Methods to Living Sociology

Abstract

A sociologist as an academic practitioner and an individual are not two separate entities; they are interconnected, united in one. A sociologist, as an individual (or subject, self or agency) operating in the social field and as a social scientist (a teacher), applies the same method of participation, critical engagement, cognition and application (of information and knowledge). Self-objectification and deconstruction are the methods applied in both domains as the individual-sociologist engages critically with everything that he/she comes across and goes through a relentless process of selection, rejection, modification, and deconstruction-reconstruction of the cognitive elements, while making them an integral part of the relative subject that he/she is in a given time and space. The cognitive elements thus construed are then put to practice in actions and non-actions. This deciphers the magic of praxis in social and academic life. The subject or the agency is active with all practical reasoning in encountering and interpreting the bits and pieces of information and given discourses in the process of “subjectivation”. The idea here is to obliterate the conventional distinctions between “subjective” and “objective” fields of knowledge and praxis.