Research Program
The research program Social Problems in Contemporary Modernity addresses the social problems that result from processes of globalization and individualization in contemporary western societies, especially the Netherlands. Although at first sight these processes differ widely, they both uproot social life by disembedding individuals from the institutions, communities and traditions of the past, contributing to the formation of ethnically and culturally mixed urban populations, creating new types of social exclusion and social inequality, putting pressure on collective welfare-state arrangements and destabilizing traditional social identities, religious traditions and political ideologies. As such, globalization and individualization underlie many of the most pressing contemporary social problems: problems of legal and illegal immigration, problems of integration and identity formation of ethnic minorities, problems of social exclusion and poverty, and widespread cultural and political discontent. The program’s aim is to contribute to scientific and public debate about these social problems, without necessarily identifying with the perspective that underlies state attempts to deal with them. Because state policies inevitably evoke reactions by those subject to them, state interference may after all produce all sorts of unintended outcomes, even to the extent of aggravating existing problems or giving rise to new ones.
More specifically, the research program studies 1) How the twin processes of globalization and individualization spawn new social problems and transform existing ones in western countries (the Netherlands in particular); 2) How relevant social actors (including the state) articulate and address these problems (either policywise or otherwise); and 3) What social consequences (either intended or unintended) result from these attempts to deal with these social problems. The program’s simple, yet sociologically fundamental, point of departure is that human societies constitute nothing more or less than collective attempts to deal with social problems. Precisely because of this, today’s new risks, insecurities, and vulnerabilities inevitably give rise to new social forms and configurations that gradually replace those of the past.
Now that many modern and traditional institutions have lost much of their former legitimacy and taken-for-grantedness, an unmistakable sense of malaise, loss and nostalgia has come to pervade sociology, too. Ever since the start of the alleged ‘crisis of sociology’ in the 1960s, the discipline has aimed to re-invent itself by adapting to the new social world it has come to find itself in. Under these conditions, methodological or theoretical monism and unproductive conflicts between rivaling “approaches” and “schools” (rather than between testable theories) can no longer be afforded. The research program Social Problems in Contemporary Modernity therefore rejects rigid intellectual boundary maintenance as well as theoretical and methodological closure and views purely theoretical or methodological tours de force with healthy suspicion. The program instead aims for intellectual experimentation and methodological and theoretical openness. It opts for a ‘sociology that matters’: a sociology that is both intellectually and socially relevant and thus rejects any belief in the incompatibility of these two objectives. Sociology – good sociology – has been studying key social issues since its classical origins and by losing this focus it would betray its promise. Cross-fertilization of theoretical ideas and empirical research, supported by well-reflected and solid methodologies, is considered the only feasible road to such theoretically meaningful and socially relevant sociological knowledge.
The program therefore encourages its members to apply whatever qualitative or quantitative methods and whatever theories – be they classical, modern or post-modern – deemed appropriate for the research problem at hand. Likewise, it strongly encourages collaboration with disciplines in which its substantial research problems are equally high on the research agenda (e.g., social and cultural anthropology, economics, social geography, psychology, political science, public administration, law, history, and communication science).
