Journal of Classical Sociology

http://jcs.sagepub.com Introduction - The Fragmentation of Sociology

Journal of Classical Sociology 2001; 1; 5 DOI: 10.1177/14687950122232431 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jcs.sagepub.com

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Journal of Classical Sociology

Copyright 2001 SAGE Publications London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi Vol 1(1): 512 [1468795X(200105)1:1;512;019797]

Introduction The Fragmentation of Sociology

In the second half of the 20th century, there was a rapid expansion of journals dealing with sociology and social theory. This development in the eld of academic social science publications was an effect of the growth of sociology as part of the undergraduate university curriculum, but more importantly a consequence of sub-disciplinary specialization and disciplinary fragmentation. At the same time, there has been a signicant growth of interdisciplinary activity (cultural studies, gender studies, lm studies, international relations, communications and media, and queer theory). Many versions of academic collaboration in teaching and research (multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity) became popular in the curricula of universities. The result of this growth has had one peculiar consequence, namely the defence of specic disciplinary traditions and objectives has been strangely neglected. While the hinterland has proliferated, the heartland has been lost to view. In fact, disciplinarity is often treated as an intellectual weakness, as mental narrowness and as a lack of vision. Interdisciplinarity often conveniently forgets that disciplinarity (in teaching and research) is logically a necessary precondition for interdisciplinary activity. Interdisciplinarity in practice often means lack of intellectual rigour and absence of educational progression through a system of study. There appears to be no forum in the mainstream journals for the specic study of classical sociology, despite the relevance of the study of the classics for the survival and continuity of the social sciences. National journals, of which there are a great number, do of course publish work on classical sociology texts and traditions. But the sociological project has never been exclusively dened by a national intellectual tradition. Early journals of sociology were typically international, for example in their reviewing policies. The defence and promotion of sociology can be effectively undertaken through the Journal of Classical Sociology, which is committed to the exploration and articulation of its intellectual roots and traditions. The Journal of Classical Sociology can provide an important intellectual bridge between European and American traditions, while also being determined to publish contributions that support the global development of sociology. In the 20th century, academic sociology was fragmented by various theoretical traditions and a variety of methodological practices. It was also

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fractured by numerous ideological battles and diverse national perspectives. The discipline of sociology has often been strangely lacking in any sense of cumulative theory or research ndings. The MarxWeber debate was a classic illustration of the divisions and conicts within sociology, especially during the period of the Cold War. It appeared to lack any real sense of progression, accumulation or nality. In Europe, where Marxism as a social philosophy remained a robust alternative to sociology, criticism of Weber from the standpoint of Althusserian Marxism had to create a caricature of Weberian sociology as a misdirected science of action. Ironically, the post-communist period now makes the re-reading of Marx once more a productive possibility. While the 20th century was a divisive and contested period, it was also the case that it developed a recognizable canon of classical sociology (Turner, 1999).

The Possibility of a Canon

The orthodox canon has been constituted by specic ways of doing sociological theory, various modes of collecting evidence and various forms of analysis. A canon, however uncertain and contested, has been important as a common platform in the study of sociology, as a framework for teaching sociology students and as one component in building a common research purpose. It provides the conditions for a reexive and cumulative approach to empirical research and empirical investigation study. The canon came typically to include a number of social theorists (Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Mannheim, Simmel and Parsons), a set of core topics (capitalism, social class, ideology, legitimation, institutions, culture, social structure and social conict) and a range of methodologies (ethnography, survey methods, participant observation, oral history and historical techniques). A commitment to defending classical sociology is important if contemporary sociology is to ourish without destructive fragmentation and dispersal (Levine, 1995). The notion of a canon implies the possibility of an orthodox sociological tradition or even a professional code of practice, but sociological orthodoxy has been seriously under attack (by feminism, postmodernism, queer theory, the techniques of literary deconstruction, critical theory, rhetorical analysis, textual critique, postcolonial theory and so forth). In fact, the contents of the canon were always open to criticism, because the notion of a crisis in sociology has been a persistent theme in sociology (Gouldner, 1971). At the beginning of the millennium, there is perhaps a more basic question: is there anything of the canon still in place? The Journal of Classical Sociology is based on the recognition that the sociological canon is highly contested, but it also assumes that the debate is signicant and that canonical authority is important if sociology is to survive as a convincing intellectual practice and as a distinctive discipline. A canon does not have to be an exclusionary professional hurdle; it is rather a eld for debate and analysis, the consequence of which is to nurture a specic disciplinary activity. What constitutes the canon is something that the Journal of Classical Sociology will

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help to shape and dene, but the precise features of that canon must remain uid. The canon is an evolutionary project or intellectual ambition, whose specic contours and contents must remain open to debate. The purpose of a defence of classical sociology is not to achieve a set of professional pronouncements to secure the infallibility of the canon. Our purpose is to secure a hinterland for disciplinary discussion, teaching and research. To continue with the metaphors of continents and maps, classical sociology is a journey rather than a destination.

