No. 003 CONFLICT METHODOLOGYby TR Young RED FEATHER INSTITUTE 1973
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ARCHIVES
of the TRANSFORMING SOCIOLOGY SERIES of the RED FEATHER INSTITUTE for ADVANCED STUDIES IN SOCIOLOGY |
CONFLICT METHODOLOGY
From Conflict Theory to Conflict Methodology.
Gouldner (1970) makes it clear that one political meaning of survey methodology is that it
provides the technical basis for a police state. At the same time, the dynamics of the
greatest part of contemporary methodology, based as it is on tact, consensus, cooperation,
persuasion, and establishment sponsorship are compatible with a managed society; managed
on behalf of largescale organizations: business, government, military, industry,
finance, and largescale education.
Yet there is more conflict built into the research process than Gouldner has mentioned.
The essence of surveys, polls and samples is that they reduce knowledge about society to a
few useful facts derived from isolated individuals who do not have the benefit of
considered discussion with all other members of the group or sector of society to which
these 'facts' purport to apply. The collective interest is lost to individual interests
which inform the responses made on the questionnaire. Individual interests often reach
beyond the single individual to her/his family, his/her union, her/his ethnic group,
his/her city, state or even nation. However the geometry of the 'We' is reduced to its
smallest and most self-centered dimensions when surveys, polls and samples are generated
from single respondents in the home, office or shop.
It is this form of social organization, that of large scale organizations in which
individuals are treated as single individuals, or treated as disconnected interest groups,
out of which mass societies emerge. Thus an 'objective' form of social research is
returned to the society from which it comes to alter, dramatically, the very organization
of that society. What purports to be objective, value-free research has a sub-text not
immediately visible to the innocent scientist or his subject.
In a society with severe conflict built into its structure, class, racist, or gender
inequality, objective research takes on a partisan character not easily known to the
writers and readers of that research. For example, in asking about social policy on aid to
women with dependent children, those persons whose children are adequately feed, housed,
parented, educated, clothed and churched are not part of the interest group to whose well
being such programs are pointed. Rather, the informed self interest of most persons in the
USA and elsewhere, is to minimize local, state and federal taxation on similarly situated
families.
Where an interactively rich research format to be instituted such that parents in need of
housing, health care or better educational resources could make a case, opinions
registered as 'public opinion' might very well be significantly different. Were there a
wide reaching discussion about the sources of poverty, the wider social effects of ill
health and great uncertainty in a sector of the general population or about the moral
implications of turning away from the needs of children; were such discussion to be part
of the research process, the 'facts' upon which public policy are based might well be
qualitatively different.
There is a case to be made that private opinions could be informed by news media such that
the Generalized Other is expanded to include a more general interest. The case could be
made that there is already an informationally rich public opinion process adequate to the
general interest is in place in the various media; radio, television, news magazines and
television news. One could assert that even given such an informationally rich process,
still individuals make informed judgments such that a much more narrowly based opinion is
expressed in the survey or poll. However the range of opinion and the nature of reporting
is such to further divide and privatize the opinion process (Dahlgren, 1979). PBS may do
as well as any news facility but even there, the range of opinion is narrowed to that of
the centrist liberal and the centrist conservative point of view; there is no regular
appearance of marxists, feminists, critical theorists or Black Power advocates.
More to the point of conflict, much research is commissioned with the information needs of
corporations and public agencies in mind. The University of Michigan, for a fee, will add
items to surveys which are fielded by the Survey Research Institute in Ann Arbor. Many
private research organizations undertake research designed to serve the same information
needs. Private policy, based upon such information weighs heavily against the interest of
consumers, workers, competitors and or regulatory agencies.
Research undertaken by public agencies; schools, public health agencies, housing agencies,
transportation authorities or other such public entities all presume the bureaucratic
structure of a large scale organization in which it is assumed that individuals will come
before the public agency singly and conform to the rules of discourse within the agency.
Thus both the hierarchy of the bureau and its mass social base is, in the same moment,
twinborn.
Research could be done within a more united community gathering as was the case in Newark
during the years of the War on Poverty (PBS, January 17, 1995). Public policy on the
construction of a Medical Center during the late 1960s turned out to be very different
from that set by public officials who had used the bureaucratic/mass format for the
setting of public policy. After several months of intense debate, legal actions and wide
spread dis-order, several important additional features were added which benefited the
Afro-American community in ways not possible within the instituted policy process.
