Introduction – The Fragmentation ofSociology

In the second half of the 20th century, there was a rapid expansion of journalsdealing with sociology and social theory. This development in the field ofacademic social science publications was an effect of the growth of sociology aspart of the undergraduate university curriculum, but more importantly a con-sequence of sub-disciplinary specialization and disciplinary fragmentation. At thesame time, there has been a significant growth of interdisciplinary activity (culturalstudies, gender studies, film studies, international relations, communications andmedia, and queer theory). Many versions of academic collaboration in teachingand research (multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity) became popular in thecurricula of universities. The result of this growth has had one peculiar con-sequence, namely the defence of specific disciplinary traditions and objectives hasbeen strangely neglected. While the hinterland has proliferated, the heartland hasbeen lost to view. In fact, disciplinarity is often treated as an intellectual weakness,as mental narrowness and as a lack of vision. Interdisciplinarity often convenientlyforgets that disciplinarity (in teaching and research) is logically a necessaryprecondition for interdisciplinary activity. Interdisciplinarity in practice oftenmeans lack of intellectual rigour and absence of educational progression througha system of study.

There appears to be no forum in the mainstream journals for the specificstudy of classical sociology, despite the relevance of the study of the classics for thesurvival and continuity of the social sciences. National journals, of which there area great number, do of course publish work on classical sociology texts andtraditions. But the sociological project has never been exclusively defined by anational intellectual tradition. Early journals of sociology were typically inter-national, for example in their reviewing policies. The defence and promotion ofsociology can be effectively undertaken through the Journal of Classical Sociology,which is committed to the exploration and articulation of its intellectual roots andtraditions. The Journal of Classical Sociology can provide an important intellectualbridge between European and American traditions, while also being determinedto publish contributions that support the global development of sociology.

In the 20th century, academic sociology was fragmented by varioustheoretical traditions and a variety of methodological practices. It was also

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fractured by numerous ideological battles and diverse national perspectives. Thediscipline of sociology has often been strangely lacking in any sense of cumulativetheory or research findings. The Marx–Weber debate was a classic illustration ofthe divisions and conflicts within sociology, especially during the period of theCold War. It appeared to lack any real sense of progression, accumulation orfinality. In Europe, where Marxism as a social philosophy remained a robustalternative to sociology, criticism of Weber from the standpoint of AlthusserianMarxism had to create a caricature of Weberian sociology as a misdirected scienceof action. Ironically, the post-communist period now makes the re-reading ofMarx once more a productive possibility. While the 20th century was a divisiveand contested period, it was also the case that it developed a recognizable canonof classical sociology (Turner, 1999).

The Possibility of a CanonThe orthodox canon has been constituted by specific ways of doing sociologicaltheory, various modes of collecting evidence and various forms of analysis. Acanon, however uncertain and contested, has been important as a commonplatform in the study of sociology, as a framework for teaching sociology studentsand as one component in building a common research purpose. It provides theconditions for a reflexive and cumulative approach to empirical research andempirical investigation study. The canon came typically to include a number ofsocial theorists (Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Mannheim, Simmel and Parsons), a setof core topics (capitalism, social class, ideology, legitimation, institutions, culture,social structure and social conflict) and a range of methodologies (ethnography,survey methods, participant observation, oral history and historical techniques). Acommitment to defending classical sociology is important if contemporary soci-ology is to flourish without destructive fragmentation and dispersal (Levine, 1995).

The notion of a canon implies the possibility of an orthodox sociologicaltradition or even a professional code of practice, but sociological orthodoxy hasbeen seriously under attack (by feminism, postmodernism, queer theory, thetechniques of literary deconstruction, critical theory, rhetorical analysis, textualcritique, postcolonial theory and so forth). In fact, the contents of the canon werealways open to criticism, because the notion of a crisis in sociology has been apersistent theme in sociology (Gouldner, 1971). At the beginning of the millen-nium, there is perhaps a more basic question: is there anything of the canon still inplace? The Journal of Classical Sociology is based on the recognition that thesociological canon is highly contested, but it also assumes that the debate issignificant and that canonical authority is important if sociology is to survive as aconvincing intellectual practice and as a distinctive discipline. A canon does nothave to be an exclusionary professional hurdle; it is rather a field for debate andanalysis, the consequence of which is to nurture a specific disciplinary activity.What constitutes the canon is something that the Journal of Classical Sociology will

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help to shape and define, but the precise features of that canon must remain fluid.The canon is an evolutionary project or intellectual ambition, whose specificcontours and contents must remain open to debate. The purpose of a defence ofclassical sociology is not to achieve a set of professional pronouncements to securethe infallibility of the canon. Our purpose is to secure a hinterland for disciplinarydiscussion, teaching and research. To continue with the metaphors of continentsand maps, classical sociology is a journey rather than a destination.

