Bryant, Christopher G. A. 1944-

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BRYANT, Christopher G. A. 1944-

PERSONAL: Born April 14, 1944, in Epsom, England; son of Gordon and Edna Mollie Bryant; married Elizabeth Peters, February 17, 1967; children: two. Ethnicity: "English." Education: University of Leicester, B.A., M.A.; University of Southampton, Ph.D. Hobbies and other interests: Dining with friends, travel, watching soccer.

ADDRESSES: Office—Dean's Office, Faculty of Arts, Media, and Social Sciences, University of Salford, Salford, Greater Manchester M5 4WT, England; fax: +44-161-295-4128. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: University of Salford, Greater Manchester, England, professor of sociology and dean of Faculty of Arts, Media, and Social Sciences, former director of Institute for Social Research.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

Sociology in Action: A Critique of Selected Conceptions of the Social Role of a Sociologist, Wiley (New York, NY), 1976.

Positivism in Social Theory and Research, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1985.

Practical Sociology: Post-empiricism and the Reconstruction of Theory and Application, Blackwell (Cambridge, MA), 1995.

EDITOR

(With Henk A. Becker) What Has Sociology Achieved?, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1990.

(With David Jary) Giddens' Theory of Structuration: A Critical Appreciation, Routledge (New York, NY), 1991.

(With Edmund Mokrzycki) The New Great Transformation? Change and Continuity in East-Central Europe, Routledge (New York, NY), 1994.

(With Edmund Mokrzycki) Democracy, Civil Society and Pluralism in Comparative Perspective: Poland, Great Britain and the Netherlands, IFiS Publishers (Warsaw, Poland), 1995.

(With David Jary) Anthony Giddens: Critical Assessments, four volumes, Routledge (New York, NY), 1997.

(With David Jary) The Contemporary Giddens: Social Theory in a Globalizing Age, Palgrave (New York, NY), 2001.

SIDELIGHTS: British sociologist Christopher G. A. Bryant has devoted much of his attention over the years to changes within the theory of sociology itself. In his 1985 book, Positivism in Social Theory and Research, he provides "a concise but comprehensive overview of the debates and controversies that the term 'positivism' has inspired," according to Jonathan H. Turner in Social Forces. Positivism, to paraphrase reviewer Stephan Nowak in the American Journal of Sociology, is the theory of social science as empirical science, in which only phenomena—the facts of experience—are relevant, and statements about values are irrelevant. Bryant presents a historical survey of three national traditions in positivist philosophy and sociology: the French, the German, and the American; these surveys were "the real meat," for Turner, of a book that "should be essential reading for those concerned about the problems and prospects of scientific sociology." Nowak, on the other hand, had reservations about Bryant's analysis of American "instrumental positivism," but he asserted that, overall, "one reads Bryant's book with intellectual satisfaction. It is a real pleasure to read a competent, precise, and evenhanded analysis of such a 'hot' issue in contemporary sociology."

Reviewer Russell Hanson, in Contemporary Sociology, declared that Bryant's chapter on American sociology laid out the beginnings of an "important, sweeping indictment of American sociology," but that the requisite evidence for such an indictment was not marshaled. In contrast to Turner, Hanson felt that the treatment of French positivism was cursory rather than concise. Hanson held that the book was too "schematic" to fulfill its purpose of placing positivism in context. However, Hanson added, "In other respects, the point of the book is well taken and well made. Bryant's style is remarkably lean and efficient, and he intelligently covers almost two hundred years of Western sociology in a few [214] pages."

In 1995, Bryant published Practical Sociology: Postempiricism and the Reconstruction of Theory and Application, a book discussing the major change in sociology which reviewer J. Daniel Schubert, in the American Journal of Sociology, called "the linguistic turn." Positivism, although still holding sway in the public imagination and among policymakers, no longer ruled the academy. Instead, linguistically oriented theories such as post-structuralism had supplanted the empiricism of the past, spurning the assumption of a strict dichotomy between the sphere of facts and the sphere of values. Bryant calls the new style of inquiry "postempiricism." Schubert remarked: "For Bryant, postempiricism is a practical sociology that works politically and socially." Such a science, Schubert commented, would be scientific and rational, moral and empowering all at once. Schubert felt, however, that Bryant devoted so much of the 190-page book to a review of existing literature that he shortchanged his own original contributions: "Bryant's strength is also occasionally his weakness."

