Sociology, public statements and the Iraq War (part two)

In the last article we looked at the American Sociological Association (ASA) and their 2003 resolution on the Iraq War, examining how the lack of clarity around the resolution may have facilitated discussion but at the expense of focus. Rather than providing a clear organisational view, the final statement was open to misinterpretation, reflecting poorly on our supposedly scientific endeavours.

In this article we examine the lessons for social research today in more detail, revisiting the 2003 resolution as a way of exploring different rationales for public statements.

Role of the referendum

Two possible positions can be taken about the 2003 resolution, that it was either primarily about external change and influencing society itself or more about the internal position of the ASA and its members.

The external perspective

An external perspective sees the resolution as primarily about changing the broader context and public climate, namely actually trying to stop the war. If this was the primary objective, it is hard not to reflect on the 2003 debate and wonder whether it was worth all the effort. Did anyone outside the ASA and other sociologists really care what a group of largely left-leaning, ageing, middle-class, white, academics thought? Was it all just navel gazing and virtue signalling? Could that time and effort not have gone into something more productive?

There is a lot of truth lurking behind these questions. To the surprise of absolutely no-one, the war carried on as if nothing had happened. None of the memoirs or histories of the time refer to Bush, Cheney or Rumsfeld losing a minute’s sleep over the ASA publicly opposing the war. The resolution was ignored by wider society. Few other organisations paid any attention.

The counterargument is that without similar debates across the world there would have been minimal public opposition to the war. What is an ocean if not billions and billions of individual drops of water? However, this counterargument does not prove that having an organisational view, as opposed to allowing individuals to make their own decisions, made any difference. True, an organisation’s name may have some heft, but if we collected data on the impact of the ASA brand, we would require months of desperate p-hacking before dredging up anything vaguely statistically significant.

While there was little rationale for expecting the 2003 Iraq War resolution to have any real external impact, this would not necessarily be true in every case. Public statements on issues where sociologists can say something distinctive, based on clear sociological evidence as opposed to a relevance or morality-based argument, could realistically be expected to have more of an effect. Although gathering evidence on impact is difficult, the evidence-based nature of the 2017 letter to President Trump on transgender access to facilities arguably gave it more chance of making a difference than the Iraq War resolution.

The internal perspective

Far more plausible is that an external-facing referendum was valuable for internal purposes. By voting on a public resolution you are obliged to think more carefully before daring nail your colours to the mast. Rather than just letting individuals make up their own minds, taking a group perspective could help clarify thinking while also reflecting sociological values on open debate and democracy.

The Iraq War resolution may have served this purpose, primarily as the war arose at a time of considerable debate among sociologists concerning the role of their discipline. Michael Burawoy was elected as President of the ASA, reflecting the increased interest at the time in a more engaged public sociology. Burawoy had an existential concern not just for the future of sociology but public society itself. He saw social science as fighting a rearguard action against the way economics and political science were producing “ideologies that are threatening all arenas of autonomous politics” and helping form neoliberal thought that was “bent on the destruction of everything to do with the idea of ‘public”’.[1] There were new awards, websites and textbooks on public sociology, and the 2004 ASA annual meetings broke the attendance records at the time. Invoking Walter Benjamin, Burawoy felt that “dark times have aroused the angel of history from his slumbers”.[2]

Reflecting on the resolution in a broader context leads to two important points. Firstly, the relationship between public statements on an issue and wider debate on the role of sociology may be problematic. When discussion on sociology’s role is febrile, this may reflect considerable internal disagreement. If there is notable disagreement, public statements run the risk of being ill-defined, seeking majority acceptance by adopting vague wording. This was arguably the case in 2003, where the resolution passed but without being clear as to the underlying rationale. Secondly, while a resolution may provide an initial incentive for internal debate, once a definitive decision is made there is less need for continued discussion. The impact on internal discussion and democratic practices may be limited, depending on internal structures, processes and protocols. From a different perspective, there is a risk that releasing final statements results in view becoming ossified while resentments linger.

In the next article on the American Sociological Association (ASA) and their 2003 resolution on the Iraq War, we will look in detail around why and how organisations could release public statements. In particular, we will examine how any statements can build on sociological values and practice, learning from what is best about our profession. 

[1] “The Field of Sociology: Its Power and Its Promise”, M Buroway, in “Public Sociology”, 2007, University of California Press

[2] https://burawoy.berkeley.edu/PS/ASA%20Presidential%20Address.pdf