Private Sociology:

Our Study of That Which We Hesitate to Tell

Arthur B. Shostak, Ph.D.

"We are ... committed to an especially important and difficult problem of self-study and understanding, since, in a sense in which this is not true for natural scientists, it is our professional job to include the study of ourselves in our own program of work." Talcott Parsons, American Sociologist, November 1965,p.3

I believe you and I can better learn, teach, and apply sociology (and, not incidentally, enjoy more of our lives), if we share our own story, share more of ourselves with others.

Many sociologists shy from this challenge. As Alvin Gouldner pointed out a quarter century ago, "When the normal sociologist encounters a problem, his first impulse is to put on his hat, shoes, and coat, and to leave at once, to go somewhere, anywhere, as long as it is somewhere else, to go into the 'field' and to probe and prod the 'out there.' The normal sociologist's deepest dogma is fundamentally ex-ternalizing."1

Our lives, however, actually color every facet of our sociological work, and do so profoundly: "...there is no neutrality. There is only greater or less awareness of one's bias ... Awareness of the self is...an indispensable avenue to awareness of the social world. For there is no knowledge of the world that is not knowledge of our own experience with it and our relation with it."2

Slowly, but steadily, progress is being made on this front. More and more sociologists recognize that our social class, race, gender, politics, ethicality, morality, sensuality, and the like, keenly influence our focus.

Using the first-person voice and coming center-stage, these socio-logists employ autobiographical sociology (AS) in one or another of its three major varieties: Public Sociology, or the sort of formal and very proper account one hears when someone is being introduced from the podium. Or Personal Sociology, the sort of informal and affable things one says when introducing oneself from the podium. Or Private Socio-logy, the sort of irreverant and improper account one hardly ever offers about oneself from the podium ... or almost anywhere else.

I am especially interested in this last option, the sociological study of that which we hesitate to tell. It reaches indelicate topics we do not rush to include in our resumes. Topics that are not the first, the second, or even the third thing we mention about ourselves, our signi-ficant others, our careers, or our research preoccupations.

As a subset of autobiographical sociology, private sociology re-minds us that those aspects of our lives we find awkward to discuss, those aspects with the pungency of truth and the power to discomfort us, are as important to mine for sociological ore as are more acceptable matters.

Twenty three sociologists contributed in 1996 to what my research suggests was and remains the first-ever essay collection devoted to this brow-arching approach. As the book's editor, I would like to believe our discipline is better off for the deed.3

To help promote wider interest in and use of this novel option I discuss differences among Public, Personal, and Private Sociology. I also explore why the last two are still quite uncommon. I next explore what we can hope to take from Private Sociology.

1. Defining Terms. Invited in 1986 to define Autobiographical Sociology (AS), Robert K. Merton suggested it "utilizes sociological perspectives, ideas, concepts, findings, and analytical procedures to construct and to interpret the narrative text that purports to tell one's own history within the context of the larger history of one's own times."6 In concept, "though not necessarily in practice, the truly sociological autobiography combines the complimentary advantages of both Insider and Outsider while minimizing the disadvantages of each."7

Four years later Norman L. Friedman similarly defined AS as a "pathway to data and ideas that requires the sociologist introspectively recollect, reconstruct, and interpret the past phenomenon or process he/she was involved in." 8

Those who over the decades have written book-length exercises in AS have included George C. Homans, Pitirim A.Sorokin, Robert M. MacIver, Derek Phillips, Alvin Gouldner, Robert K. Merton, Irving Kenneth Zola, Alice S. Rossi, Andrew Greeley, Irving Louis Horowitz, Richard Quinney, Susan Krieger, William Foote Whyte, and numerous others.9

Variations on the Theme. AS comes in three "flavors," the differences among which far outweigh any similarities.

The most common type, Public Sociology, is exemplified by honor-ific essays collected in a festschrift for the retirement of an esteemed colleague. Or the notes on the author found on the back jacket of a book: You get what a prim and proper New York Times used to discretely call "the news fit to print." Constrained by "politically correct" norms, this harmless and ritualistic form of autobiographical sociology emphasizes the most conventional aspects of one's life.

Personal Sociology is exemplified by obligatory journal essays from incoming or outgoing presidents of various sociological societies. Or the preface of a book by an author with panache: You get what the newly hip New York Times now regards as cool and "with it." Far less constrained by "politically correct" norms, though not indifferent to them, this cheeky form of autobiographical sociology emphasizes less conventional and colorful aspects of one's life ... though not at any great risk to teller or audience alike. Titillation is possible, but always policed by mainstream sensitivities.

