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Chapter:# Handbook on Teaching and Learning in Sociology

SOCIOLOGY WITHIN THE LIBERAL ARTS

Diane Pike, PhD Augsburg University
INTRODUCTION

Seriously—where to start?

The concepts of “liberal arts” and of “sociology” have been defined in a more-than-is-worth
counting number of articles, department webpages, syllabi, essays, opinion pieces, classrooms,
faculty conversations, and conference panels. Far beyond early constructions of “liberal arts” in
the Middle Ages and Comte’s declarations to a select French audience in 1840, Google results
today for each idea are in the multi-millions. (Apparently you can count them.) It is hard to
imagine writing anything new.1

Fortunately, writing something new is not the task. Rather, this chapter examines how sociology
can thrive within undergraduate curricula given the current intersection of social, cultural,
political, and economic forces. Programs are being cut nationwide,2 legislators argue that the
main purpose of education is jobs as determined by major, and there is general questioning by
parents and society of the value of going to college at all, let alone majoring in sociology. While
sociology has never had an easy time of it, the confluence of these waves makes explaining who
we are and why we matter even more challenging.

Each of three familiar versions of the discipline—sociology as knowledge production, sociology

as ideology-driven activism, and sociology as both/and—have different benefits, risks and
potential outcomes for strengthening our place within the liberal arts. None is a sure bet. What is
clear is, however, is that our professional presentation of self to date hasn’t landed us in a strong
position in many college and university programs. To address this challenge, sociology should
more boldly declare its rationale for continued inclusion within the liberal arts as a knowledge
generating social science, not as an ideologically focused enterprise.

LIBERAL ARTS

Understanding “liberal arts” is a little like pornography-- “you know it when you see it.” Yet,
while the edges are soft, there is a measure of shared understanding of what is and is not liberal
arts.

Liberal arts statements by colleges, universities and departments demonstrate concerted attention
to both definitions and rationale.3 Critical thinking skills, depth and breadth of knowledge,
communication skills, questioning, and the integration of different forms of knowledge are
common. “Liberal” is intended to be understood as freeing, liberating, enlightening, not as a
political position (Washington Post 2015). And nearly all statements also provide a functionalist
rationale for the value of liberal arts. Liberal education is essential for “lifelong learning, civic
involvement and personal flourishing… “(AAC&U 2020); liberal education “empowers
individuals and prepares them to deal with complexity, diversity and change” (OleMiss); “these
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new modes of thinking will prepare students for leading meaningful lives with conscientious
global citizenship to enhance the greater good (Harvard University). Democracy itself, some
assert, depends on a liberally educated populace (AAC&U; Schwalbe 1998).

The goals and rationale for a liberal arts education have changed relatively little over time. The
wording shifts but the functions and benefits do not. A 1977 Carnegie report proposed the
importance of knowledge, capacity for aesthetic sensibility, analysis of arguments,
communication skills, informed self-consciousness, and the desire for continued learning as
salient features of a liberal education (Boyer and Levine). It is difficult to imagine a profession
or a life that would not benefit from these qualities. Employers continue to value what a liberal
education offers—good communication skills, the ability to work in teams, skill in interpreting
data, an understanding of different cultures, personal and social responsibility (Pasquerella 2019;
Flahrety 2021). At the same time, a liberal education curriculum must be dynamic and evolve to
incorporate changes in the substantive knowledge, skills and values that are relevant and
inclusive.4 Cyclical revisions of general education, often contentious and time-consuming faculty
processes, reflect an awareness that the general education curriculum “should be the one we
need, not the one we have” (Mintz 2020).