What is Classical Sociology?The possibility of any academic canon has become deeply political, in part as aconsequence of the impact of literary deconstruction and postmodernism on theEnglish canon (Bloom, 1994). The defence of a canon has become associatedwith opposition to the ‘dumbing down’ of academic study, especially in thehumanities and social sciences. The very idea of a canon has become politicized.In the context of taken-for-granted relativism, many sociologists would pre-sumably have considerable difficulty with the idea of canonical sociology. Weknow that claims about orthodoxy can often function as a form of social closure toexclude categories of persons rather than to encourage academic excellence. Howdid it manage until recently to exclude the work of W.E.B. DuBois (Katz andSugrue, 1998) or Mirra Komarovsky (Reinharz, 1989)? A constructive canon ofsociology should have the normative goal of nurturing the sociological imagina-tion rather than functioning as a narrow principle of professional exclusion.

What is classical sociology? In part, it embraces the foundational theoriesand paradigms that constituted sociology in the decades from 1890 to 1920(Morrison, 1995). In this period, sociology was constructed in the academyaround a set of problems that were the legacy of social and political change thatcan be dated to the French Revolution. Sociology is the study of social institutionsthat are shaped by the dialectical tension between solidarity and scarcity. It hasbeen classically concerned with the nature of social order, and with the destruct-ive impact of capitalist markets. It has addressed the tensions between liberaldemocracy and the inequalities of social stratification. It has been concerned tounderstand the rituals that sustain a common culture. It has been fascinated by thecivilities that make everyday social life possible. The term ‘sociology’ was used inthe correspondence of Auguste Comte in 1824 and was employed more fully inhis Positive Philosophy of 1838. As the etymology of the word (socius) suggests, itbecame the study of the roots of sociality. Later theories of reciprocity, socialexchange, consensus, networks, groups, associations, social bonds and com-munities follow from this primary concern with the conditions for and nature ofthe social. But why start with the French Revolution? In Talcott Parsons’s TheStructure of Social Action (1937), the problem of the social starts with the attemptby writers like Thomas Hobbes to frame an account of the relationship betweencivil society and the state. The so-called Hobbesian problem of order was taken by

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Parsons to be constitutive of the sociological critique of utilitarianism thatpreoccupied Weber, Durkheim, Simmel and Pareto. Another alternative is tolocate the origins of classical sociology with Michel de Montaigne’s reflections onthe nature of human violence and the problem of agreement in a civilized societydivided by religious differences. Montaigne’s essays provide a model of writingabout the social as a self-reflexive activity (O’Neill, 1982). For other sociologists,the sociological imagination is coterminous with the processes of modernizationitself, such that sociology is the self-reflexivity of the modern.

In our view, these difficulties of providing a precise date for the foundingof ‘the sociological tradition’ indicate that such specific questions about originsand periodization may be inappropriate. Acceptance of the canonical status of aparticular period in the history of sociology may achieve a premature closure. Bycontrast, the Journal of Classical Sociology will attempt to present the view thatsociology is an evolving rather than static tradition. It should not attempt tocanonize a particular period, but rather focus on how the notion of the socialemerged and developed under different sets of conditions. It follows that the useof the definite article in the notion of the classics is also misleading, since weshould be attentive to the idea of different traditions and seek to nurture classicalsociologies. There are clearly profound differences between North Americanand European traditions and approaches. The differences between for exampleC. Wright Mills and Norbert Elias are perfectly obvious. While recognizing thisdiversity in the evolution of classical sociology, there is a recognizable sociologicalvision. Both Wright Mills and Elias had a definite sociological imagination,regarded themselves as sociologists, embraced a common understanding of socialprocess and shared some common tastes and dislikes – including a hostility toParsonian functionalism. Both men were hostile to the grand theories of structuralfunctionalism. Elias’s emphasis on understanding process in social life and hisattention to state formation and the growth of class-based taste are not incompat-ible with Wright Mills’s focus on the American class structure and the socialproduction of elites. In every other respect, their orientations were whollydifferent (Mills and Mills, 2000).

