Abstract
Critics find that social sciences tend to comply with social domination by power elites, which is often low-moral, but the debate on public expectations of social scientists often misses this. The failed kibbutz research illuminates this problem: while supposedly abiding by such expectations, a dominant functionalist scientific coalition was co-opted by privileged old guard leaders and power elites for dozens of years to the public detriment. This coalition concealed leaders’ and power elites’ violations of kibbutz radical principles in inter-kibbutz organizations (hereafter I-KOs) by evading their study, and created a faked image of democracy and egalitarianism that enhanced academic success but helped conceal the pernicious conservative oligarchic hegemony of life-long I-KO leaders, harming efforts to overcome it. This eventually led to the demise of the kibbutz radical system, a failure that functionalists have failed to explain. The findings support critics of conformist social sciences while pointing to their Achilles heel, i.e., fallible survey research methods that call for new measures that minimize fallibility and the likelihood of co-opting social scientists by power elites, as well as measures that will maximize chances of exposing such scientific failures.
Highlights
Sociologists discussed epistemological questions of their knowledge production versus their own and public expectations of this knowledge [1]-[9]
Studying the prime problem of I-KO practices violating kibbutz principles and privileging self-perpetuating power elites would give grist to the opponents of kibbutzim. This benign intention led to co-optation by kibbutz leaders and hegemony by functionalist scientific coalition which, even after the avoidance of critique became superfluous as kibbutzim overcame early crises and achieved major national successes, continued the suppression of students who criticized I-KOs’ anti-kibbutz practices
Junior surveyors who met I-KO officials and saw how their power and privileges emanating from violation of kibbutz principles caused conflicts, member frustration and exits, could not study these problems, while seniors who were distanced from the field, hobnobbed with tenured oligarchic leaders who curbed their sociological sensibility (e.g., [4]) and followed in Buber’s footsteps, never questioned I-KO anti-kibbutz practices and their impacts on kibbutzim
Summary
Sociologists discussed epistemological questions of their knowledge production versus their own and public expectations of this knowledge [1]-[9]. Studying the prime problem of I-KO practices violating kibbutz principles and privileging self-perpetuating power elites would give grist to the opponents of kibbutzim This benign intention led to co-optation by kibbutz leaders and hegemony by functionalist scientific coalition which, even after the avoidance of critique became superfluous as kibbutzim overcame early crises and achieved major national successes, continued the suppression of students who criticized I-KOs’ anti-kibbutz practices. This partial-biased kibbutz research is explained by the following: 1) Researchers’ co-optation by leaders and power-elites [59]; 2) Functionalism and use of fallible survey research methods [2] [60]-[65]; 3) Evasion/denial of contradictory findings by users of unobtrusive methods [66] such as anthropologists and historians; 4) Avoidance of cognitive dissonance and loss of face by never admitting any past mistakes by which were promoted successful academic careers; 5) Kibbutz researchers’ elevated status encouraged lower morality [67]; 6) Conflict sociologists surrendered to functionalists to join their dominant scientific coalition [32]
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