Sociology has a Trump problem

Sociology has a Trump problem. And a Brexit problem. And a Populism problem. And a white people problem, and a class problem, and a man problem. What does this mean? Confusion is expected because, unfortunately, sociology has these problems in numerous ways. For example, sociology has a real Trump and Brexit problem in the straightforward sense that it is institutionally dependent on higher education and research funding which are directly threatened by Trump’s election and Britain’s secession from the EU. It has a populism problem in the sense that populism’s assertion of popular authority against elites, including elite “experts”, sanctioned to speak by their sheepskin credentials, moves sociologists from being observers of society to an interested position in political struggle and even a political adversary for many of the people we might want to study. It has a white, privileged, male problem because too many elite academics are white privileged males and the effect is that their distinct dispositions and views become normalized while others are reduced curiosities. And that is just to name a few of the dimensions to these problems. But worthy as these are for consideration, these are not the problems that I want to address.