Constructing a TraditionThe Journal of Classical Sociology will consider the various modes of doing(writing and reading) sociological theory, the national and international formswithin which sociology evolved, and the nature of cross-disciplinarity (between,for example, economics, history, psychoanalysis, literature, geography, politics,anthropology and sociology). Clearly sociology did not emerge in a vacuum, andit was specifically shaped by a debate with orthodox economics. The work of earlysociologists was an attempt to understand the non-rational components ofeconomic action and to show that the utilitarian paradigm of action had seriouslimitations. Sociology as a result took a determined position on the importance of

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culture as a topic of scientific inquiry. It is difficult therefore to understand the riseof sociology without a grasp of the importance of both social anthropology andpsychoanalysis. Both Sigmund Freud and Bronislaw Malinowski are critical to theevolution of classical sociology. In more specific terms, it is assumed thatcontributions to the Journal would include discussions of cultural theory, socialanthropology and sociological theory. It will explore the interface betweensociology and psychoanalysis in terms of theories of subjects and agents, agencyand structure, identities and subjectivities. Anthropology raised specific problemsabout the scientific method through the development of fieldwork and ethno-graphy. The tensions between a natural science model of explanation versusnormative and hermeneutic approaches to social phenomena will shape debatewithin the Journal.

The study of classical sociology will necessarily include the analysis ofacademic institutions within which sociology is located, namely universities,research institutes and centres, including the growth of the profession of soci-ology itself. The institutionalization of sociology as a form of knowledge and theconditions for its reproduction are crucial sociological topics in their own right.The study of sociology requires the sociology of knowledge, if it is to achievecritical self-assessment. There is the pessimistic point of view that sociologyflourished in the 1960s as part of social movements against authoritarianism, andthat it is difficult for sociology to sustain its position in the universities withoutadopting a politically conservative standpoint. The professionalization of soci-ology means that, with the commercial development of the university as acomponent of corporate research interests, a critical vision of society will besuppressed, or at least marginalized. The corporate invasion of the universitymeans that sociology can only survive as an aspect of policy sciences (Agger,2000). These challenges to sociology suggest to us that the maintenance of arobust tradition of classical sociology is an important precondition for the survivalof the discipline. We also need to consider how the teaching of sociology willbe transformed by globalization and the spread of information technology.Will the website become the future kernel of research activity and with whatconsequences?

Sociology versus Social TheoryWe take the view that in recent years the preference for ‘social theory’ has in factdiluted the intellectual vitality and force of ‘sociological theory’. One might takethe charitable view that ‘social theory’ is simply parallel to ‘political theory’. It isintended to avoid the narrow idea of science based on the natural sciences in orderto embrace forms of social philosophy and normative debate (O’Neill, 1972). Italso wants to be expansive to include for example aspects of theological discussioninto the arena of social reflection. Such a view of the province of social theory isindeed attractive and laudable. Unfortunately, there is a negative side to the

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growth of social theory. The promotion of social theory has often been apublishing strategy to situate theory books in a larger and more effective marketstrategy. However, this strategy may have little intellectual value for sociology.Social theory becomes a ragbag for almost any set of observations on modernsociety. There is no sense of an effective distinction between opinion and theory.‘Social theory’ has as a result become almost identical with ‘cultural theory’.There has been a tendency for cultural theory to re-orient sociology away fromthe study of specifically social institutions to a vague reflection on culturalphenomena from chocolate bars to Bach’s concertos. In the contemporarycontext of interdisciplinarity in cultural studies, there is an important disciplinaryneed to defend the authenticity of sociological theory (Rojek and Turner, 2000).This sociological project includes the study of major institutions as the determin-ing contexts of micro-cultural behaviour.