Competition, critique and pressures also shape the liberal arts arena. STEM fields are being
promoted at the expense of non-STEM liberal arts (Cohen 2016). And while sociology is a
STEM field within the National Science Foundation (NSF), it is not necessarily recognized as
such on many campuses. Conservatives attack “liberal as leftist” education (the current target is
critical race theory) and argue that diversity means including views from the political right.
There are serious threats to the professorate: budget cuts, higher tuition, smaller tenured
faculties, and the “erosion of a worldview that once understood the value of an advanced
education beyond mere job preparation or vocational training…(Hemmer 2017).5

What has changed is the intensity of focus on career readiness among many legislators, pundits,
and families (Harris 2018). While ultimately unsuccessful, Governor Scott Walker attempted in
2015 to tweak the long standing tenets of “The Wisconsin Idea” that higher education serve the
public good for every family with a budget proposal in which the “search for truth” would be cut
in favor of a charge to “meet the state’s workforce needs” (Harris 2018). Similar calls have been
made in Texas, Colorado, West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Washington among others. In Florida,
sociology received special attention when State Senator Dennis Baxley (R-Ocala) proposed
legislation to limit state funding only to majors leading directly to a paycheck (Orlando Sentinel
2021). In support of his quickly failed bill, Baxley explained that he had wasted much of his time
getting a four-year degree in sociology which in most towns would get him “two bucks and a cup
of coffee” (The News Press, 14 Mar 2021).

Majors that equal job titles are viewed as desirable for their greater career accessibility and better
prepared employees requiring less training. Thus, these professional (versus liberal arts) majors
benefit an organization. Yet, the professional focus may actually contribute to organizations
bemoaning the lack of other critical, non-technical skills in their hires such as written
communication (Bauer-Wolf 2018).6 Professional majors typically requiring a large number of
credits—business, education, nursing, social work—also put pressure on reducing the number of
general education credits and the opportunity for electives.
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Certainly it is not a simple question of liberal education versus career preparation. All liberal arts
and sciences disciplines, including sociology, believe that the knowledge and skills they teach
are an asset in many occupations.

SOCIOLOGY

Sociology is the study of social life, social change, and the social causes and
consequences of human behavior. Sociologists investigate the structure of groups,
organizations, and societies and how people interact within these contexts (American
Sociological Association 2021).

Sociology has a history of trying to establish itself as different from psychology and social work
(Berger 1963) and explaining clearly that what we contribute is distinctive and valuable. Most
instructors spend some time in introductory courses explaining why being a member of society
doesn’t make someone “a” sociologist any more that being a biological creature makes one “a”
biologist.7
Yet, sociology offers different views of itself. Is sociology essentially “just” a perspective or an
imagination (Mills 1959; Erikson 2018)? Is it a body of knowledge, theory and methods that
contributes to understanding the human social worlds in ways other disciplines do not? Is it a
science? Is it a social justice entity? Is it all of the above?
Identity as a science or not, our role in activism, and whether or not sociology gets the
recognition it deserves remain contentious deliberations. At the ASA 2021Annual Meetings, two
plenaries (one of senior scholars and one of mid-career scholars) explored the state of sociology
in response to James House’s essay (2019) on the “culminating crisis” in sociology. The
presentations revealed a significant range of views of what sociology is now and should be in the
future, as well as deep critique of House’s arguments. Concern about our work being co-opted by
other disciplines (Abbott 2000) is juxtaposed with advancing the case for greater
interdisciplinarity (House 2019) while also noting its risks (Buroway 2013). Despite a century of
reflexive analysis that perhaps both stimulates and stagnates our work, sociology is facing
closings, declining numbers, and a tenuous status both within and outside the academy.
In some ways, it’s the same hot mess it’s always been.

THREE STANCES

Three recognizable constructions of the discipline are persistent--sociology as a 1) knowledge-

generating academic field; 2) an activist, left-leaning ideologically driven enterprise; or 3) a
both/and. There is little consensus among sociologists, and even less among outsiders, as to
which stance is or should be our anchor identity. In what follows, each stance is briefly
summarized, acknowledging the lack of space for nuanced discussion of each claim on our
identity. Notably, nuance and internal debate are often not particularly relevant for larger
organizational decisions across thousands of colleges and universities with respect to sociology’s
role in general education and the strength of our majors. Much of sociology is “in the trenches”
(Atkinson and Lowney 2014) and not only in ASA or debates among R1 scholars.
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Knowledge Generation: Scientific and Humanistic Sociology

Sociologists have made clear declarations that sociology is a science8. Most introductory texts
identify sociology as a science (at least in part) although ASA’s own definition skirts debate by
using the word “study”. “Social science”, itself a concept, is committed to a protocol based in a
set of norms, practices, and standards. The shared agreement is typically that a scientific
approach is grounded in systematic, empirically knowable and testable explanations. In this
understanding, the argument that sociological work is scientific is persuasive and valid.

