The "Vocation" Redux: A Post-Weberian Perspective from the Sociology of Knowledge

This paper engages the Weberian view on the scholarly vocation from a perspective informed by ‘strong reflexivity’. The reflexivist perspective is grounded in a sociological understanding of knowledge that calls for a coherent reformulation of the relation between the social nature and social function of science, and of the cognitive and axiological posture of scholarship understood as socio-political praxis. Drawing on the sociology of knowledge, the paper argues that Weber’s perspective is untenable conceptually and practically. Strong reflexivity, here illustrated through Standpoint Feminism and Bourdieusian sociology, permits a coherent delineation of the problem of the scholarly vocation, in a way that reconciles the social origins, efficacy, and responsibility of science, and hence allows for a more realist reformulation of the cognitive, social, and moral dilemmas we face as scholars, educators, and citizens.