Abrams Sense of Past Origins of Sociology

The Past and Present Society
The Sense of the Past and the Origins of Sociology

Author(s): Philip Abrams
Source: Past & Present, No. 55 (May, 1972), pp. 18-32
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society
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THE SENSE OF THE PAST AND THE ORIGINS
OF SOCIOLOGY
*
SOCIOLOGY IS AN ATTEMPT TO UNDERSTAND THE DIRECTION OF CHANGE.
More
emphatically,
it is a science of social
development.
This is
not
just
a matter of its
early entanglement
with evolutionism. If one
asks what sort of
project sociology
was for Max Weber or is for
Talcott
Parsons,
if one seeks the
underlying significance
of the mass
of
apparently
disconnected
empirical work,
or the common concerns
of, say,
Theodor
Geiger
and
Raymond Aron,
one discovers a diverse
but sustained and
remarkably
coherent
effort,
first to
identify
indus-
trialism as a
type
of
society
in contra-distinction to a
pre-industrial
type
or
types,
and second to tell industrial man where industrialization
is
going. Every
so often this main commitment of
sociology appears
to
go underground,
as when Durkheim
thought
he had buried Comte
and
Spencer by constructing
a non-historical science of social facts.
But on each occasion what was taken to be a
grave
turns out to have
been
only
a
tunnel,
as when Durkheim himself reverted to a
rampant
historicism in order to
explain
the social functions of
religion.
In
1937
we find Professor Parsons
firmly repudiating evolutionary
interests in the
opening
sentences of his manifesto for a
new,
non-
historical
sociology:
"Who now reads Herbert
Spencer?"
But
by
1967
it is
apparent
that Parsons himself has been
busy reading
Spencer
and is
devoting
his
energy
to
just
the old
Spencerian quest
for
evolutionary
universals and
stages
of
development.1 Certainly
Comte and
Spencer
would have felt
quite
at home in the
plenary
sessions of the
1970
World
Congress
of
Sociology,2
in which the
effort to understand the future
by extrapolating
tendencies from
relationships presumed
to exist between abstract models of
past
and
present
was taken as
seriously
as it had ever been in their
day.
What the
discipline
is
after,
in other
words,
is not
just explanations
of social
behaviour,
but tendentious
explanations
of social behaviour:
"a
science to teach the laws of
tendencies",
as Buckle
put
it.3
*
This
paper
is based on
my paper
to the
1970
Past and Present Conference
on "The Sense of the Past and
History".
Since then some of the material it
contains has been used in
my inaugural lecture, Being
and
Becoming
in
Sociology (Durham, 1972).
1
T.
Parsons,
The Structure
of
Social Action
(New York, 1937);
Societies:
Evolutionary
and
Comparative Perspectives (New Jersey, 1970).
2 VIIth World
Congress
of
Sociology, Varna, 1970,
Transactions (Inter-
national
Sociological Association, 1971).
S
T. H.
Buckle, History of
Civilisation in
England,
i
(London, 1857), p. 27.
THE SENSE OF THE PAST AND THE ORIGINS OF SOCIOLOGY
I9
Whether such an
enterprise
is,
in
principle, philosophically
or
empirically
viable is a matter for debate.
Personally
I think it
is,
and that it is
just
this
emphasis
in
sociology
which
gives
the
discipline
its
importance,
or at least its seriousness.
Still,
it can be
argued
that the
ways
in which
sociology
has so far
gone
about the
explanation
of
tendency,
or
transition,
have been flawed
by
a
radically
unsound
methodology.
And it can be
argued
that much of this
unsoundness is rooted in the manner in which
sociologists
conceive
of the
past.
Some
conception
of the
past
is
inescapable. Sociology proceeds
in its most
typical
forms
by way
of the
typing
of structural
systems
-
for
example, industrialism, feudalism, legal-rational authority.
But if structuralism of this kind is to
explain anything
it must be
by
advancing explanations
in terms of the
principles
of
structuring,
or
of what
Piaget
in a
stronger phrase
calls the transformation laws of
structures.4
Now it is
plainly
not the case that all
structuring
is
chronological structuring:
this would not be so for
linguistic
or
mathematical structures for
example.
But it is
necessarily
the case
in the fields of
history, sociology
and
anthropology,
the social sciences
for which the idea of action in time is the essential element in
explanation.5 Analysis
of the mechanics of historical transition is the
proper
basic
activity
of the
practitioners
of these sciences. The
only
reference the idea of structural transformation can have here is a
reference to historical
process.
Far from
detaching
social
analysis
from
chronology,
structuralism in the social sciences entails histori-
cally grounded explanation.
I would
agree
with Gellner that the
resonance and
appeal
of
sociology
in recent
years springs
from the
impression
the
subject gives
of
dealing directly
with the mechanics
of the transition that
rightly
concerns us most
-
industrialization.6
But I am not as confident as he seems to be that
sociology
has been
attacking
this
problem
in
any particularly
useful
way.
