Delusions of Empire

STEPHEN TURNER

Betting on the future of sociological theory is a hazardous affair. Parsons, late in life, admitted one of his smaller predictive errors when he conceded that Merton's "middle range theory" idea had been a better strategy for the time than the one he had himself r ecommended (1968, p. ix). But he did not admit his most spec- tacular and comprehensive error: in 1945 he insisted that "we stand on the threshold of a definitely new era in sociology and the neighboring social science fields" because of the "availability and common acceptance and employment of a well-articulated generalized theoretical system" (1964, p. 212). The predict ion was a preposterous and of course self-centered fantasy. But in one sense, the tactical one, this predict ion was not an error: foundations accepted it and fi- nanced, quite generously, Parsons's efforts and those of the persons who were associated with the program. 1 In the fifties and sixties the work of these persons became constitutive of "good sociology" in the eyes of funding agencies, weal thy universities and ambitious graduate students.

One is tempted to say "apart from merit." But retrospective judgments of merit are almost as dit/icult as prospective ones. For the moment , we may put aside the questions of intrinsic merit. Academic careers are in part at least the product of competi t ions carried out in artificial, human institutions, in which winners are judged by humans who are involved in various ways with the compet i t ion itself, and who judge in part on the basis of beliefs they share or do not share with those they judge. 2 Consequently something may be said about many aspects of the rise and fall of intellectual strategies apart from merit.

This particular strategy produced marvelous career opportunit ies for those who had invested early, and were consequent ly sought after as representatives of the new fashion. The beneficiaries used their role as judges to evaluate negatively those who disagreed with the program, and the consensus solidified. Later, the

Stephen Turner is Graduate Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Florida- Tampa. His most recent book was The Search for a Methodology of Social Science (Reidel, 1986). He has taught sociology at the University of South Florida, Notre Dame, and Boston University. Please address all correspondence to Department of Philosophy, University of Florida-Tampa, Tampa, FL 33520.

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exis tence of the consensus p roduced opportuni t ies for critics: once the band- wagon had filled up, bet t ing against an overbe t strategy became the be t te r strat- egy. And this strategy itself became overbet . When the critics we re done, they had worked themselves out of a job. The diversity of alternatives that had been de- ve loped made consolidat ion (or even exhumat ion of the old consensus) a possi- ble strategy. To those looking to back potential winners, and to the uncommit ted , w h o can gain more from a subordinate place on a winning combinat ion than as individuals peddling their own alternative in a c r o w d e d market, a new band- wagon will be attractive.

Smelser is touting such an opportunity. Just as in the days w h e n Parsons and Merton sold the foundations on the prospects of theoretical, scientific sociology, talking up consolidat ion makes it a be t ter strategy (especially if one has a head start in the consolidation market). Of course, especially in a situation of decline, there wou ld be no point to consolidation if it didn't involve a good bit of log- rolling: Parsons left out a great deal of what had p receded him, including the kind of theory done by most of the persons who identified themselves with the area in 1945. And so with con temporary efforts. Thus it is perhaps not surprising that a small group of carefully selected persons, possessing b e t w e e n them a significant fraction of the available cultural and institutional capital in the p ro tec ted market of American sociology, and represent ing some subset of the array of work in the area which is wi thout too many inherent conflicts, 3 might find it in their interest to engage in "consistently nonpolemic and construct ive dialogue," even to strug- gle "to accommodate , assimilate, and strive for synthesis." So did the Robber Barons.

This is harsh. But there is a something harsher that Smelser leaves out. American sociological theory is n o w intellectually marginalized. The ideas discussed in these meetings are mostly the ideas of others w h o are outside of sociology, notably public-choice economists, decision theorists, and game theorists, such as Mancur Olsen, Gary Becker, and Jon Elster, or anthropologists (or "cultural ana- lysts" with roots in distinctively anthropological traditions, notably structuralism and hermeneutics) . These programs are each, one might say, in an imperialistic phase. Sociology is today in a dependen t one, responding to challenges to its turf ( some of which have been harshly put ) or assimilating those ideas of the chal- lengers that it can wi thout losing its claims to a distinctive subject matter alto- gether, and in general defending and protecting.

Sociological theory had its imperialistic phase as well (far more heavily bank- rolled by the foundations than these new imperialisms), and as I have suggested, it too was marked by ambitious programmatic p ronouncements no less absurd than the sort one hears today from Gary Becker. It is well to r emember that during o u r m o m e n t in the sun scholars in o ther disciplines were attracted to our prod- ucts, such as Parsons's program, just as sociologists today embrace Becker.