Politicizing Ethno-Methodology In the same way,
Gouldner's analysis of the political meaning of Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology is valid on
its own terms yet still incomplete. As Garfinkel (1967) uses it, ethnomethodology simply
evokes taken-for-granted normative structures, otherwise not visible, by engaging in
small-gauge deviances or other behavior inappropriate to the occasion under construction.
Garfinkel does not endorse the replacement of such minor deviances; he assumes the
legitimacy of whatever order is made visible. One does not study social realities in order
to change them as Marx teaches; in Garfinkel, one studies social realities in order to
write books which instruct others about that which does exist.
In factories, shops, restaurants, elevators, offices, schools and churches, information
about the invisible, taken-for-granted normative structure is offered up as value-neutral
observations. What action others then take on the basis of putatively neutral research is
understood to be outside the purview of the researcher. In all bureaucracies; in all
stratified social organizations; in all societies organized by deep cleavages and by great
inequalities in power, wealth and social honor, such information flows to the managers,
police, social workers, teachers, and other authorities who then use is as part of the
'scientific administrative' process to produce and reproduce social occasions agreeable to
the authoritarian management of society.
Ethnomethodology is completed as a full fledged exercise in conflict methodology by
understanding that the deliberate practice of things offensive to the established social
order might well be institutionalized as an alternative to that established and stratified
social order; that such alternative ways of thinking, acting and behaving may well be more
congenial to the human project than the normative structures Garfinkel wants only to
reveal and report.
A fully conflict use of Ethnomethodology is thus vital to a conflict
theoretical approach since it offers an understanding that a methodology which stands in
overt hostile contrast to its subject produces dimensions of scientific enterprise closed
off by traditional methodologies limited, as they are, by 'ethical' standards reduces the
sociological enterprize to merely reporting and describing that which exists. Such a
methodology is a conservative methodology in that it tends to freeze the status quo and,
in the doing, creates the false impression that what exists is what must exist. 1
This paper will serve as a starting point from which to understand the
epistemological advantages accruing from a conflict methodology. In the pursuit of
insight, understanding, validity and other ways of "knowing", these advantages
include additional dimensions of meaning, additional levels of awareness, additional
sources of data, as well as dimensions of dedication lost to the "impartial"
researcher. Conflict methodology, as an epistemological tool, restores moral
responsibility to the research act; no longer can the social scientist claim neutrality in
the knowledge process; s/he is part of the process by which society is created and
recreated and must accept both the good and evil for which s/he is in part responsible.
There are a variety of modes in which the social scientist may stand in overt hostile
contrast to the subject of study. They range from the gentle and small-gauge activities of
Ethnomethodologists such as Garfinkel to the bestial and brutal natural and contrived
experiments in prisons, asylums, and concentration camps, not to mention fraternities.
Experiments in human degradation, sensory deprivation, physical pain, inquisition, in
electroshock therapy, in chemotherapy, in rehabilitation all provide valid scientific
data; all are varieties of conflict methodology; all stand in direct hostile contrast to
the subject of study.
The practice of conflict methodology requires that consensus aspects of research
methodology taught by contemporary graduate schools be set aside. Objectivity, tact,
informed consent, and open research designs are right and proper in societies in which
consensus and the norm of reciprocity are, in fact, honored. They are well placed in
egalitarian societies; they are greatly to be honored in democratic social occasions; they
are desirable in those social occasions in which those who live out their years and
desires fully participate in the creation of those social forms. One can argue for more
hostile research procedures even under those conditions; double blind as a research tactic
is appropriate even under consensus conditions.
More deliberately deceptive and overtly hostile research tactics may be defended as
ethical under conditions of oppression and conditions in which unnecessary repression
occurs. The heart of this paper offers consideration of such times and tactics. There is a
special argument against the overt use of conflict methodology which must be answered
before one can get on with the business of use social science as an emancipatory tool. The
argument centers around what is called the Heisenberg effect.
