Mannheim’s Paradox
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:category: research
:date: 2005-04-26T06:00:00
:tags: dissertation, BostonMiracle, sociology

Reading `Carey (1989)`_, I met again the issue of the Mannheim’s Paradox
(the author’s name), which is fancy name for finding that social
scientists themselves are humans and thus subject of ideological
pressure and laws of human behavior, which could influence how they
perform as scientists. Or in other words, how scientists being humans
and thus not fully rational cannot create purely rational theories and
purely rational conclusions not influenced by their personal preferences
and prejudices.

Carey suggests that there are currently two main streams of
understanding of ideology—he calls them “causal” and “functional”
explanations of ideology. The result of both theories is that seemingly
irrational behavior is not considered to be what it really is. The first
theory tends to explain ideological behavior in terms of social
structure, power struggle, and class interests. The problem with these
theories is that they are really hopeless in terms of quality of their
predictions. People just do not follow their class interests enough to
make these theories quite useful. The reaction to causal theories are
functional theories, which try to explain ideology as an attempt to
restore balance in the society which is perpetually malintegrated.
Unfortunately these theories typically produce unbelievably complicated
and obscure explanations omitting participants’ understanding. Carey
citing Geertz (1973) summarizes this notion in this way:

    […] a group of primitives sets out, in all honesty, to pray for rain
    and ends up by strengthening its social solidarity; a ward
    politician sets out to get by or remain near the through and ends by
    mediating between unassimilated immigrant groups and an impersonal
    governmental bureaucracy; and ideologist sets out to air his
    grievances and finds himself contributing, through the diversionary
    powers of his illusions, to the continued viability of the very
    system that grieves him (p. 206).

The problem is obviously in the fact, that these theories implies
elimination of anything which wouldn’t fit into the rational model of
science, namely “the experience itself as some ordered system of
meaningful symbols.” Of course, Carey sees as a solution following the
tradition of symbolic interactionism and introduce study of symbols and
their meaning. He also follows in this Blumer (1969) with the big stress
on keeping research close to the data and omitting from data anything
which is not convenient for the development of “scientific” theories.

Moreover, one thing which is common to all these theories is that they
are really weak on explanation of the links between suggested
explanations and observed action. E.g., what is the mechanism by which
that wonderful solidarity is created in praying together?

.. _`Carey (1989)`:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-04-445062-1