Sociology: Canceled!

 

Max Weber, my friends, is one of the most famous sociological theorists. This week, you might say he was canceled by Florida!

I'll tell you about the irony of all this in a minute. But first, let me say that I am a sociology professor--one of those who teaches a large intro course to masses of students from all sorts of majors. My course is called Solving Social Problems, and it teaches students how to recognize social problems in their communities, understand why they arise, and provides some tools to empower them to help solve those problems. We look at all sorts of issues: failures of our healthcare system, why people struggle to meet obligations to work and family, persistent inequalities, crime, economic insecurities, climate change, political polarization, and many others. And instead of sitting around feeling depressed and powerless--which is, sadly, kind of a national mood today--I work to give students optimism! I provide them with sociological tools for their skillsets so that they can improve the world around them. And I tell them repeatedly that this is one of the great hopes that society has about higher education: that students will take what they learn in college and use it not only to secure good careers for themselves, but to help their communities.

Most of my students really appreciate the class! But Florida has declared such courses to be "woke indoctrination." Florida’s education commissioner, Manny Diaz Jr., announced on social media that, “Sociology has been hijacked by left-wing activists and no longer serves its intended purpose as a general knowledge course for students.” And now, Florida's 12 universities are no longer permitted to allow sociology classes to meet university requirements.

Canceled!

OK, now for the irony I promised you. (I mean, beyond the one we're now so familiar with: a bunch of people who are always complaining that universities are full of leftist enemies of academic freedom who censor free speech, being the ones who in fact ban books and eliminate programs they consider politically distasteful. Projection is a helluva drug.)

Let's actually talk about sociological theorist Max Weber! Besides writing the notoriously long book Economy and Society (‎1469 pages!), one of the things Weber wrote about was how at different stages of civilization, societies run on different sorts of authority. You start out with societies in which people follow a leader due to their charisma: someone seen as larger than life, like a prophet, or a hero--someone you follow out of love. Then societies get more formal, and run on traditional authority--think royalty. The king is the king because they were born to the position, and you obey the king because that is the tradition. And finally, you get to modern industrial societies, which are run by bureaucracies, like companies and government agencies.

Weber says that everyone agrees bureaucracies are, well, boring. Instead of charismatic miracles, or aristocratic pomp and circumstance, you get rulebooks and hierarchy charts. But they are the best, says Weber! Why? Well, they are fair and rational. The way you become an agency head or the manager who oversees information technology at a corporation is through meritocracy. You go to school and get skills, make a resume that gets vetted, and work your way up in the organization by getting good performance evaluations. The society is thus run by people with expertise, and their decisions are rational and based on evidence. Instead of some king giving positions in his government to his toadies, and banishing people who disagree with him, you get fairness and efficiency. So it's great. Even though people miss the flair and magic of the old kinds of power, and reading through a bunch of regulations is pretty dull, bureaucratic authority keeps us safe and makes a society prosperous.

The irony here is that Weber just got cancelled in Florida by a (supposed) bureaucracy! The 17-member Florida Board of Governors, which oversees public universities in the state, voted to remove sociology from the general education curriculum. It looks like a bureaucracy just decided that the grand theorist and defender of bureaucracies was full of BS.

Aaaactually, though, what Weber would say if he were resurrected and didn't immediately die of shock would be that what we have here is a case of a failed or false bureaucracy. Because the Florida Board of Governors is appointed by the governor. And instead of filling it with education experts, he filled it with political cronies who have no professional background in education--a bunch of rightwing businessmen. That is not how bureaucracies are supposed to be staffed! Then, instead of collecting evidence about the field of sociology today, what sociology courses teach, and how students evaluate their learning, the Board of Governors made its decision in a few minutes. That is not how a bureaucracy is supposed to work. And the main basis of their decision seems to be that one thing sociologists engage in is the empirical study of structural inequalities, and Florida has made telling students structural racism is real illegal, because to say that would supposedly make white students feel guilty, which is an intolerable injury.

That's not how *anything* is supposed to work. You can't make speaking empirical truth illegal because it conflicts with your worldview. The sun didn't start orbiting the earth when Galileo was tried and imprisoned for writing that the earth went around the sun. . .

Hence, Weber would be shocked by Florida Man.

What a time to be alive!

Anyway, this week I spent 30 hours just on teaching my one Solving Social Problems class (and I do have a lot of other responsibilities--it's been a long week). The hundred students in the course had their first written assignment, and I gave each one of them quite detailed and affirming individualized feedback, so that they could maximize their grades, understand concepts more clearly, and feel sure that their instructor was invested in their academic success and them as human beings. I put in those hours because that's one way I try to help solve the social problem of college students today feeling more anxious and adrift.

Midway through my initial gradingfest, Florida cancelled the same course I teach in its state university system. But I remain more invested than ever in teaching it.