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Styles of Sociological Thought: Sociologies, Epistemologies, and the

Mexican and U.S. Quests for Truth*

GABRIEL ABEND

Northwestern University

Both U.S. and Mexican sociologies allege that they are in the business of making true

scientific knowledge claims about the social world. Conventional conceptions of

science notwithstanding, I demonstrate that their claims to truth and scientificity

are based on alternative epistemological grounds. Drawing a random sample of

nonquantitative articles from four leading journals, I show that, first, they assign a

different role to theories, and indeed they have dissimilar understandings of what a

theory should consist of. Second, whereas U.S. sociology actively struggles against

subjectivity, Mexican sociology maximizes the potentials of subjective viewpoints.

Third, U.S. sociologists tend to regard highly and Mexican sociologists to eagerly

disregard the principle of ethical neutrality. These consistent and systematic differ-

ences raise two theoretical issues. First, I argue that Mexican and U.S. sociologies

are epistemologically, semantically, and perceptually incommensurable. I contend

that this problem is crucial for sociology’s interest in the social conditioning of

scientific knowledge’s content. Second, I suggest four lines of thought that can help

us explain the epistemological differences I find. Finally, I argue that sociologists

would greatly profit from studying epistemologies in the same fashion they have

studied other kinds of scientific and nonscientific beliefs.

The phrase ‘‘Uruguayan physics’’ might refer to physics departments located inMontevideo or to physicists who possess Uruguayan citizenship. But insofar as itrefers to theories and laws, the traditional conception of science would consider‘‘Uruguayan physics’’ to be an oxymoronic phrase. Maxwell’s equations are notScottish, nor is Lavoisier’s refutation of the phlogiston theory of combustionFrench. In fact, the oxymoron can be made even starker: ‘‘Scottish attitude towardvalue judgments’’ and ‘‘French conception of objectivity’’ seem to be, from the pointof view of science, unintelligible expressions. Unlike mores, political cultures, andaesthetic judgments, science, this argument goes, is universal.

In Mannheim’s ([1929] 1966:265) words, ‘‘the sociology of knowledge has set itselfthe task of solving the problem of the social conditioning of knowledge.’’ Taking

*Address correspondence to: Gabriel Abend, Department of Sociology, Northwestern University, 1810Chicago Ave., Evanston, IL 60208. E-mail: [email protected]. My research in Mexico wassupported by the Center for International and Comparative Studies at Northwestern University and aFulbright Alumni Initiative Award. I gratefully acknowledge the hospitality of the Centro de EstudiosSociologicos at El Colegio de Mexico, the Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales at UNAM, and the Centrode Investigacion y Docencia Economicas. I have benefited from comments and suggestions from SarahBabb, Charles Camic, Paula England, Marion Fourcade-Gourinchas, Andreas Glaeser, Rebeca de Gortari,Natividad Gutierrez, Carol Heimer, Jerry Jacobs, Michele Lamont, Jeff Manza, Ann Orloff, Juan ManuelOrtega, Devah Pager, Olivier Roueff, Michael Sauder, Ben Ross Schneider, George Steinmetz, JessicaThurk, Francisco Zapata, several anonymous referees, and the editors of Sociological Theory. I owe specialthanks to Bruce Carruthers, Elif Kale-Lostuvali, and Arthur Stinchcombe, who read more drafts of thispaper than I care to remember.

Sociological Theory 24:1 March 2006# American Sociological Association. 1307 NewYork Avenue NW,Washington, DC 20005-4701

science as a special case of knowledge, one would readily acknowledge that the factthat two communities of sociologists might be interested in different topics orprivilege different methods can be accounted for by ‘‘the existential basis of mentalproductions’’ (Merton [1949] 1968:514). This argument is consistent with ‘‘the imageof science by which we are [generally] possessed’’ (Kuhn [1962] 1970:1), according towhich science is objective, rational, and universal. For it can be argued that theselection of a research interest or a methodological tool is just a matter of tasteunrelated to the context of justification. By contrast, it would not be consistent withthe traditional conception of science if two communities of sociologists differed insomething more fundamental: the criteria through which they discriminate betweentrue and false claims, their definition of what constitutes knowledge, their under-standing of what an acceptable theory should look like—that is, their epistemologicalassumptions. While there are theoretical and empirical grounds to expect variation in,for example, foci of attention and rates of advance, it may be an unexpected andunsettling empirical finding that sociology’s very foundations are in some way ‘‘sociallyconstructed’’ (on these scare quotes, see Hacking 1999).

This is precisely the question that this article addresses—its main argument is thatthe discourses of Mexican and U.S. sociologies are consistently underlain by signifi-cantly different epistemological assumptions. In fact, these two Denkgemeinschaften(Fleck [1935] 1979) are notably dissimilar in at least four clusters of variables (see, e.g.,Andrade Carreno 1998; Brachet-Marquez 1997; Leal y Fernandez et al. 1995; Girolaand Olvera 1994; Davis 1992; Girola and Zabludovsky 1991; Paoli Bolio 1990; GarzaToledo 1989; Sefchovich 1989; Benıtez Zenteno 1987): their thematic, theoretical, andmethodological preferences; their historical development and intellectual influences;the society, culture, and institutions in which they are embedded; and the languagethey normally use. It is reasonable to expect that if variation in epistemologicalassumptions can be found at all, it would be more likely when there is variation inthese clusters of variables as well. Then, the comparison of Mexican and U.S. socio-logies is a promising one to tackle the issue of that ‘‘more fundamental’’ difference.

Both U.S. and Mexican sociologies allege that they are in the business of makingtrue scientific knowledge claims about the social world. Conventional conceptions ofscience notwithstanding, I show that their claims to truth and scientificity are basedon alternative epistemological grounds. My argument is organized as follows. Afterexpounding my data and methods, I present my findings in three substantivesections, each of which addresses a different epistemological dimension. The first ofthem explores the nature and role of theories and the dialogue between theory andevidence. The second looks at whether and how epistemic objectivity is sought after.Finally, the third substantive sector examines to what extent the ideal of a value-freescience is pursued and realized.

In turn, my empirical findings raise two theoretical problems, which I discuss in theconclusion. The first is how to explain the difference I describe. The development of atheory that could explain the exceptionally complex process through which U.S. andMexican sociologies have come to hold their distinctive epistemological commitmentswould require a profound historical study, which is beyond the scope of this article.Nonetheless, I shall suggest four lines of thought from which this theory might profit.The second theoretical problem is in what sense variation in epistemologies can besaid to be more fundamental than variation in, for example, methods or topics. Thiswill lead us to the subject of commensurability or translatability, that is, whether thetranslation between theoretical claims rendered in these languages is at all possible (orwhether there is a meta-language into which both could be translated). I shall argue

2 SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY

that this problem is crucial for the sociology of knowledge in general, and for what Icall the ‘‘sociology of epistemologies’’ in particular.

Obvious as it by now may seem, I would like nevertheless to underscore that this isnot an epistemological treatise but an exercise in the sociology of knowledge. Hence,in accordance with Bloor’s ([1976] 1991:7) tenets of impartiality and symmetry, I donot grant any epistemic privilege to the Mexican or U.S. ways of going about studyingthe social world. I do not know nor do I care about how true and false beliefs aredistributed.1 My approach is not theoretical, normative, or philosophical—it isempirical and sociological. As I argue in the conclusion, sociologists would greatlyprofit from studying epistemologies in the same fashion they have studied other kindsof scientific and nonscientific beliefs.

DATA AND METHODS

My inquiry into the epistemological presuppositions that underlie the discourse ofU.S. and Mexican sociologies is based on a content analysis of a sample of journalarticles. The sample is drawn from two Mexican and two U.S. journals of sociology:American Journal of Sociology (AJS), American Sociological Review (ASR), EstudiosSociologicos (ES), and Revista Mexicana de Sociologıa (RMS). These journals are themost cited and most prestigious ones in each of the communities.2 The followingvolumes are considered: AJS Volumes 101–106 (1995–2001), ASR Volumes 61–66(1996–2001), ES Volumes XIV–XVIII (1996–2000), and RMS Volumes LVIII–LXII(1996–2000). Throughout these periods, three different editors served on AJS, twoeditors and one editorial team on ASR, three directores on ES, and two directores onRMS.3 These variations provide some small degree of control over the effect of thevariable ‘‘editor.’’

The population of articles from which I draw my sample does not consist of all thepieces published in the volumes of the journals mentioned above. First, it excludes:editorials, book reviews and review essays, comments and replies, addresses, transla-tions, and any other nonrefereed piece (as far as it can be told). Nor does it includetheoretical, methodological, and exegetical articles, for my chief interests include thedialogue between theory and data and the pursuit of objective representations of reality.

There is still another group of articles not included in my population. For a naıve‘‘anthropologist of sociologies,’’ the most striking difference between ASR and AJS,on the one hand, and ES and RMS, on the other hand, would be the ubiquity versusvirtual absence of statistical and formal models. This is most important because thevariable ‘‘method’’ accounts for much of the variation of the epistemological dimen-sions under scrutiny. Specifically, the modal U.S. article, centered on a statisticalmodel and employing highly standardized argumentative and rhetorical practices,

1As I discuss at some length in the conclusion, there is a sense in which this claim is reflexivelyproblematic. On reflexivity in the sociology of scientific knowledge, see Ashmore (1989) and Woolgar(1988a).

2For example, ASR and AJS have regularly led the rankings of ‘‘total cites’’ and ‘‘impact factor’’ thatappear in the Institute for Scientific Information’s Journal Citation Reports, as well as Allen’s (1990, 2003)‘‘core influence’’ scores. While there are no comparable rankings in Mexico, RMS and ES are widelyregarded as the most prestigious Mexican journals of sociology. Along with the theory journalSociologica, they consistently figure at the top of sociologists’ assessments of prestige (e.g., Cruz andGutierrez 2001:112). Likewise, when the National Council for Science and Technology (CONACyT)established its register of journals ‘‘of excellence’’ in 1994, ES and RMS were the only two empiricaljournals of sociology included (Andrade Carreno 1995:201).

3However, Andrew Abbott’s tenure at AJS began only in the fourth number of Volume 106 and Jose LuisReyna’s in ES in the third number of Volume XVIII.

STYLES OF SOCIOLOGICAL THOUGHT 3

implies a certain relationship between theory and evidence and powerfullydisplays objectivity by means of numbers and formulae. That the mostly quanti-tative U.S. pieces and the mostly nonquantitative Mexican pieces are associatedwith dissimilar epistemological assumptions would not be difficult to establish. Itis a more interesting argument that the difference persists after ‘‘method’’ iscontrolled for. And, given the characteristics of the two distributions, the onlyviable solution is to compare just nonquantitative articles. By introducing a biasin the populations of articles that makes it more difficult to reject the nullhypothesis of no difference, this move in the research design subjects my claimsto a much tougher test. It therefore allows for stronger conclusions and perhapseven a fortiori arguments (for instance, along the lines of what Calhoun (1996)calls the ‘‘domestication’’ of historical sociology). In practice, I establish thefollowing criteria to distinguish between ‘‘quantitative’’ and ‘‘nonquantitative’’articles. A ‘‘standard quantitative article’’ (a) uses ordinary least squares (OLS)regression, more sophisticated statistical models, or other types of formal model-ing (game theory, network models, etc.); and (b) these models play a key role inthe argument (if it is a multi-methods piece, the models play at least as importanta role as the other method used).4

The population of articles thus delineated, I drew a random sample of 15 cases foreach of the four journals considered.5 These samples constitute a different fraction ofthe overall number of nonquantitative empirical pieces published by each of them.This difference is due to the method through which I control for method, which leavesout approximately 80 percent of the U.S. articles. By contrast, only two Mexicanarticles meet the two aforementioned criteria. Therefore, inferences from the samples’estimates to the populations’ parameters have different degrees of confidence. All theinformation concerning my sample is summarized in Table 1.

For at least three reasons, conclusions reached with these data cannot be generalizedtout court to U.S. or Mexican sociology. Hence, the expressions ‘‘U.S. sociology’’ and‘‘Mexican sociology,’’ which I use throughout the article, are meant to be just convenient

4The criterion I establish to the effect that OLS regressions (rather than, say, cross-tabulations) mark thedifference between quantitative and nonquantitative articles is based on the way in which the communityitself marks this difference. That is, whereas articles that run OLS regressions are generally seen asquantitative, articles that present cross-tabulations are generally seen as nonquantitative. Two shortcomingsof my criteria are: first, I do not construct an objective indicator for the second criterion; second, the notionof ‘‘more sophisticated statistical models’’ is admittedly fuzzy.

5The complete list of the 60 articles randomly selected is available from the author upon request.

