“The first source of uncertainty one should learn from is that there is no relevant group that can be said to make up social aggregates, no established component that can be used as an incontrovertible starting point. Many a sociological enquiry has begun by setting up one—or several—type of groupings, before apologizing profusely for this somewhat arbitrary limitation made necessary, it is often argued, by the ‘obligation to limit one’s scope’ or ‘by the right of a scientist to define one’s object’. But this is not at all the sort of setting, the sort of obligation, the sort of apologies, sociologists of associations wish to start with. Their duty is not to stabilize—whether at the beginning for clarity, for convenience, or to look reasonable—the list of groupings making up the social. Quite the opposite: their starting point begins precisely with the controversies about which grouping one pertains to, including of course the controversies among social scientists about what the social world is made of.”
Orthodox groupings occasion uncertainty since they are based on haphazard factors. Groups do not integrate all the social dynamics that can be categorically be utilized to delineate and categorize an individual. Accordingly, the inherent partisanship of the grouping prompts debates regarding the guiding aspects of such alignments. Curtailing the disagreement concerning the groupings which delimit the social realm is contributory in streamlining the frames of sociology.
“When a criminal says, ‘It is not my fault, I had bad parents’, should we say that ‘society made her a criminal’ or that ‘she is trying to escape her own personal culpability by diluting it in the anonymity of society’—as Mrs Thatcher would have certainly commented. But the criminal said nothing of that sort. She simply said, ‘I had bad parents.’ Bad parenting, if we take it seriously, is not automatically translatable into something else and certainly not into society—and she did not say ‘castrating mother’ either. We have to resist the idea that there exists somewhere a dictionary where all the variegated words of the actors can be translated into the few words of the social vocabulary. Will we have the courage not to substitute an unknown expression for a well-known one? Here lies the most morally, politically, and scientifically relevant difference between the two sociologies.”
Subjective elucidations can be inconsistent especially when they are manipulated to uphold a social framework. Actors’ contentions should not be coerced to fit into the social background. The illustration on the criminal’s proclamations validates that parents and the society are distinctive units which should not be switched. Endeavors to introduce immaterial social jargons upsurges intricacy of sociological studies. Society should not be held accountable for individuals’ actions. Furthermore, the words used to explicate the various sociologies matters should not prompt misperception about the Actors and the activators for their actions.
