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example, on pages 298-299, point out that tragedy emphasizes the importance of burial- rites, and note 99 even refers the reader to Bradshaw’s article on Antigone’s burial of Polyneices. It is true that I omitted much of what individual characters say because, in tragedy, especially in Euripides’ plays, characters are often made to debate both sides of a question; this makes good theatre but an altogether unsound basis for social history. Professor Roberts Responds:

I gratefully accept almost every point in the review. Whilst Greek mythology did, I believe, answer-in personal terms, that is, by

reference to the characters of gods- the theological question “What sort of a world is this for man?” Greek religion as a whole provided more kinds of emotional satisfaction than I conveyed. It was certainly no less expressive of human feeling than explanatory of human experience.

In the speech made by the representatives of Corinth to the Spartan Assembly in 432 B.C. (Thucydides 1.70, part of which I cite on p. 63) we have a valuable guide to Greek perceptions of Athenian expansionism. It would be interesting to discover what internal opposition there was, if any. Unfortunately, as A. Andrewes has shown (“The Opposition to Perikles,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 98 [ 19781: 1-5), Plutarch’s account (Perikles 11-12, 14), of the clash between Perikles and the other Thucydides is worthless. The son of Melesias would have been most unwise to campaign on the basis that it was immoral to spend tribute money on replacing the temples destroyed by the Persians. We do not know what issue was settled by his ostracism, but we can make a better guess than Plutarch.

Journol of the History of rhe Behovioroi Sciences Volume 23, July 1987

John H. Stanfield. Philanthropy and Jim Crow in American Social Science. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985. xii + 216 pp. $29.95 (cloth) (Reviewed by Donald Fisher) John H. Stanfield sets himself a difficult task. Following the lead of sociologists

like Philip Abrams and Theta Sckopol,’ he attempts to provide a historical/sociological account of the development of social science research on race relations in the United States prior to World War 11. As the author puts it, he adopts a “. . . sociology of social science paradigm. . . .” which is utilized to ‘‘. . . shed light on the intrinsic linkages be- tween the origin and development of race relations social science and historically specific societal racial inequality patterns” (p. 4). As the title of the book makes clear the major “linkage” is the sponsorship of research by philanthropic organizations, namely, the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial (LSRM), the Rockefeller Foundation (RF), the Julius Rosenwald Fund (JRF), and, the Carnegie Corporation (CC). As other recent authors such as Ellen Lagemann, Edward Berman, Edward Silva, and Sheila Slaughter,’ Stanfield is documenting the role of philanthropic foundations in the production of knowledge. In a general sense he is explaining the relation between philanthropy and society.

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There are a number of reasons why the book falls short of its objective. First, there is a problem with how the book has been organized. Although the author describes the book as a series of “case studies,” in fact, it consists of biographical and institutional vignettes stuck together in a vague chronology. Stanfield details the lives of Robert E. Park, Beardsley Ruml, Leonard Outhwaite, Edwin Rogers Embree, Charles Spurgeon Johnson, and others, and the workings of the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, the Julius Rosenwald Fund, the Carnegie Corporation, the University of Chicago, the Tuskegee Institute, and Fisk University. Unfortunately, neither the introduction nor the “theoretical concl~sion’~ do much to coordinate the contents. The theoretical frame should have been at the beginning of the book. Second, the theorizing does not go far enough in making connections between the structures of power and racism. The author adopts a critical stance yet concepts like “social class’’ and “ideology” are left undeveloped and for the most part unused. Thus many of his conclusions fall flat somewhere between the descriptive detail and the inadequate theoretical frame, taking on a hollow and brit- tle quality.

As I see it, Stanfield’s goal is to document how the structures that constitute racism in the United States have been reinforced by the institutionalization of social science research, that is, how these structures have been reproduced in the internal practices of the social science disciplines. The author’s thesis is that white, male philanthropists, foundation officers, and social scientists all worked within a traditional racist framework. This framework dominated the institutionalization process so that even in “race rela- tions” research, blacks and women were either excluded from the work, or in the case of black males were separated from white social scientists by region and institution. Fisk University is taken as the archetypical symbol in the social sciences of Jim Crow society. Within this process, the author explains the emergence of an environmental perspective on blacks as distinct from the traditional genetideugenic perspective.