Table 1. Characteristics of the Sample

Journal Volumes

Number

of

Volumes

Time

Period

Total

Empirical

Articles

Non

quantitative

Articles

Sample

Size Proportion

RMS LVIII–LXII 5 1996–2000 154 153 15 9.80

ES XIV–XVIII 5 1996–2000 92 91 15 16.48

ASR 61–66 6 1996–2001 258 45 15 33.33

AJS 101–106 6 1995–2001 167 40 15 37.50

RMS, Revista Mexicana de Sociologıa; ES, Estudios Sociologicos; ASR, American Sociological Review; AJS,

American Journal of Sociology.


labels. First, a journal article is a literary artifact, which conceals the complex socialprocesses involved in ‘‘doing’’ or ‘‘making’’ science. Other types of scientific practices anddiscourses could be searched for epistemological assumptions as well, especially if we areinterested in studying ‘‘science in action’’ (Latour 1987). Second, there are books. Mostsociologists write and publish both articles and books, and there are even ‘‘book people,’’who do not write articles and do not like to be regarded as article authors (Clemens et al.1995:450). The effect of genre on epistemological presuppositions is evident, and I canonly encourage its empirical examination.

Third, and most importantly, it is not a straightforward question what the fourjournals selected are representative of—probably most professional sociologists donot publish in them, there certainly is variation within each community, and disciplin-ary consensuses are weak. For example, in the United States, there is a wide array ofjournals and a corresponding wide array of epistemological inclinations.6 In particular,some of these journals are epistemologically at odds with ASR and AJS. Thus, even ifwe restrict ourselves to the world of journals, my data are not representative of thediscipline as a whole but of one particular kind of sociological discourse. For mypurposes, the most important feature of the four journals selected is their high status,their often being referred to as ‘‘leading,’’ ‘‘mainstream,’’ or ‘‘top’’ journals. And this isprecisely why they were selected. Given my aims, it is reasonable to focus on thejournals that are located at the center of the sociological field. Among other things,central actors can more effectively define normative standards, are more readily asso-ciated with the field itself, and usually set the terms of the debate. Nevertheless, itshould be borne in mind that the four journals selected are not the only game in town,even if they occupy a privileged position in terms of power and influence.

Let us conclude with two further methodological points. Journal articles are rheto-rical constructs designed to persuade the community to which they are addressed ofthe truthfulness of their claims (on the rhetoric of science, see Gross 1990; Bazerman1988; Nelson, Megill, and McCloskey 1987; McCloskey 1985; Woolgar 1981; Gusfield1976, 1981). In fact, thanks to the ‘‘invisible hand of the peer review’’ (Harnad 1998),the community not only can accept or reject a piece of work but can actually ‘‘correct’’it. Thus, my analysis of journal articles is not about the ‘‘real epistemological self’’ ofindividual sociologists, the one that would have manifested itself had they not sub-mitted their papers to a prestigious journal. My analysis, then, is intended to shedlight specifically upon communal epistemological presuppositions.7

Finally, while it is widely accepted that scientific discourses are underpinned byepistemological (and, for that matter, ontological) assumptions, even if not con-sciously adopted, it is more debatable how these can be accessed empirically.Evidently, they cannot be accessed as straightforwardly as an article’s topic or theauthors’ gender. While views on epistemic objectivity are not explicitly acknowledged,the writing of an article presupposes a topic on which to write and encourages itsexplicit communication, and the authors’ names are most times a reliable indicator oftheir gender.8 However, since a conscious or unconscious stance on epistemic

6There is an asymmetry here between Mexican sociology and U.S. sociology because the number ofjournals in the former is much smaller than the number of journals in the later.

7Here I take up Fleck’s idea of thought-communities having a somewhat autonomous existence, beyondthe aggregate sum of their individual components. Fleck suggests the analogies of a soccer match, aconversation, and the playing of an orchestra, which would lose their meaning if regarded as ‘‘individualkicks one by one’’ or ‘‘the work only of individual instruments’’ (Fleck [1935] 1979:46, 99).

8Androgynous names and names in, so to speak, little-known languages might be seen as exceptions. Butstill in these cases, the authors’ gender is a relatively unproblematic issue, and the difficulty is simply with itsmeasurement.


objectivity is unavoidably informing the authors’ research and writing choices, it willnecessarily yield observable, yet sometimes subtle, marks amenable to intersubjec-tively valid measurement. At least, this is one of the assumptions of this article.

THEORY AND EVIDENCE

What Is a Theory?

Grand-theories, the formulation of a more or less general social regularity, theidentification of the causal mechanism that brought about the outcome in a particularcircumstance, an ‘‘abstractedly empiricist’’ (Mills [1959] 1967) analysis of the relation-ship between two variables, and a historian’s detailed description of a specific event‘‘wie es eigentlich gewesen’’ are all, in some way, theoretical enterprises. In the lattertwo cases, often accused of being ‘‘atheoretical,’’ this is not just because observationsand methods are theory-laden and accounts of the empirical world are mediated bylanguage (Popper [1934] 1992; Duhem [1906] 1991; Hanson 1958; Winch 1958).Theories can be found not only in explicit explanatory systems of propositions butalso in analytical, interpretive, methodological, and argumentative choices. Therefore,rather than imposing a particular definition, here ‘‘theory’’ becomes a variable itself.My questions are whether U.S. and Mexican sociologies’ theories are actually differ-ent, whether there are discrepancies in the meaning of the term, and whether theoriesrelate differently to evidence and to other theories.

In most of my U.S. articles (U-ART9), the concept of ‘‘theory’’ is quite faithful toMerton’s ([1949] 1968:39) famous definition of the ‘‘theories of the middle range’’:‘‘logically interconnected sets of propositions from which empirical uniformities canbe derived.’’ Merton ([1949] 1968:39, 68) emphasizes that ‘‘middle-range theory isprincipally used in sociology to guide empirical inquiry’’; from theories, ‘‘specifichypotheses are logically derived and confirmed by empirical investigation.’’ Seventy-seven percent of the theories found in U-ART are theories of the middle range—closeto, unambiguously related to, and tested by the data. When drawing on grandertheories, these are reformulated or curtailed so that they can function as theories ofthe middle range. In addition to actually testing theories with data, 87 percent ofU-ART explicitly suggest one ought to ‘‘test,’’ ‘‘confirm,’’ ‘‘corroborate,’’ or ‘‘prove’’theories with data (see Table 2). Interestingly, U-ART tend to talk in terms ofconfirmation rather than falsification (a term that is not found even once).Hypotheses are confirmed rather than nonfalsified, and the literature has ‘‘proven’’or ‘‘demonstrated,’’ thereby tacitly adhering to a verificationist epistemology.

Mexican sociologists10 have a very different understanding of the concept of theory.None of their theories is ‘‘tested’’ by and related to the data in the U.S. sense, andnone of the articles explicitly say that theories ought to be tested by the data. Forty-seven percent of M-ART are theoretical in the sense that they provide a nonevidentreading of the empirical world. The very distinction between theory and evidence thatU.S. standards take for granted is put into question here—what U.S. sociologistsmight understand as the data, Mexican sociologists may see as the theory, as boththe data and the theory. Another 50 percent of M-ART draw ‘‘freely’’ on

9Henceforth, I refer to my sample of U.S. and Mexican articles, respectively, as U-ART and M-ART.10For the present purposes, it does not matter where authors were trained, work, or were born; the issue

here is the community that accepts their piece for publication. Thus, the terms ‘‘Mexican sociologists’’ and‘‘U.S. sociologists’’ do not mean sociologists who were born in those countries. Rather, they meansociologists who have published in those countries’ journals.


theories—theories that tend to be ‘‘total systems of sociological theory,’’ such asHabermas’s, Luhmann’s, Giddens’s, Bourdieu’s, Touraine’s, and Marx’s (seeTable 2). Authors borrow concepts and definitions from these theories, or use themto interpret or illuminate particular aspects of their arguments. Sometimes, theoriesare also presented as Weltanschauungen or inspiring meta-viewpoints, general frame-works that suggest how to formulate questions and how to look at the world, andwhat is and what is not interesting.

For example, in his study of the Mexican urban social movement, Tamayo(1999:501) says:11 ‘‘To introduce this theme and contextualize it in some way, I rescue[rescato] Alain Touraine’s idea when he affirms that the transit to globalization hasended.’’ Consider now Zermeno’s (1999) article on the Mexican social crisis, UrteagaCastro-Pozo’s (1996) on female punks in Mexico, Gonzalez’s (1999) on MexicanCatholicism and the Catholic Church, and Astorga’s (1997) on ‘‘corridos’’ aboutdrug traffickers. As these articles illustrate, Mexican sociologists may borrow termi-nology from Habermas (Zermeno 1999:191), Bourdieu, and Marx (Gonzalez 1999:68–69, 91); recall an observation made by Hans Magnus Enzensberger (Zermeno

11As with Abbott (1992:54), ‘‘I have used quotations extensively, since the exact locutions employed are ofcentral importance.’’ All translations are mine, except for titles and abstracts, which the Mexican journalsthemselves translate into English. Because the exact locutions—in all their semantic and syntactic nuances—are of central importance, my translations try to retain as much as possible the original style, even whenalternative phrasings would have been less awkward.

Table 2. Theory and Evidence in Mexico and the United States

United States(%)

Mexico(%)

Use of theoryMertonian ‘‘middle-range’’ logic 77 0Draw ‘‘freely’’ on grand-theory 10 50Do not explicitly employ theories 0 47Other 13 3

Statement that theories should be tested by dataYes 87 0No 13 100

General proposition among central claimsYes 87 7No 13 93

Role of the empirical problemEmpirical problem in itself is the main concern 7 93Empirical problem speaks to a broader theoretical issue 93 7

Justification of problem in terms of a broader theoretical issueYes 90 0No 10 100

DeductivismYes 60 0No 40 100

Number of cases 30 30


1999:186); resort to Levi-Strauss to analyze a certain aspect of the subculture ofMexican punks (Urteaga Castro-Pozo 1996:114); or make a brief reference toBourdieu’s concepts of field, objective positions, and dispositions (Astorga1997:247). Similarly, Heau and Gimenez (1997:223) analyze the ‘‘insurgent poetics’’of the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas ‘‘from the perspective of Claude Duchet’s literarysociocritique.’’ This ‘‘perspective’’ provides foci of interest and jargon; it does notprovide any propositions with empirical content.

The word ‘‘hipotesis’’ may occur. But Mexican hypotheses are definitely notMerton’s ‘‘specific hypotheses,’’ ‘‘logically derived and confirmed by empirical inves-tigation.’’ For example, Arciniega (1996:331–32) says: ‘‘Our hypothesis is that since1975 . . . Peru initiated a process of reorganization of industrial relations that the Statewill implement through its labor policies with the intention of marginalizing anddemobilizing trade unionism.’’ Perhaps here the most semantically accurate transla-tion of ‘‘hipotesis’’ would be ‘‘theory.’’ The statement is at such a level of abstractionthat U.S. sociologists may argue that one needs to operationalize the concepts con-tained in the theory and then put forward the hypothesis. The same is true of Tamayo(1999:499; emphasis in original), who writes: ‘‘The argumentation of this article istwofold: the first is the hypothesis that a new social subject, the citizen, is coming intobeing [constituyendose] in Mexico, who [the citizen] is sustained by considerations of astructural character and of precise historical conditions.’’

The exact location of theories in the argument is significant as well. As Heau andGimenez (1997) exemplify, M-ART draw on theoretical systems whenever it seemsuseful, at whichever point of the argument the theory might be needed. Alternatively,theories might be simply embedded in or grow up with the argument. In contrast, 93percent of U-ART follow a standard format of organization of the argument (seebelow for a lengthier discussion of this point). Theories are employed at a certainpoint of the text, which suggests and constrains their function in the argument. Theyare separated from and precede the data. What it is thus assumed is, first, theepistemological independence of evidence from theory: whatever the ontologicalstatus granted to ‘‘reality,’’ the process of cognition does not affect its observablemanifestations. Second, most times theories are not a consequence of the empiricalinvestigation, but of the unscientific, arcane, and irrelevant context of discovery. Theyare either ‘‘relevant’’ theories, formulated by prestigious scholars and drawn from ‘‘theliterature,’’ or ex nihilo constructions.

General Regular Reality

Perhaps the main ontological assumption that informs the dialogue between theoryand evidence in U.S. sociology is the great regularity of the social world, a version ofthe principle of uniformity of nature. Epistemologically, it is further assumed thesociologist’s ability to grasp that regularity in the form of lawlike propositions. I shallcall these two principles the ‘‘general regular reality’’ (GRR) assumption.12 Only 7percent of M-ART central claims are general propositions; this is the case in 87percent of U-ART (see Table 2).

