Sociological and lay accounts as versions of reality: Choosing between reports of the “charismatic renewal movement” amongst Roman catholics

Conclusion

The fact that the above theories of truth somewhat deny what we sociologists take for granted as “watchers of behaviour” has not prevented us from either implicitly invoking such theories as legitimation for our exercises (although usually correspondence is the firm favourite), nor does it excuse us from not validating our statements. In everyday life a formal study of truth is not needed to accomplish practical affairs. The problem of correspondence is the routine necessity of satisfying hearers that we have established a relationship between words and things that make sense. Sociology also faces all these difficulties as an ongoing practical accomplishment, and in this respect must vie with other accounting procedures as just one other. The inherent weakness of truth theories (in which we are surely interested as honourable men?) makes our claims to scientific status an embarrassment.

At least it does when you link the problem of correspondence with the inevitable reflexivity of all accounts; especially the use of “etcetera” clauses. Following Garfinkel, Coulter points out that actors in everyday life do not need to demonstrate correspondence in any direct way, nor do they pretend to spell out resemblances. “There comes a cut-off point, an “etc” particle, that is socially sanctioned as a legitimate device for terminating a particular account, given that it could ramify indefinitely.” This not only means that so many sociological descriptions which contain chunks of lay accounts have taken into themselves statements which make no pretence of correspondence, it also means that they too are “prisoners” of etceteras. To talk about second order activities, or logical shifts from the natural to the scientific attitude, does not alter the fact that sociology is “trapped” by the very conventions of accounting procedures which make sociology possible at all.

In short: there is no way out into some contextually free way of reporting. As touched upon earlier, the sociological account of the charismatic renewal movement offers no principled grounds as to why we should buy that version rather than the others. It appears to be de-contextualized, but in fact, like its rivals, is hemmed in by unclear notions and attestations to the indexicality of its speech; its form of life (the auspices of which are unrecognised) is displayed no more acceptably to us than the other versions, which are quite clear in generating procedures for understanding and-in their different ways-maintaining a charismatic social order.

If, however, the purpose of this paper was merely to rehearse what is by now a familiar argument, that there are no grounds for discriminating between accounts aside from circumstantial interests, where the very circumstantiality of these interests attest to their practical character, then it were better that I had remained silent. For to have done so, would be another way of saying we, as the community of sociologists who had accepted the positive ideal of the true account or objective reporting, have discovered that every version of reality is no better nor worse than our own; each way we turn is a cul-de-sac, and all blind alleys lead nowhere. To talk this way is not undesirable, because the only moral thing to do would be to stop doing sociology. But by admitting we have a problem which is unsurmountable, we are admitting the authority of the problem; to look for solutions even if none are discovered is to demonstrate that the problem itself by capturing our attention has forced its sovereignty upon us.

Thus, if I was writing in this way and with the primary purpose of showing what is wrong with positivist theories and how choosing between versions of reality is a problem, then I could only conclude by giving another accounteven if it simply said I cannot tell you how to choose one report from another-which nevertheless accepts the importance of choosing as both a source of trouble and an authoritative limit to my inquiry. Now, I started the paper the way I did, because I assume that there are some for whom choosing versions are an urgent issue; and by using substantive materials to highlight in a concrete way how difficulties can arise even within the positivist sociological community, I was prodding for the cynical response. In a sense, and more to the point, I was re-enacting my own disenchantement with the conventional wisdom in the chronological way it occurred in my own history. To move towards an alternative commitment/community of science one has to follow a path (or perhaps a better metaphor would be to leap without certainty as to the true nature of the new ground), and I simply wanted to show how I started.

That is a matter of history, however. Analytically I was able to begin by a discovery of the grounds which underlie, make intelligible, the very facticity of the problem of competing accounts. In short, the problem arises because it is made possible by the intellectual tradition whose form of life displays concern with promoting true accounts, disputing and destroying false ones, correcting bias, and upholding objectivity. It is the whole baggage of positivist sociology with its concern to be true to Nature in its social garb that grounds the very sensibility of differing versions of the world as a trouble and a worry. In this sense, in pointing to the auspices of sociology I am not only seeking to display its form of life in order to reveal its hidden and reflexive character which enables it to proceed as it does, but I am also displaying my own commitment to a non “cataphatic” analysis.

