"The Between" of Teaching Sociology: Ways of Knowing and Teaching

Abstract

B UBER (1965:202-205) IDENTIFIED THE SUBJECT of sociology as between. His sensitivity to the inherently relational character of human existence has particular poignancy for between of teaching sociology (Berry 1985). From dyads to transnationals, sociologists attend to the normative character of life. Attending to between of teaching sociology means asking a reflexive question about the normative character of pedagogy. The question is not whether pedagogy has an ethical dimension, but rather Which ethos does any given pedagogy promote? (Schwehn 1993:84). In this essay, I ask about a pedagogy that promotes an ethos of connectedness and compassion. Teaching sociology in a culture of individualism presents ironies. We explore a subject matter that seems to many ofour students not quite real. As cultural solipsists for whom the self, its experience, and choice constitute the paramount reality, many students view society as epiphenomenal. A second irony is that while we analyze the normative character of life, ethics seems to us not quite real knowledge. As scientists for whom knowledge is public fact, clear and distinct from values, we relegate ethics to private opinion. A third irony is that while we focus on social as content, we overlook the classroom as context. Methodological individualism extends to our pedagogy, reducing the classroom to the sum of its student parts. Within contemporarywestern culture, as Mills (1959), Macpherson (1962), Lasch (1984), Bellah et al. (1985, 1991), Taylor (1989, 1991), and many others have pointed out, individualism filters and flattens howwe perceive, experience, and act toward the self, others, and the world. It dominates and emasculates how we teach.