The GRR assumption is well illustrated by Samuel Clark (1998) and NancyWhittier (1997). Drawing on the experience of four 17th-century minorities, Clarkformulates 14 ‘‘nomothetic propositions’’ (1998:1268) about the relationship between

12The phrase is inspired by Abbott’s (2001) ‘‘general linear reality.’’


the treatment of minorities and international competition. Nancy Whittier (1997)offers three propositions about generational processes in social movements.

PROPOSITION 4.—The greater the fusion between local struggles and great-power rivalries,the less likely is conciliation. (Clark 1998:1293; emphasis in original)

Proposition 1: The collective identity of a given cohort of social movement parti-cipants remains consistent over time. (Whittier 1997:763; emphasis in original)

These propositions are presented in universal terms. Lacking scope conditions, theyhold regardless of time and place (provided, I note, the objects could be meaningfullydefined). Logically, the propositions begin with universal quantifiers. Despite the factthat U-ART never discuss whether these generalizations are ‘‘nomic’’ or ‘‘accidental,’’they can still be labeled ‘‘social laws’’ or ‘‘lawlike generalizations.’’

Even when not explicitly advancing ‘‘nomothetic propositions,’’ most U-ARTarguments are predicated on GRR. Cooney (1997:316) exemplifies this with hisarticle’s main question: ‘‘Does the state diminish violence in human affairs?’’ Thepoint of the piece is to elucidate that relationship in general terms, regardless of anyother confounding factor, regardless of time and place. Diani (1996:1054) affirms that‘‘[t]he success of the [Italian] leagues challenges current theoretical approaches tocollective action.’’ In other words, theories are supposed to explain all instances ofcollective action, and therefore they are ‘‘challenged’’ by the fact that they do not seem towork in one case. In another example, Collins (1997:844) tries to explain Japanesecapitalist growth by applying his ‘‘general institutional model of capitalist development.’’The model identifies in general terms a ‘‘chain of causal conditions for self-transformingcapitalist growth’’ (1997:845). And the explanation consists of substituting those generalterms with the particular names of their Japanese instantiations (1997:852). Collins(1997:844; emphasis added) makes an epistemological case for his method:

Only a general model of the institutional components of capitalist growth and ofthe obstacles to these institutions in agrarian-coercive societies provides thecontext in which we can assess whether the conditions for the independentdevelopment of capitalism were present in Japan and elsewhere.

In a comparable fashion, Bernstein (1997:536, 539–41, 558) verbally presents andgraphically represents ‘‘a general model to explain identity strategies.’’ According toher (1997:539) model, ‘‘identity strategies will be determined by the configuration ofpolitical access, the structure of social movement organizations, and the type andextent of oppositions.’’ Bernstein claims that her model can be ‘‘applied’’ (1997:531,557) not only to her focal case (lesbian and gay movements) but also to the southerncivil rights movement, black nationalism, and the older and younger wings of thefeminist movement. For it to be a truly ‘‘general model,’’ though, it must be applicableto any case. One final interesting example is the article of Biggart and Guillen’s article(1999). The authors (1999:725; emphasis in original) point out a ‘‘limitation to muchof the development scholarship of recent decades: the search for a unified theory ofdevelopment applicable to all countries.’’ They criticize the approach of ‘‘applyinggeneral theory to explain historical instances’’ (1999:730) and try to ‘‘avoid falling intothe trap of universal explanations’’ (1999:729). Even if departing from the typicalGRR assumption, the way they make the case against a general ‘‘critical factor’’


explanation of development still manifests the influence of the dominant epistemolo-gical worldview. Biggart and Guillen (1999:723; emphasis in original) argue that‘‘development depends on successfully linking a country’s historical patterns of socialorganization with opportunities made available by global markets.’’ Rather than arguingthat there is no general system of propositions that can explain economic develop-ment, the authors formulate their generalization, but one step higher in the ladder ofabstraction. Of course, the empirical nature of those links between the characteristicsof the country and the global markets will vary significantly, but the existence of acertain causal variable is constant across time and space. This claim allows them to‘‘formulate a sociological theory of cross-national comparative advantage’’ (1999:722)or ‘‘institutional perspective on development’’ (1999:728, 742).

The GRR logic is apparent in the widespread search for ‘‘conditions under which’’things happen. For example, Loveman (1998:477, 479) asks: ‘‘under what conditionswill individuals risk their lives to resist repressive states?’’ and ‘‘when (under whatconditions) do high-risk social movements and organizations emerge?’’ Bernstein isinterested in ‘‘under what political conditions . . . activists celebrate or suppressdifferences from the majority’’ (1997:532, 539, 561). Hagan (1998:56) identifies ‘‘par-ticular conditions under which social networks can develop or weaken.’’ As we shallsee, these formulations invite deductivism and, in particular, deductive-nomologicalexplanations. This type of reasoning is nonexistent among Mexican sociologists.

That Mexican sociology is close to the idiographic pole of Windelband’s ([1894]1980) dichotomy is reflected by another indicator: 93 percent of M-ART are princi-pally driven by the comprehension of an empirical problem—that is the main thrustof the exercise. While some authors argue about the importance of the case or cases assuch, no one justifies its or their selection in theoretical terms. Thus, the purpose ofmost articles is to make sense of, tell a persuasive story about, give a good account of,or shed light upon that empirical problem. Even though this problem might involveone, a few, or several ‘‘cases,’’ it is not through general models that these cases aredealt with, nor is it against the background of a general regular reality that storiesabout instances are told. According to the Mexican assumptions, abstracting generalprinciples from concrete empirical occurrences may be a misguided strategy, for it isonly in those particular contexts that the observed relations are valid.

On the contrary, in 93 percent of U-ART the main function of the empiricalproblem is to prove, illustrate, or speak to a ‘‘broader’’ theoretical issue—articlesare not ‘‘mere’’ examinations of empirical problems. Consequently, 90 percent providean explicit justification of why the case or cases under study were selected thatconcerns its or their theoretical relevance (see Table 2). Still, given the widespreadbelief in and prestige granted to lawlike propositions, most nonquantitative socialresearch faces the problem of specifying the epistemic role of empirical cases fromwhich inferences to broader populations are not statistically reliable. The crucialargumentative moment, then, is that transitional one when authors have to movefrom particulars to general statements, ordinarily in the concluding section of thearticle.

For instance, how precisely does the author move from four lesbian and gay rightscampaigns in Vermont, Oregon, and New York City to a ‘‘general model of identitydeployment’’ (Bernstein 1997:558)? How exactly is the connection made between thedebates and riots about abolitionism in antebellum Cincinnati and the general pro-blem of ‘‘how episodes of collective action affect the success or failure of differentframes’’ (Ellingson 1995:135)? Debating with Snow and his collaborators, Ellingson(1995:136–37) contends that


these processes of frame alignment are influenced as well by the course andinterpretation of collective action events. Such events intervene in the processof creating frames or discourses, change the value actors assign to collectivebeliefs, and motivate some groups to abandon a set of arguments and adoptthose of a rival or create new ones. They also provide some speakers with newinformation that they can use to substantiate their claims and discredit the claimsof others.

But Ellingson also affirms that ‘‘[e]pisodes of collective action may lead speakers toreopen the discursive struggle by providing evidence for speakers and audiences’’(1995:135), and ‘‘[e]vents, then, may change the underlying ideas or beliefs thatmake up discourses and frames used by movement actors’’ (1995:136). The thirdconclusion of this study is that ‘‘speakers occupying different positions within a fieldof debate may respond to episodes of collective action and construct their argumentsin very different ways’’ (1995:137). The important contrast here is between universalstatements and those statements whose generality is affected by the modal verb‘‘may.’’ While it might be debatable how the analysis of antebellum Cincinnati leadsto claims about what generally—let alone always—influences processes of framealignment, it is clear that an instance suffices to prove that something may or can bethe case or happen (or to illustrate how something is the case or happens, or at leasthow something was the case or happened). The same tension is apparent in twodifferent wordings of Zhao’s (1998:1498, 1523; emphases added) argument, one inhis introduction, and the other in his conclusion: ‘‘This article argues that ecology isrelevant to movement mobilization because it determines the structure and strength ofsocial networks . . .’’ versus ‘‘This article demonstrates that ecological conditions can beimportant to a political process as complex as a large-scale social movement . . .’’

The use of ‘‘may’’ or ‘‘can’’ in contexts like these is a concession from the point ofview of GRR, especially when it is meant to indicate a retreat from determinism toprobabilism (rather than conservativeness about the degree of confirmation of adeterministic social law). But, in any event, it is probably the only reasonable rheto-rical choice for small-N studies that intend to contribute to ‘‘theory’’ (in the U.S.sense). On the contrary, these problems do not arise for those few arguments whoseinferential structure is modus tollens rather than modus ponens, as originally argued byPopper ([1934] 1992). For instance, Biggart and Guillen (1999) need only to show thatthe paths of development of the automobile industry in South Korea, Taiwan, Spain,and Argentina have been different to refute any ‘‘critical factor’’ theory of develop-ment. Indeed, two cases would have sufficed. Because the number of potentialinstances tends to infinity, the degree of confirmation added by two more cases isalmost zero. Likewise, Centeno (1997) can challenge the universality of the positiverelationship between war and state making by showing that it does not hold in thecase of 11 new Latin American states between 1810 and 1830.

In their analysis of the outcomes attained by 15 homeless social movement organ-izations active in eight U.S. cities, Cress and Snow (2000:1101) say:

While it is an empirical question whether this conjunction of conditions holds forother movements, the findings and analysis suggest that attempts to understandmovement outcomes that focus on the ways in which different conditions interactand combine are likely to be more compelling and robust, both theoretically andempirically, than efforts that focus on the conditions specified by a single per-spective or that pit one perspective against another.


This paragraph illustrates two of my points. Having studied 15 organizations, Cressand Snow are cautious not to affirm that their substantive conjunction of conditionsholds beyond their cases. However, they still maintain that their ‘‘findings andanalysis’’ ‘‘suggest’’ something that pertains to the study of ‘‘movement outcomes’’in general. But Cress and Snow are also cautious in another way. What the authors’findings and analysis suggest is that certain approaches to the study of social move-ments ‘‘are likely’’ to be ‘‘more compelling and robust’’ than some others. That this issaid to be just ‘‘likely’’ is another reflection of the tension between the demands ofGRR and the so-called small-N problem.

Deductivism

A variable closely related to GRR is what I call ‘‘deductivism.’’ I define deductivism asthe use of deductive logic for either explanation of events or confirmation of theories.Although they pursue different aims and the truth status of their components isdifferent, I emphasize here the structural similarity between the deductive-nomologi-cal model of explanation and the hypothetico-deductive method for confirmation(Salmon 1989). Stinchcombe (1968:16; emphasis in original) puts the latter thus:‘‘From [a] theoretical statement we derive, by logical deduction and by operationaldefinitions of the concepts, an empirical statement. The theoretical statement thenimplies logically the empirical statement.’’ For its part, Hempel and Oppenheim’sdeductive-nomological or covering-law model argues that ‘‘in empirical science, theexplanation of a phenomenon consists in subsuming it under general empirical laws’’(Hempel [1942] 1965:240; Hempel 1965; Hempel and Oppenheim [1948] 1965; see alsoGorski 2004; Ruben 1990; Salmon 1989, 1998; Cartwright 1983; Wright 1971). Theexplanantia are the premises of the syllogism: the major is a universal law, and theminor a statement of initial conditions. The explanandum is the conclusion, which, ofcourse, follows logically.

While not a single M-ART proceeds in a deductive fashion, 60 percent of U-ARTdeduce empirical statements from theories of the middle range, be it to explain theformer or to confirm the latter (see Table 2). In an illustrative article, Goldstone andUseem ‘‘apply’’ (1999:988, 1025) a reformulation of Skocpol’s ‘‘formula for revolu-tion’’ (1999:992) to prison riots. The central empirical question is whether the same‘‘conditions for a revolutionary situation’’ (1999:1002) can account for prison riots aswell (and perhaps, the authors speculate, also for instability in military organizations,schools, or business firms; in fact, in ‘‘any hierarchical, absolutist-type social organ-ization, whether it operates on the scale of millions, or merely hundreds, of individ-uals’’ (Goldstone and Useem 1999:1024)). Actually, the deductive ideal is explicitlyput forward: ‘‘A hallmark of good theory is that i[t] can usefully be extended tophenomena not anticipated in the original development of the theory’’ (1999:1025).