Offering a similar view was Martin Parker in the Sociological Review, who argued that although Bryant was "the right person for the job" of setting forth a new, practical sociology, this particular book hadn't done the job completely. Parker wished for fuller treatment of the post-structuralists Derrida, Foucault, and Lyotard, as well as for more explanation of "what (if anything) [Bryant] would change about British sociology at the moment in order to make it more 'practical.'" Nevertheless, Parker added: "I find Bryant's aims laudable and his book charming. . . . I do want to stress that this is a nice book to read, knowledgeably written with some excellent sketches of theorists and some bitingly accurate observations."

Bryant has also coedited volumes of essays on various sociological issues. In 1990, he and Henk A. Becker edited What Has Sociology Achieved? Their overall answer—given in fourteen "generally well written and often very enlightening" essays by twelve authors—was "quite optimistic and reasonable," in the view of Ragnvald Kalleberg in Contemporary Sociology.

In 1991, Bryant and David Jary edited Giddens' Theory of Structuration: A Critical Appreciation. Anthony Giddens, founder of structuration theory, and general editor of the "Theoretical Traditions in the Social Sciences" series, which had included Positivism in Social Theory and Research, was one of the more thoroughly discussed voices in contemporary British sociology. Ira J. Cohen argued in Contemporary Sociology: "The Bryant-Jary collection includes exceptionally fresh and provocative—albeit occasionally more speculative than secure—readings of Giddens on structuration theory." Cohen wrote that Bryant, in his own essay among the six in the book, "approaches Giddens more sympathetically than other authors yet still develops one of the most compelling contributions to the volume," Cohen pronounced.

The New Great Transformation? Change and Continuity in East-Central Europe, edited with Polish social scientist Edmund Mokrzycki, deals with a specific regional issue in another part of the world: the changes occurring in Eastern Europe during and after 1989. The book was, for Jozsef Borocz in Contemporary Sociology, "a selection of essays, at various levels of theoretical abstraction and acuity, about the complex, menacing uncertainty in which these societies found themselves a few years after the collapse of state socialism." Although Borocz claimed that the book "radiates a sense of disorientation, uncertainty, or, indeed . . . liminality," he found several of its contributions, including Bryant's, to be, "clearly, high-quality, refreshing readings." Borocz applauded the editors for their recognition of a major limiting factor in Western sociologists' analyses of Eastern Europe. The critic argued: "the study of 'communism' from the outside has always been, to a large extent, an exercise in self-reification and -reinforcement." One of the strengths of the collection, Borocz maintained, is that Bryant and his coeditor were "resigned" enough to be ambivalent about Western sociology's ability to fully understand the changes in Eastern Europe.

Bryant told CA: "I write because my contract as an academic obliges me, among other things, to research and publish. But writing has also always been a challenge and a pleasure. It has been a challenge because, when I started in the late 1960s, social scientists were routinely charged with over-using jargon and writing badly. I did not think there was any need for this, as Robert Merton, the American sociologist, had demonstrated. It was a pleasure because I had excelled at English in school without displaying any talent for creative writing. Now I could treat writing English as a craft and let it serve my career as a social scientist. This it has done ever since. On occasions I have been praised for expressing complex ideas lucidly, even elegantly. Nothing has given me greater pleasure. I am also mindful that, like most Britons, I am not fluent in any other language than English. With over ninety percent of the world literature in sociology in English, this has not mattered too much. I have, however, visited Eastern Europe often, and I know how hard social scientists there have to work to achieve proficiency in English. The very least that English native speakers like me can do for them is take the trouble to write as well as they can."