IV. Major American Theorists
The origins of American sociology
American sociology originates during Reconstruction, following the Civil War. As in Europe, the mid- to late-19th century was a period of intense urbanization, but in the American case, also of immigration, mostly from Europe.
Very rapid flow of ideas from Europe (although translations from German and French were not always available or accurate)
Americans were trained in European universities
1858- course in “Social Problems” at Oberlin College
1873- William Graham Sumner (Herbert Spencer’s American protégé) begins teaching “social science” at Yale
1880s- “sociology” courses begin to appear
1889- first American sociology department, at the University of Kansas
1892- Sociology department founded at the University of Chicage—becomes dominant American department for 30-40 years
Early American sociologists were not nostalgic (compare with Ferdinand Toennies)
They were political liberals, generally unfamiliar with Marx’s writing
They were social progressives; they believed in progress, w/or w/out government action
There was a strong influence of Protestantism: desire to save the world, in this case using science rather than scripture: to “solve social problems” without radically changing society
Compared with Europe, sociology was easily established in American universities, which were newer and rapidly expanding
American sociology was mostly positivist, “scientistic” and pragmatic
Turned away from Weberian interpretive historical approaches, Verstehen
Less theoretical interpretation of long-term changes
More quantitative analysis of short-term changes
Until WWI, Social Darwinism was highly influential
Herbert Spencer (UK) Ã William Graham Sumner (Yale)
The Chicago School
The University of Chicago was dominant in American sociology from roughly 1900-1935-ish
Encouraged a scientific approach to sociology
Robert Park (former journalist, trained in Germany with Simmel)
Initiates tradition of “urban ethnography”
Charles Horton Cooley
George Herbert Mead
Study social psychology, “Symbolic Interactionism” (micro-sociology of identity, subjective experience)
We’ll discuss these more later.
Structural Functionalism
The Chicago School collapses in the 1930s, center of influence in American sociology shifts to Harvard, specifically to Talcott Parsons
Critical of “dust bowl empiricism” of the Chicago School and Midwestern sociology generally—lack of theoretical ambition or imagination, focus on small problems
1937, Parsons publishes “The Structure of Social Action”
(more on him later)
Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore were Parsons’s most famous students (functionalist theory of stratification)
Structural functionalism is dominant in American universities from the 1930s-early 1960s, then falls apart
Rejection of Structural-Functionalism
“Europeanization” of American sociology, renewed interest in Marx, Weber and Durkheim, minus Parsons’s idiosyncratic interpretation of them
1) return of conflict theories
a. neo-Marxisms, e.g. Critical Theory; Feminist theory
2) emergence of cultural theory
a. Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, Michele Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu
b. Social Constructionism (Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann)
c. Post-positivism, Postmodernism, rejection of “scientism”
W.E.B. DuBois (all of ch. 7)
Taught sociology at Atlanta University, although is remembered more as a public intellectual than as an influential theorist
Like Bourdieu and others, DuBois did not distinguish theory from practice
Not a professional academic theorist; someone who wanted to explain and improve the situation of African-Americans (not long after abolition, 50 years before the Civil Rights movement, affirmative action)
DuBois’s mother was a maid, father a barber, preacher, drifter—left the family.
His mother died while he was a boy.
By age 16 he was self-conscious of his race, the “color line,” and class
Four white men paid for his education at Fisk University, in Nashville, Tenn.—an all-black university
Thought that African-Americans should organize together, accept the color line—they should not organize and strive in terms of values of individualism, egalitarianism, or economic participation (e.g. Booker T. Washington and the Tuskegee Institute, a technical institute in Atlanta)
DuBois teaches poor black children in the east Tennessee countryside, goes on to Harvard University.
7th ever African-American student at Harvard; first to complete a PhD there
While studying at Harvard, DuBois traveled to Germany. Was astounded to find himself studying among non-racist whites—including Max Weber, who likes DuBois’s work.
DuBois returns to the U.S., is politically active:
—against racism, colonialism, imperialism
—for communism, socialism
Major ideas
the “race idea”—which he took seriously, accepted without much questioning
the “color line”—relation of the “darker” and “lighter races” across the world (the American Civil War is just one example, not unique)
“double-consciousness” or “two-ness”—the experience of being of African origin and American—a divided identity (prefigures identity politics, sociological interest in identity construction)
“the veil”—metaphor, in which African-Americans and their problems are hidden from white America, and African-Americans have a unique perspective on “White America”
“colortocracy” of light-skinned blacks in the African-American community—excessive pride in their noses, skin color, hair
The “talented tenth” of African-Americans would lead their communities
Writes The Philadelphia Negro (1899), which was commissioned by the University of Pennsylvania as a study of the problems of Philadelphia’s black community. DuBois is ambivalent about this kind of study. It is insulting, patronizing, and probably won’t lead to any real change—on the other hand, he does it, and it makes known the social situation of African-Americans, which would otherwise be hidden.