What seems
to have
happened, rather,
is that structural
types
have been
put
together
in a
generally impressionistic
and
historically
casual manner
4J. Piaget,
Structuralism
(London, 1971):
"Were it not for the idea of
transformation structures would lose all
explanatory import,
since
they
would
collapse
into static forms"
(p. 12).
5
To this extent I would
agree
with W. G. Runciman
(Sociology
in its
Place,
Cambridge, 1970)
that there can be no serious distinction between
history,
sociology
and
anthropology.
But
by
the same token I
disagree
with his further
claim that all three
disciplines
can be reduced to some sort of
psychology.
It is
just
their central
emphasis
on historical
structuring
that makes them non-
reducible. "Men make their own
history,
but
they
make it in
spite
of
themselves"
(Marx)
-
it is their effort to understand the "in
spite
of" that
gives
these
disciplines
their
autonomy.
6
E.
Gellner, Thought
and
Change (Chicago, 1964).
20 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER
55
- consider the
way
in which
bureaucracy
and anomie were identified
as
emergent properties
of industrialism
by
Weber and Durkheim for
example.
And
secondly, logically
ordered contrasts between struc-
tural
types
have been
treated, quite naively
for the most
part,
as
though they effectively
indicated
chronologically
ordered transitions.
On this basis a
sociological past
has been worked
up,
a
past
which is
linked to the
present
not
by carefully
observed and
temporally
located social interaction but
by inferentially necessary
connections
between
concepts.
Discussions of the decline of
community,
of the
traditional
working
class and of the
problems
of modernization in the
context of contrasts between
"developing"
and "modern" social
systems
are
among
the better known
contemporary examples
of the
application
of this mode of
thought.
In each case a
perspective
on
present
social
experience
is
gained by postulating
a tendentious
relationship
between what is observed now and a structural
type
associated
firmly
but
unspecifically
with the
"past".
The function
of the
sociologist's past
in other words has not been to
provide
a frame
of reference for
empirical
studies of the mechanics of transition but
instead to furnish a rationale for
side-stepping
such tedious historical
chores and
moving
at once to the construction of
predictive interpreta-
tions of the
present.
We have the odd
spectacle
of a
discipline
which
claims
importance just
because it takes the
problem
of the
temporal
transformation of structure as its central
analytical
issue,
but which at
the same time
appears
committed to a sense of the
past
which
actually
directs attention
away
from the need for
analyses
of structural
transition as a
temporally
and
culturally
situated
process.
Parsons's
influential and
representative essay
"The Institutional Framework of
Economic
Development"
is
perhaps
our best recent
example
of both
sides of this ambivalence in
sociology.'
Unlike
Rostow,
Hoselitz
and a number of
others8
who can be said to use the idea of
stages
of
development
in a
fairly
mechanical
way
in
producing
scenarios of
development policy,
Parsons
displays
a
good
deal of refinement and
subtlety
in
applying
his model of industrialization to the
predicament
of the
underdeveloped
countries. He allows for
example
that the
actual
present
of these countries is
importantly
unlike the
past
of the
European
countries as a result of the
intervening history
of the latter.
Nevertheless,
when all his refinements and modifications are
made,
the
7
T.
Parsons,
"The Institutional Framework of Economic
Development",
in
Structure and Process in Modern
Society (Glencoe, Illinois, 1960).
8 Cf. W. W.
Rostow,
The
Stages of
Economic Growth
(Cambridge, 1962);
B.
Hoselitz, Sociological
Factors in Economic
Development (Glencoe, Illinois,
1960).
THE SENSE OF THE PAST AND THE ORIGINS OF SOCIOLOGY 21
problem
of
development
remains one of
adjusting
the
history
of the
underdeveloped
countries to a model of structural transformation
abstracted from
European
and American
experience. Although
he
sees
that,
as a result of the time
lag
in
industrialization, political
institutions will be
relatively
more
important
in the
underdeveloped
countries than
they
were in
Europe,
the
trajectory
of industrialization
remains
essentially
the
same;
the
point
of
departure (traditional
society)
and the destination
(industrial society)
are treated as conform-
ing
in all
important respects
to a common model. For such a
procedure
to make
any
sense at all it must be
assumed,
as it
is,
that the
pasts
of the
developed
and
underdeveloped
countries are
basically
similar and
basically unproblematic.
Robert
Nisbet, criticizing
what he calls the
metaphor
of
develop-
ment in Social
Change
and
History,9
and Andre Gunder
Frank,
criticizing
what he calls the
ideal-typical
index
approach
to the
study
of transition in "The
Sociology
of
Development
and the Under-
development
of
Sociology",lo
have
exposed
some of the more
startling consequences
of this state of affairs. In this
paper
I want
to consider causes rather than
consequences,
however. How is it
that
sociology
has remained so
unregenerate
in its commitment to
a sense of the
past
which we have been told
again
and
again
contributes
more to
ignorance
than to
knowledge?
The
paper
is not meant to
provide yet
another occasion for historians to feel
superior
at the
expense
of
sociology.
