Watkins and Miller

Things that didn't make it into the memo.

First, in something that Miller later identifies as the "alteration principle," he insists that in principle, any social fact could be changed by the "relevant" individuals, given the will and sufficient information about the situation. Miller seems unhappy this, though I'm not 100% clear on why. His idea seems to be something like a false consciousness argument: that it is possible for individuals to be systematically confused about what they want, and so prevented from acting to change collective practices that damage their interests. In contrast, I actually like this idea a lot as a way to express the essential mutability of social relations. Of course, one needs to be more explicit than (the ideologically tinged) Watkins of what's involved here: the "relevant individuals" are at the least going to have serious collective action problems (think the difference between individualistic and organized strategies by workers) and very likely going to have systematic conflicts of interest (e.g. the "relevant individuals" in anything involving work conditions are going to include employers).

Second, Watkins says this: "The practical or technological or therapeutic importance of social science largely consists in explaining, and thereby perhaps rendering politically manageable, the unintended and unfortunate consequences of the behavior of interacting individuals” (112-3). This strikes me as a remarkably clear statement of the ideal of "reformist liberal" social science. For one thing, it's pitched in terms of "unintended and unfortunate consequences" as opposed to objective conflicts. But even more interesting is the implicit equation of the "practical" consequences of social science with first technology, then therapy, then political manageability. Talk about a grab-bag of ideological metaphors. Politics is not about conflicting claims, but about "management" of problems that are implied to be akin either to "magneto trouble" (to use Keynes' phrase) or individual maladjustment to society.