abril de 2004 - CCHLA - Universidade Federal da ParaÃba

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Generated by Foxit PDF Creator © Foxit Softwarehttp://www.foxitsoftware.com For evaluation only.Most advances in knowledge have occurred whensome brave soul broke out of her/his routine. Deroutinized,the learner is able to see a problem that hadhitherto had been invisible, and apply a new approach tosolving it. Freud’s early work as a psychiatrist provides anexample. Since his training was medical, he wasn’t’ muchuse to his patients at first. But the case of Anna O,mishandled by his mentor, Breuer, shocked him out ofmedical routines. He deduced that what the patient hadmost needed was not intervention on the physician’s part,medical or otherwise, but a sympathetic listener. Thisinsight was the beginning of modern psychoanalysis andpsychotherapy.Durkheim’s study of social bases of suicide providesanother example. In a single stroke, he founded modernsocial science, by formulating a new problem andattacking it in a new way. He combined theory (anomie),a qualitative method (anthropological observations ofparticular cultures), and a quantitative method(comparative statistical analysis of suicide rates). Largelyon the basis of this single study, Durkheim became acharismatic figure for sociologists.As Weber has taught us, the usual fate of charismais routinization [1] . In the current social and behavioralsciences, the three approaches that Durkheim integratedso successfully have become routinized into separatespecialties, with little congress between them. Theoristsreview classic and new formulations, without benefit ofmethod or data. Qualitative methodologists conductdescriptive ethnographies or analyze conversation, andquantitative methodologists apply numerical analysis toatheoretical or social problems.In this format, new problems cannot beapproached in a new way, since the researcher has a priorcommitment to theory, qualitative or quantitativemethods and to one of the disciplines as well. Perhapsthese prior commitments, routinizations, are the mainreason that the human sciences are struggling. Ourgraduate programs continue the process of routinizationby training students to become specialists in one of thethree approaches, and in one of the separate disciplines,subdisciplines, or levels of analysis. This process ofroutinization, that dominates virtually all of human112
Generated by Foxit PDF Creator © Foxit Softwarehttp://www.foxitsoftware.com For evaluation only.science, has turned us into blind men and women tryingto describe an elephant.Routine is not the enemy of science, since it savestime, effort and emotion. Like all other problems, humanproblems require both routine and innovation. Kuhn(1961) famously made this point over forty years ago. Hisidea of "normal science" is the equivalent of what I amcalling scientific activity based completely on routines.Kuhn’s point was that these routine uses of scientificmethod are effective when employed as the "mopping up"operation in the wake of a great discovery. The HumanGenome Project provides an example: routine procedurescan be used to map genetic materials because of thediscovery of the structure of DNA.Perhaps Kuhn was too gracious to note thatscientific routines are ineffective, even useless, whenthere has been no great discovery. This is the situationfaced by human science. Routine becomes destructive tothe extent that it takes over completely, exiling innovationand change [2] . There are areas in the human scienceswhere this has already happened, as seems to be the casein self-esteem research, to be discussed below. Manyother areas may be approaching a similar deadlock.Studies of suicide like Durkheim’s, mentionedabove, provide an example of the problem of researchthat is not based on a great discovery. Although hisfindings have been replicated, the correlation betweendegree of social integration, however it is indexed, andsuicide rates is always quite small, accounting for lessthan 10% of the variance. The tiny size of the correlationsuggests that other factors are involved, perhaps manyothers. The theory of social integration does not explainthe major cause(s) of suicide.There was a legitimate reason for Durkheim’sstudy: he was establishing sociology as an approachseparate from other disciplines, especially separate frompsychology. But now that sociology, psychology, andeconomics have all been established as separatedisciplines, it seems futile to try to explain human conductexclusively within a single discipline.Cases in point are the Blau and Duncan study(1967) of incomes and the replications of it. These studies113
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