The
attempt
to understand the mechanics of
transition involved in structural
change
seems to me
unquestionably
more
important
than the sort of
thing
that
normally goes
on in most
Departments
of
History.
We
have, too, enough examples
of success
in this sort of
enterprise
to know that the work is not in
principle
futile: the best
example,
I
suppose,
is the first volume of
Capital.
So it becomes a
question
worth
asking why sociologists
have been so
unsuccessful in
striking
a fruitful balance between the
typing
of
structures and the
empirical analysis
of transition
-
why they
have
for the most
part
felt that the need "to order structural
types
and
relate them
sequentially
is a
first
order of business" - and have in
proportion neglected
the business of
using
structural
concepts
to
inform historical
investigation.11
The
ordering
of structural
types
is a relevant heuristic
setting
for the
analysis
of
change.
It cannot
9Published
Oxford, 1969.
10
A. G.
Frank,
Latin America:
Underdevelopment
or Revolution
(New York,
1964).
The
essay
cited is also
published separately,
New
York, 1968.
11
T.
Parsons, Societies, Evolutionary
and
Comparative Perspectives, p. III;
and see
Nisbet, op. cit.,
ch. 8.
55
be a substitute for it. How did
sociologists
come to
adopt
an idea of
history
which so
directly implied
the
opposite?
We
may
start from
John
Burrow's observation that the social
sciences were in the first instance a
response
to
anarchy:
"social
anarchy
as a
fear,
intelletcual
anarchy
as a fact".'2 More
importantly
perhaps
the social and cultural confusion of the time was understood
not as an effect of wickedness
(as
a
comparable
disorder had been
understood in the seventeenth
century),
but as an effect of
history.
The sense of disorder was
ubiquitous
and acture. Its
intensity
was
such that
many
felt unable to
say,
at even the most modest level of
abstraction,
what was
going
on. The
predicament
was well described
by
Lamartine in his account of wht it was like to live
through
the last
months of the
July Monarchy:
These times are times of
chaos; opinions
are a
scramble; parties
are a
jumble;
the
language
of new ideas has not been
created; nothing
is more difficult than
to
give
a
good
definition of oneself in
religion,
in
philosophy,
in
politics.
One
feels,
one
knows,
one
lives,
and at need one dies for one's
cause,
but one cannot
name it. It is the
problem
of the time to
classify things
and men. The world
has
jumbled
its
catalogue.13
But the
collapse
of
meaning
had in addition a
specifically
historical
content. Eric Hobsbawm has drawn attention to the
propensity
in
all societies to use the
past
as a resource for either
anticipating
or
prescribing
the
future.14
It was
precisely
the
possibility
of such
thought
that the
pace
and
scope
of
change
in the mid-nineteenth
century
seemed to undermine. The sense of the
meaninglessness
of
the
present
was felt as a matter of the lack of
relationship
between
present
and
past.
The
generation
that
gave
birth to
sociology
was
probably
the first
generation
of human
beings
ever to have
experienced
within the
span
of their own lifetime
socially
induced social
change
of
a
totally
transformative nature -
change
which could not be
identified,
explained
and accommodated as a limited historical
variation within the
encompassing
order of the
past.
One faced for
the first time a situation in which the idea of historical action or
accident
-
conquest,
revolution or
plague
-
could not
begin (so
it
seemed)
to account for the
ways
in which the
present
differed from the
past.
To act
effectively
in the
present,
a frame of reference which
allowed one to
identify
the structure of one's
situation,
and so to
anticipate
the
consequences
of one's
actions,
was essential. But such
a frame of reference could not be derived
directly
from the
study
of
12
J. Burrow,
Evolution and
Society (Cambridge, 1966), p. 93.
13
Cited
by
C. Geertz
"Ideology
as a Cultural
System"
in D.
Apter (ed.),
Ideology
and Discontent
(New York, 1964), P. 43.
14 E. J. Hobsbawm,
"The Social Function of the
Past",
above
pp. 3-17.
23
the
present
- the world had
jumbled
its
catalogue.
Nor could it be
derived
naively
from
knowledge
of the
past
because the nature of the
historical connection of
past
and
present
had become
obscure,
the
conventional
categories
of historical
thought
could not
grasp
it.
Hitherto the
past
had
provided
the
pattern
for the
present
in
quite
straightforward ways. History
had been an
unproblematic
matter of
recording
duration and succession. Neither duration nor succession
had
appeared
to
bring
the nature of the
principles
of social
organiza-
tion into
question.
But that was
just
what
happened
in the mid-
nineteenth
century.
One did not need to be
very sophisticated
to feel that the
present
when considered in relation to the
past
was
deeply enigmatic.
The
merchants and landlords who
joined together
to form the Bristol
Statistical
Society
in
1838
were driven to an interest in social research
by
motives not
very
different from those which were to
inspire
Durkheim or
LePlay.
