Sociology and Common Sense Knowledge

Sociology is not just a more careful version of everyday thinking. It is a genuinely different way of knowing, and one of its clearest breaks is with common sense. Common sense feels obvious and self-evident, but sociology treats it as something to be examined, tested, and often overturned.

The book makes this point by contrasting two kinds of explanation for the same phenomenon: the naturalistic and the sociological. A naturalistic explanation assumes that behaviour has obvious, 'natural' reasons built into people themselves. An individualistic explanation, closely related, locates the cause in the personal qualities of the individual. Both are typical of common sense.

The book's example is poverty. The common sense, naturalistic view says people are poor because they are afraid of work, come from 'problem families', cannot budget properly, suffer from low intelligence, or are simply shiftless. The sociological view says something entirely different: contemporary poverty is caused by the structure of inequality in class society, and is experienced by those who suffer from chronic irregularity of work and low wages. The first explanation blames the person; the second examines the social arrangement.

This is the core difference. Common sense explanations are unreflective — they do not question their own origins. Common sense never asks itself, "Why do I hold this view?" Sociology, by contrast, is built on a questioning attitude. The sociologist must be ready to ask of any cherished belief about ourselves: "Is this really so?" This systematic, questioning approach is not invented by sociology; it is derived from the broader tradition of scientific investigation.

Sociology also differs from theological and philosophical observations, just as it differs from common sense. It breaks away from all three. But the book is careful to warn against expecting drama. Sociology does not always, or even generally, lead to spectacular results. Great advances in sociological knowledge are made incrementally, and only rarely by a dramatic breakthrough. Meaningful and unsuspected connections can be reached only by sifting through masses of connections. This is slow, patient work.

Sociology has a body of concepts, methods, and data — however loosely coordinated — and this cannot be substituted by common sense. That body of knowledge is what allows the sociologist to see what common sense cannot.

The book offers a striking example of an unsuspected connection. In many societies, including parts of India, descent and inheritance pass from father to son — a patrilineal system. Because women tend not to get property rights, the Government of India, after the Kargil War, decided that financial compensation for the death of Indian soldiers should go to their widows, so that the widows would be provided for. The government had not anticipated the unintended consequence. The decision led to many forced marriages of widows with their brother-in-law (the husband's brother, or dewar). In some cases the brother-in-law, now the husband, was a young child, while the sister-in-law, now the wife, was a young woman. The purpose was to ensure that the compensation remained with the deceased man's patrilineal family. …