Private Sociology is confined to specialized journals devoted to ethonomethology, the sociology of emotions, or the sociology of sociology. You get what the Sunday New York Times Magazine still shies away from, or material likely to shock, perhaps offend, and even outrage some readers. Often at odds with "politically correct" norms, this rule-breaking form of autobiographical sociology explores the least conventional and most tabooed aspects of the writer's life ... not for their shock value, but out of the conviction that something valuable can be uniquely learned in this way.

The two more daring varieties have developed in reaction to the glaring limitations of Public Sociology. It is commonly so mild-man-nered and cloying as to verge on the insipid. Far too much reduces to the kind of well-intentioned harmless musings one swaps with kindred souls bound together by an ancient treaty of (social) non-aggression. While at its best it can illuminate a person, a time period, and (bowd-lerized) aspects of a profession, at its worse it resembles trivial, toothless, self-promoting, and quite forgetable gossip.

Even Personal Sociology suffers from being inappropriately shy and incomplete. A decorous form of "politically correct" self-censorship dominates the form and keeps it from completing an honest "warts and all" picture of its user. Typical is the absence of revealing experiences that challenge self-esteem ... such as persistent anxiety over social class advancement. Or over changing one's religious role. Or over sour-ces of personal despair ... such as discovery of a serious illness in a loved one or oneself. Or the loss of a loved one to senseless violence.

While both Public and Private Sociology decourously shy from such matters, from indelicate topics too little aired, each of these subjects is reached by a Private Sociology essay in my 1996 volume.

Those who urge its use believe certain valuable and unique sociological lessons can only be wrung out of uncommon matters. Out of the unsightly, untidy, or uncomfortable aspects of our lives. They contend it can liberate and inform both speaker and audience quite unlike any other sociological voice.

Advocates commonly choose topics missing from our Intro text-books, to say nothing of stuffy sociological volumes of autobiograph-ical pap, topics that may cause hard-nosed prudes and puritans to stam-mer and fume. They do not set out to deliberately cause such constern- ation, but neither do they flinch from it. Their goal is the processing through sociology of relatively "high voltage" aspects of life, the better to learn from this trying process and share their new learning with us.

3. Why So Uncommon? Peter Berger asked in 1963 why is it that sociologists "segregate their professional insights from their everyday affairs."10

Laurel Richardson echoed the question nearly 30 years later when she asked why is it that "nearly every time sociologists break out into prose they try to suppress (their own) life: passive voice....11 She noted wryly that "although there are textually marginal places, such as appen-dices and prefaces, for social scientists to ponder their lived experi-ence, making that experience the centerpiece of an article seems Im-proper, bordering on Gauche and Burdensome."12

Reasons for this distorted situation, this avoidance of unsparing self-study, are not hard to come by, and I will consider five, though the list could be extended at some length.

For openers, some feel threatened by unruly content (especially that of Private Sociology), the sort of material looked at askance by polite society (and ultra-polite sociologists). Its potential to em-barrass, to unsettle, to violate conventional standards, and thereby, to be out of the control of the reader (that is, to lack "politically correct" predictability) is more than many prissy types can accept.

Others may find disconcerting its willingness to go public with the chaos, the inconsistencies, and the irrational mysteries in the life of the teller, as this is at sharp variance with the super-cool rational-ac-tor model featured in mainstream sociological discourse.

Some may be nervous about getting involved with anything as indi-vidualistic, anything as much in danger of being written off as psycho-logically reductionist. (Proponents, however, applaud the ability of first-person sociology to "highlight the linkages between the way the same person is simultaneously like all and some other persons, as well as individualistically like no other ones...").13

Certain prospective experimenters probably shy away from fear of having a hostile label attached to them. They suspect zealous critics are lying in wait to savage any user of personal or private sociology as a self-indulgent "emotional exhibitionist."14

A fifth reason for neglect also involves fear, this time that the use of the first-person form of address unduly and irreversibly tilts the field away from the natural sciences toward the humanities. In rebut-tal, some sociologists cheer this very possibility:

"Autobiographical sociology is the most humanistic of sociologies....It asserts that one sociologist's recollected experiences are sometimes more revealing, informative, and/or sociologically imaginative that those of a cast of thousands, and it helps safeguard against the inadequacies and biases of large numbers alone."15

For my part, I like to think all three varieties of Autobiographical So-ciology can be rigorous in insisting on systematic self-observation and yet also creative in emphasizing expressive insight.16 AS should be judged by the standards of science and the practical, emotional, and aesthetic demands of life.17

4. Why bother? Mainstream sociological efforts "start (and stay) broad, remain shallow, and are highly impersonal, that is, about name-less and faceless respondents, subjects, or actors."18

Private Sociology, in contrast, opens up unique possibilities of in-tellectual and emotional reward. For example, proponents hail its abil-ity to help rectify the chilling reception given the emotional side of reality. Much of mainstream sociology transforms emotional experience into lifeless models of rational action.