The Souls of Black Folk (1903) was his major book on race and class. He was the first to write about these issues sociologically and systematically
Political career
Debates with Jamaican Marcus Garvey, who wanted to bring African-Americans back to Africa.
Loses all popularity
Seen as snobbish (which he was), elitist
Proponent of socialism, communism—neither are popular in America
Regains popularity since the 1970s-ish
Post-colonial studies, studies of globalization
Ethnic and racial studies, departments, multiculturalism
e.g. at UNT we have Women’s Studies and Jewish Studies departments, an African-American Studies institute, Mexican-American Studies, and the Study of Sexualities
Establishment of departments of African-American studies, e.g. Harvard has the W.E.B. Dubois Institute for African and African American Research—a famous institute, often in the news, a site of major academic controversies
Henry Louis Gates Jr., Cornel West (left for Princeton)—academic, philosopher, and rapper, he appeared in The Matrix and The Matrix Reloaded
George Herbert Mead (all of ch. 8) 1863-1931
Born in Massachusetts, trained at Harvard and with the psychologist Wilhelm Wundt in Germany.
Was interested in Darwinism and economic theory, as well as psychology and sociology
Upon graduating from Oberlin in 1883, Mead took a grade school teaching job, which, however, lasted only four months. Mead was let go because of the way in which he handled discipline problems: he would simply dismiss uninterested and disruptive students from his class and send them home.
Most famous book: Mind, Self and Society, which was published after his death Sociologist, pragmatist (non-metaphysical) philosopher, and psychologist
Pioneering figure in American sociological social psychology, or micro-sociology
As a psychologist he was opposed to Watson’s positivism and behaviorism—which were based on the idea that the person could only be studied using scientific methods developed for the physical sciences (e.g. B.F. Skinner).
Positivism ignored the self-concept, and the social sources of the self. Thus Mead was a social psychologist.
Humans are unique in that they can take the perspective of other actors towards objects. This is the other. As a child matures, by taking others’ perspectives routinely in daily life, they internalize the generalized other, the amalgamation of all the other people with whom they have meaningful interaction. This is how social influence works, and it enables complex human society and social coordination.
A contrast to this view is behaviorism and rational-choice economics. In both, people respond to their environments by directly calculating what is in their self-interest, and pursuing their chosen goals through the optimal means (see Weber on the forms of rationality). UNT today has a department of behavioral psychology.
For Mead, existence in community comes before individual consciousness. First one must participate in the different social positions within society and only subsequently can one use that experience to take the perspective of others and thus become self-conscious.
Mead writes in Mind, Self and Society that human beings begin their understanding of the social world through “play” and “game.”
"Play" comes first in the child's development. The child takes different roles he/she observes in "adult" society, and plays them out to gain an understanding of the different social roles.
When more mature, the child can participate in the game, for instance the game of baseball. In the game he has to relate to others and understand the rules of the game. Through participating in the "game", he gains the understanding that he has to relate to norms of behaviour in order to be accepted as a player. This is the child's first encounter with “the generalized other.”
There are two phases (or poles) of the self: (1) that phase which reflects the attitude of the generalized other and (2) that phase which responds to the attitude of the generalized other. Here, Mead distinguishes between the "me" and the "I." The "me" is the social self, and the "I" is a response to the "me" (Mind, Self and Society 178).
“The 'I' is the response of the organism to the attitudes of the others; the 'me' is the organized set of attitudes of others which one himself assumes”
Mead defines the "me" as "a conventional, habitual individual," and the "I" as the "novel reply" of the individual to the generalized other (Mind, Self and Society 197).
The "me" is the internalization of roles which derive from such symbolic processes as linguistic interaction, playing, and gaming; whereas the "I" is a "creative response" to the symbolized structures of the "me" (i.e., to the generalized other).
Political Utopianism
For Mead, the human social ideal . . . is the attainment of a universal human society in which all human individuals would possess a perfected social intelligence, such that all social meanings would each be similarly reflected in their respective individual consciousnesses — such that the meanings of any one individual's acts or gestures (as realized by him and expressed in the structure of his self, through his ability to take the social attitudes of other individuals toward himself and toward their common social ends or purposes) would be the same for any other individual whatever who responded to them(Mind, Self and Society 310).