The False Neutrality of Objectivity: Heisenberg and Hawthorn. The Heisenberg
effect states that, by studying a field, that field is changed. Presumably, the results
from such intrusion are invalid and therefore, what one has left is not science. In its
sociological expression the principle is known as the Hawthorne Effect. The dominant
schools of research methodology in American sociology view it to be a cardinal sin of
science to deliberately provoke the operation of the Heisenberg principle. To the end of
research neutrality, unobtrusive measures, double blind techniques, surreptitious
participant observation are greatly to be valued. In a word secrecy, duplicity,
clandestine, and concealed research tactics are to be preferred as one tries to obtain
knowledge without changing the object of knowledge.
When such findings are hostile to the interests of workers, minorities, women, third world
peoples, or other research subjects, a gloss of neutrality is constructed by publishing
such findings in scholarly journals. The claim is that, since the journals are available
to everyone, neutrality is maintained. The thinness of such arguments becomes apparent
when one realizes that large corporations, governments and wealthy individuals hire whole
cadres of people to search these journals for just that information which serves the
interest in control and/or exploitation.
If the findings are available only to those who are in hostile contrast to the subject,
the canons of objectivity, value neutrality, and freedom of speech become disclaimers with
which a researcher can fashion the image of consensus while, at the same time, be a well
paid and honored partner to the hostility and partiality the use of such findings entail.
Thus the conflict relationship between researcher and researched is transferred to a
second, third and fourth intermediary who makes no pretense at complying with the 'ethics'
of scholarly research.
The Knowledge Benefits of Conflict Research As a
special case of conflict methodology, ethnomethodology on the other hand requires that one
poke, probe, provoke, and puncture the social system in order to make visible its chief
characteristics. Avoidance of Heisenberg/Hawthorne principle, under an ethnomethodological
view, is a political obstacle to a more complete understanding of the nature of the social
system. Thus, an ethnomethodologist might assign students the task of challenging the
trust relationship of another in a social occasion in order to obtain, on the part of the
student of sociology, a full understanding of the importance of naive trust in social
relations.
The importance of trust, faith, honesty, sincerity or other taken-for-granted key
components in the construction of social reality are never visible to research procedures
available to consensus methodologists. Trust, for example, is a highly important
social-psychological component of a wide range of social systems and is a part of that
which is taken for granted. The takenforgranted aspects of trust means that it is
seldom visible. When we drive into a gas station or shop in a large market, we take for
granted that the clerks are 'really' clerks and not con-artists or imposters. Asking for
some identity or outside validation of the right of the clerk to take the status-role is
seldom done. Asking one's mother if she is, in fact, 'really' one's mother seems
senseless, yet mothering and clerking are social processes in which role are allocated and
behavior regulated. Anyone could feign the behavioral components for a time without having
been assigned the role. The unobtrusive/consensus observer would scarcely notice a crucial
element of these social systems with his limited repertoire of research techniques. Unless
one were the subject of the response to a test of trust, one could not know the meaning of
that response.
In scientific terms, both parties to the conflict arising from a challenge to trust know
the meaning of the response far better than an "objective" observer ever could
know. In point of fact, the more we stand in hostile contrast to naive trust, the more we
understand its vital role in the construction of social systems.
Halfway between the gentle things and the horrible things which comprise
the content of conflict methodology is the law suit. 2 As Joseph
Sax has demonstrated at length in Defending the Environment,
the law suit produces information and clarified positions which would otherwise be hidden
from public view by what Sax calls the Insider Perspective (pp. 5362). The Insider
Perspective produces a surrender of the public trust on the part of public agencies in
that decisions must balance off all constraints, pressures, and influences among
conflicting constituencies and thus the insider cannot make decisions hostile to the
interests of the most powerful of the agencies' constituents.
Sax provides us with insight on the advantage of a trained researcher acting as adversary
in seeking out information on behalf of his client using such legal instruments as the
hearing, the injunction, the court order, as well as public record laws by which to ferret
out information. Sax emphasizes that a request for information by a private person can be
ignored by administrators of governmental and other private organizations while a court
order for documents cannot readily be discounted. By means of this kind of conflict
methodology, the canons of bureaucratic secrecy are set aside: or seriously challenged on
behalf of the public which such agencies purport to serve. As a methodology, the law suit
is clearly superior to questionnaires, interviews, content analysis, and other tactics of
consensus and cooperation in a variety of situations. As a methodology, there is conflict;
there is partisanship, there is subjectivity, there is hostile intent to damage the
interests of the object of one's research.