Academics learn to use their intellectuality to "hide [themselves] >from one another...[This} gives our life and even our work a vision of a world of roles, but not of people."19 We become "ever more suspicious of decent motives of kindness and personal attachment lest human warmth interfere with organizational glory."20 We wind up leery of any-thing that veers toward the emotional, fearing it may soon go over the edge... and take us with it.

Private Sociology teaches instead that emotional and cognitive orientations are intimately linked. It can help us get beyond our surface public self and reach out to claim and share our inner feeling self.21 It can help us "unravel the complex manner in which emotion, cognition, and lived body intertwine."22 It teaches us to respect and utilize "an emotional, precognitive apprehending that is sublime, unstructured, and nonverbal in nature...a resource that may be consulted in the future."23

Private Sociology can also help challenge another "cold shoulder" mistake, this one the idea that fact and reason actually dominate our lives, at least to hear certain mainstream sociologists tell it. In con-trast, Private Sociology forces us to concede how truly discombobula-ted is much of life. Reflexivity surfaces the veiled and often denied un-certainties and contradictions in our rough-hewed existence, the chaos and planlessness, and the role of chance and luck in our seemingly "or-derly" lives.

Finally, Private Sociology can help us with perhaps the most pro-found self-education task of all, the uncovering and processing of vex-ing truths about ourselves.

Outstanding in this connection is a unique afterword Joseph Gus-field attaches to a 1990 autobiographical essay of his, thereby trans-forming it into an exemplary Private Sociology exercise. Critiquing his own lengthy AS piece he reflects ruefully that his reflexive essay has unexpectedly revealed certain attributes of himself ( including self-ishness, cynicism, and aloof divorce from causes and people) he was not as fully aware of beforehand. Admirably frank with himself and his reader, Gusfield's afterword leaves us envious of his hard-earned achievement in self-knowledge.24

Private Sociology can make a significant contribution to our discipline and our lives. Its deeply human and generally well-written stories strive to combine exemplary tales with sound sociological insights. Clear-eyed and empathetic, without cuteness or treacly sentiment, they illuminate how one's "most intimately individual being is inseparable from life on the planet as a whole."25

With respect to our discipline, Private Sociology helps by encouraging us to mine rich sociological ore in our own personal histories. Second, it helps widen and liberate our range of concerns. Colleagues push the frontier of our discipline even while taking us into their confidence. Seasoned survivors, they never apologize for being complicated. Mixing authenticity and sensitive discernment, they demonstrate our ability to help end Comstockery in a field better guided by the ancient adage - "Nothing human is alien unto me."

Third, Private Sociology would have us value both the thinking and the emotional aspects of our being.26 It helps us access understanding that is both rigorous - based on systematic observation - and yet also quite moving. It promotes a precious form of touching, of making contact with what Carl Jung called the "irrational facts of experience," valuable to us as scientists and humans alike.

Fourth, it demonstrates our ability to combine objective theory-building with the subjective art of story-telling. As ours is an era "whose boundaries are blurred and shift-ing as we redefine space, time, and knowledge,...it is no coincidence that much emergent theory today is reflexive and multiperspective."27

Finally, while Private Sociology often contains vexing disclosures, much of it also offers field-tested remedial prescriptions. While it be-gins with our insecurities and incompleteness, it often reaches daring acts of belief and affirmations of our struggle to overcome.

We can take away more meaning from such essays than we may have brought to our reading. Revelations of life's possibilities, as well as its pains, underline creative responses that exist to a wide range of closeted challenges. We learn anew we have sound advice and hard-won optimism to share with one another. And we are reminded that attention is owed the transcendent aspects of human life. That reality is "infinitely more profound than what meets the eye."28

While there is much to argue over concerning these claims, Private Sociology has the big theme right: It recommends more candor, courage, and introspection ... as exemplified by Marianne A. Paget, a contributor to my volume, who wrote even as she was dying of cancer - "My work still excites me. There is so much more to do and say."