What is Classical Sociology?

The possibility of any academic canon has become deeply political, in part as a consequence of the impact of literary deconstruction and postmodernism on the English canon (Bloom, 1994). The defence of a canon has become associated with opposition to the dumbing down of academic study, especially in the humanities and social sciences. The very idea of a canon has become politicized. In the context of taken-for-granted relativism, many sociologists would presumably have considerable difculty with the idea of canonical sociology. We know that claims about orthodoxy can often function as a form of social closure to exclude categories of persons rather than to encourage academic excellence. How did it manage until recently to exclude the work of W.E.B. DuBois (Katz and Sugrue, 1998) or Mirra Komarovsky (Reinharz, 1989)? A constructive canon of sociology should have the normative goal of nurturing the sociological imagination rather than functioning as a narrow principle of professional exclusion. What is classical sociology? In part, it embraces the foundational theories and paradigms that constituted sociology in the decades from 1890 to 1920 (Morrison, 1995). In this period, sociology was constructed in the academy around a set of problems that were the legacy of social and political change that can be dated to the French Revolution. Sociology is the study of social institutions that are shaped by the dialectical tension between solidarity and scarcity. It has been classically concerned with the nature of social order, and with the destructive impact of capitalist markets. It has addressed the tensions between liberal democracy and the inequalities of social stratication. It has been concerned to understand the rituals that sustain a common culture. It has been fascinated by the civilities that make everyday social life possible. The term sociology was used in the correspondence of Auguste Comte in 1824 and was employed more fully in his Positive Philosophy of 1838. As the etymology of the word (socius) suggests, it became the study of the roots of sociality. Later theories of reciprocity, social exchange, consensus, networks, groups, associations, social bonds and communities follow from this primary concern with the conditions for and nature of the social. But why start with the French Revolution? In Talcott Parsonss The Structure of Social Action (1937), the problem of the social starts with the attempt by writers like Thomas Hobbes to frame an account of the relationship between civil society and the state. The so-called Hobbesian problem of order was taken by

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Parsons to be constitutive of the sociological critique of utilitarianism that preoccupied Weber, Durkheim, Simmel and Pareto. Another alternative is to locate the origins of classical sociology with Michel de Montaignes reections on the nature of human violence and the problem of agreement in a civilized society divided by religious differences. Montaignes essays provide a model of writing about the social as a self-reexive activity (ONeill, 1982). For other sociologists, the sociological imagination is coterminous with the processes of modernization itself, such that sociology is the self-reexivity of the modern. In our view, these difculties of providing a precise date for the founding of the sociological tradition indicate that such specic questions about origins and periodization may be inappropriate. Acceptance of the canonical status of a particular period in the history of sociology may achieve a premature closure. By contrast, the Journal of Classical Sociology will attempt to present the view that sociology is an evolving rather than static tradition. It should not attempt to canonize a particular period, but rather focus on how the notion of the social emerged and developed under different sets of conditions. It follows that the use of the denite article in the notion of the classics is also misleading, since we should be attentive to the idea of different traditions and seek to nurture classical sociologies. There are clearly profound differences between North American and European traditions and approaches. The differences between for example C. Wright Mills and Norbert Elias are perfectly obvious. While recognizing this diversity in the evolution of classical sociology, there is a recognizable sociological vision. Both Wright Mills and Elias had a denite sociological imagination, regarded themselves as sociologists, embraced a common understanding of social process and shared some common tastes and dislikes including a hostility to Parsonian functionalism. Both men were hostile to the grand theories of structural functionalism. Eliass emphasis on understanding process in social life and his attention to state formation and the growth of class-based taste are not incompatible with Wright Millss focus on the American class structure and the social production of elites. In every other respect, their orientations were wholly different (Mills and Mills, 2000).

