Sociologist Abroad

196 Pages·1959·6.29 MB·English

by  George Simpson (auth.)

SOCIOLOGIST ABROAD
SOCIOLOGIST ABROAD
by
GEORGE SIMPSON
Brooklyn College
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
1959
©Springer Science+ Business Media Dordrecht 1959
Originally published by Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands in 1959
Softcover reprint oft he hardcover 1st edition 1959
All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to
reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form.
ISBN 978-94-017-5685-3 ISBN 978-94-017-5994-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-5994-6
FOREWORD
This book contains the substance of a series of lectures to students
that I gave at the university of Leiden in the Netherlands during
the academic year 1958-59 when I was visiting professor there in the
Sociological Institute under the Fulbright program of the United
States. Some of the material on methodology I also used in lectures
in early April 1959 at the university of Copenhagen under the aus
pices ofits Psychological Laboratory, a visit made possible under the
interfoundation Fulbright program.
In going over the material for publication I have been struck
by its being something of a personal confession. Like all personal
confessions it contains some despair concerning those who do not
see things as I do.
Faced with the choice of formalizing the material for publication
or leaving it in the familiar style in which it was delivered, I have
chosen the latter alternative. At the end I saw that all of it rep
resented a striving for a systematic position I seem to be working
towards. The general subject of the lectures was "Issues in American
Sociology" and I found that the issues that concerned me involved
methodology as well as substance and policy. Sometimes the issues
considered here are merely methodological, sometimes merely
substantive, sometimes merely policy; at other times they are com
pounded of these elements. Since I was promenading through
sociology where I wished and as I wished on European soil, I have
given them the title Sociologist Abroad. Their informality has led me
to avoid footnotes and bibliographical references even for some of
the quotations.
It is difficult to put into words my gratitude to the university
of Leiden, to its Sociological Institute, and to the Leiden students
for their many kindnesses and the cordiality extended to me. I
think that the faculty, staff, and students know how I feel. And I
think I was able to communicate to the people at the university
of Copenhagen how much I enjoyed my visit with them in that
captivating city.
George Simpson
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword
1. The Development of American Sociology
I. Introductory Remarks
2. Some Factors Encouraging the Early Development of American
Sociology 2
3. The Founding Period 8
4. Expansion and Research 11
5. Full Acceptance and Internal Disputes 17
6. The Immediate Past 22
2. Some Methodological Issues in American Sociology
7. Sociology: Natural or Humanistic Science? 27
8. Psychological Presuppositions 30
9. Operational Definitions 33
10. Some Comments On Interviewing 37
II. Statistical Analysis versus Case-Study 41
12. Measurement of Attitudes 45
13. Scaling and Scalograms 49
14. The Place of Experiment 54
15. Prediction in Sociology 58
16. L'envoi on Methodology 62
3. The Fields of Sociology : Capita Selecta
17. Single Discipline or Separate Disciplines? Collective Behavior or
Individual Behavior? 65
18. Non-Social Factors: Geography; Race; Biology; Population 71
19. Socialization: Modal Personality and Rorschach Testing 80
20. Sanctioned Behavior: Causes of Juvenile Delinquency 89
21. Social Structure: Role Conflict; Primary Groups; Bureaucrati-
zation; Urban Life 103
22. Social Processes: Assimilation 114
23. Ideological Sociology: News; Mass Communications; Leader-
ship; Public Opinion and Propaganda 126
24. Thought-Systems: Religious Sociology and Functionalism; Psycho-
analysis and Religion; The Contemporary Religious Revival 141
4. The Sociologist: His Values, His Role, His Philosophical Orientation
25. Values and the Sociologist 157
26. The Role of the Sociologist in Modern Society 168
27. Philosophy and Sociology 177
Index of Names 187
To the university of Leiden, its Sociological In
stitute, the director of that institute, Professor
F. van Heek, its faculty and staff, and the sociolo
gy students at Leiden, in gratitude for an un
forgettable year.
I
THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN SOCIOLOGY
1. Introductory Remarks
pRIVATELY and also before a smaller group I have already ex-
pressed my delight at being here at Leiden. Now I am able to do so
before a larger public. Every American professor, deep down, longs
to ascend the rostrum of a lecture-hall at a great European uni
versity and discourse on his subject-matter. In that way he feels he
has arrived and is at one with the great European tradition of
learning from which American higher education sprang. To be sure,
on the other hand, there are some few American scholars who seem
to believe today that they are bringing the gospel from America but
even they know in their heart of hearts that we Americans are all
. Europeans and that when we feel superior it is only in the role of