In a
simple
state of
society [they noted]
a man
may
know
tolerably
well what
his duties to the
poor
are . . . but what shall be said of that artificial and
complicated
state of
things
when a nation manufactures for half the world
-
and when the
consequence unavoidably
is the enormous distance between
the labourer and his virtual and sub-divided
employer?'5
The
rapid
and
amazingly
ramified extension of the division of labour
was the
beginning
of the
problem.
But
layer upon layer
of
complica-
tion had been
heaped upon
it until all effective sense of
historically
anchored
process
was lost. Even
Bagehot,
the least
flappable
thinker
of his
generation,
sensed the dilemma. "The
greatest living
contrast",
he was moved to remark in
1861,
"is between the old
Eastern and
customary
civilizations and the new Western and
changeable
civilizations".16
What resources were available for
making
sense of the
experience
of
living
in a
changeable
civilization?
Only knowledge
of the
past.
Somehow that
knowledge
had to be used to
yield up
a new under-
standing
of what was
happening
in the
present.
G. H. Lewes
expressed
the
problem very clearly.
Like most of his
contemporaries
he found himself in "an
age
of universal
anarchy
of
thought",
an
age
'"anxious to reconstruct . . . but as
yet impotent"
-
impotent
because
the
anarchy
was
historically
induced and
historically incompre-
hensible. "In this
plight",
he
concluded,
"we
may hope
for the
future but can
cling only
to the
past:
that alone is
secure,
well-
grounded.
The
past
must form the basis of
certainty
and the
15
J. of
the Statistical
Soc.,
ii
(1839).
16 W.
Bagehot, Physics
and Politics
(London, 1872), P. 114.
24
PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER
55
materials for
speculation"."1
In
turning
to the
past,
then,
the
intention was somehow to transcend mere
history.
Here the
emerging
social sciences faced a fundamental
strategic
choice. Was
the
past
to be understood as a structural
system
or as a field of
history
?
Because the most
urgent
issue was to
identify
the
general organizing
principles
of industrial
society
and the
general principles
of
change
involved in
industrialization,
it was
perhaps
natural that the
historical character of the
past
should in the first instance have been
ignored,
that the first
response
should have been a set of
attempts
to
reify
both the
past
as a structural
type
and
history
as a
developmental
process.
What was not so
natural,
but nevertheless
happened
in
almost
every
case,
was that this intitial elaborate construction of ideal
types
did not lead social scientists back to substantive
investigations
of
historical transition in
particular settings
but was allowed to stand as
being
in itself a
theoretically
and
empirically adequate
alternative to
such
investigations.
Even Max Weber in The Protestant Ethic and the
Spirit of Capitalism,18
the nearest
thing
to an
example
of
good
histori-
cal
sociology
which the
founding
fathers of the
discipline
were to
produce,
was
astoundingly
casual about the detailed historical valida-
tion of his
argument.
One of the
things
which makes it so difficult for
students to answer the standard examination
question
which invites
them to
compare
Weber's account of the
development
of
capitalism
with that of Karl Marx is that Marx is
simply
a much better a historian
than Weber.
Marx
was,
of
course, always primarily
interested in the mechanics
of
transition,
the relational basis of industrialization.
By comparison
the construction of
developmental types
has a
second-order,
even a
background, importance
in his
thought.
Nevertheless it is
strange
that
sociologists
in
general
should not have been led as Marx was from
the reification of the
stages
and
processes
of
development
to the sort
of
empirical
historical
sociology
Marx himself achieved. We can
hardly explain
the failure
by suggesting
that the
sociologists
were
work-shy.
On the
contrary
the
important nineteenth-century
sociologists
were at least as industrious as Marx. It is
possible
that
Spencer
accumulated more data than
any
other scholar has
yet
done.
Nor were the
early sociologists
disinclined to handle historical data
-
Weber for one seems to have had an inexhaustible interest in such
17
G. H. Lewes,
"The State of Historical Sciences in
France",
cited in
Burrow, op. cit., p. 94.
18
M.
Weber,
The Protestant Ethic and the
Spirit of Capitalism,
first
published
in Archiv
fur Socialwissonschaft
und Social
politik,
vols. xx and
xxI (1904-5),
English
translation
by
T. Parsons
(New York, 1930).
25
material.
Generally
it was
through
the
reinterpretation
of historical
materials that
they hoped
to achieve an
understanding
of the
meaning
of the
present.
What is odd is that
they
remained committed to
ways
of
using
historical materials that were both ahistorical and
historicist. It is this ahistorical historicism of
sociology
that needs to
be
explained.
The
explanation
seems to have two main elements. First there
was the intellectual
ascendancy
of evolutionism. Second one must
recognize
the
apparent power
of the
analytical paradigm produced by
the treatment of the
past
as a structural
type.
It did
permit
as,
Marxism
apart, nothing
else
did,
a
generalized
account of the
structure and
tendency
of industrialism. An exhaustive
explanation
would also have to consider the
importance
of some
questions
of
academic convenience and convention. In
establishing
its own
academic
credentials, sociology
had above all to differentiate itself
from
history.