In the beginning of my commen t I put aside questions of the quality of schol- arship. But they cannot be kept aside entirely. The analogy that intrudes today, in the ruins of sociology's imperialistic past, is wi th the automobi le business. We are

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stuck with a bunch of a r rangements- -wi th patrons, audiences, the public, the "discipl ine"-- that served in the past but no longer do. Sociology is today an "empirically or iented" discipline with a variety of aspirations: to evaluate social policies on the basis of determinable inputs and outputs, to descr ibe various forms of social life, to analyze statistical relations b e t w e e n "social" variables, and so forth. These aspirations only fit with certain kinds of "theory." The aspirations to the status of "theoretical science" which motivated Parsons and Merton in the forties and fifties, and which served as their link to the rest of sociology, today seem merely quaint.

It is cruel to say so, but the conferences Smelser describes sound to me less like a por ten t of future synthesis than delusions of empire lost. We lost our empire because our bid for empire itself was defective. The main predict ions to the foundations that bankroUed the consensus, of a science of society of the sort that Parsons and Merton optimistically envisioned, did not come true. The great Parsons- Merton gamble was a great fiasco on the terms on which it was originally stated. We should have learned something from this experience. But instead, in the p ro t ec t ed internal market, a spirit of tolerant backscratching and inflated praise prevails. The machine grinds on. People go to too many subsidized conferences, publish too many papers wi thout much substance for a rapidly dwindling "do- mestic" audience. "Theory" can cont inue as an intellectual activity on these terms, though it is difficult to imagine why anyone wou ld wish to participate in it, o ther than out of the vanity that comes with small intellectual horizons and historical ignorance. Weber and Durkheim, even Parsons, would not have thought it wor th the candle.

Historically, there was an alternative. The older v iew of theory, the v iew of Albion Small, Charles Ellwood, Harry Elmer Barnes and others in prewar sociol- ogy, was that " theory" s tood pret ty much on its own footing, apart from social statistics, as a historical s tudy of past systems of social thought, knowledge of which was more or less directly relevant to an intelligent person 's understanding of the world. The task of sociology was to bring these ideas to bear on present affairs. Small bel ieved that social theories, like philosophies, we re "at tempts to substi tute revised second thought for the hasty first thoughts composing the popular sociologies in which busy men outside the schools ut ter their impres- sions" (1895, p. 6), and that theory should be "about things that interest ordinary men in a form which men of affairs wiU see to be true to life." This was, for Small, a cri terion of validity, though not the only one. He did not shrink from conceding that this implied that men of affairs "are then the most authoritative sociologists" (1895, p. 14).

H o w actualizable is Small's alternative today? He t ided his editorial preface to the 1895 journal "The Era of Sociology," because he bel ieved that men of affairs we re and wou ld be increasingly concerned with social issues. Perhaps the era is over, and there is no going baclc But wri ters like Peter Drucker do meet Small's cri terion today, and deal in a serious way with the kinds of problems that Webe r had, in his time, wri t ten on for newspaper audiences. For a start, w e could do our

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scholarly duties by examining the ideas of those who are speaking successfully to public audiences. Producing more documents whose meaning depends almost entirely on the artificial institutional structure of American academic sociology and its little turf struggles and pecking order games is unworthy, and unworthy of the aspirations that past sociologists had for the discipline.

Notes

1. Parsons was a long term beneficiary of generous Carnegie support. For a more elaborate discussion of the historical issues surrounding the aspirations of theoretical sociology and the historical alternatives to the idea of theory Smelser assumes, see Buxton and Turner, forthcoming, and Turner, forthcoming.

2. Merton, for example, had a major role in the Gaither report that led to support by the then-newly established Ford Foundation, which in turn supported Merton-like work.

3. It is notable that no representatives of sociology's hot test current, and the only one exert ing major influence outside sociology, namely the movemen t that calls itself the "sociology of scientific knowledge," were invited to any of these mee t ings - -no r would they have been as easily "accommodated."

References

Buxton, William and Stephen Turner. (forthcoming). "Edification and Expertise: Sociology as a 'Profession.'" In Terence C. Halliday and Morris Janowitz (eds.), ,~ociology and its Publics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Parsons, Talcott, 1964. Essays in Sociological Theory. New York: Free Press. _ _ . 1968. The Structure of Social Action. New York: Free Press. Small, Albion. 1895. "The Era of Sociology." American Journal of Sociology 1:1-15. Turner, Stephen. (forthcoming). "The Strange Life and Hard Times of the Concept of General Theory in Soci-

ology: A Short History of Hope." In Steven Seidman and David G. Wagner (eds.), General Social Theory and Its Critics. London: Basil Blackwell.

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