It is inescapable: we are all part of networks of social relationships that influence us – and that we also influence – in what we think, what we say and what we do on a day-to-day basis. Since we were born, in the family. At school, among colleagues and teachers. Between our friends and our neighbors.
We associate ourselves with groups of people, some more formal (associations, political parties, social movements, clubs or churches, for example), others more informal (a group of football friends or with whom other activities are practiced, the musical band that forms, people on Facebook or other social networks with whom you interact or friends you meet regularly).
We integrate in companies or in other types of organizations of larger or smaller size to work, dealing directly with hierarchies and professional relationships. We experience lives in common, with friends, acquaintances, boyfriends, partners. We build new families, and several, throughout our lives.
Finally, life is always made with one another, in groups and institutions that shape people in different and unequal ways: depending on the economic, social and cultural conditions of the families in which they were born and in which they live; the qualifications they have gained and the skills they develop; to be male, female or transgender; the age you are and the roles you are called to play throughout life (child, youth, adult or elderly person; student, worker or pensioner, or children, parents or grandparents, for example); of working conditions and professions, which give people more or less valued and favored social statuses from a social point of view. We inherit networks of social relationships and constantly build others in an increasingly complex, fluid, globalized and unpredictable society.
It is in this context that, in general terms, we find the specificity of Sociology as an area of knowledge: its vocation is to study the social relationships that are established between people and that build social life, at the most daily level of social encounters, at the institutional life of organizations, or the more structural level of transnational relations and global problems, to name a few. It is therefore of interest to Sociology to discover how these networks of more localized or broader social relationships are constructed, to explain how they are organized, to understand what influences they have on everyone's lives, and what impacts they have on everyone's lives, namely in terms of maintenance. or social transformation.
But none of this happens in a deterministic and predetermined way. Social life has its rules and regularities, but it does not have universal laws, as other sciences tend to seek. Social relations are always contextualized in times of collective history and life stories, as well as in geographic and cultural spaces, with increasingly fluid borders. Within these time and space matrices, people build with each other (in collaboration), or against each other (in conflict), fields of possibilities to design and develop their personal and collective lives.
It turns out that these fields of possibilities are not egalitarian in their “structure”, that is, in the opportunities they provide and the constraints they place on people. Social relations tend to be characterized not only by marked differences but also by profound inequalities. Some are born into more favored or more vulnerable social and economic conditions. There are those who acquire social statutes that give more power to themselves and others. These conditions constrain, from the outset, the space of possibilities and choices of each individual or group. Hence sociology, knowing that this happens, studying how and why it happens, also frequently participates with the knowledge it produces in the foundation of policies that favor equal opportunities between people.
Considering everyone's intimate relationship with Sociology's own object, social life, this relationship is both fascinating and dangerous in the exercise of the various professional practices of sociologists, whether at the university or in many other fields where they practice. the sociological knowledge(s). As social beings, we all construct value judgments and categories of interpretation of life in society, its institutions and social dynamics. However, not all of us are qualified to do sociology.
What distinguishes Sociology from mere opinion – even if informed and sophisticated – and gives it the status of Science, is the fact that the knowledge it produces is always the result of an empirically grounded research process. This process, in turn, implies the systematic and controlled application of a set of methodological, technical and deontological protocols, which guide the production, treatment and analysis of empirical data of a different nature, quantitative or qualitative. It is in this sense that many of you, dear readers, will have already been asked by sociologists or sociology apprentices to complete a questionnaire survey, to respond to an interview or participate in a discussion group, or to be observed. in your daily life, or accompanied in some specific activity.
The data that you kindly give to sociologists when you collaborate in our research is an extremely valuable asset for us, insofar as it is only through them that the hypotheses of explanation and understanding of social life built on the historically accumulated conceptual heritage are validated. in the field of Sociology. It is this careful and ethically conducted articulation between the data that people provide us, the theories we have and the methods we apply, that protects Sociology and the professionals who make it from ideological contaminations and dogmatic positions so easily (re)produced in life. Social. Instead, it takes them for itself as an object of study, deconstructing and explaining preconceived ideas, abusive generalizations, reductionist universalisms or blaming individualisms, and making known the social world in its plurality, organicity and complexity.
This can only be done with solid basic training, in theoretical, methodological and ethical terms, which should start as early as possible. Despite being recent, Sociology is, nowadays, a consolidated disciplinary field in Portugal, with an internationally recognized quality training offer in higher education. It has, however, been a neglected subject in the training offer at secondary school level. Today, it boils down to an optional subject in the 12th year of schooling, where sociologists, anachronistically, continue not to be recognized by official bodies as holders of their own qualifications to provide them to students, easily surpassed in teacher placement competitions by colleagues from other areas.
Now, in an era in which the «post-truth paradigm» tends to impose itself, the revaluation of Sociology at an early stage of the school trajectory would certainly contribute to a more critical, reflective, inclusive and citizen education of young students. , when anchored in scientifically based knowledge about the challenges that will be posed to them with greater intensity by contemporary societies in their life paths.
Author Victor Sérgio Ferreira
Sociologist, Researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon, Coordinator of the LIFE research group – Life Path, Inequalities and Solidarity: Practices and Policies.
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