Since
it, too,
dealt in historical materials and
problems,
the differentiation
virtually
had to be in terms of
sociology's
special methodology.
Once
methodology
became the hallmark of the
discipline
at this level it was
surprisingly easy
for it to
prove
an
obstacle to the
adoption
of new
ways
of
dealing
with the
problems
as
well. It is bizarre but not
unrevealing
that we should observe
attempts
to demonstrate that
Stanley
Elkins is "not
really"
a historian
or that
Barrington
Moore
Jr.
is "not
really"
a
sociologist.19
But this
is
by
the
way.
As an
empirical
science of the laws of
tendency, sociology sprang
directly
from the
sense, pervasive
and
disturbing
as it
was,
of a
changeable
civilization. Either
changeability
made civilization
unpredictable
-
a
prospect
not even Herbert
Spencer
was
sanguine
enough
to embrace
-
or it was
scientifically
ordered in
ways
which
appropriate contemplation
could reveal.
Appropriate contemplation
in turn was felt to involve three
things: first,
the
discovery
of a
conceptual language capable
of
differentiating
between
present
and
past,
of
marking
out the
trajectory
of
change;
then a
general
structural
characterization of the
present
as distinct from the
past;
and
finally
the identification of the
processes
of
change
or
growth
in terms of
which
past, present
and future were bound
together.
For each of
these
purposes
it was not historical action but
objectified
historical
19
S.
Elkins, Slavery (Chicago, 1959)
and
Barrington
Moore
Jr.,
The Social
Origins of Dictatorship
and
Democracy (Benson Press, Boston, 1966)
are
among
the
better known recent studies to have created
intra-disciplinary soul-searching by
demonstrating
the
unavoidably inter-disciplinary
nature of
explanation
in the
social sciences. For current
examples
of
pedantic boundary disputes
of this
kind,
see The American
Sociologist,
vi
(New York,
1971).
55
process
that was of interest. The idea that
process
could be
ascertained
only through
careful observational studies of action
occurred to
very
few
people.
In
passing
we
might
note that the
problem
of
putting together
a
suitable
language
of
concepts
was itself an acute one. Few
things
are as evident in
early nineteenth-century
social
analysis
as the want of
appropriate
terms to
specify
the variations in social
experience
that
observers wished to discuss. The
vocabulary
that served to
describe traditional social
relationships simply
could not
grip
the
experience
of the
present
with
any precision. Compare
the
vigour
of the first
part
of this statement
by
Cobbett with the
limpness
of the
end: "When master and man were the terms
everyone
was in his
place
and all were
free;
now in fact it is an affair of masters and
slaves".20
Now of course it was not
really
an affair of masters and
slaves. But Cobbett's
repertoire
of
concepts simply
could not
get
him
any
nearer. Nor was it sufficient to see the
present simply
as
a
negation
of the
past: Shelley's string
of
negatives
-
"sceptreless,
uncircumscribed, unclassed,
tribeless and
nationless,
exempt
from
awe, worship
and
degree"21
-
was
a
good
intuitive
response
to the
situation but no basis for
analysis.
In the event the
vocabulary problem
was solved under the
umbrella of the
general attempt
to characterize the
present
as a
type
of social
order,
and to infer from the
supposed typological
properties
of
types
of social order
supposed
laws of
tendency
or
principles
of social
development.
The
overriding necessity
was to
obtain an
objective,
abstract
yardstick
outside the flux of the
present
situation
-
the
complicated
and artificial state of
things
-
to which
the
present
situation could be referred and in terms of which it could
thence be known. To this end the
emerging
social sciences seized
hold of
history
in two
ways.
First in the form of a series of bold
conceptual polarities, explicit
antitheses between
past
and
present
which Nisbet has called the unit ideas of
sociology.
Second in the
form of a set of ambitious
descriptive
theories of the
stages
of social
development.
The effect of both
procedures
was to turn
history
into
an
object.22
20
W.
Cobbett,
Political
Register,
lxxxvi
(London, 1835) p. 767.
21
P. B.
Shelley,
"Prometheus
Unbound",
Act
III,
Scene
iv,
The
Complete
Poetical Works
(Oxford, 1907).
22
R.
Nisbet,
The
Sociological
Tradition
(New York, 1966).
If one were
disposed
to
accept
the
argument
that the
principal property
of the culture of
capitalism
is a
process
of reification in which all
secondary relationships
tend
increasingly
to be
perceived
as
relationships
between
things,
one could then
add to
Engels's analysis
of the
way
in which the real connectedness of man and
(cont.
on
p. 27)
27
The
attempt
to formulate laws of
development
as a matter of
explicit
historical
process
was of course a
conspicuous
failure. Its
empirical
difficulties were
quickly apparent
to most observers. Thus
Henry Sidgwick
observed in
I885
how:
With
equal
confidence
history
is
represented
as
leading up,
now to the naive
and
unqualified
individualism of
Spencer,
now to the
carefully guarded
and
regulated
socialism of
Schaeffle,
now to Comte's dream of
securing
seven-
roomed houses for all
working
men ....