Supporter of the League of Nations
Talcott Parsons
1937, “The Structure of Social Action”
Discusses Weber, Durkheim, Pareto
In so doing, introduces theory as a legitimate area within American sociology
His translation of Weber, and his interpretation of all 3, are now seen as biased
He suggested that all three were building to his Structural Functionalism
He was concerned with “macro” sociology, with the relations among large-scale social structures and institutions
His emphasis was on order, dynamic equilibrium (as in functionalist approaches generally)
- Social System
- Cultural System
- Personality System
Social change is orderly, evolutionary
C. Wright Mills – Radical Sociology in America
Born in Waco, TX in 1916, conventional middle-class background
PhD at the University of Wisconsin, spends most of his career at Columbia University
Dies of his fourth heart attack at age 45, 3 marriages with one child from each, many affairs
Outsider in many ways, had trouble with his professional relationships as well
He was at odds with American society
Challenged Talcott Parsons (Structural Functionalist), but also Paul Lazarsfeld (rememberd for his contributions to sociological methodology)
Ideas
Marx was either reviled or ignored in American sociology, although there were exceptions, and C. Wright Mills was one of the most notable
Not a sophisticated Marxist, not very familiar with Marx’s ideas
He was a rare American “radical sociologist” though, meaning he was a
Class theorist, a power theorist
“White Collar” – analyzed the new occupational category of white-collar workers
“The Power Elite” – showed how America was dominated by a small group of white male businessmen, politicians, and military leaders—in spite of American conceits of pluralism and democracy, of a balance of competing interests
This is a “political economy” that Mills refers to as the “triangle of power”
Power in the United States had once been decentralized, spread among the states with a weak federal center
Since WWII, business and government have become increasingly unified—think of Eisenhower’s warning about the “military-industrial complex”
The men of the power elite come from similar social and educational backgrounds, similar careers and styles of life
These men move easily between the three points of the triangle
Mills argued that competing interests and competition only occurred among members of the middle class, and middle-sized enterprises (e.g. labor unions and political parties—these change, but the structure of power and privilege does not).
At the “commanding heights” of the economy, military, and government, there is unity and class self-interest.
Social revolts against this system—the agrarian revolt of the 1890s, the small-business revolt since the 1880s, the labor revolt of the 1930s—have all failed to change anything (also the Reagan revolution in the 1980s, the Republican Revolution in the 1990s, Clinton’s “reinventing government” in the 1990s)
Mills argues that intellectuals need to openly discuss and debate the structures of power in American society.
Separation of the civil service from corporate interests.
Free associations of communities, families, smaller groups should be able to influence the national political economy.
“The Sociological Imagination” (1959) (damning critique of Parsons)
Robert Merton
Robert King Merton (July 4, 1910 – February 23, 2003, born Meyer R. Schkolnick to immigrant parents)
He spent most of his career teaching at Columbia University
"self-fulfilling prophecy."
"role model"
Revised Parsonian functionalism, retaining an interest in the integrative functions of social institutions, and, with Durkheim, Weber, and Parsons, a focus on the integrative role of normative values in social life.
Merton parts ways with Parsons in his analysis of the dysfunctions of social systems, for example in his discussion of:
For Merton, manifest functions and dysfunctions are conscious and deliberate, the latent ones the unconscious and unintended.
The manifest function of a rain dance, is to produce rainhttp://www.angelfire.com/or/sociologyshop/manlat.html
The rain dance’s latent function is to produce social integration.
Berger, 1963: "...the “manifest” function of antigambling legislation may be to suppress gambling, its “latent” function to create an illegal empire for the gambling syndicates.
Or the control of the Communist Party over all sectors of social life in Russia “manifestly” was to assure the continued dominance of the revolutionary ethos, “latently” created a new class of comfortable bureaucrats uncannily bourgeois in its aspirations.
Or the “manifest” function of many voluntary associations in America is sociability and public service, the “latent” function to attach status indices to those permitted to belong to such associations.” "
The manifest function of bureaucracy (Weber’s rational-legal authority) is to produce efficient outcomes. But bureaucracy has "unintended consequences,” dysfunctions and latent functions. Merton discusses the “bureaucratic personality” as an example.
Bureaucrats who work in the same role for long periods of time become mentally inflexible, they cling to routines that may no longer be functional, and they treat customers badly because they come to feel that they know all that can be known within their small area. At home they treat their families as they treat their customers and coworkers at the office (e.g. schoolteachers treating adults as children)
Merton also developed theories of deviance and a sophisticated sociology of science. He emphasized normative values and culture, and manifest and latent functions, in this work.
Merton advocated “middle-range theory” – smaller theoretical ideas that would allow broader theoretical frameworks (Marxist, Weberian, Durkheimian, Parsonian, etc.) to be challenged and tested
Combined broad [European-ish] theory and historical knowledge with an attention to empirical detail and verification
In this way he was a forerunner of contemporary sociology. Modern sociologists almost never create theories ex nihilo. So, in some ways “theory” ceases to exist as a separate sphere within sociology after the 1960s. Since Parsons, there has been almost no one who can be considered a major theorist per se.
5) Social Constructionism
Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, “The Social Construction of Reality”
In the 1960s, SC provided a radical new alternative to Functionalism and Conflict Sociology
Part of the turn to cultural theory. SCism has been influential well beyond sociology, particularly in studies of science.