The Politics of Methodology in a Stratified Society.
The canons of consensual methodology are as fully compatible with a conservative politics
in a stratified society as is structural functionalism. The canons of conflict methodology
may be put to a variety of political uses, one of which is radical sociology. Radical
sociology cannot limit itself to the research procedures of conservative scientists; to do
so is unscientific as well as selfdefeating. The experience of the liberal camp in
sociology demonstrates the last point excellently well. Liberal sociologists are far too
concerned with tact and consensus to be effective in dealing with the establishment on any
terms save those permitted by sponsors.
We must understand that a conflict theoretical approach requires a conflict methodology;
that a conflict methodology is more productive of accurate, continuing, relevant, reliable
information under some conditions of social organization than is "tactful",
safe, consensual, contemporary methodology. We must understand that Garfinkel and, to a
lesser extent, Goffman, embody the precepts of conflict methodology. As sociologists, we
must appreciate them on these terms. The social conditions under which a conflict
methodology is required include all those social conditions which, taken together, produce
the stratification of wealth, of power, and of social esteem.
Among the conditions requiring the techniques of conflict methodology in contemporary
society; East and West, one may cite the recent growth and development of the large,
complex organization as the central arena in which life is experienced and behavior
constrained. There is also the systematic evasion of reciprocity typically found in mass
society. There is as well, the emerging superiority of the military as the dominant
institution across societies; there is the vast increase in the technology of data control
largely dedicated to exploitative ends. We urgently require a repertoire of conflict
methodologies by which to counter these developments and to promote those conditions of
social organization which promise a better chance to survive and which promise to force
large scale establishments to serve human ends rather than continue the use of human
genius and human skill to serve corporate ends.
The Politics of Methodology in Social Science. The art and craft of social
methodologists are, in highly important ways, politically controlled. The effect of this
political domination is, in most respects, a conservative effect. The assumptions and
procedures in social methodologies have been assumed and presented as scientific and
beyond political causes, radical or conservative. That this is not the case will be
clearly demonstrated in the sections of this paper which follow. If this is not the case,
then one must acknowledge the political meaning of methodologies in social science and
begin to deal with the responsibility which accrues with this awareness. As long as social
scientists are falsely conscious of methodology as value free, they bear no great
responsibility for the use of their "science" as a political tool. As social
scientists lose their innocence on this point, they become responsible in the first
instance, and they become culpable for the ham (or good) they do in the second.
Beyond an interest in arresting the evasion of responsibility on the part of social
scientists, and perhaps more important in the long run, this paper is interested in an
attempt to put methodology into a larger theoretical perspective than now surrounds it.
Presently we confine our theoretical excursion in methodology to narrow questions of
scaling, quantifying, validity, associations, and dispersion. There is more to the
philosophy of methodology than mere epistemology. Epistemology is a basic interest. also
basic is an interest in how information is constrained and how it decays. Social systems
are generated and maintained by constraining the flow of information. Any systematic study
of that flow of information must be regulated if the system is going to survive. The only
information which is irrelevant to a system is information which is not likely to be the
object of study. lie have long understood the vital role information plays in linking
social systems. Under the mistaken assumption of functional interdependence, we have
assumed that the tactics of consensus methodology are sufficient. This assumption has
blinded us to the full range of methodologies dealing with.information flow in a complex
society. Graduate schools, especially in sociology, train the researcher in consensus
methodology but ignore all the tactics of conflict methodology. This is a political act:
its character can be understood by reference to the contingency table (next page).
Table 1 | |
Consensus Methodology: 1=in; 3=out | Conflict Methodology: 2=In; 4Out |
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In this table, one can see that only in one of the four quadrants is the
label "science" applied to those methodologies by which information is
accurately and continuously accumulated, assessed, and reported. In this quadrant are the
methodologies by which information is monitored by experts under conditions of consensus
and under conditions of information output.
