ABSTRACT
Though it was published in 1979, this essay includes the oldest work in the collection. I first came across role theory while doing courses on social psychology as an undergraduate; and had another dose while doing a PhD on ‘political socialisation’, since a lot of the American literature on this topic presented itself as an analysis of role learning (the ‘citizen role’ and so forth). By the end of that, I felt it was time to get systematically to grips with the underlying theory, so spent part of 1970 sitting in the University of Chicago library reading through Goffman, Mead (who turned out to be massively misrepresented in most of the ‘role’ literature), Sartre and a host of others, and arguing about it with Pam Benton. That argument continued for the next eight years or so, as she worked on ‘sex-role’ ideas in social psychology, welfare and the women’s movement, and I struggled to get clear what was wrong with role notions as social theory. It became more and more obvious that, for all the powerful criticisms that had been made of role concepts, they remained extremely influential. The criticisms were just ignored. I now think that role theory has to be regarded, not as scientific theory at all, but as part of the practical ideology of academic social science. Its significance is mainly in the conservative influence it exerts in the welfare semi-professions and other arenas of that kind. It can’t be destroyed by rational criticism, since role theorists take no account of criticism. But it can, perhaps, be laughed out of court, and displaced by better ways of doing social science.
190The idea of ‘role’ is one of those domesticated concepts that rarely call attention to themselves, but are constantly to be found in the background when you look for them. Role is part of the furniture in the social sciences. Just how much it is taken for granted can be seen in the common response to proffered criticism: surprise, even astonishment, as to why anyone should raise doubts, or what offence could possibly be taken at so helpful and so obvious an idea. No doubt this is why the penetrating criticisms of role theory that appeared in the first half of the decade (Urry, 1970; Coulson, 1972; Pfohl, 1975) have failed either to provoke a theoretical debate, or to dampen the flow of role literature in the journals and applied text-books. Practitioners, it seems, do not take criticism seriously. To them the concept of role is practically unquestionable.
Yet it is questionable, very. In this paper I will try to set out a brief but reasonably systematic case for rejecting ‘role’ as a theoretical paradigm in social science; hoping to provide grounds for understanding its ideological effect as a practical concept.