One of Goldstone and Useem’s chief assumptions here is the meaningfulness oftheir theoretical translation. The application of a theory to a particular case requiresthat the entities under examination belong to the class of entities the theory refers to.This correspondence is not given in the facts but needs to be theoretically established.Yet, prior to that, Goldstone and Useem had to ‘‘translate’’ or ‘‘rephrase’’ Skocpol’stheory ‘‘to create analogues for prison riots’’ (1999:1002). They claim that this task is‘‘straightforward’’ (1999:1002), but it might be so only in light of certain decisions asto what should be taken into account in order to say that two given entities are similaror different. And these decisions are suggested neither by the empirical world nor bythe theory that is being extended.


Koopmans and Statham’s piece exemplifies how, by using the hypothetico-deduc-tive method, competing theories can be confronted. The authors present three theo-retical perspectives on citizenship: ‘‘postnational,’’ ‘‘multicultural,’’ and ‘‘national.’’From these theories, they ‘‘derive’’ (1999:652, 655) a set of hypotheses about thecollective claims making of migrants and ethnic minorities. The authors express(1999:670–75) that the three theories ‘‘imply,’’ ‘‘predict,’’ ‘‘lead us to expect,’’ ‘‘allowus to derive a clear expectation,’’ ‘‘imply clear expectations,’’ or are ‘‘associated with’’certain values of the dependent variable—patterns of minority claims making. Beinglogical implications, they are assumed to be the theories’ predictions for the case athand. Finally, Koopmans and Statham (1999:655) ‘‘confront these hypotheses with[their] data in order to assess the relative merits of the three models.’’

The deductive approach found in U-ART can be fruitfully compared with NavaNavarro’s article (1997:301), which studies, ‘‘from [a partir de] the perspective ofcollective action and social movements,’’ the case of the Refresquera Pascual (aMexican cooperative that produces soft drinks). The author affirms (Nava Navarro1997:302) that ‘‘our argument [planteamiento] stems [se desprende] fundamentallyfrom the European perspective represented by Alain Touraine, and from AnthonyObers[c]hall’s arguments [planteamientos], because of the manner in which they high-light the concept of social conflict and this concept’s importance for our object ofstudy.’’ But what does the author precisely mean by the verb ‘‘to stem?’’ Rather thandrawing predictions from, or explaining the case by subsuming it under Touraine’stheory, Nava Navarro (1997:302) ‘‘understands’’ social movements ‘‘in Tourainianterms’’: ‘‘in Tourainian terms, we will understand a social movement as the mostcomplex form of collective action, which one defines as the set of interactionsnormatively oriented between adversaries who possess opposing and conflicting inter-pretations about the reorientations of a model of society.’’ From Touraine andOberschall, Nava Navarro (1997:303) borrows the idea that ‘‘in order to understandcollective action’s import [alcance] it is necessary to analyze the dynamics of theconflict’’; then, ‘‘starting with these considerations, we will reconstruct the experienceof the case of Refresquera Pascual’s workers.’’ Her empirical inquiry is informed bythose considerations but does not explicitly return to them.

Mexican sociologists’ theories are constructed ‘‘much nearer to the facts’’(Stinchcombe 1978:117). Indeed, they are constructed so close to the facts that theyare sometimes inseparable from them—the theories are the facts; the theories are thefacts as they are told. Now, despite the impression that U-ART often try to convey, itseems to me that theories are not constructed through insightful intuitions, introspec-tion, or speculations in a state of aloofness and detachment from sensory experience.13

Instead, theorists do draw on the empirical world—the principles of a theory arebased on the more or less systematic observation of a limited number of instances.Because theories are understood in the United States as (at least moderately) generalexplanatory systems of propositions, they are expected to be relevant to cases beyondthose from which they were originally drawn. Thus, theory construction involvesampliative or nondemonstrative reasoning. Like physicists’ theories, sociologists’theories are haunted by the specter of Hume’s problem of induction. Therefore, asin physicists’ theories, the principle of uniformity of nature or GRR has to beassumed.

13This does not seem to be even possible. Even if it were, it would be enormously costly, for any logicallyconsistent theory, however empirically implausible, would have the same probability of being formulatedthan any other.


Then, both physicists and sociologists can proceed as though their theories were,rather than inductive generalizations, laws of nature. From these laws of nature, onecan deduce other laws, explain by subsumption, and derive predictions. In this regard,the current state of affairs in the United States approximates Homans’s (1964, 1967,[1961] 1974) or Blalock’s (1984, 1969:2) ‘‘realistic’’ ‘‘ideals’’:

It has been noted that theories do not consist entirely of conceptual schemes ortypologies but must contain lawlike propositions that interrelate the concepts orvariables two or more at a time. . . . Ideally, one might hope to achieve acompletely closed deductive theoretical system in which there would be a minimalset of propositions taken as axioms, from which all other propositions could bededuced by purely mathematical or logical reasoning. More realistically we mighttake the model of the completely closed deductive system as an ideal which inpractice can only be approximated.

All in all, perhaps the chief contrast lies in that while in the United States mosttheories have substantive content, Mexican sociologists tend to think and make use oftheories as grammars. The guidance provided by these theories is completely differentfrom the one Merton’s theories of the middle range provide. Grammars are conven-tional tools and therefore lack truth-value. Grammars are ‘‘ways of worldtelling.’’14

There are numerous grammars, and they can be seen simply as different equallyacceptable instruments with which the world is talked about. Mexican sociologists‘‘tell’’; U.S. sociologists ‘‘show’’ (Booth 1961). This argument leads us to the nextsection.

EPISTEMIC OBJECTIVITY

In the realm of science, the term ‘‘objectivity’’ has had at least two different meanings:one ontological and one epistemological (see Lloyd 1995; Megill 1994; Daston 1992;Daston and Galison 1992). For the scientific enterprise to be meaningful, the existenceof some kind of objective reality and the equation of this ontological objectivity withtruth have to be assumed, and discussions about realism can be safely left to philo-sophical speculation. But once this is granted, science faces the epistemologicalproblem of the cognition and representation of reality. Let us consider the analogyof realist painters, who try to represent things as they really are. Naturally, they haveto use certain paints, brushes, and grounds. They have to look at their object fromsome point of view. If we further assume, for the sake of the argument, that theirobject is ‘‘the world,’’ then they have to paint themselves, too. Indeed, they have topaint themselves looking at and representing the world from their specific location.Therefore, their paintings of the world inevitably acknowledge some subjectiveelements. Similarly, with the exception of Popper’s world of intelligibles ([1972]1979:106–52), knowledge and knowing necessitate a subject, the knower. Insofar asthis subject is not the Universal Reason or the Objective Spirit, but a linguistically andhistorically situated individual, subjectivity is to some extent necessarily involved.Then, how do scientists deal with the conflict between their aiming at the objectiveworld and an unavoidably present subjectivity?

14It is irrelevant here if they are ‘‘ways of worldmaking’’ (Goodman 1978) as well, as the Sapir-Whorfhypothesis suggests (Lucy 1997).


One possible strategy is to define ontological objectivity as the neutralization ofepistemological subjectivity. In Thomas Nagel’s (1986:5) words,

[a] view or form of thought is more objective than another if it relies less on thespecifics of the individual’s makeup and position in the world, or on the characterof the particular type of creature he is. [. . .] We may think of reality as a set ofconcentric spheres, progressively revealed as we detach gradually from the con-tingencies of the self.

Objective knowledge is thus related to impersonality and impartiality; disinterest,neutrality, detachment, and impassibilite; it is antithetical to the knower’s individual-ity, idiosyncrasies, contingencies, biases, prejudices, and whims. As a result, scientistspursue the ‘‘absolute conception of the world’’ (Williams 1978, 1985); they know ‘‘subspecie aeternitatis.’’ Their views are ‘‘views from nowhere’’ (Nagel 1986), ‘‘viewpointsof no-one in particular’’ (Fine 1998), ‘‘God’s eye points of view’’ (Putnam 1981:49–50),or ‘‘escapes from perspective’’ (Daston 1992). In practice, this stance has crystallizedinto a conception of objectivity as procedural. A standardized, rigid, and formulaicprocedure, the mythical scientific method, severely limits the exercise of discretion andrepudiates any form of unarticulated ‘‘tacit knowledge’’ (Polanyi 1958).

One alternative strategy denies the equation of reality with detachment from thecontingencies of the self. It denies that the knowledge true of the objective world isthat knowledge that anyone can reach—only ‘‘certain positions have the advantage ofrevealing the decisive features of the object’’ (Mannheim [1929] 1966:301; see alsoHarding 1986, 1991, 1998). Hence, idiosyncrasies, individualities, and contingenciesare not obstacles to be surmounted, but vantage points. Thus, this second strategy—customary among 17th- and 18th-century natural scientists, 18th-century atlasmakers, and 19th-century British actuaries and French engineers—leaves room fortwo aristocratic, anti-democratic, and ineffable attributes: genius and skill (Scott1998:309–41; Porter 1995; Shapin 1994; Daston 1992:609–12; Daston and Galison1992:118). Ontological objectivity is associated with the maximization of epistemolo-gical subjectivity. Rather than a standardized method that anyone can follow, theknower’s approach to the known should be a function of their nature and the natureof their relationship. While this stance does not imply ontological relativism, it doespose critical challenges to intersubjective validity.

In the following pages, I argue that Mexican sociology presupposes this secondmodel of objectivity. As we shall see, no attempt is made to attain ‘‘views fromnowhere,’’ and standardized procedures are rarely followed. Moreover, its discourseadmits, perhaps encourages, the paradigmatic exemplar of perspective: value judg-ments. In contrast, U.S. sociology presupposes the first model of objectivity.According to this model, as Pearson ([1892] 1937:6) wrote in his Grammar ofScience, one of the main characteristics of ‘‘the scientific frame of mind’’ is its relianceon ‘‘judgments independent of the idiosyncrasies of the individual mind.’’ Let us nowturn to the data.

Reconstruction of the Research Process

Most times, research processes do not follow the orderly steps outlined in textbookintroductions to the scientific method. Yet, scientists often pretend in their researchreports or journal articles to have religiously respected those steps. This ‘‘a posteriorirationalisation of the real process’’ (Latour and Woolgar 1979:252) is crucial to the


ideal of neutralization of subjectivity, for it veils the chaotic, the contingent, and theunmethodical. In turn, veiling the chaotic, the contingent, and the unmethodical iscrucial to the possibility of replication.15 Doing ethnographies of laboratories andcontrasting natural scientists’ formal and informal accounts, sociologists have high-lighted the fictional character of these rationalizations (Gilbert and Mulkay 1981,1984; Knorr-Cetina 1981; Latour 1981; Latour and Woolgar 1979; Gilbert 1976; seealso Medawar [1963] 1990). This particular type of ‘‘impression management’’(Goffman 1959) is evident in 80 percent of U-ART but none of M-ART (see Table 3).

One suggestive indicator is the vocabulary of ‘‘expectations’’ and ‘‘anticipations,’’‘‘hypotheses’’ and ‘‘predictions’’ about the empirical world, presented before the‘‘findings’’ or ‘‘results’’ (e.g., Lieberson, Dumais, and Baumann 2000:1249, 1253;Zhao 1998:1494; Diani 1996:1056, 1057; Ferree and Hall 1996:935, 936). Then, resultsmight turn out to be ‘‘as expected’’ (Stearns and Allan 1996:710), or one can encountera ‘‘surprising finding’’ (Koopmans and Statham 1999:689) or ‘‘surprising result’’(Lieberson, Dumais, and Baumann 2000:1261). Lavin and Maynard (2001:469;emphasis added) illustrate the point:

Given that there are no restrictions placed on interviewer laughter at theUniversity of Midstate survey center, we would expect that interviewer practicesfor tacitly declining respondent-initiated laughter would be less prevalent andthat reciprocation would be more frequent. Our counting of acceptances, declina-

15Because of practical difficulties, meager incentives, and the Duhem-Quine thesis (Duhem [1906] 1991;Quine 1953; see also Harding 1976), few studies are actually replicated. Yet, science heavily relies on thepossibility of replication (see Collins 1985). For the Duhem-Quine thesis at work in recent U.S. sociology,see Ferree and Hall’s (1996) article, Manza and Van Schyndel’s (2000) comment, and Ferree and Hall’s(2000) reply; and Finke and Stark’s (1988) article, Breault’s (1989a) ‘‘new evidence,’’ Finke and Stark’s(1989) comment, and Breault’s (1989b) reply.

Table 3. Epistemic Objectivity in Mexico and the United States

United States (%) Mexico (%)

Rational reconstruction of research processYes 80 0No 20 100

SectionsStandard 93 0Nonstandard 7 80Two or no sections 0 20

Average number of tables 4.40 0.33

Data discussionYes, in a section 67 0Yes 20 10No 13 90

Methods discussionYes, in a section 63 0Yes 7 0No 30 100



tions, and pseudo-laughing techniques in the two data sets confirmed theseexpectations.