Should sociology be a science? Sociologists have made this case, questioned this case, and
drilled deep on what it means if we are or are not a science.9 One only need consider the decision
in 1969 to award a Nobel Prize in Economics, or the shift within psychology toward
neuro/biopsychology research versus clinical and therapeutic, to recognize the prestige of being
understood as a social science. With prestige comes resources.

Of course, debate as to whether the social, versus the natural and physical, worlds can be studied
scientifically will likely always be with us, as well deep examination of whether or not any
science can be “objective”. Does free-will negate the possibility of the scientific study of
society? Is value-neutrality different from objectivity (Weber 1949)? Is there a difference
between the values of a scientist and the science itself? It is enough, as Porpora (2015) suggests,
to produce competent science that may not necessarily be objective but is at least intellectually
honest? Such questions can be asked of all sciences.

As scientific sociology is knowledge generating, so too is our best work using an interpretive or
humanistic approach. A partial list of such scholars includes: Weber, Perkins Gilman, Du Bois,
Berger and Luckman, Goffman, Hochschild and Bourdieu. The key is not which type of inquiry
or methodology is applied (although there is plenty of debate here) but whether or not the goal is
the generation of knowledge based on a clearly articulated ontology, epistemology, and
methodology.

Sociology is distinctive because it applies scientific and humanistic methodologies to social

facts--structures, institutions, and processes that have impact on patterns of social interaction. It
provides a unique and valuable lens for explaining human social phenomena that cannot be
understood using other lenses. Our questions differ and so do our explanations.

Activism and Social Change

Sociology as an activist discipline and ideologically driven enterprise is another dimension

present from our origins. Comte, Addams, Marx, Durkheim, and Du Bois all understood that the
foremost value of sociological knowledge is the potential to improve the human condition. But
the tension is not whether or not knowledge should be used for good. The tension is whether the
implementation of that knowledge is best determined by sociologists who conduct research with
an activist goal (Hern 2016). There are myriad ways this scholar-activism approach in sociology
is defined and manifested—from the intellectual activism so compellingly expressed by Patricia
Hill Collins to the manifesto positions of ASA Presidents Joe Feagin, Mary Romero, Aldon
Morris, and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. In this stance, sociology’s distinctiveness is the capacity to
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be both scholarly and activist simultaneously, producing knowledge through intentional research
agendas that should influence social change.10

The complication arises when sociology is labeled as ideologically driven and its left-of-center
ideas contribute to being understood as a political entity, not a scientific one. Recent analysis on
“activism, sociology, and scientific legitimacy” suggests that not only does our leftist reputation
shape the view of the discipline among administrators and state legislators (Huber 1995), but
political affiliation among the general public is associated with a higher or lower perception of
sociology as scientific (Schietle 2018). Does it matter that conservatives see sociology as less
scientific than liberals do? Noting ASA’s 2017 focus on engagement and advocacy, Schietle
suggests that “efforts to inform ‘timely policy issues’ without addressing the discipline’s
reputational issues could lead to failure on the policy front while solidifying those (negative)
reputational perceptions” (2018:11). The stakes are high for more than just our role in liberal
education if we also wish our knowledge to influence policy.

Similarly, in discussion with graduate students regarding Mary Romero’s ASA theme on what
scholar-activism means, Brad Vermulen acknowledges that while many of us would agree with
the goals of leftist scholar-activists, “the problem is that the scholar-activists’ findings and
prescriptions are self-assuredly predetermined by their political ideology….sociology becomes a
vehicle for enacting a particular moral and political vision” (2018).11

Frequently accompanying this position in sociology is a rejection of the notion of objectivity.12

Because we cannot or choose not to separate ourselves or our positionality from what we study,
objectivity is dismissed. The impossibility of objectivity provides support for activism (Morris
2017).13

But does positionality disqualify people from speaking on certain issues?14 Is the problem of
objectivity the same type of concern in physics, business or psychology? Every discipline is
normative to some degree, as are individual practitioners. But as a senior colleague once
remarked “emotions are not a good guide to the world”—they are a risky way to make
decisions—and, I would add, to do science.