The author uses the following theoretical statements that he labels hypotheses, which appear in the final chapter, “Philanthropy and Jim Crow in American Social Science: A Theoretical Context”:

(1) Givers have consciousness and through it produce knowledge; (2) giving is a generation phenomenon; and (3) giving is a patrimonial tradition (p. 185).

The first statement means that funding elites act with intent. Thus Stanfield documents the actions of Edwin Embree as president of the JRF from 1928 to 1948; Frederick Keppel as president of the CC from 1923 to 1941; and, most important, Leonard Outhwaite and Beardsley Ruml of the LSRM, where Outhwaite was put in charge of “Anthropology and Race Relations.” Ruml ran the LSRM from 1922 to its demise in 1929 and then continued during the 1930s as an officer of another Rockefeller philanthropy, the Spelman Fund. The accounts show that foundations were powerful participants in the produc- tion of knowledge. Ruml is used as the archetypical “giver.” Stanfield points out that Ruml held an explicit definition of the social sciences that led him to support those in- stitutions and the type of social research that conformed to his beliefs. Stanfield con- cludes that “givers” had ‘‘. . . the ability to create or at least to support any social organization they chose” (p. 192). In characterizing the “givers,” Stanfield simultaneously underestimates the power of foundations and overestimates the power of individual ad- ministrators. The philanthropic foundations included the founding families, the trustees, and the administrators, and these structured relations necessarily constrained the in- dividual “givers.” Similarly, the social forces in the larger society provided the ideological

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contexts in which some institutions, some ways of doing research, were defined as legitimate. Social scientists were actively involved in the process of legitimation. The ideology of “scientism” was at the center of this process. The interests of social scien- tists and foundation personnel merged in the boundaries being created and re-created around social science disciplines.

On the other hand, while givers clearly could not do anything they liked, the founda- tions could forcefully persuade institutions to adapt and mold themselves in the image of foundation policies. This clearly is the case between the LSRM and the receiving in- stitutions during the 1920s, and also with the RF in the 1930s. I believe that an “ex- change relation’’ existed, that is, the institutions received money in return for conform- ity with foundation policy.

The second and third hypotheses are less useful. The second statement refers to “giving” as a “generation phenomenon.” By this Stanfield means there is a sociological generation that creates “. . . a culture of giving in which its participants adhere to similar traditions, values and norms” (p. 187). Though Stanfield provides some valuable in- sights into personal and institutional connections, he does not go far enough. If this hypothesis is worth pursuing, formal network analysis that goes beyond a few founda- tion officers and includes trustees, family, and, given the reciprocal nature of research funding, social scientists is called for. One cannot ignore the status hierarchies within disciplines, professional associations, and systems of postsecondary education.

The third hypothesis refers to “giving” as a patrimonial tradition. This aspect of foundation practices appears not to be dealt with at all, and I am at a loss to under- stand why the author included it.

The book makes some valuable contributions to our knowledge about the develop- ment of the social sciences. The chapter on Robert E. Park provides an informative account of his work after he moved from the Tuskegee Institute to the University of Chicago in 1913. Park’s shift by the late 1920s from looking at the causes to the effects of racial differences is set within his activities at Chicago and the broad societal changes as blacks migrated from the South to northern urban centers. Park’s overriding con- cern to collect scientific facts was the replica of Rockefeller philanthropic policy, whether the policy was applied directly through the Local Research Committee at Chicago or indirectly through the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) research committees. Stanfield also points to Park’s sponsorship of black scholars such as Charles S. Johnson and E. Franklin Frazier, as his crowning achievement.

The chapters on Johnson and on Embree at the JRF are the most valuable, pro- viding fascinating insights into the workings of the fund, particularly the close working relationship between Rockefeller officers, Embree and Johnson. Foundation money was given to produce change because of Embree’s foresight and his liberal commitments, first to equality between the races and later to racial integration. Embree and Johnson became firm allies. Johnson took on the pivotal mediating role between black social scientists and the “Black South” and the white world of northern philanthropy. Johnson dedicated his life to liberating blacks from racial discrimination. With the help of Presi- dent Thomas E. Jones of Fisk University, Johnson converted that institution from a small college into a “center of excellence” for social scientific research. Johnson’s com- mitment to scientific research encouraged the LSRM and the RF to appropriate approx- imately $200,000 to Fisk for the social sciences between 1927 and 1932, which was used to create the first department of race relations there. This department became the data bank of the civil rights battles in the 1950s.

