| Chapter 2: | Background |
|
|
This is a limited free preview of this book. Please buy full access.
Bloor objected to the notion of Mannheim’s exclusion of the discipline of mathematics for sociological analysis. What is useful for the research covered in this study is that Bloor introduced the concept of a realm for a discipline in his article. Bloor explained that the job of sociologists of knowledge is to explore the social process of the inside and the outside of the realm. Using mathematics as his example, Bloor stressed that as a sociologist one should think of mathematical truth as a realm, a world, and consider it as having an independent existence “as a structured and bounded territory” (Bloor, 1973/1982, p. 43). He explained that there are two conceptual spaces that sociologists could explore for a discipline. One is the sociological activity inside the realm of a discipline, and the other is the sociological process of gaining access into that realm. For Bloor, a need for sociological explanations arises during the stages when someone goes through the processes of selection and education in becoming a mathematician, as well as in the process of maintaining the realm of a discipline. In defining these two conceptual spaces, Bloor has expanded the terrain of the sociology of knowledge beyond discussions within theoretical dialogues and, as Delanty (2001) suggested, Bloor’s work has led to the creation of many influential works on the social production of technical knowledge and expertise. The implication of Bloor’s idea is that it provides a conceptual explanation to allow researchers to undertake sociological investigations in a specific knowledge field, such as Chinese studies. Further, the use of Bloor’s concept helped to refine my study—that is, the study is not concerned about sociological studies of the training that someone goes through in the process of selection and education in becoming a sinologist. Rather, it is concerned with the sociological phenomenon that happens inside the realm of a discipline and with the process of maintaining the realm. Having defined a conceptual platform for the sociological investigation of a discipline (as stated, he used mathematics as the example), Bloor also defined the role of sociologists of knowledge. He argued that sociologists must be silent about what goes on within mathematics—that is to say, sociological explanations ought to be concerned with factors outside mathematical explanation and not with mathematics proper, which is, as Bloor suggested, a mathematician’s job.