B&L develop a sociology of knowledge, a way of thinking about how we know things, about common sense knowledge (“recipe” knowledge), not intellectual knowledge per se.
How do we know that the earth revolves around the sun? That today is Thursday? How do we know how to behave in different situations? How do we know ourselves?
Their approach is that of phenomenology, or thinking about the experience of existing, of consciousness, empirically although not scientifically, through reflection, introspection, and description.
They are perspectivists: knowledge is always knowledge from a certain social position.
For B&L, human nature is “world-openness”: people are born into the world unformed, unlike other animals.
Humans have no “species-specific environment.”
Human instincts (“drives”) are unspecialized and underspecified: we have to be taught almost everything we need to survive.
Humans have immense plasticity: we can be formed into all different types, unlike other animals. E.g. sexuality is treated very differently in different cultures. What is attractive to one person or a member of one culture is repulsive to another.
We need “culture” to survive, and culture is a product of society and history.
Society and culture are not imposed on people, as Marx or Parsons might have it.. They result from human actions through several processes:
Habitualization – psychological gain of reducing alternatives to action, by making action habitual; human nature to need this
Institutionalization – as habitualization occurs among groups, action become institutionalized – it becomes official, dogmatic, and historically long-lasting – e.g. the incest taboo, institutions of marriage, living arrangements, hierarchies, identities (student, teacher, father, mother, worker)
Culture is a result of processes of historical sedimentation, of ideas and habits and recipe knowledge layered on top of one another over historical time and within individual minds.
Language is a depository of historical sedimentations. Language gives ontological status to semi-arbitrary historical reifications: e.g. social categories like Black, Jew, Asian-American, English, French.
Ideas of social functions are intellectual abstractions attached to institutions ex post facto. E.g. gender, inequality, organizations.
Language and culture create a protective “universe” of cultural meanings that shield the individual from the terror of being alone and mortal.
Mythology, theology, philosophy, and science provide “conceptual machinery” that allows for universe-maintenance.
Internalization of the cultural universe
Through primary socialization of the child as a member of a society. Mostly through identification with the parents, and through language.
Internalization of the “generalized other” (Mead)
Secondary socialization into a specific segment of society (worker, student, mother). Role-specific vocabularies.
6) Feminist Theory
Feminism has a long and rich history in the United States, from the Victorian era in the late 19th century, in cities, to the feminist movement of the 1960s and 70s, to debates over affirmative action and women’s rights today.
A. Gender Inequality
In the 19th century, women were legally analogous to children
Today, worldwide, women are ½ the population but own a small fraction of the world’s land and property, make a fraction of the income of men, they are limited in terms of their educational and career opportunities, denied legal rights (such as voting rights), and suffer from spouse abuse and other forms of abuse
B. Women and Sociological Theory
As sociology developed, women naturally became interested in trying to explain gender inequality (just as Marx wanted to explain class inequality, and DuBois the “color line”)
Women, however, were generally denied opportunities for higher education, and certainly for careers in academia
C. Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935)
From a prominent New England family, difficult childhood—father left, moved around
Deeply depressed after her marriage and the birth of her daughter. Divorced husband, gave her blessing to his remarry her close friend and raise her daughter.
Gilman’s depression lifted when she was able to work, unencumbered by family responsibilities.
Gave lectures around the U.S.
Secured her reputation in feminist circles when she published Women and Economics (1898)
Advocated women’s economic independence from men
Public day care
Cooperative kitchens
Wanted peaceful socialism
Argued that the nuclear family was dysfunctional for women. It was more natural for “women’s work” (cooking, cleaning, childrearing) to be done communally, as was the case in most human societies, rather than alone and isolated in the home.
The traditional family structure is inherently exploitative—women work, but are not paid.
Gender inequality is a product of socialization in the family, not inherent biological differences.
Girls and boys learn their gender (not sex) by dressing differently, being praised and scolded for different things.
And yet, she thought that men and women were innately different. Because of evolution, women are antiselfish, they want to love, to nurture. Men are competitive, want to fight, take control.
There were racist sections of her writings, and she seemed to be speaking mainly for white women. She was against slavery and the oppression of African-Americans, and genocide and oppression of Native Americans, though.
D. Contemporary Feminist Theory
Gilman’s feminist theory is almost common sense to many sociologists today, aside from the racist parts.
Feminist theory today has taken a “postmodern” turn:
Feminism against sociology: some feminist theorists are highly critical of sociology because of its male-centeredness, blindness to women
Feminism against science: view of science as a masculine, dominating enterprise
Feminism against globalization and neo-liberalism (more expressly political): the structure of the world economic system is inherently exploitative of women: e.g. sex slaves, wage inequality, poor health care and day care for immigrant working women