Constructing a Tradition
The Journal of Classical Sociology will consider the various modes of doing (writing and reading) sociological theory, the national and international forms within which sociology evolved, and the nature of cross-disciplinarity (between, for example, economics, history, psychoanalysis, literature, geography, politics, anthropology and sociology). Clearly sociology did not emerge in a vacuum, and it was specically shaped by a debate with orthodox economics. The work of early sociologists was an attempt to understand the non-rational components of economic action and to show that the utilitarian paradigm of action had serious limitations. Sociology as a result took a determined position on the importance of

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culture as a topic of scientic inquiry. It is difcult therefore to understand the rise of sociology without a grasp of the importance of both social anthropology and psychoanalysis. Both Sigmund Freud and Bronislaw Malinowski are critical to the evolution of classical sociology. In more specic terms, it is assumed that contributions to the Journal would include discussions of cultural theory, social anthropology and sociological theory. It will explore the interface between sociology and psychoanalysis in terms of theories of subjects and agents, agency and structure, identities and subjectivities. Anthropology raised specic problems about the scientic method through the development of eldwork and ethnography. The tensions between a natural science model of explanation versus normative and hermeneutic approaches to social phenomena will shape debate within the Journal. The study of classical sociology will necessarily include the analysis of academic institutions within which sociology is located, namely universities, research institutes and centres, including the growth of the profession of sociology itself. The institutionalization of sociology as a form of knowledge and the conditions for its reproduction are crucial sociological topics in their own right. The study of sociology requires the sociology of knowledge, if it is to achieve critical self-assessment. There is the pessimistic point of view that sociology ourished in the 1960s as part of social movements against authoritarianism, and that it is difcult for sociology to sustain its position in the universities without adopting a politically conservative standpoint. The professionalization of sociology means that, with the commercial development of the university as a component of corporate research interests, a critical vision of society will be suppressed, or at least marginalized. The corporate invasion of the university means that sociology can only survive as an aspect of policy sciences (Agger, 2000). These challenges to sociology suggest to us that the maintenance of a robust tradition of classical sociology is an important precondition for the survival of the discipline. We also need to consider how the teaching of sociology will be transformed by globalization and the spread of information technology. Will the website become the future kernel of research activity and with what consequences?

Sociology versus Social Theory

We take the view that in recent years the preference for social theory has in fact diluted the intellectual vitality and force of sociological theory. One might take the charitable view that social theory is simply parallel to political theory. It is intended to avoid the narrow idea of science based on the natural sciences in order to embrace forms of social philosophy and normative debate (ONeill, 1972). It also wants to be expansive to include for example aspects of theological discussion into the arena of social reection. Such a view of the province of social theory is indeed attractive and laudable. Unfortunately, there is a negative side to the

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growth of social theory. The promotion of social theory has often been a publishing strategy to situate theory books in a larger and more effective market strategy. However, this strategy may have little intellectual value for sociology. Social theory becomes a ragbag for almost any set of observations on modern society. There is no sense of an effective distinction between opinion and theory. Social theory has as a result become almost identical with cultural theory. There has been a tendency for cultural theory to re-orient sociology away from the study of specically social institutions to a vague reection on cultural phenomena from chocolate bars to Bachs concertos. In the contemporary context of interdisciplinarity in cultural studies, there is an important disciplinary need to defend the authenticity of sociological theory (Rojek and Turner, 2000). This sociological project includes the study of major institutions as the determining contexts of micro-cultural behaviour. Our approach to sociological theory is to avoid writing sociological theory as simply a history of ideas, or treating theory as merely a list of substantive areas (such as theories of the family, or theories in the sociology of work), or suggesting that sociological theory is only an exegesis of conventional texts. This was not the practice in any of the texts that we regard as classics of sociology. While studies of individual sociologists are perfectly legitimate and important activities, we do not interpret classical sociology as involving simply a respectful study of a phalanx of great names. The Journal of Classical Sociology will consider how classical sociological theory is produced, how it relates to other forms of theoretical work (in economics and politics for example), where classical sociological theory has been constructed, and under what intellectual and social conditions, and how canonical theory is contested. Reexivity about how sociology gets done is an important prerequisite to the development of a critical canon that can provide some shared assumptions about what constitutes good work, namely what are the criteria of scholarly excellence that can drive the discipline. How do we discipline sociology? Another underlying assumption is that sociological theory has to have some creative relationship to sociological practice, namely with empirical research. The sociological tradition has thrived when research and theory have been mutually supportive. Marxs engagement with the conditions that produce working-class radicalism, Durkheims employment of suicide statistics, Webers research on east Elbian labour relations or Tonniess attempt to engage with the emergence of public opinion were empirical research interests that drove their theoretical activities. Current trends in pedagogy unfortunately keep theory and methods apart, and most American sociology departments have adopted the idea of a theory chair, as if adequate sociological theory could ever be divorced from social research, specically empirical research. Our notion of canonical sociology specically includes an engagement with the history of sociological methods, and the relationship between methods and theory. Equally it is difcult to see how sociology could remain a relevant or vital discipline without specic interests