This vocabulary is reminiscent of the standard quantitative article and its ‘‘expecta-tions’’ about what the statistical models will yield. In fact, as Latour (1981:66) pointsout, a ‘‘temporal framework’’ is being invented, with the help of ‘‘temporal markers.’’The question, for both quantitative and nonquantitative articles, is not whetherexpectations in fact arise in the mind of researchers previously to their encounterwith the data, whether they were really surprised to find out what they found out, orwhether the literature review is actually the first section they write up. The point isthat the community expects a rational reconstruction of the research process thatdescribes it as though that were the case. Even when every individual scientist knowshow things actually work most of the time, the community seems to believe in the taleof orderly sequence.

The reconstruction of the research process is also visibly indicated by the fact that,as mentioned above, 93 percent of U-ART exhibit, with minor variations, a standardformat of organization of the argument (see Table 3). This format is modeled on theresearch report in the natural sciences. It is based on the tidy steps of the scientificmethod: ‘‘introduction,’’ ‘‘theory’’ or ‘‘literature review’’ or ‘‘previous literature,’’ ‘‘dataand methods’’ (instead of the experimentalist ‘‘materials and methods’’), ‘‘results’’ or‘‘findings,’’ and ‘‘discussion’’ or ‘‘conclusion.’’ This sequence tries to appear as natural,logical, and necessary. It makes ‘‘available to the reader a picture of the discoveryprocess as a path-like sequence of logical steps toward the revelation of a hithertounknown phenomenon’’ (Woolgar 1981:263).

Language, Mathematics, and Symbols

Standardization efforts concern language as well. Procedural objectivists and ordinarylanguage have always had a difficult relationship. For instance, logical positivists,pointing out language’s impreciseness and ambiguity, aimed at a completely formallanguage for science (see, e.g., Nagel 1961:7–10). The problem with ordinary languageis that it is too malleable; the imprint of the author’s subjectivity is too conspicuous.Thus, for example, the new ‘‘scientific’’ professional historian of the end of the 19thcentury rejected its ‘‘literary,’’ ‘‘gentleman amateur’’ predecessor’s ‘‘Gothic style’’(Novick 1988).

The issue of sociology’s prose and its alleged abstruseness has many dimensions,including the relationship between complex ideas and dense style, and how themastery of a code inaccessible to the layperson legitimizes professional niches. Here,I want only to note that, given that texts’ meanings are the product of a dialecticalprocess in which the reader plays a significant role, the greater the prose’s obscurity,the more its meaning depends on the reader, and the less it achieves objectivity or, forthat matter, intersubjectivity. Despite U.S. sociologists’ complaints (e.g., Erikson1990; Becker 1986), Mexican prose is by far more abstruse than U.S. prose. Verymuch like in the case of continental (as opposed to analytic) philosophy (Rorty1982:220), in Mexico the burden of understanding the text is usually placed on thereader.16

16There is no reason to believe that the grammatical nature of the two languages is a source ofspuriousness (i.e., that Spanish lends itself more readily than English to abstruse prose).


For reasons related to the economy of research, I cannot offer an objectiveindicator here (for example, one that counted the average number of clauses persentence17). I can only illustrate the point with one not atypical sentence fromM-ART, which a translator not so preoccupied by style may have rendered intoEnglish in two or three sentences:

In other words, even though in a first moment one should be careful to under-stand certain social processes as possessing a neutrality that methodologicallysave us from politically opposing to something that can be of indisputable benefitfor a country, then, after doing this act of analytical composure, one mustconsider the possibility of a quarrel in the field of the effects or outcomes ofthose processes, crucial dilemma in the case of a co-government between the leftand other groups of the political scenario and one of the fundamental ways toexert, from the left, differentiation without having to wait for the thoroughapplication of all and every one of the properly leftist proposals, in the assumptionof course that they have left the limbo of fantasy. (Barrios Suvelza 2000:180–81;emphasis in original)

At the antipodes of natural language stands mathematics. Mathematics embodiesthe ideal of objectivity as neutralization of subjectivity. First, it is the existing con-ventional language that best surmounts individualities and contingencies, and bestserves commensurability, publicity, and communicability. Once social concepts havebeen translated into the language of mathematics, they can be manipulated andtreated as though they were that type of entities, taking advantage of mathematics’elegance and exactitude. Second, mathematics is thought to be objective, universal,and untouched and untouchable by social factors (for counterarguments by sociolo-gists of mathematics, see Bloor [1976] 1991; Restivo 1992). Thus, in addition to theepistemic purposes that regression coefficients and equations serve in quantitativesocial research, they symbolically convey a sense of objectivity and scientificity. Allthese are very convenient for quantitative sociologists oriented toward the language-game of science who have followed Lord Kelvin’s dictum about the meagerness (ormeagreness) of knowledge not expressed in numbers (McCloskey 1985:7; Merton,Sills, and Stigler 1984; Kuhn 1977:178; Wirth 1940:169). But what do nonquantitativesociologists oriented toward the same language-game do?

Whereas Mexican sociology disregards mathematics and statistics almost comple-tely, U-ART recurrently resort to mathematical and statistical jargon and symbols.For example, Koopmans and Statham (1999:668) report Cronbach’s alphas forintercoder reliability, and in their seven cross-tabulations (1999:676–86) they reportchi-square values, P values, and degrees of freedom, employing the usual statisticalnotation. Lieberson, Dumais, and Baumann (2000:1266, 1281, 1283) report P valuesand Spearman’s rhos, and graphs and numbers are prominent. The authors(2000:1260fn) also construct an Index of Androgyny, ‘‘derived from the P* index,’’and provide its equation in a footnote. Guseva and Rona-Tas’s ‘‘theoretical’’

17It would even be necessary to contemplate the grammatical function of those clauses to build a reliableindicator of ‘‘abstruse prose.’’ Two other plausible indicators are the average numbers of relative anddemonstrative pronouns per sentence. As for the vocabulary’s obscurity, it would be yet harder, for howwould one define a word’s degree of obscurity? How would one measure the degree of obscurity of eacharticle’s thousands of words? Bazerman’s (1988:167–71) analysis of spectroscopic articles published in thePhysical Review from 1893 to 1980 relies on variables such as type of subordinate clauses, sentence length,or type of word used as the subject of the main clause.


(2001:624) section discusses various scholarly approaches to credit, risk, uncertainty,and trust. In their gloss of the approach of mainstream economic theory to uncer-tainty and risk, they (2001:624) present an algebraic expression that represents ‘‘thestandard theorem of expected utility maximization.’’

Conversation-analysis pieces are another good example. Their symbolic apparatusis ostensibly displayed in numerous ‘‘extracts’’ or ‘‘excerpts’’ and in comprehensiveappendices with ‘‘transcribing conventions used in this article’’ (Lavin and Maynard2001:474–76) or ‘‘transcription symbols’’ (Greatbatch and Dingwall 1997:167).Conversation analysts claim that their transcripts enable ‘‘researchers to reveal andanalyze tacit, ‘seen but unnoticed,’ aspects of human conduct that otherwise would beunavailable for systematic study’’ (Greatbatch and Dingwall 1997:153). It should benoted that this ‘‘revelation’’ is achieved by following a standardized method thatmechanically translates utterances into symbolic representations. This method gener-ates two types of numbers: arbitrary progressions indicating the line number andnumbers in parentheses indicating lengths of silences in tenths of seconds. In thesecond case, one is in the presence of precise numerical measurements of an aspect ofthe empirical world, that is, numbers correspond in some way to nature. This israpidly taken advantage of—for instance, Duneier and Molotch (1999:1277) refer toand interpret ‘‘a full 2.2 second silence’’ in their transcripts, and Lavin and Maynard(2001:46) do so with a ‘‘1.9 second pause.’’ While authors retain interpretative discre-tion to some extent, the methods of conversation analysis have limited part of it andthus helped in the accomplishment of procedural objectivity.

In their quest for procedural objectivity, U-ART can undertake more systematicformalizations. Goldstone and Useem’s (1999:1020) comparative-historical study of13 prison riots in the United States is supplemented by a ‘‘formal data analysis’’: ‘‘thematched-pairs signs test.’’ Cress and Snow’s (2000) research on homeless social move-ment organizations employs Ragin’s (1987) qualitative comparative analysis (QCA).QCA’s truth tables, Boolean equations, and the very mention of ‘‘the logic of Booleanalgebra’’ (Cress and Snow 2000:1079) conspicuously give off impressions of objectivityand scientificity. But, more importantly, QCA realizes procedural objectivity by beingan algorithmic rule into which one—anyone—enters data and obtains results. Likestatistical models, truth tables are presented as yielding undisputable truths indepen-dent from the whims of the knower.

Let us now look at the usage of tables and figures. The difference between U-ARTand M-ART is quite significant: the average number per article in U-ART is 4.40 andin M-ART is 0.33. A discussion of the pictorial language (Lynch and Woolgar 1990;Gilbert and Mulkay 1984) of tables and figures is well beyond the scope of this article.Let us just note that tables and figures stand closer to mathematics than to naturallanguage in their appeal to commensurability and rejection of subjectivity. Forinstance, tables very often contain numbers. Their shape and appearance is extremelysuggestive of a certain style of thought. Sometimes, tables even supply the algorithmicrule that nonquantitative articles generally lack. Take the case of Cooney (1997). HisTable 3 (1997:323) compares rates of death from war and homicide between statelesssocieties and democratic state societies. It is easy to notice in the table that the formerhave much higher rates. Then, Cooney (1997:324) writes: ‘‘Thus, the conclusion to bedrawn from Table 3 seems clear: The more violent . . .’’ What deserves mention is thatthe conclusion is drawn from the table rather than from, say, the narrative. It is asthough the table were not showing the data or supporting an argument but producingthe results, and by looking at it one could find out the previously unknownrelationship.


Discussion of Data and Methods

To allow for replication, scientists have to exhaustively describe how their knowledgeclaims were arrived at. This includes the description of the data on which the articledraws, the methods employed to collect it, and the operations performed on theevidence. As one of the biochemists interviewed by Gilbert and Mulkay (1984:53)puts it, ‘‘the scientific paper should make it possible, assuming that a library isavailable, for a Martian to come and do your experiment.’’ Eighty-seven percent ofU-ART have some sort of data discussion. Sixty-seven percent is in the form of a‘‘data’’ or ‘‘data and something else (usually methods)’’ section. Ninety percent ofM-ART do not make a single reference to the evidence on which they draw; no ‘‘data’’section is ever found (see Table 3). That is, arguments are based on empirical evidence,but there is no discussion of its characteristics, how it was collected, its ‘‘limitations,’’and so on.

By the same token, while not a single M-ART refers to the methods through whichits knowledge claims were reached, such references appear in 70 percent of U-ART(see Table 3). Even when Mexican authors conducted costly research in the field, it isnot rhetorically profitable to describe it in detail. If they are interested, readers have tostruggle to infer from hardly visible cues what the research consisted of and how itwas carried out. For example, Salas-Porras uses footnotes to indicate that ‘‘Expansionand various international newspapers were consulted’’ (2000:70) and to mention theinterviews she conducted (2000:66–68, 75; see also Botero Villegas 1998).

U.S. ethnographies are particularly worthy of note in this respect. How do ethno-graphers deal with procedural objectivity, given that the method through which theycollect the data seems to be essentially subjective? One recurrent strategy is anextremely detailed account of their data and methods. Ethnographies may reportsuch details as how a research project fortuitously began when the author met severalgang members while administering a survey (Venkatesh 1997:86); who introduced theinterviewees to the authors (Edin and Lein 1996:255); or a precise description of whereand when the ethnography was conducted (Duneier and Molotch 1999:1265): ‘‘onthree adjacent blocks along Sixth Avenue, from Eighth Street and Greenwich Avenueto Washington Place, over the period September 1992–October 1998, with dailyobservation from September 1992 to June 1993 and complete immersion during thesummer months of 1996 and 1997.’’ Duneier and Molotch (1999:1268) further illus-trate the point:

Mitch became a general assistant to the street vendors, sometimes watching theirmerchandise while they went on errands, occasionally also buying up merchan-dise offered in their absence, and assisting on scavenging missions. He alsoperformed such favors as going for coffee. He eventually worked for two fullsummers as a scavenger and vendor.

