Social Theory as a Vocation: Genres of Theory Work in Sociology

431 Pages·2014·1.782 MB·English

by  Donald N. Levine

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ISBN: 978-1-4128-5502-0
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Contents
List of Figures vii
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Prologue: Social Theory as a Vocation xvii
Part I Custodial Theory Work
1 Note on Park, The Crowd and the Public 3
2 Max Weber’s 1908 Note Regarding Simmel 9
3 Review of the Variorum Edition
of Max Weber’s Economy and Society 17
4 Taking the Measure of Auguste Comte 21
5 Émile Durkheim, Univocalist Manqué 27
6 Robert K. Merton On and In Ambivalence 43
7 Revisiting Georg Simmel 55
8 Simmel’s Stranger and His Followers 71
9 Simmel and Parsons Reconstructed 87
Part II Heuristic Theory Work: Internal to the Discipline
10 The Concept of Cultural Integration 107
11 The Organism Metaphor in Sociology 123
12 The Concept of Rationality: From Kant to Weber 143
13 Rationality and Freedom, Weber and Beyond 163
14 P utting Voluntarism Back into a Voluntaristic
Theory of Action 179
15 “ Ambiguity and Modernity”: Engaging a
Serendipitous Problem 197
16 Somatic Elements in Social Conflict 225
17 R econfiguring Ethiopia’s Nationhood
in a Global Era 239
Part III Heuristic Theory Work External to the Discipline
18 S immel as a Resource for Sociological
Metatheory 253
19 Sociology after MacIntyre 271
20 I mages and Assumptions in a Scholarly
Domain: Ethiopian Studies 279
21 M issed Opportunities as a Diagnostic Issue:
Ethiopia, 1960–2005 291
22 A Problem of Collective Identity 313
23 Modernity and Its Endless Discontents 323
24 Crises in Liberal Education 343
Appendixes
A Syllabus: American Sociological Theory, 1900–1980 357
B Syllabus: Perspectives on Modern Social Theory 361
C Syllabus: The Forms and Functions of Social Knowledge 365
D Syllabus: Organizations of the Social Sciences 367
E Organizing a Practicum in Social Theory 369
References 373
Index 395
List of Figures
Figure P1. An Agenda of Theory Work in Sociology xxviii
Figure 8.1. A Typology of Stranger Relationships 80
Figure 8.2. A Paradigm for the Sociology of Strangers 81
Figure 12.1. Objectified Rationality in Three
Institutional Spheres 158
Figure 12.2. The Various Meanings of Rationality
in Weber’s Work 159
Figure 15.1. The Functions of Ambiguous Discourse 214
Figure 15.2. The Functions of Univocal Discourse 214
Figure 17.1. The Ethiopian Diaspora, 1973–2003:
First-Generation Immigrants 245
Figure 21.1. Modernity Revolutions and Their Effects 293
Figure 21.2. Issues and Openings 300
Figure 21.3. Three Factors Leading to Sub-optimal Outcomes 307
Figure 23.1. Conceptions of Modernity: Essential Processes 325
Figure 23.2. The “Revolutions” and the Benefits of Modernity 332
Figure 23.3. The Modern Revolutions and Their
Associated Discontents 332
Figure 23.4. The Hallmarks of Modernity in Action
Theory Terms 337
Figure 24.1. Notions of General Education: 1900–1950 354
vii

Preface
“A course in what? American sociological thought?”
For summer 1996 I was invited to create such a course for a class
of Japanese students coming to the University of Chicago as part of
a master’s program in the humanities. I was taken aback. Didn’t the
authorities know that the social theorists who deserved to be reckoned
as authors of our humanistic classics were Durkheim, Simmel, and
Weber and that, relatedly, most other figures in that list, whom I was
then recovering for The Heritage of Sociology series—figures such as
Max Scheler, Norbert Elias, Maurice Halbwachs, Marcel Mauss, and
Martin Buber—were not Americans?
No matter, they replied. This initiative formed part of an effort
to respond to the interest of the Japanese students in getting bet-
ter acquainted with American culture. To me, conceiving American
sociological theorists as forming a tradition distinctive of American
culture—that was new. I had never taught such a course and doubted
that anyone else had either. Accepting the challenge, I supplemented
my knowledge of mid-nineteenth-century American social theorists
with refresher work on earlier authors. The task was eased by returning
to authors featured by Morris Janowitz when he founded The Heritage
series in the late 1960s—Thomas, Park, Wirth, and others; by my own
turn to American authors to include in The Heritage series (Hughes and
Cooley; Sorokin, Lazarsfeld, and Merton); and by work on some early
American figures in my Visions of the Sociological Tradition (1995).
The curriculum thus assembled seemed plausible to me and of
interest to the students from Japan—sufficiently so that I was invited
to repeat the course in Tokyo in autumn 1997.1 Between those dates,
I chaired the ASA Theory Section, “which prompted me” to reflect on
how, without thinking much about it, I had styled my course: American
Sociological Thought, 1900–1980. It had just seemed natural to make
the cutting-off point of the course a year following the death of Talcott
Parsons. But that date soon came to signify an increasingly problematic
ix