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in political institutions and the structure of power relations. The separation of sociology and politics in many university faculties is detrimental to both disciplines. Sociology is inevitably a mode of writing about ideas, about societies and their cultures. The Journal of Classical Sociology provides an opportunity for probing and scrutinizing the textuality of sociology and its claims to speak authoritatively about social institutions. The Journal of Classical Sociology welcomes and encourages close textual readings and interpretations of classical works. There has been, because the undergraduate market requires it, a tendency for sociologists to provide glossaries, summaries and overviews of sociology, rather than focused study of specic sociological texts. There is a craft of textual analysis that we seek to encourage that involves serious respect for the specic mechanisms of argumentation that in turn depend on style and rhetoric. Bland surveys of sociological trends do not produce advances in sociological theory. Models of textual criticism would include Charles Taylors reading of Hegel (Taylor, 1975), Wilhelm Henniss studies of Webers concepts of personality and life orders (Hennis, 1988) or Steven Lukess classic study of Durkheim (Lukes, 1972). The Journal will contribute to the renaissance of sociology and challenge the fragmentation of sociological theory through attention to how sociological theory is produced. It wants to recover the historical, analytic and textual practices that make classical sociology a distinctive enterprise.

Conclusion: Voice and Tradition

Sociology has been characteristically a critical vision of society. A critical vision should not be confused with a socialist critique of the problems of industrial capitalism. There was clearly an important association between socialism and the work of St Simon and Durkheim in France; it also included the critical voices of Wright Mills and Alvin Gouldner. But romanticism and conservatism also produced a radical critic of industrial society. The Journal of Classical Sociology makes the assumption that sociological theory is necessarily critical theory, but that critical vision can come from a variety of ideological positions. Because sociology is critical, the idea of a classical sociology may be provocative. It is clear, as we have indicated, that an exclusionary canon has served to marginalize a variety of voices; women and black intellectuals were underrepresented or simply not represented in the traditional formulation of classical sociology. The question of gender and classical sociology is an issue that we wish to explore systematically (McDonald, 1997). The Journal of Classical Sociology will seek out critical articles on classical sociology from a variety of perspectives feminism, postcolonial theory, subaltern studies and postmodernism. It does not exist to defend a bland rehearsal of the legacy of sociology, but to ask by contrast: what is valid and vital in the sociological tradition today? The classical sociological tradition is a living body of social knowledge, which the Journal will explore and

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develop. Indeed we recognize a variety of sociological traditions across a range of societies and cultures. The Journal of Classical Sociology welcomes manuscripts that fall within its manifesto. We undertake to provide prompt critical assessments by our reviewers to assist authors publication of their work in accordance with peer standards of excellence.

References
Agger, B. (2000) Public Sociology: From Social Facts to Literary Acts. Boston, MA: Rowman & Littleeld. Bloom, A. (1994) The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. New York: Harcourt Brace. Gouldner, A.W. (1971) The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology. London: Heinemann. Hennis, W. (1988) Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction. London: Allen & Unwin. Katz, M.B. and T.J. Sugrue (eds) (1998) W.E. DuBois, Race and the City. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Levine, D.N. (1995) Visions of the Sociological Tradition. Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press. Lukes, S. (1972) Emile Durkheim, His Life and Work: A Historical and Critical Study. London: Allen & Unwin. McDonald, L. (1997) Classical Social Theory with the Women Founders Included, pp. 11241 in C. Camic (ed.) Reclaiming the Sociological Classics: The State of Scholarship. Oxford: Blackwell. Mills, K. and P. Mills (2000) C. Wright Mills: Letters and Autobiographical Writings. Berkeley: University of California Press. Morrison, K. (1995) Marx, Durkheim, Weber: Formations of Modern Social Thought. London: Sage. ONeill, J. (1972) Sociology as a Skin Trade: Essays towards a Reexive Sociology. London: Heinemann. ONeill, J. (1982) Essaying Montaigne: A Study of the Renaissance Institution of Writing and Reading. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Parsons, T. (1937) The Structure of Social Action. New York: McGraw-Hill. Reinharz, S. (1989) Finding a Sociological Voice: The Work of Mirra Komarovsky, Sociological Inquiry 59(4):37495. Rojek, C. and B.S. Turner (2000) Decorative Sociology: Towards a Critique of the Cultural Turn, Sociological Review 48(4): 62948. Taylor, C. (1975) Hegel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Turner, B.S. (1999) Classical Sociology. London: Sage.

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