Many sociologists and programs are committed to this sociological stance particularly in
teaching. If sociology is promoted as an activist discipline and first as a knowledge generating
discipline, will we be a valued and included partner in the already stressed arena of liberal arts?

All of the Above: Both/And

The third conceptualization is sociology as bifurcated--both a knowledge generating discipline

and a value driven enterprise. Some sociologists do science while others do scholar activism (or
some of each at different points of a career). This is clear in the ASA declarations and
department mission statements. The long standing discussion about identity and value may
indicate that for all of our history sociology has tried to be both/and-- a respectable social science
that advocates for social change, particularly that which addresses inequality, oppression and
race. While this multi-faceted self-identity attracts some of our majors and advances worthy
goals, perhaps this dual countenance is part of the reason sociology is still struggling. Because
sociologists argue, sometimes too publicly and certainly constantly internally, about who we are
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and who we should be, it is tricky to make the case that “whatever we are” we should be
included. We don’t speak with one clear enough voice, so we don’t get heard.

The problem is when the activism overshadows the science. Theorist Jonathan Turner is
particularly concerned about the marginalization of science in many sociology departments
(2019). “The chance for sociology to use its vast store of knowledge to help clients of all types
solve their organizational problems will be lost if sociology is defined as a political rather than a
scientific enterprise” (Turner 2019).15 Yet, calling out weak science when we personally agree
with the activist/social change goal is also tough. Again, do professionally trained sociologists
have the credibility as sociologists to act upon what is morally right and wrong? Our answers
differ to this question.

Some sociologists will argue that we are distinctive precisely because we think we can or at least
should strive to do both equally well. There are many examples of excellent scholarship in the
service of social change, such as Matthew Desmond’s work on eviction. But our collective
presentation of self and our front stage public persona is muddled. The field attempts to
distinguish between public, policy, professional and critical sociology (Buroway 2005) as well as
clinical, applied, civic, revolutionary, and emancipatory sociology16. Given the current cuts and
threats, it is doubtful that this expansion of identity has improved our position within the liberal
arts.

MAKING THE CASE

Then

Sociologists have long examined our explicit role in liberal arts. A century of discussions worth
re-reading include Small (1921), Mills (1959), Bierstedt (1963), Bressler (1967) and Levine
(1973). Robert Stauffer (1980) helpfully examines these authors’ ideas about sociology and
liberal education specifically: Bierstedt makes a clear case that the characteristics of sociology
are the qualities of a liberal education, while Bressler argues for more evidence of sociology’s
impact and greater clarity as to “what it is that sociologists offer that is both unique to sociology
and common to all sociologists (Stauffer:253). Stauffer himself is particularly clear about the
differences among sociologists on what the role of sociology in liberal education is versus what
they think it is versus what they think it ought to be (255). Building on ideas from those earlier
writers Stauffer concludes,

“sociology contributes (or ought to) [to] a greater sense of the social nature of self; an
awareness of the provisional nature of any particular pattern of social organization and
thus a kind of liberation from common sense; and, above all, an enhanced capacity for
critical reasoning… (1980:256).

Now

Angst about our dire circumstances and possible demise continues.

In ASR’s 2019 Annual Review, James House argued we do not simply need to make a better
case for sociology; we need a “new and better sociology” itself. Sociology today is experiencing
a “cumulating crisis” that has resulted in a lack of intellectual unity which paralyzes our ability
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to contribute. Right now, sociology is “less than the sum of its parts” (2019:21). House
recommends sociology not pull away from policy work and interdisciplinarity. This essay was
viewed as significant enough to be the basis for the two ASA plenary discussions referenced
earlier. Many of the comments involved critique of House’s view in the context of the
conference theme of emancipatory sociology. Voices were clear in their eagerness to move in the
direction of greater activism and relevance and colleagues are equally worried about a future that
does not move sociology in that direction.

Next

Sociology’s contingent history cannot be changed, but its contingent future can be shaped. It is a
distinctive and valuable discipline with significant contributions in theory, data, and analysis of
social facts. But the decreasing numbers of sociologists and sociology majors today belie the
idea that business as usual will strengthen our place within the liberal arts. Should we become
more activist or more clearly a social science or keep trying to do/be both?