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The chapter on Gunnar Myrdal and the “American Dilemma” study is much less satisfying. The description of the inside relationships borders on being superficial. Nor is the symbolic importance of this study examined. Similarly, the chapter on Rockefeller philanthropy, entitled “The Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial,” is inadequate. Although the author correctly chronicles LSRM’s history, he misinterprets and ignores large chunks of relevant activities. For example, Stanfield refers to the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) in three paragraphs on pages 68, 70, and 71 and in the last of these paragraphs he refers to the creation of an SSRC Advisory Committee on Prob- lems Relating to the Negro in 1926. Actually, the committee was created in 1925. More important, the author fails to tell us that within a year the committee’s name had been changed to the Advisory Committee on Interracial Relations. It should be noted that Rockefeller philanthropy provided the majority of SSRC’s support during the interwar years. From 1925 to 1930 the committee funded the St, Helena Island studies under Howard Odum’s direction, a study of the “Negro Family” by E. Franklin Frazier, and a “Survey of Investigation of Problems of the Coloured Race in the United States” by Johnson.

In addition, Stanfield said that during the 1920s the SSRC made no concerted effort to train black social scientists. In response to Odum’s prodding, however, the SSRC established the Committee on Southern Fellowships in the Social Sciences (1929-1933), and in 1930 it established a program of Southern Grants-in-Aid that ran for the rest of the decade. The money for both these operations came from the JRF, and some of the more than 150 awards under the two programs did go to black social scientists. In any event, Stanfield ignores activities that were crucially important to the development of the social sciences in the South during this period.

The author also misinterprets the LSRM’s activities, implying a very personal racist- sexist interest on the part of LSRM officers that is unfair. I believe it is more appropriate to see the LSRM as an institution that was to a great extent contained by and was also actively reinforcing the dominant ideological viewpoints on race and gender. For exam- ple, although the LSRM did not provide significant support to any female college, one of the key staff members, Sydnor Walker, was female. Her sphere of influence spread across the social sciences and was not confined to social work.

Two topics should have been given more attention. First, conceptions of “science” and the ideology of “scientism” with respect to the social sciences are left unexplored. The brief references to science include the following: “. . . science in itself is a non- capitalistic phenomenon . . .” (p. 5); “A most effective means of race myth making has been science” (p. 17); and referring often to “positivistic social science.” The furthest the author goes in writing about the relation between race relations and positivism is to conclude that white elites defined blacks as being less able to become scientists because of their race and culture. Unfortunately, he does not provide evidence for this conclusion.

The second topic concerns the role of social scientists in a liberal democratic soci- ety, that is, the changing bargain that social scientists have struck between themselves and the powerful, whether that power was in the hands of capitalists, foundations, or the state. Stanfield misunderstands this relation during the interwar years, for his con- sistent theme is one of disappointment in the behavior of social scientists. He blames social scientists for not being critical enough of the social inequalities in United States society. The implicit notion is that social scientists let down the reformist tradition of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by not confronting racism. Social scien- tists are criticized for not challenging, and ultimately for not breaking the constraints

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of cultural hegemony. I believe this is to misjudge the place of social scientists in soci- ety. The developing relation between philanthropy and social scientists in the 1920s focused on the production of scientific knowledge in order to solve social problems, such as the consumption of alcohol and industrial relations, as well as race relations. In varying degrees, these problems were perceived by foundation administrators, trustees, and capitalists as threatening to the social order. In turn it was believed that social science could produce knowledge that, when translated into policy, would restore equilibrium. Just as economists talk about “fine-tuning” the economy so did the “givers” and most of the social scientists agreed that the society was basically healthy. In other words, they did not search for structural faults in the society. Therefore it should not come as a surprise to find that, although there were elements of resistance and the consequent production of counter-hegemonic knowledge, adaptation and accommodation to the dominant cultural hegemony characterized the behavior of social scientists.

The work begun in this book is important. The author quite appropriately adopts a critical stance toward his material. Given the pervasiveness of racism in the United States during the interwar period, it is predictable that black social scientists would suffer from the effects of discrimination. It is therefore easy to agree with John Stanfield’s conclusion that

The conservatism of philanthropists, foundation administrators, and gatekeepers in the organized social sciences institutionalized an assimilationist concept of white/black relations that stressed asymmetrical cultural adaptation in a formally segmented society (p. 195).

