Review and Prospect

1
Review and Prospect

• When and how did the three classic figures of
  sociology become classics?

2
We have argued that

• The classic figures are Marx, Durkheim, and Weber
• Who stressed class, norms and organization,
  respectively
• Conflict theories focus on positive feedbacks,
  and functional theories on negative feedbacks.

3
Prior to the 1960s many other figures would have
been considered more important.

• Parsons from 1940-1970 made Durkheim and Weber
  central figures.
• The critics of Parsons from 1960-1990 made Marx
  important.
• In Chicago sociology, figures such as Spencer,
  Comte, or Glumpowitz were considered more
  important.

4
Much of Chicago sociology was directed against
Spencer

• Mr. Sociology from the 1840s to the 1930s
• Social Darwinism argued that progress was
  driven by the survival of the fittest.
• Spencer wrote the first books in English on
  sociology, arguing for laissez faire and the
  importance of genetic differences.
• The Chicago sociologists argued that human
  behavior was socially shaped.

5
Liberalism and Social Darwinism

• 19th c. Liberals were not liberal but
  conservative
• They stressed competition and genetic variation,
• and so they opposed labor laws, income tax, and
  social policy generally.
• In the US, Spencer was very popular with the
  robber barons that controlled American education,
  and William Graham Sumner was an exponent
• Charles Murray is a contemporary example

6
Liberalism and Individualism

• Popular explanations of crime, income,
  educational success, addiction, etc. often stress
  individual traits.
• One can always ask why this individual rather
  than that one develops cancer, fails school or
  abuses drugs.
• But such explanations may be useless in
  explaining rates and structures relevant to
  health, education or drug abuse.

7
Positivism

• Saint-Simon and Comte developed a project of a
  social physics.
• Saint-Simon was also one of the founders of
  socialism.
• Their work does not look very scientific today.
• In the US, Ward was a main exponent.

8
NeoKanianism

• A variety of different bodies of thought
  developed Kants ideas that our
  conceptualizations make our knowledge possible.
• Simmel was one form of neoKantian theorist, who
  was most central to the Chicago school.
• And figures such as Mead or W.I.Thomas insisted
  that the ways that people think about reality is
  real in its consequences. (I.e. belief in
  witchcraft creates witches.)
• This became one source of symbolic interactionism

9
Historicism

• Other European theorists developed historical
  description and conceptualization of social
  change.
• Toennies Community and Society was an elaborate
  conceptualization of different kinds of social
  structures.
• Ch. 5 of One World noted that there were many
  analyses of social development that were the
  basis of modern sociology.

10
The Chicago School

• The set of pragmatist and empirical theorists at
  the University of Chicago established a very rich
  tradition of empirical description of slums,
  ethnic and racial groups, gangs, etc.
• Most of them studied in Germany.
• Robert Park promoted empirical studies
  sociologist as (wo)man with clipboard.