Guidance, truly,
is here
enough
and
to
spare;
but how shall the bewildered statesman select his
guidance
when his
sociological
doctors exhibit such
portentous disagreement?
Not
surprisingly Sidgwick
ended
by begging
his audience "to take
no
steps
calculated to foster delusions of this
kind".23
The more
important epistemological
difficulties of
evolutionary sociology
were
no less
effectively exposed,
first
by
would-be evolutionists such as
Hobhouse and
Ginsberg,
then
definitively by Popper.24
Two
years
after
Popper's
first
onslaught
on
sociological
historicism Parsons
proposed
the
repudiation
of all interest in diachronic
analysis
and the
reorientation of
sociology
around the
synchronic investigation
of
systems
of action in terms of formalized ahistorical
properties.26
What
actually happened
at this
point, however,
was
that, although
the
discrediting
of the overt intellectual
strategies
of evolutionism was
acknowledged,
the infrastructure of evolutionism remained embedded
in
sociological thought.
It was here that the
conceptual polarities
of
sociology's
unit ideas were
important.
Status and
contract,
community
and
association, organic
and mechanical
solidarity,
traditional and
legal-rational authority,
the folk
community
and the
urban
community
- all these double
concepts
were
ways
of
trying
to
apprehend
and
identify
the
changes
in the structural format of
society
associated with industrialization. More or less
explicitly
the
changes
indicated in the
conceptual
antitheses were treated as
necessary
concomitants of
industrialization,
an idea which surfaced
from time to time
(most recently
in the work of Clark Kerr and his
colleagues
in the
I96os)
in the notion of the
"logic
of industrialism".26
There could be and was
wide-ranging dispute
as to the exact nature of
(note
22
cont.)
his
history
is "lost for fair" in the veils of fetishism
spun by philosophers,
political
theorists and
jurists
the observation that the
peculiar
contribution of
the
sociologist
to this
process
has
been,
as a final ironic
transformation,
to turn
history
itself into a
thing.
13
British Association for the Advancement of
Science, Proceedings (London,
1885).
24
L. T.
Hobhouse,
Social
Development (Allen
and
Unwin, London, 1924)
and Morals in Evolution
(Macmillan, London,
I901);
M.
Ginsberg,
The
Diversity of
Morals
(London, 1956);
K.
Popper,
The
Poverty of
Historicism
(London, 1957).
2r
T.
Parsons,
The Structure
of
Social Action
(Glencoe, Illinois, 1937).
26
C.
Kerr,
et
al.,
Industrialism and Industrial Man
(London, 1962).
55
the
logic
of industrialism but the salience of the idea as a
governing
focus of
thought
remained
strong.
Not all of the
early sociologists
adopted
the device of
conceptual polarization
in its fullest form.
Often the
polarity
was
merely implied
in the assertion of some
distinctive
processual property
of industrialization: the
emergence
of
chronic
anomie,
urbanism as a
way
of
life, bureaucratization,
secularization,
the isolation of the
conjugal family.
But the
procedure
is
really
the same. It is a matter of
abbreviating history.
It involved the observation of
key
structural differences in the
constitution of the
present
as distinct from the
past.
But it did not
necessarily
involve
any
need to show
how,
historically,
the differences
had been effected. It was the observation of contrasted moments of
development
that mattered.
Having
characterized
past
and
present
as states of
being
in terms of some
key properties,
one could
go
on to
infer laws of
tendency by logical
rather than historical
procedures.
Whatever the difficulties of the
method,
its sheer
economy
was
among
its
principal
attractions.
Quite simply,
there was no
quicker
method
of
producing
a theoretical account of where
society
was
going
or of
what were its
significant
structural
components.
It did
matter,
of
course,
to show that the
past postulated by
sociology
- the world of the extended
family,
of
community
and
corporation,
of folk culture and traditionalism - had been
really
there
in some concrete sense. But to see how this was done is to see still
more
clearly
how
profoundly
unhistorical the whole
enterprise really
was. The
point
after all was not to know the
past
but to establish an
idea of the
past
which could be used as a
comparative
base for the
understanding
of the
present.
Once the flood of
ethnographic
data
became available and once it became clear that the
Iroquois,
the
ancient Picts and the Irish in Manchester
were, analytically,
the same
thing,
the essential irrelevance of
history
in the construction of this
past
was revealed. This did
not,
of
course,
at all reduce the
importance
of
calling
it the
past.
That
importance
was irreducible.
But it
sprang
from the
sociologists'
concern to achieve a
theory
of
modernity,
and if
possible
of
modernization,
not from
any
interest in
the mechanics of historical transition. As
J.
