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176 Communication Theory & Research
Thirdly stands the threat of clientism – the definition of our enquiries from
without by those who fund and legislate for research. The transmutation of the
national statutory body which funds academic social science research in Britain
from the ‘Social Science Research Council’ into the ‘Economic and Social
Research Council’ some years ago was but the first warning shot in this battle.
The growth of research funding through government-inspired programmes
rather than to diverse and original researchers, driven by curiosity and invention
rather than application and competence, is one of the most insidious detractors
from sociology’s role as critical story-teller in recent years. [...]
At best sociology becomes part of our common sense. The very linguistic air
we breathe is suffused with sociological understanding. Class, charisma, life-
style and a myriad other terms have drifted into everyday understanding. There
is such a thing as society.
In Manhattan there is a boutique named Gemeinschaft after one of the key
terms in the German sociologist Max Weber’s classic work in social theory. One
waits with bated breath for the opening of the Weltanschauung coffee bar in
central London. But sustaining that intervention into everyday thought must
remain our core task, using reasoned argument and incontrovertible evidence to
argue and challenge the orthodoxies and precepts that rule our lives.
How much more true this is of social research into communications.
Abandonment of that search for the links between systems of communication and
the dynamics of power and inequality which roots media research in the heartland
of social inquiry can only ultimately impoverish and marginalize our labours.

Coda: Story-Telling and Telling Stories

The story I have been trying to tell is in some ways a tragedy. It has been said
that ‘democracy is the precious right of the British not to have to think about
politics’. But the clouds have silver linings. How heartening it was to hear a dis-
tinguished back-bench Member of Parliament, Sir John Stokes, tell a Committee
of Members recently, ‘People never talk about politics in the pubs. But now they
are starting to. I regard that as a sinister sign’.
He may be right. But that culture of dissent, debate and informed citizenship
can only survive if a critical academy stands firm in defence of independent
social research and scholarship. In Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses we are told
that the poet’ s task is ‘to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides,
start arguments, shape the world and stop it going to sleep’ (Rushdie, 1992: 97).
I can think of no better task for the sociologist. 2
In a society riven by growing inequalities, in which large sections of the
population are increasingly being left behind by the denizens of comfortable
Britain, in which reports of racial harassment have soared in the last two years
and the sour stench of racism once again corrodes our culture, in which millions
live those ‘public issues which become private troubles’ – in this society we have
stories to tell. All around us are other tellers of stories and keepers of secrets –
powerful, venal, mendacious and effective. Our task is also to tell stories, and in
doing so we must make the stories we tell telling stories.