Sociology and Social Policy

Abstract

T DO NOT SEE how I can discuss the present and future relations | between Sociology and social policy without raising yet again the Soft-repeated question 'What is Sociology?' or rather 'What is Sociology about?' For 'social policy' is clearly about a very wide range of matters; and I presume we have to take into account the position of Sociology in relation to them all. 'Social policy' is directly concerned with what ought to be done, or at any rate with the choice of what is in some sense the best among possible alternative ways of collective action. The question put to me I take to be broadly this: In what ways and to what extent can Sociology as an academic corpus of studies be helpful in the shapingof social policies, either generally or in particular fields? It is possible to conceive of Sociology in such a way as formally to exclude it from being of any help for this purpose. If Sociology is concerned solely with the collection and analysis of 'social facts' to use Durkheim's phrase and is concerned with value judgments only as facts and not at all with their validity, the sociologist can be in no position to advise on 'social policy' because he is precluded from regarding any one policy as superior to others, in any sense other than that of fitting harmoniously into an actual social pattern. On that assumption, he can say nothing about the superiority or inferiority of any one such pattern as compared with any other, or about the desirability of attempting to modify an existing pattern except by removing or reducing inharmonious elements that actually exist within it, so as to bring the society as a whole more into harmony with its own accepted pattern of values, whatever this may be. A sociologist who takes this view of his subject cannot, as a sociologist whatever he may do as a man or a citizen either lay down that any one pattern for example, Fascism, or Communism, or the so-called Western, or the American or British 'way of life' is better or worse than any other way, actual or possible: he can at most only point, within any one of them, to possible modifications that would render it more consistent with itself more internally coherent, but not in any further respect, either better or worse. It does not of course follow that the sociologist who takes this view

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