Yet the book raises more questions than it answers, for the structural ties that pull together social class and ideology in the practices of racism are left implicit. We need detailed accounts of the development of black social science that go beyond the biographies of a few leaders. The book should serve as a launching pad for this work.

NOTES

1 . Philip Abrams, Historical Sociology (Shepton Mallet, England: Open Books Publishers Ltd., 1982). Theta Sckopol, Vision and Method in Historical Sociology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). 2. Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, Private Power for the Public Good (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan Univer- sity Press, 1983); Edward H. Berman, The Influence of the Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller Foundations on American Foreign Policy (Edison, N.J.: State University of New York Press, 1984); and, Edward T. Silva and Sheila A. Slaughter, Serving Power: The Making of the Academic Social Science Expert (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984). Professor Stanjield Responds:

Professor Fisher’s review of Philanthropy and Jim Crow in American Social Science addresses several important issues, but there are two major underestimations in his review. First, he underestimates the ability of individuals in powerful institutions distant from public scrutiny to act with a great degree of latitude and discretion. In the foundation sector, particularly prior to World War 11, with all due consideration to eventual in- stitutional constraints, power to act on funding issues was heavily vested in individuals. Unless we study the life histories of such persons and their embeddedness in institu- tional structures, it is impossible to gain an accurate depiction of how philanthropy developed in a particular sphere.

Second, Professor Fisher underestimates the power that key individuals and institu- tions had to create the world in their own images. His discussions of the broader sociocultural hegemony and dominant ideologies are quite deterministic if not fatalistic.

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“Funding elites” had numerous options to follow and usually selected the most conser- vative ones for reasons given in my book. Only Edwin Embree changed his funding philosophy dramatically in the period between the world wars, providing the most ob- vious evidence of the extent to which administrators of private venture capital could act in ways counter to prevailing hegemonic thinking whenever they chose. Indeed, at times they even had the capacity to reconstruct cultural hegemony. Certainly that is the most accurate understanding of why Embree and Charles S. Johnson were so racial in the period between the wars in race relations, social science, and reform.

This is a history and sociology of social science study, not a work bemoaning the racist exclusion of black social scientists. It does not blame or criticize or express disappointment in the ideological overtones implied in Professor Fisher’s review. It is most unfortunate that his misinterpretation of why black and white social scientists and foundation administrators were analyzed drew attention away from the bigger picture- the role of philanthropy and social science in the construction, reinforcement, and modification of racial cultural hegemony in the larger society between the wars.

Journal of (he Hislory of the Behavioral Sciences Volume 23, July 1987

Robert Jay Lifton. The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. New York: Basic Books, 1986. 576 pp. $19.95 (cloth) (Reviewed by Kenneth L. Vaux) Shortly after finishing his study of atomic bomb survivors, a rabbi friend visited

psychiatrist-historian Robert Lifton and declared “Hiroshima is your path, as a Jew, to the Holocaust.” Lifton’s provocative book facilitates such a journey for our modern culture as we search for moral roots and a charter for interhuman ethics in a world that we sense has gone wrong and knows not what to do with its power. This moral quest confronts us prominently today in the area of biomedical visions of survival and progress. Following Otto Rank, Lifton contends that “human beings kill in order to assert their own life power . . . and to cure deadly disease” (p. 467). Ethics is the analysis of the prohibitive and ameliorative impulses in the human spirit, individual and com- munal. The Holocaust has become for modern civilization and its ethics task both the tragic center and the focus of hope. Here we see most clearly what we have become and what we must become if the world is to survive with a human future.

Lifton unfolds this drama of insight into human evil and good in three sections - Part I: “Life Unworthy of Life: The Genetic Cure,” Part 11: “Auschwitz: the Racial Cure,” and Part 111: “The Psychology of Genocide.” Based on in-depth interviews with dozens of participants in the medical policies and ultimate extermination policies of the Third Reich, Lifton shows how a pathological mind, both personal and collective, ir- resistably evolved to a point where a doctrine of “killing every last one” came to be seen as the precondition of biological survival and salvation. The result of this relentless documentary is not to repress or excuse, but to face squarely the new beings we have become as malevolent and benevolent potential is amplified by technological power. Such