the prodigal son. I thank you, therefore, for this oppportunity to
come home again. In my case it is particularly a homecoming since
I was born in a town originally called Breukelen and have lived a
good part of my life in what used to be Nieuw Amsterdam. My
earliest memories of history-lessons concern Peter Minuit and Peter
Stuyvesant. And here I am in the days when $24. gets you nowhere,
certainly not in possession of Manhattan Island.
In discussions with Professor van Reek and the members of the staff
of the Sociological Institute here at Leiden it was agreed that I
should concentrate in this series of lectures on the general topic:
lssues,in American Sociology. I mean to discuss these issues in no
1
AMERICAN SOCIOLOGY: ITS DEVELOPMENT
dispassionate style; for twenty-five years and more I have myself
been embroiled in them and I do not believe in disengagement at
this late date. In fact, you may even come to believe after a time
that some of the issues are of my own making but that is because
I may identify myself strongly with one side of them. Under the
general topic of Issues in American Sociology I should like to dis
cuss here: 1. The Development of American Sociology; 2. Method
ological Problems; 3. The Main Fields ofSociology; 4. Values and
the Sociologist, the Role of the Sociologist in modern Society, and
the Relation of Philosophy to Sociology.
2. Some Factors Enco~raging the Early Development of American Sociology
If a space man were to have predicted one hundred years ago - say
in 1858 - from a quick social survey of the western world where
sociology would find its greatest area for operations, he would
probably have placed the United States last on his list. With no
great tradition of higher learning and university life there, he could
hardly have expected the developments of the many state universi
ties, particularly in the West. What long entrenched university life
there was then along the eastern seaboard in what is now known as
the Ivy League was dominated by theologians and classicists. The
vast hinterland west of the Mississippi was swarming with Indian
tribes whose extinction in westward expansion has given the moving
pictures its films oflast resort. The metal ore deposits of the Mesabi
and of the Mountain states had not yet been discovered and the
high waves of immigration from central and eastern Europe and
from Italy had not yet begun to beat upon the doors of freedom.
To be sure, Auguste Comte had invented the word sociology in
French and Harriet Martineau had translated him for American
readers. But the readers were few and far between and their influence
was not wielded as anything that would be called sociology today.
The economic and social system was still half slave and half free,
holding up the industrial development of the North and keeping the
South as an underdeveloped area. It was to take a Civil War that
brought industrialization with a rush, the settlement of the West
2
EARLY DEVELOPMENT
and the linking of both sides of the continent, and the waves of
immigration to man the new industrial plants and settle the farms as
pioneers, as well as a vast change in the intellectual climate in the
colleges and universities, before sociology could become an American
sCience.
It is to the change in intellectual climate that we may devote
attention for that change shows also the effects of industrialization,
immigration and technology in bringing sociology into being. One
hundred years ago the leading intellectual current in America was
undoubtedly New England transcendentalism steeped in ideas of
progress and social experimentations like Brook Farm and the
Oneida community. It might be thought that transcendental
thinkers devoted to the idea of progress would have been entranced
and seduced by Comte's three stages. But as Vernon Louis Farring
ton wrote in his elegant and learned work Main Currents in American
Thought:
"One would have supposed that Positivism would have appealed
to American intellectuals, as it appealed to liberal English thinkers
like Mill and Spencer. Not only has the American mind taken
kindly to sociology, but the history of America ... offers too pat an
illustration of the Comtean law of progress to be overlooked. The
three centuries of American existence - the seventeenth with its
theocracy, the eighteenth with its abstract theories of political rights
and its faith in constitutions, and the nineteenth with its industri
alism based on science - would seem to be pages out of the Positivist
philosophy of history. That Comte made so slight an impression on
the mind of New England was due, no doubt, to the current influ
ence of transcendentalism with its metaphysical backgrounds.
Although eager young intellectuals like John Fiske might accept it
while awaiting a more adequate evolutionary philosophy, the
country was not yet ripe for Positivism. When that time came it was
Spencer rather than Comte who became the master of American
intellectuals - Spencer and to a lesser degree John Stuart Mill.
Both Spencer and Mill had come under the influence of the French
sociological school, and it was through their writings that the new
social philosophy penetrated America."
Thus it was not Comte directly who shook up American social
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