For those groups who have ostensibly abandoned positivism (I am thinking especially of ethnomethodologists and those engaged in Analysis), indulging in the production of still more accounts of events and activities has been dropped in favour of a radical shift in attention: away from focusing on substantive features of settings to how members assemble the facticity of such features. Furthermore, reflexivity is seen not as a problem, but as an essential component of our artful manipulation of everyday affairs. The ethnomethodological researchers look upon reflexivity as a property embedded in the social world; others seem to see it as a property of consciousness. It is not the place here to investigate the widening gaps between these groups who have abandoned traditional sociology, but perhaps it is worth noting that alternatives are not without their own “problems.”

First, one can see that the co-writers of “On the Beginning of Social Inquiry” are quite clear that ethnomethodologists are simply another branch of the positivist tree. They point out that although the attention has been shifted to practical reasoning, the methods are still scientific. Conversational analysts concerned with formal properties of talk would probably find it difficult to deny this; some admit it, but argue that in trying to say something about the world it is difficult not to be positive. Seeing themselves as technicians attempting to display a craft, they seem, for the moment, to have abandoned scholastics in favour of empirical rigour. They see those doing analysis as engaged in creating a moral order where community commitment takes precedence over work; it is difficult to know what technicians and moralists can possibly have to say to each other.

But let me end with another “problem” (the ground of which I cannot as yet explicate). Let us assume for argument's sake that ethnomethodologists are coming back to positivism through the back door, leaving Analysis outside. What kind of truth have the latter members opted for? Well, clearly they have abandoned the correspondence debate, and with some alacrity appear to be running backwards in a linear dimension passing Descartes, all the mediaeval scholars, and even the grand papa of modern positivism, Aristotle. Pausing for breath at Plato to breathe in some Pure Forms of Life, they settle down with Socrates for some didactic talk. Well we can get a few clues here as to their method of collaboration and metaphysical metaphors, but not much help with truth. We know that they do not want to avoid the issue, although McHugh tells us that they can find no adequate grounds for its existence “except the grounds that are employed to grant or concede it.” Now, to view truth as bound up with the conditions of its utterance, and different versions of it bound up with the forms of life which make them possible, is methodologically useful. Indeed pursuing this line of thought, it obviously follows that ideas of objectivity can exist—not one objectivity—and are judged by cultural colleagues who recognise them as having fulfilled accepted rules of procedure.

Now as I say all this is methodologically useful, if not indispensable, because otherwise precisely those areas of interaction are glossed over whereby truth comes to be seen as a practical accomplishment. But what is its analytic status? Are we offered a world of different truths bound to forms of life as if communities somehow owned their own truths? Can mistakes be talked about in any universal and non-relative way or are they microscopically and divergently bound to separate epistemic collectivities? In short, I wonder whether “analysts” deciding that “somewhere reasons must come to an end” have declared their moral commitment, closed the door (from the inside?) and talk to each other. In such a world private languages develop and coherence theories flourish. In his article on Positivism McHugh is clearly aware of the danger of abandoning correspondence for coherence. By addressing us sociologists (as I read it in this context as “our community”) to back him up in agreeing that we know as observers that people do not really act as coherence theorists would have them do, he is not forced analytically to prove his case; anyway, he does not.

I am not saying categorically that Analysis is coherence: I am saying that I have a problem ...

Perhaps all of us who claim to be involved in reflexive sociology, whatever our sectarian differences and regardless of whether we see our commitment as essentially moral, theoretical, or methodological, have some duty to speak plainly or not at all. As we have, at least, dealt obliquely with charismatic renewal we could heed, and adapt to ourselves, St. Paul's instructions to the man who would speak in strange tongues: But if there be no interpreter, let him keep silence ...; and let him speak to himself and to God.