which they were subjected to varied substantiall
If Africa and South Asia were subjected to 'retreatist colonialism', Latin
America experienced 'replicative colonialism' (Oommen 1991). Viewe

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434 Sociological Bulletin, 63 (3), September- December 2014
in terms of social structure and culture, Latin America is similar to other
settlement societies such as North America and Australia constituted by
immigrants drawn from a wide variety of backgrounds. For example, in
Brazil, the biggest country in Latin America, although a colony of
Portugal, the immigrants were drawn substantially also from Italy, Spain,
Japan, and Germany. These ethinies living together in the territory of a
state do not make a nation-state in the WeSt European sense (Oommen
1997). But sociologists did not challenge the three-world schema of the
Cold War era which continues to be a serious obstacle to understand the
specificities of social structures and cultural patterns of settlement
societies, which include societies from the First as well as the Third
worlds.
The conflation of state and nation is an extant conceptual confusion
and a persisting stumbling block to internationalisation of sociology
(ibid.). The state, the conventional focus of analysis by political
scientists, will not wither away and cannot be wished away, and socio-
logical analysis cannot ignore it. And yet to confuse it for nation is an
appalling error. The rise and fall of states are fairly common; in contrast,
nations are relatively stable entities. But, when sociologists refer to
'national traditions' in sociology, they are invariably referring to
sociological studies undertaken in the territory of states (see Genov
1989). Before the Berlin Wall emerged and after its demolition, there
was only one national tradition in German sociology; during the
existence of the Wall there were two 'national' traditions, one for East
Germany and another for West Germany. Before the dismantling of the
Second World, Soviet sociology encapsulated several national socio-
logies; with the breakup of Soviet Union, several national sociologies
came to be recognised and accorded separate status. There is an Indian
sociology in the multi-national state of India, but no Bengali, Gujarati, or
Tamil sociology, although each of these nations is distinct in terms of
their cultural patterns. Thus, international sociology in practice is inter-
state sociology and, given the lack of coterminality between state and
nation, the unit of sociological analysis is far removed from social and
cultural realities. That is, the persisting state-centrism of sociology is
antithetical to the very spirit of internationalisation of sociology.
There are two consequences of linking sociology with the state. One,
those 'nations' who did not succeed in establishing their own sovereign
states will not have their sociologies; there is a French sociology, but no
sociology of Brittany; there is a British sociology, but no Welsh socio-
logy; there is a Spanish sociology, but no Catalan sociology. The
Kurdish nation is vivisected across several sovereign states and hence it
is destined to remain without its own sociology. In this rendition, the fate

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Profession 435

of 'national sociolo
fortune of nations
dictum. Can one me
logy in such a situat
To link sociology w
discipline. The mis
cultural patterns in
pre-modern, simp
disciplinary vested
pursuing the goal o
souls of sociology
they are chained tog
the determinant of
I anticipate that so
demise of nation-s
global society. Whi
nomy (through cap
cannot be said that
structures and cult
and heterogenisat
occurring thanks
(Oommen 2005). Int
to these on-going p
The dismantling of
world and its logic
here is that the tran
and economy and no
assume the emerg
some even advocat
exists one commun
into the original s
and fashioning it af
fields of knowledg
complexity: materia
which engages with
matter, life, and cu
universality and ob
not applicable to s
symbol making - is
in the course of my
Sociology, two dec

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436 Sociological Bulletin, 63 (3), September-December 2014

one culture, one civilization, one communication system and the like is
not only possible but not even desirable - pluralisation encapsulates the
very conception of world society' (Oommen 1995: 266).
I want to close this short comment with two observations. One, in
spite of all the social transformations that occurred in human societies,
three dimensions are shared by all of them: unity (as philosophical
realism upholds), multiplicity (as sociological nominalists advocate), and
social process (as cultural pluralists hold) (Stark 1962). True, the
intertwining of these dimensions varies in their intensity across societies,
but the basics are there. This provides the hope for internationalisation of
sociology. But, instead of focusing on these basics, sociology had
lionised the importance of economy, polity, technology, media, ecology,
and the like, relegating social structures and cultural patters to the status
of mere dependent variables.
My second and last observation is that the complexity of societies
varies based on permutations and combinations of stratification, hetero-
geneity, and hierarchy more than the level of economic development and
the type of the polity. All human societies are stratified based on class,
gender, age, and the like. But when they are also heterogeneous based on
culture, particularly religion and language, and race, thanks to inter-
sectionality, the complexity of such societies increases. However,
hierarchical societies, wherein inequality is legitimised by social values,
not by constitutions, complexity increases exponentially through inter-
sectionality. An authentic internationalisation of sociology should pursue
the commonalities and specificities of all societies. Thus conceived, inter-
nationalisation of sociology is neither universalisation nor indigenisation
(see Mukheņi and Sengupta 2004), but contextualisation (Oommen
1983) which avoids hegemonisation implicated in universalism and paro-
chialisation implicit in indigenisation. Indeed, comparative sociology is
the gateway to internationalisation of sociology.

* This is the text of a presentation made at the XVIII World Congress of Sociology at
Yokohama, Japan on 16 July 2014 the theme of which was 'Internationalisation of
Sociology - ISA at 65 : Looking Backwards and Forwards' in which the former
presidents of ISA were the panellists.

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T.K. Oommen, President, International Sociological Association (1990-94), 85, National

Media, Shanker Chowk, Gurgaon - 122002, Haryana
Email: tkoommen5@gmail.com

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