The important thing to note in Table I is that in all four cells, the flow of information
must be managed by experts in the field if the endeavor is to be successful. All four
methodologies are, in fact, scientific in the sense that accurate, reliable, effective
information flows systems are instituted. No one form of information control is any more
or less scientific than another. And yet one is called science and the other three are
variously labeled. Two sets of methodologies receive laudable labels and the other two
receive pejorative labels. The difference in labeling these methodologies, frequently
exactly the same for the flow of information into and out of systems, is best understood
as a political act rather than an objective, necessary scientific act.
While it is true that the methods by which information may be gleaned from a system under
congenial conditions requires the canons of science; it is also true that the methods by
which one obtains, analyzes, interprets, and summarizes information under hostile
conditions requires that one resort to the canons of science. Not to do so in the latter
case is manifestly dangerous to the system doing the surveillance and the consequences of
unscientific methods are decidedly political. The people in the C.I.A. are just as much
scientists as the people in the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan.
The people who attempt to introduce information into systems under conditions of hostile
contrast must operate by the same canons of science as do consultants. In each case the
methods may be different but in each case, the efficacy of the method must be
scientifically tested before adopted if the best job is to be done. In the case of
quadrant three endeavor, the methodologist must know whether the questionnaire is an
appropriate tool by which to elicit information and he uses scientific tests as a way to
know. The "propagandist" too, must know if his tactics are efficacious and he
uses the tools of science as a means to know such.
one can make the claim that neither the methodologist or the "propagandist" is a
scientist. . . that both are mere technicians who use the tools of science. This case
illuminates the political nature of methodology; to "label" one practitioner a
scientist when he is serving a system by providing it with information it needs to serve
its survival needs while labeling the other practitioner a "propagandist" for
providing a system with information hostile to its purposes are precisely the acts which
makes methodology Political. it is a specious point to argue that under one case the
subject has the option to deny the information and under the second the subject is denied
the option of rejecting the information. If a person is seriously ill and denies
information to a doctor, his option is a political oneto live or to die. if a social
system denies information to a friendly scientist, it restricts its own options and may
not be able to elaborate the structure it needs to remain matched to its environment. .
equally a political decision. The meaning of any event is found in its context. In both
contexts above, the context makes methodology a political event.
But the central question with which the theorist must deal is why the scientific
acquisition of information from a system under consensus conditions is labeled science
while the scientific dealing with information flow under the other conditions represented
in the contingency table is not labeled "science". In particular, it is termed
"science" when one extracts information under consensus and it is termed
"espionage" or "intelligence" work when one extracts information under
conflict situations. Is there any scientific reason for treating one activity as science
and the other as nonscience. I think not. The standards of rigor and replication hold
equally well for both sets of techniques. The tests of validity and predictability are
equally of interest to the scientist as to the interrogator.
Light can be shed on the question by recourse to information theory. In particular,
information can flow between two systems to the degree they share structure in common. In
the diagram on the following page, it is possible to schematically represent the major
differences in conflict and consensus methodologies. In the diagram, one may note that x
Y; i.e., some structure of system A is identical to some structure of system B. If A
intersects B in such a way that x = Y. then information can flow. In concrete terms, if
two systems share the same members, they have structure in common and can exchange
information. if two systems have language in common, they share structure and have the non
sine qua of information flow. If two systems share values in common, they share structure,
and information flow is facilitated. In the first instance above, the structure is social
organizational; in the second, the structure is cultural, and in the third instance, the
structure shared is social psychological.
But two systems never share structure by accident. The commonality of structure is always
a product of previously occurring organizational or re-organizational activity . . .
political activity. If system A above is some set of persons called methodologists and
system B above is some second set of persons called subjects, then the task of generating
shared structure is a political process where the systems do not share structure. It is,
as well, a political question which system (or both) is to be changed. Under conditions of
consensus, the political process is ended and the scientists share values and or members
as well as language while under conditions of conflict, the political process has not as
yet ended and the "Scientists" must construct temporary structures to match the
system under study or reorganize that system in such a way as to obtain the desired
information flow.
