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62 PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL ACTION
One cannot, of course, abandon abstractions altogether; they are the essence of scientific method. But the social scientist who constantly speaks in abstract terms, instead of getting down to cases, helps to perpetuate the status quo......
"new," "reflexive," "radical," "existential," "evaluative," and so on. When viewed collectively, it seems appropriate to term all these sociologies humanistic since a chief characteristic of all of them is a pressing concern with improvement of the human condition.
The last observation brings up the second question with which this paper began: Are all sociologists humanistic? Is a chief characteristic of all "a pressing concern with improvement of the human condition?" The answer to this question is, again, a matter of judgment. My judgment is that all too few sociologists have been meaningfully humanistic. They may have inclinations in this direction, but in a number of cases one would have to scratch deeply to find evidence of humane concern.
As an example, I refer to the February 1973 issue of the ASA Footnotes in which a University of Washington sociologist, reacting to a recent conference, condemned fellow conferee Laura Nader as a "muckraker"; Ms. Nader had pointed out that many sociological concepts are implicity elitist because those who formulate them are so often either complacent about, or fully agree with, the arbitrary hierarchical aspects of society. This does not seem like muckraking to me. Rather, it appears to be a realistic depiction of one aspect of a vitally important political-economic factnamely, that one-third of the human species live "fat" largely by exploiting the other two-thirds. This fact is so well-founded by a variety of cross-cultural surveys of resource use and living levels, and is so basic in its implications for human society, that it should logically be a prime center of attention in any social science worthy of the name.
But it is obviously not a center of attention for many social scientists; some of these appear to be callously indifferent to the sad plight of the multitudes; no doubt others timidly prefer concentrating on abstractions that will not excite animosity among the politically powerful.
How militarists must treasure social scientists who carefully avoid speaking about "bombing out of a small country," choosing instead to describe "the parameters of political action." Scientists speaking thus are described by establishment authority as "certified realists," as "hard research personnel" (Roszak, 1969: 143). Such personnel, whether they intend it or not, provide a gloss of respectability for the uglier aspects of power politics.
In contrast, when a humanistic social scientist, properly so-called, is confronted with a manure shovel, he or she calls it that or something more pungent, not trying to make the earthy elegant by speaking of "an implement designed for the manipulation of animal livings." Similarly, when reality prompts, the humanistic scientist graphically describes threats to kill