Social reality can be impoverished or enriched by the ways we use to reflect on it. Social analysis is a classic way of reflecting on our reality. I propose that two general types of arguments exist in social analysis characterised by the relationship they have with the status-quo. The first is pro-status quo; the second is anti-status quo. These two types are involved in a constantly raging struggle to dominate the discursive space of social analysis.
Before I deal with these two types, I shall form a parenthesis by pointing out how social analysis and status-quo are understood here. By social analysis, I mean the broad critical enterprise of verification and falsification of social facts represented most prominently by disciplines like economics, political science, sociology, anthropology, history, and other related disciplines. By status quo, I mean the tentatively stable and dominant state of things at any given time in social life. The time itself could be of shorter or longer duration without changing the change-resistant aspect of status quo.
As an arrangement of social, political and economic relations, maintenance of status quo implies wedding rigidity and fluidity together in such a way that the element of change as reorganisation of society and as the natural propensity of things to evolve is primarily subordinated to the preservation of previously designed forms of social life locked into a geometric solid consistency.
Both the arguments yoke together descriptive and prescriptive modes of explanation in a circular path of mutual reinforcement in their narratives of the world. They are also distinguished by the different uses of logic and rhetoric. Convinced by the time-honoured practice of Greek sophists, these two modes of argument take great care to keep alive the unity of the two in such a way that logic becomes rhetorical and rhetoric turns logical so that rhetoric sustains a faltering logic and logic props up a breathless rhetoric.
The pro-status-quo arguments proceed from the solid assumption of the near-finality of the status-quo. From this assumption, the whole enterprise of social analysis becomes a matter of adducing reasons in support of a largely static view of things. Here, it should be pointed out that this static view of the world does not exclude movement but only change. Movement in the pro view of the status quo means the reproduction of already established and privileged categories of social life while change is interpreted as supersession of these categories.
In order to avoid change, this type degenerates into an attempt to preserve the present in future. This usually takes the form of invoking past to valorise the present. In short, this brings about the continuation of status quo ante. The rhetorical device employed by this type of arguments is the strategic understatement of events to retard their inherent change factors.
The anti-status quo arguments base their reasoning on the innate tendency of things to change and decay. It identifies movement essentially with change. Accordingly, it foregrounds the possibility of change and prescribes strategies to bring it about by accelerating the change factors in society. In its impatience to surmount the present, this view is mystified by future thereby turning into post-status quo outlook. The rhetorical device of this type of social analysis is the strategic exaggeration of events in order to highlight the mercurial and volatile aspects of reality.
Understatement and exaggeration as rhetorical games are termed strategic because they are not necessarily reflective of the objective tendencies inherent in events but are rather guided by the compelling social visions engendered by pro- and anti-status quo arguments.
There is a consensus between these two types over the methods of evaluating the correctness and authenticity of explanation and demonstration. The test of the sincerity and correctness of an argument is seen to be in the experiential or intellectual proximity its proponent enjoys with the subject matter. Granted, the arguer’s closeness is not always a sign of the correctness or even sincerity of an argument but the dominant streams of social analysis refuse to grant the status of respectability to a critique that refuses to play by the rule of proximity.
The two modes of proximity mutually validated by both the types are, first, the direct lived experience of the subject matter of the analysis, and second, the extended critical involvement with the subject matter sanctioned ultimately by the peer-reviewed study of the subject matter. There can be a third state of nearness consisting in the combination of the experiential and the intellectual proximity but it essentially and safely remains within the confines of the two authoritative ways of conferring prestige on social analysis.
The two types of arguments are hurled at us from the podium, exchanged round the street corner, inculcated in the classroom, and imbibed in the living room. What is interesting to note, however, is that in fulfilling their respective social ambitions both these types, energised by the descriptive-prescriptive path, the unity of logic and rhetoric, and the proximity-based method of valorisation, ignore the meaningful study of the present at their peril. Since the present is analytically ignored, even if it is impossible to physically ignore it, both the mutually combative types of arguments produce the same outcome of making social reality not amenable to the free development of human beings.
The writer is a Senior Policy Analyst working for the OIC’s Standing Committee on Scientific and Technological Cooperation and can be contacted at [email protected].