The basic idea that underlies these detailed descriptions seems to be that one cancontrol for ‘‘performing such favors as going for coffee.’’ In other words, although thefact that the author went for coffee might introduce biases and it certainly introducesidiosyncratic elements, by means of a ‘‘benign introspection’’ (Woolgar 1988b) onewould be expunging any unwelcome effects from the data. Through the fragments ofthe paper devoted to ‘‘tales of the field,’’ ethnographers might be actually exorcizingthe data from the evil spirits of subjectivity. Afterward, their knowledge claims can beasserted in the customary tone of objectivity. This point about field research takes us


to a more general issue that is not restricted to ethnographies: the relationshipbetween authoriality, passive voice and first-person pronouns, and epistemicobjectivity.

Authoriality

As Booth (1961:8) has shown, James and Flaubert initiated a major shift in therhetoric of fiction: true novels had to be realistic, all authors had to be objective,true art had to ignore the audience: ‘‘Since Flaubert, many authors and critics havebeen convinced that ‘objective’ or ‘impersonal’ . . . modes of narration are naturallysuperior to any mode that allows for direct appearances by the author or his reliablespokesman.’’ Natural scientists, too, seem to be fond of impersonal modes of narra-tion. Thus, sociologists of science have often reported that natural science papers aremostly written in the passive voice and in the ‘‘style of nonsytle’’ (Gilbert 1976;Gusfield 1976:20, 17). But, at least in science, the author’s choice of voice has morethan stylistic implications. Scientists seem to believe that direct appearances by theauthor are detrimental for the objectivity of their claims. As suggested above, this isrelated to the role that an ‘‘anti-subjectivity’’ understanding of objectivity can bestowon the author: ‘‘the scientist is regarded only as a messenger relaying the truth fromNature . . . [T]he message from Nature he brings should not be seen as his ownparticular message’’ (Gilbert 1976:285; see also Foucault 1984:109).

Drawing on conceptualizations of textuality and facticity more popular amongliterary critics than sociologists, Agger (2000) has argued that ‘‘mainstream U.S.sociology’’ conceals authoriality and purges literariness. ‘‘Positivist’’ science is ‘‘com-posed in the passive voice’’; ‘‘the first-person presence of the author is expunged’’(Agger 2000:28). According to my data, however, this is only partially correct.Because authors want to appear as ‘‘conceivers, doers, and owners’’ of their knowl-edge claims, ‘‘the first person frequently is used to express the author’s active role inconstructing ideas and collecting data as well as to claim credit for the researchprocess and results’’ (Bazerman 1988:287). Thus, in U-ART the first person is promi-nent only in certain ‘‘approved topoi’’ (Clifford 1983:132), such as data and methodssections, and the paragraphs where authors specify what their hypotheses, theirfindings, and their contributions to science are. Then, like Geertz (1973) in his noteson the Balinese cockfight, sociologists ‘‘abruptly disappear’’ (Clifford 1983:132) fromthe text. As Latour (1999:132; emphasis in original) notes in his discussion ofPasteur’s famous article on lactic fermentation: ‘‘[t]he director withdraws from thescene, and the reader, merging her eyes with those of the stage manager, sees afermentation that takes form at center stage independently of any work of construc-tion.’’ A prime example of this is comparative-historical sociologists’ narrative pre-sentation of historical data as unproblematic facts, in which all vestiges of authorialityare banished. After the introduction, the formulation of a research question, and thetheoretical discussion, they let history ‘‘speak for itself.’’

First-person singular pronouns are rare in M-ART. Sometimes they are supplantedby the regal ‘‘we.’’ But M-ART are mostly rendered in the impersonal form of thethird-person singular. Data and methods are not discussed, and asking for credit forknowledge claims, although not entirely absent, is less frequent than in the UnitedStates. Thus, grammatically, Mexican authors are for the most part not present intheir texts. How can we account for this type of impression management? First, it isclearly related to the pragmatics of standard Spanish: the aforementioned third-personal form is very common and natural, even in colloquial speech. Second,


Mexican sociologists may take for granted that sociological accounts consist ofinterpretations. Instead of letting the facts speak for themselves as much as possiblewhile ‘‘intervening’’ only when necessary, a Mexican article is believed to be in itsentirety the product of its author’s ‘‘intervention.’’ Thus, it might be unnecessary tosay explicitly that those interpretations are the author’s, for how could it be other-wise? In particular, that Nature is not speaking for itself is suggested by the ubiquityof value judgments. It should be recalled that, after all, Nature fervently adheres tothe positivist doctrine of ethical neutrality.

ETHICAL NEUTRALITY

The ideal of a value-free science has diverse philosophical roots, from Hume’s famousargument about the impossibility of deriving ‘‘ought’’ from ‘‘is,’’ to logical positivists’argument about the meaninglessness of value judgments (Proctor 1991; Hume [1739–1740] 1978:469–70; Ayer 1952). Among U.S. sociologists, the standard reference isWeber’s (1946, 1949) purportedly sharp distinctions between value and fact,Wertfreiheit (value freedom or ethical neutrality) and Wertbezogenheit (value rele-vance or value relatedness), and context of discovery and context of justification (seeCiaffa 1998; Turner and Factor 1984). In fact, modern science associates values withbias and perspective and thus makes ethical neutrality a prerequisite of epistemicobjectivity. Values are confined to what Reichenbach (1938) dubbed ‘‘context ofdiscovery’’ (‘‘when smoking a cigar on the sofa,’’ as Weber (1946:136) says). Theyare removed from the presentation of the scientific self in the journal article. In whatfollows, I examine to what extent Mexican and U.S. sociologies conform to thisprototype.

Yet what is it about a judgment that makes it count as a value judgment? How do Idistinguish wertende from wertfrei statements? In three types of cases this is a rela-tively straightforward task. First, overt judgments of goodness, beauty, rightness, orworth. Second, in fact a subtype of the first, when authors take sides, breaking therule of impartiality toward one’s ‘‘characters,’’ to put it in the way Chekhov andFlaubert have (Booth 1961:77). Third, statements about what one (morally) ought orought not to do. The fourth type is not so easy to detect. For in this case authors donot overtly declare that such-and-such a thing is good or that such-and-such a thingought to be done. Rather, in particular discursive contexts and in the context of aparticular community of discourse, certain words, expressions, tones, citations,gestures may connote particular value judgments. Indeed, certain vocabularies mayin and of themselves indicate loyalty to certain values.18 As we shall see below, this isone of the ways in which facts and values may be intertwined.19

By extremely conservative standards of measurement, value judgment can be foundin 80 percent of M-ART and only 10 percent of U-ART (see Table 4). The first thingto realize is that this difference is not purely epistemological, as the type of topicsMexican sociologists address themselves to has a lot to do with it. For the chances of

18These sort of statements may aspire to be true knowledge claims, and (as per my methodologicalorientation) I do not imply that this aspiration is irreconcilable with their also being value-laden.

19This rough characterization of value judgments suffices for my purposes. I am of course aware that onecan define values in such a way that most or even all knowledge claims be value-laden. For example, theorychoice is partly based on epistemic values (see, e.g., Putnam 2002). Values can be said to be built into thesociologist’s very concepts (see, e.g., Taylor 1985). Furthermore, the ideal of a value-free science is itself amoral one, so that the absence of moral statements can be interpreted as a particular kind of moralstatement. Nevertheless, one can still consistently and usefully distinguish between these senses of value-ladenness and the more restricted sense that I employ.


complying with the principle of ethical neutrality seem to be lower if one is discussingthe current leftist administration of Mexico City rather than mimetic institutionalisomorphisms.

Let us consider some examples from my data. Salas-Porras’s (2000) article onMexican entrepreneurs’ participation in electoral politics is full of trenchant censuresof former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari and the then incumbent PartidoRevolucionario Institucional. Significantly, her (2000:77, 80) very approach to hermain object of inquiry, the relationship between entrepreneurs and electoral politics, isby no means neutral:

The financial contributions of the wealthy make the electoral field more unba-lanced and unjust, give additional means of influence and power to a smallminority, increase the traffic of influence, political clientelism, disloyal economiccompetition and corruption.

[A very select group of entrepreneurs] erode [sic] more serious and consistentefforts, both of small and large entrepreneurs, to develop a more ethical, pluraland democratic version of liberalism than the one we have hitherto known inMexico: unilateral, classist and deformed.

Take now the case of Pucciarelli (1999), who discusses the current political, social,and economic situation in Argentina. His major knowledge claim is that theArgentinean social structure has recently undergone major transformations towardgreater ‘‘social polarization,’’ ‘‘social segmentation,’’ ‘‘social fragmentation,’’ and‘‘social exclusion.’’ While this claim does not necessarily entail a value judgment,Pucciarelli hastens to harshly condemn all these transformations, offering an ardentcritique of Argentina’s political affairs. Interestingly, just as several other M-ARTauthors refer to their homelands, he (1999:121, 126) refers to Argentina as ‘‘our country,’’identifying himself with the nation and the community. More relevantly, condemnationand description are so enmeshed that it is difficult to distinguish one from the other. Thisis most evident when the author (1999:148; emphasis added) explicitly makes a case foremploying the term ‘‘decadence’’ over the less value-laden ‘‘crisis’’:

[I]t seems to us that the notion of ‘‘decadence’’ [decadencia] is more appropriatefor our purposes, that it contains a more precise meaning and it allows us,besides, to take adequate advantage of its principal property, namely its descrip-tive, comparative and also valorative [valorativo] sense.

Tellingly, Pucciarelli entitles the article ‘‘Crisis or Decadence?’’ Now, simply byadopting a Marxist terminology (in its Latin American left variant), one might beespousing in the epistemological terrain the spirit of the 11th thesis on Feuerbach, and

Table 4. Ethical Neutrality in Mexico and the United States

United States (%) Mexico (%)

Presence of value judgmentsYes 10 80No 90 20



perhaps in the political terrain the progressive or even the revolutionary cause, too.And, at the same time, one might be displaying adherence to the ‘‘right’’ values, muchin the way citations of ‘‘right’’ theorists work (Stinchcombe 1982, 2001; Gilbert 1977).Mexican sociologists frequently talk about ‘‘dominant classes’’ (Dilla Alfonso andOxhorn 1999:132; Pucciarelli 1999:134, 140, 149; Botero Villegas 1998:394, 395;Stavenhagen 1998:7); ‘‘dominant power’’ (Heau and Gimenez 1997:224); ‘‘dominantgroups’’ (Stavenhagen 1998:9); ‘‘dominant sectors’’ (Botero Villegas 1998:406–07); and‘‘bourgeoisie’’ (Barrios Suvelza 2000:191, 193; Tamayo 1999:502, 509). They likewisetalk about ‘‘popular classes’’ (Barrera 1998); ‘‘popular sectors’’ (Pucciarelli 1999:134,149; Barrera 1998:passim; Ibanez Rojo 1998:359; Massolo 1996:136); ‘‘popular strug-gles’’ (Heau and Gimenez 1997:passim); and ‘‘proletariat’’ (Tamayo 1999:502).20 Yet,the bete noire is undoubtedly ‘‘neoliberalism’’ (Pucciarelli 1999:129, 130; Tamayo1999:510; Barrera 1998:passim; Massolo 1996:134, 136). One might refer to the‘‘neoliberal depredation’’ (Dilla Alfonso and Oxhorn 1999:132); to ‘‘neoliberal eco-nomic policies’’ (Zermeno 1999:passim; Ziccardi 1999:110); to ‘‘the importance thatcurrent neoliberal politics attribute to big firms to the detriment of small ones’’(Mingo 1996:91); to the ‘‘subtle imposition of neoliberal values [normativa]’’(Barrios Suvelza 2000:176); or to a situation that has been ‘‘considerably aggravatedby the neoliberal policies of governments and multinational financial organisms’’(Stavenhagen 1998:13). In the present context, ‘‘neoliberalism’’ is obviously a value-laden word. It does not mean an economic doctrine based on the ‘‘laissez faire, laissezpasser’’ dictum. It means an economic doctrine based on the ‘‘laissez faire, laissezpasser’’ dictum that is conceptually incorrect and morally deplorable.

In fact, arguments related to, broadly speaking, ‘‘neoliberalism’’ are the place inwhich most often values and facts are brought together in M-ART. For example,Stavenhagen (1998:3–4) talks about ‘‘the neoliberal dogma’’:

Like all dogmas, this one stays firm against any evidence with an impressiveadvertising apparatus and has taken over the principal inter-governmental agen-cies, the dominant arguments of the governments of the planet, and mostacademic institutions and universities (not to mention the associations ofentrepreneurs, who are the first to be interested in promoting the myth).

