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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6042942" data-attributes="member: 42582">I teach a bit of "soft science" - social theory - and I'm not offended by the suggestion that there are methodological distinctions between the "hard" and the "soft" sciences.These two claims push in different directions, but aren't inconsistent as such. Solid conclusions can coincide with gaps, even major gaps. And public ignorance is consistent with solid conclusions whether or not their are gaps (eg the public's general ignorance of special and general relativity).On bullying, I think part of the problem is that bullying is (to a significant extent) a moral phenomenon. A good part of behaviour that is today, in Australia, categorised as bullying (and, by implication, pathological in some fashion), was even 30 years ago (ie in my childhood) accepted as ordinary, tolerable, even desirable (and not only in special contexts such as military discipline).Whatever one thinks of the change in attitude towards that behaviour, it seems to me hard to talk meaningfully about its prevalance and causes without noting and having some regard to those broader social dynamics. I think Durkheim's discussion, in "The Division of Labour in Society", of "the cult of the individual" and the breakdown of resemblance-based solidarity could be helpful. I also think Zygmant Bauman's "Modernity and the Holocaust" could be interesting, and also Foucault's "Discipline and Punish", and both would give rise to questions about the relationship between bullying, the response to bullying, and various ideological structures that might be in play. (On the latter, and particularly in the workplace context, I also think Scott Veitch's "Law and Irresponsibility" could help shed some light.)</blockquote>

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