Sociology and Ideology

Abstract

I would like to use this occasion to discuss the relationship between sociology and ideology. My view of the subject, which has been much influenced by the work of M.N. Srinivas, is that it is desirable to keep the two apart, although it has proved difficult, particularly in India, to insulate the practice of sociology from the demands of ideology. In what follows I will have something to say both about the justification for keeping the two apart and the difficulty of doing so in a clear and consistent way. Those who wish to keep the two apart are obliged to explain, no matter how briefly, what they mean by sociology and by ideology. This is not an easy thing to do. Sociologists are by no means in complete agreement about the nature and scope of their discipline as an intellectual pursuit; and, moreover, their conception of the aims and objectives of sociology as a discipline may not correspond very well with their practices as sociologists. The concept of ideology has, if anything, an even wider range of connotations, and those who use it generally avoid giving it a clear or definite meaning. Sociology, as I understand it, is an empirical and comparative disci pline devoted to the systematic study of society through the application of a distinctive body of concepts and methods, and here I would like to treat sociology as being inclusive of social anthropology. What I would like to stress at the outset is that sociology is an empirical rather than a normative discipline, although, as I will point out later, the relationship between value judgements and judgements of reality is a difficult subject on which there are considerable differences of opinion. The primary aim of an ideology is not to understand or interpret society, but to change it by acting politically on it. Sociology as an intellectual discipline does not have any definite or specific political agenda, but an ideology that did not have one would hardly deserve that name.