In the diagram above, x i y and some temporary structure Z, is necessary. In a concrete
instance, if A is again a set of methodologists and B is a set of subjects, then the
systems stand in hostile contrast with respect to one or more structures crucial to the
flow of information. The tactics available to A are represented by the generic symbol
"Z". Among these tactics include the use of deception. Suppose the
methodologists are police who wish to acquire information about the involvement of
subjects in revolutionary activity. The police have hostile intent vis a vis the subject
group and attempt to disguise that hostility by assigning an undercover agent and by
instructing him to present a front of revolutionary zeal. By both tactics, the police have
access to accurate, reliable, relevant, continuing, decipherable information where before
it was inaccessible. The police have generated temporary social organizational structure,
the undercover agent; and temporary social psychological structure, the attitudes taken by
agent Z.
In all respects these procedures are just as scientific as what transpires between a
researcher and his subject under consensus conditions. The difference is that one
researcher has hostile intent and the other researcher neutral or benevolent intent. Any
system, to preserve itself, must label those investigations hostile to its present
structure with condemnatory terminology and must celebrate all those investigations
compatible to its structure.
Conflict Methodology and the Destruction of Information.
Just as sociologists are not trained in the techniques by which information is acquired
under conditions of conflict, neither are they trained in the tactics of destruction of
information. This is a political act supportive of a conservative bias in the social
sciences. We have always believed that information is sacred and should never be
destroyed. Yet modern systems theory instructs us that as the rate of change of the
environment increases, the halflife of information decreases. In a stable environment,
the political task of a practitioner in the management of information is to preserve
information. In a changing environment, existing information becomes an obstacle to the
search and use of new information and must be destroyed (neutralized and/or stored) if the
system is to be able to adopt the new information. In another place, I have discussed the
role of "camp" in neutralizing cherished values themselves hostile to changed
conditions. 3 But by and large, there is little attention given
over to methodologies of information destruction in sociology seminars.
The structure of science is biased toward the veneration of existing information however
it is acquired, transferred, stored, retrieved, or incorporated. These phases in the flow
of information are sufficient in
In a changing environment, another informational task develops, that of destroying
existing information organization and replacing it with alternate information systems.
This replacement is an eminently political endeavor as is the protection of existing
information systems when they are challenged. There are methodologies of replacement which
are largely ignored in the graduate education of social scientists.
The Sociology Liberation Movement, Praxis and Conflict Methodology. We can
begin to bring radical sociology and conflict methodology to bear on issues in Western
society and Western sociology, and thereby liberate sociology from conservative theory and
methodology. By moving to conflict theoretical and methodology positions in sociology, it
begins to be possible to serve elements of society which are powerless, oppressed,
alienated and inured to those conditions. We sociologists are presently activists in the
camp of the reactionary elements of society and inured to that condition. We must resist
our own powerlessness and alienation by acknowledging the political nature of science and
by putting that power to a better service than that of a managerial ethnic in a stratified
society. We can begin that liberation by being political, by being authentic (if these are
different), by teaching people instead of students, by embodied knowledge rather than by
disembodied knowledge; by dealing with issues from a sociological perspective rather than
by using issues to sell a sociological perspective, by being more interested in the
substance of education rather than the image of it (credit production hours), by bringing
passion to the scholarly enterprise, by extending the dimensions of experience for the
people who study with us rather than by limiting these.
REFERENCES
Dahlgren, Peter. 1979. Television
News and the Suppression of Reflexivity. No. 41 in the Red Feather Institute
Transforming Sociology Series.
Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Prentice
Hall.
Goffman, Irving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Doubleday and Co.
Gouldner, Alvin. 1970. The Coming Crises in Western Sociology. Basic Books.
Habermas, Jurgen. 1972. Knowledge and Human Interest. Beacon Press.
Habermas, Jurgen. 1975. Legitimation Crisis. Beacon Press.
McNall, Scott and Johnson, James. 1975. "The New Conservatives: Ethnomethodologists,
Phenomenologists, and Symbolic Interactionists." The Insurgent Sociologist, Vol. V,
No. IV, Summer.
Footnotes
1. Codes of 'ethical' conduct sponsored and endorsed by professional societies are neither ethical nor value-neutral. They are shameful disclaimers of moral responsibility for the knowledge process to which all good social science contributes. Far from being ethical codes, they are morally irresponsible codes which distant the research from the effects and uses of the knowledge processed. Return
2. I am indebted to Paul Chassy for this insight. Return
3. T. R. Young, "Camp and Corruption," Annual Meetings of the Rocky Mountain Social Science Association, 1968. Return