Professional and student sociologists cast their lot with one stance over the others, depending on
training, institutional context, and professional and personal identity. While all three views of
sociology are espoused across our discipline, the activist focus so clearly demonstrated in recent
ASA annual meeting themes and throughout the discipline is likely the riskiest approach if the
goal is inclusion in liberal education and a free-standing major.

What This Means for Teaching

Sociology needs to more consistently present itself as offering courses in general education that
demonstrate the distinctive value of the systematic study of social facts. As Ballantine and
colleagues argue, “There are both organizational and intellectual reasons for sociology to have a
core. Organizationally, if we do not establish a foundation, others will and in fact are—doing so
for us. Leaving discussions about the core to external forces is at best unwise and potentially
damaging to our discipline requirements” (2016:160).

One way to accomplish this greater focus is to adopt Ferguson and Carbonaro’s 2016
Sociological Literacy Framework (SLF) endorsed in the ASA report, The Sociology Major in the
Changing Landscape of Higher Education (2017). The SLF is a comprehensive and well-
researched source that represents high quality collective thinking that programs can customize to
their local contexts. The framework provides substantive content, a vocabulary, and a rationale
for making our case as a social science.

The SLF embraces the importance of studying inequality but is not limited to that focus.
Sociology is about how social things work and why. If sociology is taught or seen first as an
anti-oppression ideology, then it is subject to the criticisms identified earlier. Our claims are
more compelling if sociology general education courses are better representative of our full
value. As is well understood, if we don’t inspire a broad range of students in general education
courses, we are unlikely to have a major at all.

Adopting and adapting the SLF for both general education and the major does not require
diminishing the attraction for students whom we know gravitate to sociology because of the
capacity for effecting social change. What sociology is as a discipline and what it can do for
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students are related but not identical issues—we can be a science used for social change, just as
virology can be used by physicians to treat patients. Scientists focus on how the virus works, not
simply how much damage it does. Multiple and high quality opportunities in our electives,
practice in social science research skills, and experiential education will serve our majors well.

An array of courses offerings so topical that they reflect little about the discipline are less
helpful. We already know that courses, especially introductory ones in general education, should
be rigorous, balanced, taught by our most effective full time teachers, and relevant to a range of
issues, including preparation for work (Bok 2020). Stauffer argued four decades ago,

…sociologists who concern themselves with undergraduate teaching should not replace a
narrow disciplinary expertise with a narrow pedagogical expertise. Rather, what is most
needed…are sociology teachers who are intellectuals in the best and classic sense of the
term—who live through ideas of political and cultural import and who communicate with
conviction, rigor and sensitivity the significance of this enterprise (1980:263).

What we see today as ideas of “political and cultural import” may be different, but the teaching
goals remain.

CONCLUSION

In the present landscape and likely in the foreseeable future, the hot mess of higher education
challenges all of the liberal arts. Sociology should highlight our social science stance as the basis
for our claim to be an essential part of a liberal education. It would be naïve to think that the
activist/social justice component of sociology will fade or that it should—but that is a different
question from what will stem the downward flow of the discipline in the academy. The potential
consequences of the sociology we choose to promote in that context matters.

If we can’t agree on who we are or what we offer within the liberal arts, why should anyone else
think we deserve a seat at an increasingly crowded table? A more cohesive visible case for a
social science of society and collective social life is crucial. Less variability among courses and
curricula offered (one can have rigorous shared learning goals without McDonaldization) can
contribute to greater clarity about what is unique to sociology and common to sociologists
(Bressler 1967).

We might also stop being “our own worst enemy” by seeing every glass as half empty rather
than half full (Fuller 2016). While social problems today in the modern west are often cast in
psychological and economic terms, sociology often seems to present itself as the purveyors of
doom—all problems, no solutions. Some of this difficulty may be “killing the messenger” (Best
2008) and a lack of positive sociology (Yogan 2015), but it may also be influenced by attention
for protesting versus shaping policy (Pettit September 20, 2021).