F. McLennan
put
it in
a
general
rubric for the social sciences with which most of his co-
workers seem to have been
thoroughly sympathetic:
The first
thing
to be done is to inform ourselves of the facts
relating
to the
least
developed
races
...their condition,
as it
may
be observed
today,
is
truly
the most ancient condition of man. It is the lowest and
simplest...
and ... in the science of
history
old means not old in
chronology
but in struc-
ture. That is most ancient which lies nearest the
beginning
of human
progress
considered as a
development.27
27
T. F.
McLennan,
Studies in Ancient
History,
2nd ser.
(London, 1896),
p.
16.
29
There are few clearer statements of the central
strategy
of the social
sciences - and few more indicative of their indifference to
anything
that could be
called, strictly,
the historical
past. Long
after
McLennan's
hopeful
involvement with overt notions of
progress
and
development
had been
abandoned,
the
conceptions implicit
in the
idea of
systems being
"old in structure" remained rooted in
sociological
method.
Some
consequences
of this method are worth
noting.
It is not
just
that it directs attention
away
from the need for
propositional
theories about the
organization
of
change
in
particular
historical
contexts;
or that it
permitted people
like
Bagehot
to
regard
the
working
classes as
"primitive" ;28
its
economy, elegance
and
apparent
effectiveness in
differentiating past
and
present
have
encouraged
a
state of affairs in which a
high proportion
of
sociological
research is
in fact research on
myths
which
sociologists
have invented. The
sociology
of the
family provides
some
lovely examples
of this
process.
Family sociology
has until
quite recently
been dominated
by
the idea
of the classical
pre-industrial family, or,
as W.
J.
Goode
puts it,
"a
pretty picture
of life down on Grandma's farm". With reference
to this
construct,
assembled
by
means of McLennan's brand of
structural
history
and the skilful
extrapolation
from it of ideal
types,
a whole series of
quite
detailed
myths
were formulated about what
happens,
and has to
happen,
to the
family
in the course of indus-
trialization.
Goode,
who has been more involved than
anyone
else
in the
dismantling
of this
particular body
of
myth,
now concludes that
no determinate
relationship
can be established either
way
between
family patterns
and
industrialization.29 This, however,
is not so
much a definitive
finding
as a statement that the
ground
is now clear
for the sort of research that
ought
to have been done in the first
place.
Meanwhile an
expensive
research unit in
Cambridge
has
devoted several
years
to
proving
the non-existence in
pre-industrial
England
and elsewhere of a
type
of
family
which no-one familiar with
the historical evidence ever said did
exist.3"
This sort of
thing
is the
least of the costs of
sociology's
hidden ahistorical historicism. The
higher
costs are
paid
in the terms of reference embodied in whole
strategies
of
sociological thought.
A case in
point
would be the use
28
Bagehot, op. cit., pp. 82-5;
cf.
Nisbet,
Social
Change
and
History.
29 W. J. Goode,
"Industrialisation and
Family Change"
in B. F. Hoselitz
and W. E. Moore
(eds.),
Industrialisation and
Soczety (New York, 1963),
PP. 237-59.
30
T. P. R.
Laslett,
The World We Have Lost
(London, 1965), pp.
8I-Io6.
30
55
that has been made of Professor Parsons's influential
proposal
to
analyse
social action in terms of a scheme of
pattern variables.31
The
pattern
variables
appeared
as an
integral part
of Parsons's
manifesto for a new
sociology twenty-five years ago,
the
attempt
to
reconstitute
sociology
as an
analysis
of the structure of social action
dissociated from the
study
of
tendency.
In
pursuit
of this
object
Parsons
proposed
that orientations to action could be
investigated
schematically
in terms of a limited number of
pure types.
He
recommended that these
types
should be
organized
in four or five
pairs
of
opposities.
The four
pairs
of
pattern
variables
(variable ways
of
patterning action)
for which he found most use were identified as
follows:
particularism
versus
universalism; affectivity
versus affective
neutrality; ascription
versus
achievement;
and diffuseness versus
specificity.
This set of variations is offered as
encompassing,
if not
the full
range
of
possible
modes of
action,
at least such a
large
field
that
effectively
all
systems
of action can be
brought
within the
scope
of
sociological analysis.
The merit claimed for the
pattern
variables
as
analytical
tools in other words is
precisely
that
they
are
independent
of, they
rise
above, any particular
historical context.
They
are
quite simply
value-free tools. Yet the use that has been
made of
them,
in
part by
Parsons but more
especially by
some of his
followers,
makes this hard to believe. It turns out that
they
do
have,
again
in the structural
sense,
a reference to
history
or at least to the
difference between
past
and
present,
traditionalism and
modernity,
after all. Thus
Sutton,
Hoselitz and
many
others have identified the
difference between modern and
pre-modern
social
systems
as a
polarity
of
universalism, affective-neutrality,
achievement orientation
and functional
specificity
on the one hand and of
particularism,
affectivity, ascription
and functional diffuseness on the
other.32
Whether Parsons intended his
polarities
to serve the turn of socio-
logical
historicism in this
way
is not clear. His
categories plainly
are anchored in
quite
familiar contrasts between the
presumed
properties
of industrialism and
pre-industrialism, however,
and the
use that has been made of them is in this sense
legitimate. They
do serve as one more device
enabling sociology
to theorize about
31
T.