Our approach to sociological theory is to avoid writing sociological theoryas simply a history of ideas, or treating theory as merely a list of substantive areas(such as theories of the family, or theories in the sociology of work), or suggestingthat sociological theory is only an exegesis of conventional texts. This was not thepractice in any of the texts that we regard as classics of sociology. While studies ofindividual sociologists are perfectly legitimate and important activities, we do notinterpret classical sociology as involving simply a respectful study of a phalanxof great names. The Journal of Classical Sociology will consider how classicalsociological theory is produced, how it relates to other forms of theoretical work(in economics and politics for example), where classical sociological theory hasbeen constructed, and under what intellectual and social conditions, and howcanonical theory is contested. Reflexivity about how sociology gets done is animportant prerequisite to the development of a critical canon that can providesome shared assumptions about what constitutes good work, namely what are thecriteria of scholarly excellence that can drive the discipline. How do we disciplinesociology?

Another underlying assumption is that sociological theory has to havesome creative relationship to sociological practice, namely with empirical research.The sociological tradition has thrived when research and theory have beenmutually supportive. Marx’s engagement with the conditions that produceworking-class radicalism, Durkheim’s employment of suicide statistics, Weber’sresearch on east Elbian labour relations or Tonnies’s attempt to engage with theemergence of ‘public opinion’ were empirical research interests that drove theirtheoretical activities. Current trends in pedagogy unfortunately keep theory andmethods apart, and most American sociology departments have adopted the ideaof a ‘theory chair’, as if adequate sociological theory could ever be divorced fromsocial research, specifically empirical research. Our notion of canonical sociologyspecifically includes an engagement with the history of sociological methods, andthe relationship between methods and theory. Equally it is difficult to see howsociology could remain a relevant or vital discipline without specific interests

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in political institutions and the structure of power relations. The separationof sociology and politics in many university faculties is detrimental to bothdisciplines.

Sociology is inevitably a mode of writing about ideas, about societies andtheir cultures. The Journal of Classical Sociology provides an opportunity forprobing and scrutinizing the textuality of sociology and its claims to speakauthoritatively about social institutions. The Journal of Classical Sociology wel-comes and encourages close textual readings and interpretations of classical works.There has been, because the undergraduate market requires it, a tendency forsociologists to provide glossaries, summaries and overviews of sociology, ratherthan focused study of specific sociological texts. There is a craft of textual analysisthat we seek to encourage that involves serious respect for the specific mechanismsof argumentation that in turn depend on style and rhetoric. Bland surveys ofsociological trends do not produce advances in sociological theory. Models oftextual criticism would include Charles Taylor’s reading of Hegel (Taylor, 1975),Wilhelm Hennis’s studies of Weber’s concepts of personality and life orders(Hennis, 1988) or Steven Lukes’s classic study of Durkheim (Lukes, 1972). TheJournal will contribute to the renaissance of sociology and challenge the frag-mentation of sociological theory through attention to how sociological theory isproduced. It wants to recover the historical, analytic and textual practices thatmake classical sociology a distinctive enterprise.

Conclusion: Voice and TraditionSociology has been characteristically a critical vision of society. A critical visionshould not be confused with a socialist critique of the problems of industrialcapitalism. There was clearly an important association between socialism and thework of St Simon and Durkheim in France; it also included the critical voices ofWright Mills and Alvin Gouldner. But romanticism and conservatism also pro-duced a radical critic of industrial society. The Journal of Classical Sociology makesthe assumption that sociological theory is necessarily critical theory, but thatcritical vision can come from a variety of ideological positions.

Because sociology is critical, the idea of a classical sociology may beprovocative. It is clear, as we have indicated, that an exclusionary canon has servedto marginalize a variety of voices; women and black intellectuals were under-represented or simply not represented in the traditional formulation of classicalsociology. The question of gender and classical sociology is an issue that we wishto explore systematically (McDonald, 1997). The Journal of Classical Sociologywill seek out critical articles on classical sociology from a variety of perspectives –feminism, postcolonial theory, subaltern studies and postmodernism. It does notexist to defend a bland rehearsal of the legacy of sociology, but to ask by contrast:what is valid and vital in the sociological tradition today? The classical sociologicaltradition is a living body of social knowledge, which the Journal will explore and

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develop. Indeed we recognize a variety of sociological traditions across a range ofsocieties and cultures. The Journal of Classical Sociology welcomes manuscriptsthat fall within its manifesto. We undertake to provide prompt critical assessmentsby our reviewers to assist authors’ publication of their work in accordance withpeer standards of excellence.

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O’Neill, J. (1972) Sociology as a Skin Trade: Essays towards a Reflexive Sociology.London: Heinemann.

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