While the usefulness of the social sciences is sometimes questioned, the little -known history of British sociology recalls on the contrary how these sciences have been able to influence the evolution of societies.
In England, sociology has had a fairly weak institutional presence compared to its foreign counterparts for a long time: alongside political economy and social anthropology, which accompany the development of commercial power and the colonial empire, it has little visibility and little space on the academic scene. This hesitant institutional story is quite paradoxical because England was early the theater of the main upheavals that were going to give birth to modern society. But the paradox is only apparent if we admit that sociology can take various forms, that it is not reduced to its only academic presence and that it can even be the subject of a use “ intensive Without succeeding, however, to take stem in the university landscape.
By thus decentralizing the perspective, there is a whole set of work devoted to examining poverty issues and devices intended to fight it ; We discover a singular sociological tradition marked, since the nineteenth century, by a strong interweaving between analytical approaches, social and public political problems. In England, in other words, sociology presents itself in many ways as a true science of social reform, long far from the university, but always close to the circles of power. It is there, no doubt, the crucible of his intellectual identity and the source of his astonishing fertility, whether it is to measure phenomena of poverty or to propose a global interpretation.
Sociology policy
In England, social knowledge is explicitly summoned and mobilized in the context of ambitious political projects, including the establishment of a vast system of public assistance in the nineteenth century or the construction of the Welfare State The day after the Second World War. Knowledge and power thus maintain relations of ancient complicity which explain in many ways the institutional trajectory of British sociology, but also the importance of its contribution, often avant-garde, to all the debates on social interventions.
In fact, by emphasizing the need for a public health policy from the middle of the nineteenth century, revealing the existence of an incorporable misery maintained by the free game of the market or by establishing, by means of the “ line of poverty », That many workers are notoriously underpaid, sociologists will legitimize, and even equip social reform. There “ line of poverty “That Seebohm Rowntree built during its successive surveys in York, in 1899 and 1936, will for example be used to justify the first social insurance, then to define the level of allowances served by the providence state. But it is precisely because research is oriented towards action that researchers manage to impose themselves on the academic scene ; All the less, moreover, since they are often sucked towards the political machine like Rowntree or Beveridge, craftsmen of the great social reforms of the first twentieth century. After 1945 again, many academics, especially among specialists in Social Administrationwill maintain very close links with the politico-administrative circles, taking turns on the role of the expert, the professor, the lobbyist, the researcher and the political advisor.
There is therefore a real administrative tropism of English sociology, which has gradually appeared, if not as a response to poverty problems, at least as a question on the social and political conditions of their eradication. This is his pre -square and the reason for his audience in the leading circles ; This is also there, the main spring of its historical development: it combines empirical surveys which dissect social problems and more theoretical research which, at a distance more or less of the first, account for social dynamics. Naturally, if empirical research, social theory and public interventions are often questioning, their relationships are in no way mechanical: they are part of singular socio-historical configurations each time which largely determine its form and content. Over the long period, however, English sociology indeed appears as a response “ moral »To the excesses of liberalism.
Sociology and liberalism
The turning point of the twentieth century constitutes in this regard a completely crucial period when social knowledge participates in the construction of a convincing alternative to liberal individualism. Alongside the major social surveys which demonstrate, in support, the coalescence of work and misery, a whole set of works indeed strives to dissolve socialism in a renovated liberalism, a New Liberalism. At the origin of this company, we find in particular the idealistic philosophy of Thomas Green, which defends an organicist and unitary conception of society. This then presents itself as a social community, and even spiritual-at a good distance, therefore, of the simple aggregate of economists or the living organism of evolutionists. In this perspective, individuals depend on the society that has trained them and, conversely, it is dependent on what they are. In particular, it follows a reinterpretation of social problems, which no longer refer to the individual who experiences them but engage in society as a whole: they constitute a disorder or, even worse, a waste of which the community as a whole.
It is Leonard Hobhouse, first teacher of sociology in England (in 1907) and main theorist of the New Liberalismwhich makes this heritage grow in order to reconcile freedom and justice, the needs of the individual and those of the community. Because the harmonious evolution of society depends on the development of each, he explains, it is no longer incongruous that the State intervenes to release individuals from any obstacle that can hinder their personal development. Hobhouse therefore recognizes that the State a much more extensive role than the Liberals of strict obedience, whether it be taxation, social protection or education. However – and this restriction is essential – these “ rights to freedom That Hobhouse concedes are inseparable from the requirements of the company. They only have justification if they promote individual development and, therefore, if they actually contribute to the strengthening of civic morality. In other words, state intervention and behavioral rectitude are firmly set up here.
Under this light, Hobhouse occupies a pivotal position in English political and social thinking. On the one hand, in fact, he definitively disqualifies the frenzied individualism of Herbert Spencer, hitherto hegemonic ; This will no longer structure the social debate, except perhaps during the 1980s, when the Thatcherian right tried to resuscitate the principles. On the other hand, and above all, Hobhouse lays the foundations for a “ social liberalism »Who underpins major social reforms, in particular the Welfare State post-war period, and which irrigates a whole section of English sociology to the present day.
Concordance of time
The recent period undoubtedly inaugurates a new rapprochement between a political program, in search of a median and renovated path, and a research program which provides it with its intellectual ammunition. From 1997, the reforms undertaken by the “ New Labor From Tony Blair indeed testify to the political impact of the social sciences since the recalibration of the English providence state is based on the analyzes of sociologist Anthony Giddens. This defends the principle of a new social democracy which would go beyond the sterile alternative between the State and the market by opening a “ third way », Beyond the left and the right. It is in particular a question of adapting social policy to the requirements of a society “ post-traditional Where, now, individuals must accept the responsibilities that accompany their new freedoms. Among others, Giddens therefore recommends a dusting of the social contract and the establishment of institutional mechanisms subordinating individual autonomy in search of the general interest.
We thus discover an element of striking continuity between the New Lib of the beginning of the twentieth century and the New Lab From the beginning of the twenty-first century, but also between Hobhouse and Giddens, two very active sociologists on the political scene and who, both, place their hopes in the emergence of a society where individuals are called to become more autonomous and more reflexive. In fact, by closely associating rights and obligations (to work, to train, etc.), the social reforms of the neo-Travalistes reactivate the scheme of the Welfare Contractalism once defended by the supporters of “ social liberalism ». In other words, from one century to the other, social theory has remained backed by a demanding conception of the individual, which must act usefully in and on the social world, and, likewise, social policy refers less to a set of fundamental rights than a section of ad hoc programs highlighting the development of individuals.
This rapprochement is neither trivial nor fortuitous. He recalls that in England a whole section of social reflection has developed in the shadow of liberalism. It was a question of going beyond liberalism, of course, but by stressing nevertheless that freedom also creates positive obligations that it is the responsibility of everyone to fulfill – no rights, therefore, without corresponding obligations. Yesterday, this position was akin to a concession to progress in the name of an associate liberalism ; Today, on the other hand, it is more like a concession to liberalism in the name of pragmatic progressivism.