Parsons,
The Social
System (Glencoe, Illinois,
I95I).
Parsons's con-
structs are of course an
explicit
extension of Weber's distinction between the
properties
of
"traditionality"
and
"rationality":
M.
Weber,
The
Theory of
Social
and Economic
Organisation (New York, 1947).
32
Frank,
Latin America:
Underdevelopment
or
Revolution,
discusses this
procedure
at some
length.
F. X.
Sutton,
"Social
Theory
and
Comparative
Politics" in H. Eckstein and D.
Apter (eds.), Comparative
Politics
(Glencoe,
Illinois, 1963).
31
the course of
development
without reference to the mechanics of
transition.
Consider a final
example.
The literature of
contemporary
sociology
is full of
general
characterizations of advanced industrial
society
- as mass
society,
the
acquisitive society,
the affluent
society
and most
recently
the chaotic
society.
Most
particular
research
projects proceed
under the intellectual
auspices
of one or other of
these characterizations. None of the characterizations is the result
of
scholarly
historical
analysis.
All of them
depend,
however,
on the
actuality
of an assumed historical
process.
Daniel Bell's account of
the
theory
of mass
society provides
a
good example
of what is
involved:
The revolutions in
transport
and communications have
brought
men into
closer contact with each other and bound them in new
ways;
the division of
labour has made them more
interdependent;
tremors in one
part
of
society
affect all others.
Despite
this
greater interdependence,
however,
individuals
have
grown
more
estranged
from one another. The old
primary
ties of
family
and local
community
have been
shattered;
ancient
parochial
faiths are
questioned;
few
unifying
beliefs or values have taken their
place.
Most
important
the critical standards of an educated
elite
no
longer shape opinion
or taste. As a result mores and morals are in constant
flux,
relations between
individuals are
tangential
or
compartmentalized
rather than
organic.
At the
same time
greater mobility, spatial
and
social,
intensifies concern over status.
Instead of a fixed or known status
symbolized by
dress or
title,
each
person
assumes a
multiplicity
of roles and
constantly
has to
prove
himself in a succes-
sion of new situations. Because of all
this,
the individual loses a coherent
sense of self. His anxieties increase. There ensues a search for new faiths.
The
stage
is set for the charismatic
leader,
the secular
messiah,
who
by
bestowing upon
each
person
the semblance of
necessary grace
and of fulness
of
personality supplies
a substitute for the older
unifying
belief that the mass
society
has
destroyed.33
Whether or not this
type
of
characterization,
which is
quite prevalent
in
sociology,
is based on
good history
or not is not
immediately
relevant. The
important
feature of such
thinking
is that in it the
characterization of historical
process
and the characterization of
present
structure are
totally interdependent.
Each
pervades
the
other and the
conception
as a whole is inconceivable without both.
All
questions
of how the various transformations entailed in the
movement between structural
types
were effected
are, however,
firmly
set aside. The
point
is not to focus
investigation
on the social
organization
of historical
process
but to set
up
a frame of reference for
research on a
thing
called the social structure of the
present.
And
yet
structure is defined in terms which have
meaning only
in
terms of
conceptions
of
process.
We are faced with the same
paradox
33
D.
Bell,
The End
of Ideology (Glencoe, Illinois, 1960).
Professor Bell is
not,
of
course, espousing
the
theory
of mass
society
in this
passage.
His
exposi-
tion of it is nonetheless well-taken for that.
32
55
as before: the identification of structural
types,
the formal differentia-
tion of
past
and
present,
is effected with such
elan
and internal
cogency
that it ends
up by apparently making unnecessary any
further
study
of the
intervening structuring through
which the
past presum-
ably
became the
present. Yet,
of
course,
it is
only
such work that
will tell us whether our structural
concepts
make
sense,
let alone
whether
they explain anything.
The academic and intellectual dissociation of
history
and
sociology
seems, then,
to have had the effect of
deterring
both
disciplines
from
attending seriously
to the most
important
issues involved in the
understanding
of social transition.
Many
current accounts of the
historian's
past, requiring
as
they
do a wholesale
rejection
of
any
form of structural
analysis,
strike me as no better suited than the
normal version of the
sociologist's past
to deal with these issues. This
is not the
place
to consider what
changes
of heart or shifts of
emphasis
would be needed to
produce
a more fruitful and
sociological history.
What I have tried to do is to show how one could
begin
to move
towards a more
penetrating
historical
sociology.
The essential
step
is not to abandon the structural
typing
of
past
and
present
but rather
to
recognize
that the function of structural
types
is not to allow us to
by-pass history by inferring logically necessary tendencies,
but on the
contrary
to direct attention to those kinds of historical
inquiry
which
we should
expect, theoretically,
to
explain phenomena
of structural
transformation.
University of
Durham
Philip
Abrams

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