Referring to Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s, Stavenhagen (1998:8–9) con-trasts two camps: ‘‘peasant movements, left parties, and some intellectuals’’ that‘‘demanded the necessity of agrarian reforms, based on convincing economic, social,and political arguments’’ with ‘‘the dominant groups’’ that ‘‘organized themselvesnationally and internationally and soon managed to contain the popular tide byinstalling more or less brutal military regimes, with ample help from the U.S.’’ Onedoes not need additional clarification to understand that the author is morally reject-ing the ‘‘neoliberal dogma’’ or that ‘‘the peasant movements, the left parties, and someintellectuals’’ are the good guys and the ‘‘dominant groups’’ are the bad guys. Andonce again, his value judgments, entrenched in his reasoning and vocabulary, can beseparated neither from his account of the facts nor from his argument about thecauses of poverty in Latin America.

20Other expressions with Marxist connotations are: ‘‘class struggle’’ (Tamayo 1999:507); ‘‘oppression’’ and‘‘exploitation’’ (Massolo 1996:134); ‘‘oligarchy’’ and ‘‘class for itself’’ (Barrera 1998:15); ‘‘class conscious-ness’’ (Barrera 1998:20); ‘‘hegemony’’ (Botero Villegas 1998:495); ‘‘organic intellectuals’’ (Dilla Alfonso andOxhorn 1999:137; Heau Lambert and Gimenez 1997:242); and ‘‘superstructural variables’’ (Barrios Suvelza2000:176, 200).


For his part, Zermeno (1999:183) sets out to ‘‘analyze the widespread disorder andsocial atomization caused by trade liberalization and globalization.’’ The authorbelieves that one should ‘‘temper’’ ‘‘those incommensurable powers’’ such as‘‘Washington and the big transnational corporations [trasnacionales] and financialinstitutions’’ (Zermeno 1999:199). A similar mood toward Washington is found inDilla Alfonso and Oxhorn’s (1999:123, 142) article, which refers to the ‘‘aggressivenessof the U.S. [against Cuba]’’ and the ‘‘interfering [injerencista] Helms-Burton law.’’Finally, Barbieri (2000:51) points out that ‘‘the strong resistance of large multinationalcorporations and governments of countries such as the U.S. and Japan to takingmeasures that affect their economic interests, placed [centro] on the poor populationof poor countries, and specifically on their women, the cause of the world’s misfor-tunes [males].’’

Only 10 percent of U-ART (i.e., three articles) are not entirely value-free.21 In twoof them, there are only minor words, expressions, or references that could be inter-preted as value-charged. For its part, Edin and Lein’s article (1996) is especiallyillustrative of how values might be incorporated into scientific discourse in theUnited States. Edin and Lein’s findings about single mothers’ economic survivalstrategies are reached through scientific methods, from which values are conspicu-ously absent and procedural objectivity devices conspicuously present. In the finalpart of the conclusion, after summarizing their findings, the authors point out thatthey ‘‘have clear policy relevance,’’ and proceed to offer six policy suggestions(1996:264). For example:

(1) Allow recipients to count participation in high-quality training or educationalprograms that lead to living wages as satisfying the work requirement.(3) Expand the Federal Unemployment Insurance program to cover more work-ers in the low-wage sector, including part-time workers. (Edin and Lein 1996:264)

The Humean problem is whether Edin and Lein’s normative statements follow fromtheir scientific findings. It seems to me that, since in their account values are totallyisolated from facts, no logical relationship is needed: their normative statementssimply ascertain the best means to reach ends that policymakers have selected andwith which science has nothing to do. Even though in the present case the authors doendorse those ends, from a logical point of view this step is not necessary: ‘‘We believethat as states move single mothers from welfare to work, mothers’ and their children’smaterial well-being should be safeguarded’’ (Edin and Lein 1996:264; emphasisadded).

U.S. sociologists’ overall attitude toward values might be well summarized by aparagraph of Ganz’s (2000:1007–08; emphasis added) piece:

The data on which this analysis is based is drawn from primary and secondarysources as well as my experience with the UFW [United Farm Workers] from1965 to 1981 as an organizer, organizing director, and national officer. This raisesa potential problem of bias based on my personal experiences, interests I may havein particular accounts of controversial events, and personal relationships withpersons on all sides of the conflict. But my experience also equips me with a deep

21An ingrained and institutionalized value judgment into which I am not able to delve is the differentways in which generic third-person singular pronouns and their inflected forms are used in the United Statesto avoid so-called gendered language.


understanding of the context of these events, direct information as to what tookplace, and access to important research resources. In an attempt to realize thebenefits while minimizing the risks, I ‘‘triangulate’’ my data for this study bydrawing on multiple primary and secondary sources, relying on my own experi-ence only where specifically noted.

Even though—or, actually, precisely because—they are the source of unique under-standings and evidence, ‘‘personal experiences,’’ ‘‘interests,’’ and ‘‘personal relation-ships’’ are seen as threats to objectivity. They may introduce biases and thusjeopardize the ‘‘viewpoint of no-one in particular.’’ Still, through the triangulationof data it can be found out whether one’s accounts are not objective, and correctthem. One can correct those ‘‘bad’’ biases, and keep the ‘‘good’’ ones. As Ernest Nagel(1961:489) would say, ‘‘since by hypothesis it is not impossible to distinguish betweenfact and value, steps can be taken to identify a value bias when it occurs, and tominimize if not to eliminate completely its perturbing effects.’’

Let us finally note that U.S. sociologists are believed to be, on average, much more‘‘liberal’’ than the rest of this country’s population. Indeed, sociology has been shownto be the most liberal academic discipline in the United States (Hamilton and Hargens1993; Ladd and Lipset 1975). Furthermore, U.S. sociologists publish in several venuesthat welcome ethically committed work. The point is that those outlets are not themost prestigious and professional journals. In these, there is only room for truescience.

CONCLUSION

Incommensurability and the Sociology of Knowledge

The main finding of this article is that the epistemological assumptions of Mexicanand U.S. sociologies—as represented by a random sample of nonquantitative articlesdrawn from four leading journals—are significantly different. First, they assign adifferent role to theories, and indeed they have dissimilar understandings of what atheory should consist of. Second, whereas the U.S. articles actively struggle againstsubjectivity, the Mexican articles maximize the potentials of subjective viewpoints.Third, U.S. sociologists tend to regard highly and Mexican sociologists to eagerlydisregard the principle of ethical neutrality.

This finding has an important implication for the ongoing research program of thesociology of knowledge, whose ambition is to account not only for religious beliefs,moralities, and ideologies, but also for mathematical theorems and scientific theories.There are several ways of construing the argument that scientific knowledge is ‘‘con-ditioned,’’ ‘‘determined,’’ ‘‘shaped,’’ ‘‘influenced,’’ etc. by its social context. Many ofthese versions are at best unclear and at worst plainly false. Of course, science is ahuman activity, scientists have interests, biases, and so on. Of course, as any humaninstitution, science involves politics, inequalities, culture, language, rhetoric, emo-tions, and so on. But how exactly does it follow that Godel’s incompleteness theoremor Pauli’s exclusion principle (i.e., the theorem itself or the principle itself) is ‘‘sociallyconstructed?’’ I believe that my investigation suggests a more promising direction forthe social conditioning argument. It is easy to see that underlying epistemologicalassumptions have an effect upon the so-called cognitive content of scientific theories.What is more, this effect is of a particular character, which makes it theoreticallyconsequential: one may not be able to factor it out; it may be built into the theory


itself. As we shall see, that two truth-seeking communities make dissimilar epistemo-logical assumptions may entail the incommensurability of the bodies of knowledgethat they produce: there might be no common metric by means of which their truthclaims could be measured against reality; translation might be impossible in principle.Yet epistemological assumptions, as assumptions, are by definition not entirelydetached from the contingencies of the self and society. Therefore, the cognitivecontent of scientific knowledge claims might be in one (literally fundamental) respectinfluenced by the social conditions of its production.

In 1962, both Kuhn ([1962] 1970) and Feyerabend ([1962] 1981) first presented inprint ‘‘the’’ ‘‘incommensurability thesis.’’ But already in Kuhn’s magnum opus (letalone in posterior commentaries, debates, Feyerabend’s writings, and Kuhn’s variousrounds of ‘‘second thoughts’’), there are several somewhat incommensurable ‘‘incom-mensurability theses.’’ One can organize this field by distinguishing between semantic,epistemological, and perceptual incommensurability (Hoyningen-Huene and Sankey2001; Bird 2000; Sankey 1994; Hoyningen-Huene 1993:201–22; Kitcher 1983; see alsoD’Agostino 2003; Chang 1997; Wong 1989). The semantic thesis argues that ‘‘there isno language, neutral or otherwise, into which [two] theories, conceived as sets ofsentences, can be translated without residue or loss’’ (Kuhn 1983:670). In fact, themeaning of observation and theoretical terms is a function of the theory in which theyoccur. The perceptual thesis is based on Kuhn’s ([1962] 1970:150) statement that ‘‘theproponents of competing paradigms practice their trades in different worlds’’—whatHacking (1993:276) calls the ‘‘new-world problem.’’ The basic idea is that worldviewsand perceptual experience are not independent. Finally, the epistemological thesisargues that paradigms differ in their standards of theory appraisal. In Kuhn’s ([1962]1970:109) words, ‘‘scientific schools disagree about what is a problem and what asolution.’’22

To consider the epistemological thesis, let us pose the following thought experi-ment. Suppose a Mexican sociologist claims p and a U.S. sociologist claims not-p.Carnap’s or Popper’s epistemology would have the empirical world arbitrate betweenthese two theoretical claims. But, as we have seen, sociologists in Mexico and theUnited States hold different stances regarding what a theory should be, what anexplanation should look like, what rules of inference and standards of proof shouldbe stipulated, what role evidence should play, and so on. The empirical world couldonly adjudicate the dispute if an agreement on these epistemological presuppositionscould be reached (and there are good reasons to expect that in such a situation neitherside would be willing to give up its epistemology). Furthermore, it seems to me thatmy thought experiment to some degree misses the point. For it imagines a situation inwhich a Mexican sociologist claims p and a U.S. sociologist claims not-p, failing torealize that that would only be possible if the problem were articulated in similarterms. However, we have seen that Mexican and U.S. sociologies also differ in howproblems are articulated—rather than p and not-p, one should probably speak of pand q.

I believe that Mexican and U.S. sociologies are perceptually and semanticallyincommensurable as well. On the one hand, I suspect that equal stimuli do notgenerate in Mexican and U.S. sociologists equal sensations—they may ‘‘see differentthings when looking at the same sorts of objects’’ (Kuhn [1962] 1970:120; emphasis in

22From this, Feyerabend (1970:228, 1975:214, 285) concludes that theory choice, rather than rational, is a‘‘matter of taste’’ and ‘‘subjective wishes.’’ More conservatively, Kuhn (1977:331) rejects Lakatos’s(1970:178) ‘‘mob psychology’’ charge and suggests that his criteria function ‘‘not as rules, which determinechoice, but as values, which influence it.’’


original). However, I do not have the data, presumably experimental, to support thisproposition. On the other hand, I believe my data suggest that the vocabularies ofMexican and U.S. sociologies are theory-laden and thus may fail to share commonmeanings. Terms such as ‘‘social class,’’ ‘‘social movement,’’ ‘‘hypothesis,’’ and ‘‘vari-able’’ resemble some of Kuhn’s favorite examples: the meaning of the term ‘‘mass’’ forNewton’s and Einstein’s mechanics and the meaning of ‘‘earth’’ for Copernican andPtolemaic astronomy. Likewise, what ‘‘decadence’’ means is a function of how thetheory in which it occurs conceptualizes the relationship between values and facts.Finally, as Kuhn (1983) himself emphasized regarding the case of ‘‘force’’ and ‘‘mass,’’U.S. and Mexican vocabularies consist of sets of terms, whose meaning is cruciallydependent on their being a set.

In yet a fourth sense, the incommensurability thesis has been read as suggestingunintelligibility. With Kuhn’s turn toward Quine’s (1960) ‘‘indeterminacy of transla-tion’’ thesis, incommensurability becomes tantamount to untranslatability. Fromthere, the ‘‘inability of advocates of rival cosmologies and ontologies to understandone another’’ (Laudan 1996:9) seems to follow. Not only did critics find the empiricalevidence for this claim weak (Toulmin 1970:43–44), but they also pointed out thatKuhn’s argument was incoherent and logically self-defeating (Putnam 1981:114–15).Is it not the case that historians of science, such as Kuhn himself, make sense of earlierparadigms in the language of the dominant one? Is it not the case that Whorf(1956:214), claiming that English and Hopi cannot be ‘‘calibrated,’’ ‘‘uses English toconvey the contents of sample Hopi sentences’’ (Davidson 1984:184)? In fact, trans-latability might even be a criterion of languagehood: an untranslatable utterancewould not be speech behavior but random noises (Davidson 1984; Putnam 1981). Istrongly deny that Mexican and U.S. sociologies are incommensurable if this is takento mean unintelligible. Of course, my own endeavor presupposes and, if successful,demonstrates that one can plot them on a common coordinate system and render oneof them in the language of the other. But an important nuance should be brought uphere. As Kuhn (1983) himself retorted, inability to translate does not entail inability tounderstand. I do not claim to have translated Mexican sociology into U.S. sociologymeeting the standards that a Quinean manual of translation would have set. Rather, Ihave presupposed and demonstrated that a certain language can be understood,interpreted, and communicated in such a way that it becomes intelligible to themembers of a different linguistic community.