Summary. Laurel Richardson speaks for many of us when she contends there are few substantive sociology texts one can enjoy reading or recommend to students as models:

"Even when the topic was ostensibly riveting, the writing style and reporting conventions were dead- ening... they tried to suppress (their own) life; passive voice; absent narrator; long, inelegant, repetitive authorial statements and quotations; 'cleaned up' quotations, each sounding like the author; hoards of references; sonorous prose rhythms; dead or dying metaphors; lack of concreteness or overly detailed accounts; tone deafness; and, most disheartening, the suppression of narrative ('plot,' character, event).34

In sharp contrast, the writing demands of the first-person voice ("I was there; this is what I felt, thought, and did; this is why; this is what happened next"), especially when wrestling with that which we hesitate to tell, can help us be-come much finer communicators. For, as Berger explains, "whatever else it is, autobiography is personal, and I hope sociology will become more accessible as its practitioners become less invisible."35

As sociologists we are expected at present to keep ourselves "as de-cently or discretely invisible as possible."36 This is sheer folly! All sci-ence, "necessarily done by human beings with psychological hopes and cul-tural expectations, must be socially embedded...."37 Science is therefore about challenging the comfortable boundaries of knowledge, as in explica-ting our own biases and their sources in our life history.

We also want to nurture the humanistic roots of sociology, a goal ad-vanced by recognition of our shared experiences wrestling with the human predicament.

And we want to help our discipline mature, a goal aided by seeking our "moorings" in our personal histories, especially in aspects we initi-ally hesitate to discuss. Much left by public and personal sociology "on the cutting room floor" diminishes authenticity and the quality of rela-ted sociological insights.

Seeing, teaching, and writing sociologically through the lenses of "I," through the artful employ of our examined lives, and especially through the most private aspects thereof, can help us share improved knowledge and a better-than-ever grasp of ourselves.

For all these reasons and more we should become far more visible, far more boldly present in sociological work that touches the heart even as it stretches the mind.