Anchor the discipline as foundationally rigorous knowledge production and take advantage of
delivering on the learning promises gifted in the Sociological Literacy Framework. This is the
likeliest path for being able to continue to contribute to liberal education programs and to
produce skilled and employed sociology majors, as well as new professional sociologists.
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Nothing in this argument requires rejecting social justice as a citizen, as a professional in an

organization, or as an individual activist. It does require advancing a more cogent case for the
knowledge generating foundations of sociology as an academic enterprise. To thrive in the
liberal arts, a more effective stand against the elimination of departments, limited general
education participation, dismissiveness, and the disarray of our own internal debates is
warranted.

Seriously—let’s start there.

References in progress.
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11 It is also a fair question to ask who is even the audience for these discussions: general education revision
committees? students? administrations? the public? a subset of sociologists?
2
Examples include University of Wisconsin--Stevens Point, Missouri Western, University of Alaska Fairbanks,
Illinois Wesleyan. ASA does not have a central database of programs eliminated, but does track the declining
enrollments and degrees awarded in sociology.
3
The vocabulary of liberal arts, liberal arts and sciences, and liberal education are used synonymously. It is also
presumed that for most sociology programs their role in a liberal education is housed in a general education
curriculum. The sociology major is briefly discussed separately.
4
For a useful current discussion, see Montas, R. Chronicle of Higher Education July 19 2021 “Classic Books or
Diverse Books?”
5 Hemmer adds “Conservatives unable to change liberal institutions now want to destroy them.”

6
Nearly 80 percent of students also believed they were competent in oral and written communication and critical
thinking, while only roughly 42 percent and 56 percent of employers indicated that students were successful in those
areas respectively (Bauer-Wolf 2018).
7
Despite Charles Lemert’s valid assertion that each of us has some sociological competence (1998), as I tell my
students, just because fish swim in the ocean, it doesn’t mean they’re good oceanographers.
8 The National Science Foundation includes sociology as a science but it is not clear that on our campuses and in

public arenas that sociology is seen as such. Explaining “hard” versus “soft” science continues.
9 An initial reading list might include: Comte (1848), Du Bois (1899), Durkheim (1895), Hart (1921), Turner and

Turner (1999), Black (2000), Merton (2011), House (2019).

10
A kind of intellectual whiplash has been occurring the past several decades within the discipline and the ASA.
ASA President 2021 Aldon Morris recently argued that sociology will lose its relevance because of “restricted
leadership, elitism, internal arrogance, restricted view of human agency, and value neutrality”—heavy barriers to the
type of sociology he would like to see. His solution to the problems of the discipline is demographic inclusion
(2017). A diversity of players --more progressive white women, people of color, and white male scholars-- is needed
to build a better sociology by “connecting across divisive social cleavages”. That better sociology is an
emancipatory sociology.
11
Small was concerned with sociology’s future in terms of the relationship with the other social sciences and (like
others since), was worried about too much specialization within sociology. He did not wish for the hegemony of
sociology: “So long as men study human experience for means of more intelligently guiding future experience, the
demand for sociologists as teachers of rudiments of social relations, and the distinctiveness of the function which
sociologists must perform cannot fail to increase. On the other hand, our contributions to available knowledge, and
to wisdom in turning knowledge into fortunate social control (emphasis added), must depend at last upon the
sagacity of the different divisions of social science in merging their resources” (1921:192-193). Is the goal of
activism a form of “fortunate social control”?
12 This theme was central in the aforementioned plenaries at ASA 2021.
13 Perhaps the approach of finding the “human space” between objectivity and activism suggested by Vermurlen
(2018) is a helpful way of thinking about these tensions. While suggesting that true objectivity is impossible, he
writes “Still, sociology should not merely be a vehicle for enacting a particular moral and political vision. It should
be the systematic, disciplined pursuit of the truth about human social life” (November 27, 2018).

14 Thank you to Daniel Chambliss, Hamilton College, for this additional insight.
15 Turner draws different conclusions for the future of sociology—two sociologies activism and social physics.
16
Civic Sociology aims to be a forum for the cultivation of normative inquiry within the discipline, and to offer a
space for the many conversations that different ethical turns have spurred. The theme for the 2021 Social Problems
Annual Meeting is “Revolutionary Sociology: Truth, Healing, Reparations and Restructuring”.