Given its reflexive character, I would like to use the present article to provide onelast illustration of my argument about incommensurability. As mentioned in theintroduction, I have followed Bloor’s tenets, in the sense that neither the Mexicannor the U.S. epistemological approach has been assumed to be more fruitful, reason-able, or likely to get one closer to the truth. Unfortunately, in a strict sense there is nouncommitted manner to put forward knowledge claims about how knowledge claimsare put forward. For the epistemological assumptions of one’s own claims, thelanguage in which they are written can be said to performatively support a certainway of doing science. Not surprisingly in view of its conditions of production, at theperformative level this article sides with the U.S. epistemological approach. Forinstance, I present a ‘‘data and methods’’ section and four tables (slightly below themean). I reconstruct my own research process so that it fits the textbook model ofscientific research, without mentioning errors, cul-de-sacs, and reformulations.23 I aim

23This is, however, a performative contradiction. By mentioning that I am not mentioning errors, cul-de-sacs, and reformulations, I am in fact mentioning them.


at objective reality through intersubjectively valid measurements and do not let anyvalue judgments into my argument. The question then becomes: Could ‘‘Styles ofSociological Thought’’ be rendered in both the U.S. and Mexican sociologicallanguages? Could it be rendered in both languages ‘‘without residue or loss?’’ I donot think so. Suppose I did let value judgments into my argument, did not carefullyexplain what my data and methods are, and did not emphasize the intersubjectivevalidity of my measurements. The outcome could hardly be said to be a faithful,semantically equivalent translation of this article. Because many essential thingswould indeed be lost, the outcome should rather be viewed as a different article.Above all, the very question I have addressed to the empirical world is—in terms of itssubstance, conceptual bases, and most importantly logical form—of the kind acceptedby and meaningful to the U.S. sociological community. But our hypothetical Mexicanversion of this article would have to ask a question of a different form, and ipso factothe correspondence between the two would collapse.

Accounting for Epistemological Variation

Not only do I believe that epistemological presuppositions vary across communities,but also that they are not randomly distributed. Future research should work out atheory about how the nature of Mexican and U.S. epistemologies is related to theirbeing Mexican and U.S. Here I just want to suggest four lines of thought that mightbe worthy of further elaboration and eventually empirical corroboration.

For an academic discipline to establish itself, it must appear in the eyes of therelevant actors and constituencies as distinct from both neighboring disciplines and—what I would like to emphasize here—nonprofessional, unaccredited, or nonscientificknowledge. That is, an epistemological ‘‘boundary’’ must be drawn (Lamont andMolnar 2002; Babb 2001; Camic 1995; Camic and Xie 1994; Fisher 1993; Lamont1992, 2000b; Cozzens and Gieryn 1990; Abbott 1988; Gieryn 1983, 1995, 1999). Thus,a theory of epistemological variation must consider which actors count as relevant ina particular context, as well as their positions, dispositions, views, and interests. Inthis regard, several scholars have brought to light the ‘‘unique role played by fundingin American sociology, and the distinctive affinities between American sociology,foundation, and scientism’’ (Turner 1998:70; see also Turner 1994; Fisher 1993;Geiger 1993:94–110; Ross 1991; Turner and Turner 1990; Bannister 1987; Silva andSlaughter 1984; McCartney 1970; but see Platt 1996). For U.S. public and privatefoundations and university administrations, scientificity has meant ‘‘scientism,’’24

quantification, and neutralization of subjectivity, and through these criteria theyhave distinguished between scientific and nonscientific discourses about society. InMexico, external funding agencies have played a less significant role, and, in fact,there have not been comparable funding agencies in terms of financial and institu-tional resources. Moreover, the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico(UNAM), the institutional home and source of support for most research and teach-ing throughout the history of Mexican sociology, has been far from demandingscientism from its social scientists. In turn, this is a consequence of how LatinAmerican public universities are governed and administered, the great formal andinformal power that professors and students have in this system, the nature of the

24By ‘‘scientism’’ it is generally meant the thesis that the science of society should be modeled on thenatural sciences (see Steinmetz 2004; Platt 1996; Ross 1991; Bannister 1987; Bryant 1985; Halfpenny 1982;Giddens 1974; Hayek 1952).


intellectual culture predominant in these institutions, and the degree to whichuniversity matters are political and indeed closely connected to national politics(Ordorika 2003; Mendoza Rojas 2001; Lorey 1993; Brunner 1985; Clark 1983:156;Mabry 1982; Ribeiro 1967).

My second dimension attends to one type of relationship between sociology and thepolity (see Fourcade-Gourinchas 2000, 2001; Jepperson 1992, 2002; Wagner,Wittrock, and Whitley 1991; Wagner 1990, 2001; Wittrock and Wagner 1990, 1996).In the United States, as the first editor of the magazine Contexts pointed out (Fischer2002:iii), there is a wide moat surrounding the ivory tower (see also Burawoy 2005a,2005b). In general, sociologists are scientists oriented toward scientific institutionsand rewarded primarily according to their contributions to pure science. In contrast,Mexican sociologists are scientists oriented toward both scientific and political insti-tutions and evaluated according to contributions to both pure science and politicallife. Indeed, sociology qua scientific discipline has been to a large extent constitutedthrough and defined by its involvement in politics—specifically, as a critical left-wingforce (see, e.g., Zapata 1990). However, it is important that not just any kind ofcontribution to political life has been constitutive of the metier of the sociologist.Rather than just performing utilitarian calculations or developing algorithms thatprovide the most efficient means to realize political ends established elsewhere,sociologists have been expected to identify, articulate, and criticize those very ends(Munoz Garcıa 1994; Castaneda 1990:417–18; Sefchovich 1989; Villa Aguilera 1979).It is precisely this capacity to illuminate practical problems by drawing on ‘‘socialthought,’’ provide public opinion with theoretically informed accounts couched insuitable terminologies, substantiate normative standpoints in the public sphere, andbring knowledge ‘‘to the service of . . . justice and reason’’ that sociologists haveclaimed as one—and arguably the—essential component of their professional exper-tise (Contreras 2000:160; Ibarrola 1994:184; Portes 1975). And most of the actors withwhich sociology has interacted—the state, the media, public opinion, the UNAM,student bodies, neighboring disciplines—have not only accepted these claims aslegitimate but also expected it to assume such roles as being the ‘‘moral consciousness’’of the state (Girola and Olvera 1995; Castaneda 1990, 1995a:294, 1995b). Thus, thephysicist could obviously not be a model for the sociologist.

A third promising explanatory idea is based on Steinmetz’s (2005c:36) ‘‘social-epochal or macrosociological’’ approach, which focuses on ‘‘the impact of large-scale social structural processes and cultural discourses on sociologists’ sense of theplausibility of different ways of thinking about the social’’ (Steinmetz 2005d:278; seealso Steinmetz 2005a, 2005b). Independently of factors such as sociologists’ interest indrawing particular boundaries or foundations’ interest in promoting particular typesof research, in any given social context some epistemologies and ontologies would juststrike people as more plausible than others. In these papers, Steinmetz directs hisattention to the case of U.S. sociology’s ‘‘methodological positivism,’’ which is foundto be causally connected to the Fordist mode of societal regulation. But one can drawon this approach to think about the causal connections between third world modes ofsocietal regulation and the epistemological foundations of the sociological knowledgeproduced in these regions (a line of reasoning both suggested and encouraged bySteinmetz himself). If one looks at the specific Fordist elements that bolstered posi-tivism in the United States—for example, economic stability, ‘‘security,’’ a ‘‘postideo-logical’’ culture, social regularity and predictability, geopolitical centrality—it is clearthat in Mexico most of these conditions did not obtain (or, at the very least, did notobtain to the same degree). Ultimately, however, only systematic empirical research


can determine whether and how these and other social-epochal factors have had animpact on the epistemological worldview of Mexican sociology.

Last but not least, our theory should not forget that the two cases under considera-tion are not independent. That Mexican sociology has opposed scientism is to someextent a consequence of what Reyna (1979:67) calls the ‘‘Latin Americanization’’ ofMexican sociology: ‘‘a sort of ‘reaction’ against the methods and approaches thatcame, principally, from the U.S.’’ (see also Hiller 1979). In fact, Mexican sociologyhas explicitly drawn inspiration from European traditions (primarily French sociol-ogy) that lend great prestige to public intellectuals and view ‘‘views from nowhere’’with suspicion (Lamont 2000a; Loyo, Guadarrama, and Weissberg 1990:37; Lemert1981; Villa Aguilera 1979).25

In sum, the general point I put forward is that epistemological stances can beaccounted for by the social conditions of production of the discourses they underlie.This is, of course, a reformulation of the central question of the sociology of knowl-edge, from Mannheim (1952, [1929] 1966) to the Edinburgh school (Bloor [1976] 1991;Barnes 1974); from Berger and Luckmann (1966) to Bourdieu ([1984] 1988). A firstgeneration of sociologists of science argued that social ‘‘factors’’ may influence foci ofattention and rates of advance (see, e.g., Cole 1992) but that they do not affect thecognitive ‘‘content’’ of science. A second generation, the sociologists of scientificknowledge, violated the sanctuary that neither Mannheim (1952, [1929] 1966) norMerton (1973) had dared to violate.26 Now science’s ‘‘assemblage of truths’’ (Hacking1999:66) was said to be ‘‘socially constructed.’’ The irony is that, as Trevor Pinch andTrevor Pinch (1988:186) observe, ‘‘sociology, the ‘softest’ of all the scientific disci-plines, should make claims to be able to account for physics—the Queen of theSciences.’’

I believe it is high time sociologists pressed this irony further and tried also toaccount empirically and sociologically for the putative ultimate foundations uponwhich science’s edifice of knowledge has been erected. In fact, even though sociolo-gists have largely not adopted this approach, there have recently been a few hints andefforts in this direction: Kurzman’s (1994) call for an ‘‘empirical epistemology’’;Somers’s (1996, 1998) ‘‘purposefully oxymoronic’’ ‘‘historical epistemology’’; Knorr-Cetina’s (1999) ‘‘epistemic cultures’’; Shapin’s Social History of Truth (1994);Steinmetz’s (2005a, 2005b, 2005c, 2005d) work on U.S. sociology’s positivism;Mallard, Lamont, and Guetzkow’s (2002) ‘‘epistemological codes’’; and Fuchs’s(1992, 1993, 2001) conceptualization of epistemology as a dependent variable. Anempirical sociology of epistemologies would set out to show that beliefs about the bestpath to the truth have varied across time and place as much as beliefs about moralityand beauty. It would also maintain that variations in epistemological beliefs should beaccounted for sociologically. Finally, it would be interested in how the relationship

25My account applies, roughly, from the 1960s to the 1990s. Mexican sociology achieved a sizeable degreeof institutionalization only in the 1960s (Girola 1996; Valenti 1990). In its inchoate phase the predominanttradition was a somewhat idiosyncratic version of positivism (Andrade Carreno 1998; Garza Toledo 1989;Sefchovich 1989). For the past few years, Mexico has undergone major political and social changes, whichhave impinged on both the higher-education system and the social legitimacy of different kinds of boundarywork. For example, the influence of the CONACyT has increasingly become substantial, thanks to itsprogram of economic incentives for researchers and its register of journals and graduate programs ‘‘ofexcellence.’’ More importantly—and despite sociologists’ complaints—CONACyT explicitly equates scien-tificity with scientism (see, e.g., Bejar Navarro and Hernandez Bringas 1996:123–31; Perlo Cohen 1994).While policies of this kind were first implemented in the 1980s and 1990s, epistemological outlooks arestructurally ingrained features that may be affected only in the long run.

26Some of them even questioned the distinctions between social and cognitive ‘‘factors,’’ content andcontext, and ‘‘internalist’’ and ‘‘externalist’’ explanations of science (Latour 1999; Callon 1981).


between epistemological discrepancies and incommensurability can buttress sociol-ogy’s challenge to the traditional conception of science. Thus, an empirical sociologyof epistemologies would constitute a step forward in the agenda of the sociology ofknowledge, as it would further our understanding of the social conditioning ofscientific knowledge.

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