Footnotes
1. Gouldner, Alvin, The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology; New York: Basic, 1970; p.179.
2. Rose, Phyllis, Writing on Women: Essays in a Renaissance; Middletown, Ohio: Wesleyan University Press, 1985; p.77.
3. Shostak, Arthur B. Private Sociology: Unsparing Reflections, Uncommon Gains. Dix Hills, NY: General Hall, 1996.
4. See in this connection, Shostak, Arthur B. and Gary McLouth and Lynn Seng, Men and Abortion: Lessons, Losses, and Love; New York: Praeger, 1986.
5. Shostak, Arthur B., ed., Our Sociological Eye: Personal Essays on Society and Culture, Port Washington, NY: Alfred Pub. Co., 1977, p.xiii.
6. Merton, Robert K., "Some Thoughts on the Concept of Sociological Autobiography," in Sociological Lives, edited by Matilda White Riley; Newbury Park, CA.: Sage, 1988; p. 18. 6. Friedman, op. cit.; p.64
7. Ibid.
8. Friedman, Norman L., "Autobiographical Sociology," The American Sociologist, Spring 1990; p.61. I owe much to this essay, which, while written nearly 15 years after I did the first draft of this manuscript, helped me get clearer about a lot of puzzling matters and motivated its completion. My focus, Private Sociology, differs however from Autobio-graphical Sociology in its focus on veiled matters, as explained in the Introduction.
9. Homans, George C., "Autobiographical Introduction," in Sentiments and Activities, New YorK: Free Press, 1962; A Long Journey: The Autobiography of Pitirim A. Sorokin, New Haven, CT: College and University Press, 1963; MacIver, Robert M., As a Tale That is Told: The Autobiography of R. M. MacIver, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968; Philips, Derek L., Abandoning Method, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1973; Gouldner, Alvin W., The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology, New York: Basic Books, 1970; Merton, Robert K., The Sociology of Science: An Episodic Memoir, Carbondale, ILL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1979; Zola, Irving Kenneth, Missing Pieces: A Chronicle of Living with a Disability, Phil., PA: Temple University Press, 1982; Rossi, Alice S., Seasons of a Woman's Life, Amherst, Mass: Social and Demographic Research Institute, 1983; Greeley, Andrew, Confessions of a Parish Priest: An Autobiography; New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986; Horowitz, Irving Louis, Daydreams and Nightmares: Reflections on a Harlem Childhood; Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi, 1990; Quinney, Richard, Journey to a Far Place: Autobiographical Reflections; Phil., Pa.: Temple University Press, 1991; Krieger, Susan, Social Science and the Self: Personal Essays on an Art Form; New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991; Whyte, William Foote, Participant Observer: An Autobiography; Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 1995.
10. Berger, Peter L., Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective; Garden City: Doubleday, 1963; p.21.
11. Richardson, Laurel, "The Consequences of Poetic Representation: Writing the Other, Rewriting the Self," in Carolyn Ellis and Michael G. Flaherty, eds., Investigating Subjectivity: Research on Lived Experience; Newbury Park, CA.: Sage, 1992; p.126.
12. Ibid, p.131.
13. Friedman, op cit., p.64.
14. See in this connection, Rosaldo, R., Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis, Boston, MA.: Beacon, 1987.
15. Friedman, op cit., p.64.
16. See in this connection, Bateson, Gregory, Steps to an Ecology of Mind; New York: Ballantine, 1972.
17. See in this connection, Jackson, M., Paths Toward a Clearing: Radical Empiricism and Ethnographic Inquiry; Bloomington, IND.: Indiana University Press, 1989. See also Eakins, John Paul, Fictions in Autobiography: Studies in the Art of Self-Invention, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985; Leibowitz, Herbert, Fabricating Lives: Explorations in American Autobiography, New York: Knopf, 1989.
18.Friedman, op. cit.; p.64.
19. 3. Gusfield, Joseph, "My Life and Soft Times," in Authors of Their Own Lives, edited by Bennett M. Berger; Berkeley, CA.: University of California Press, 1992 ed.; p. 104.
20. See in this connection, Goffman, Erwin, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life; Garden City, NY: Doubleday. 1959.
21. Ellis, Carolyn and Michael G. Flaherty, eds.; Investigating Subjectivity; op. cit., p. 3. See also Duff, Robert W. and Lawrence H. Hung, "Management of Deviant Identity Among Competitive Women Bodybuilders," in Deviant Behavior, edited by Delos H. Kelly; New York: St.Martin's Press; 1988.
22. Ronai, Carol Rambo, "The Reflexive Self Through Narrative: A Night in the Life of an Exotic Dancer/Researcher," in Ellis and Flaherty, eds., ibid., p.124.
23. Berger, Bennett M., ed.; Authors of Their Own Lives: Intellectual Autobiographies of Twenty American Sociologists; Berkeley, CA.: University of California Press, 1992ed.; p.xv.
24. Gusfield, op. cit.; pp.126-129
25. Babbie, Earl. The Sociological Spirit2. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1994; p. 27. Few textbooks employ as much good Private Sociology as does this one, and other writings by Babbie
26. Especially helpful here is Ellis, Carolyn, "Emotional Sociology," Studies in Symbolic Interaction, 12, 1991, pp. 123-145. See also Craib, Ian, "Some Comments on the Sociology of the Emotions," Sociology, February, 1995, pp.151-158.
27. Feminist Scholars in Sociology, "What's Wrong is Right: A Response to the State of the Discipline," Sociological Forum, September, 1995, p. 495.
28. Leavitt, June. "The Hebron Disease." N.Y.Times, October 14, 1995. p.19.
29. Bateson, Mary Catherine, Peripheral Visions: Learning Along the Way. New York: HarperCollins, 1994. p. 242.
30. Friedman, Norman L., "Autobiographical Sociology," The American Sociologist, Spring 1990; p.61.
31. Gouldner, Alvin. The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology. New York: Basic Books, 1970; p.179.
32. Kakutani, Michiko. "Seeing Nabokov Grow Over 30 Years." N.Y.Times, October 20, 1995. p.C-35.
33. As cited in Lopate, Phillip, The Art of the Personal Essay, New York: Anchor Books, 1994, p. XXII. I hope much to this remarkable "Introduction," and have borrowed liberally, though I believe conscientiously, from this source.
34. Richardson, Laurel, "The Consequences of Poetic Representation: Writing the Other, Rewriting the Self," in Ellis, Carolyn and Michael G. Flaherty, eds., Investigating Subjectivity: Research on Lived Experience, Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1992; 131.
35. Berger, op. cit., p. xx.
36. Ibid. 37. Gould, Stephen Jay. "Asking Big Questions on Science and Meaning." N.Y.Times, October 16, 1995. p.C-14.