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the wiley-blackwell companion to major social theorists

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WILEY-BLACKWELL COMPANIONS TO SOCIOLOGY

The Wiley-Blackwell Companions to Sociology provide introductions to emerging topics and theoretical orientations in sociology as well as presenting the scope and quality of the discipline as it is currently configured. Essays in the Companions tackle broad themes or central puzzles within the field and are authored by key scholars who have spent considerable time in research and reflection on the questions and controversies that have activated interest in their area. This authoritative series will interest those studying sociology at advanced undergraduate or graduate level as well as scholars in the social sciences and informed readers in applied disciplines.

The Blackwell Companion to Major Classical Social TheoristsEdited by George Ritzer

The Blackwell Companion to Major Contemporary Social TheoristsEdited by George Ritzer

The Blackwell Companion to Political SociologyEdited by Kate Nash and Alan Scott

The Blackwell Companion to SociologyEdited by Judith R. Blau

The Blackwell Companion to CriminologyEdited by Colin Sumner

The Blackwell Companion to Social MovementsEdited by David A. Snow, Sarah A. Soule, and Hanspeter Kriesi

The Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of FamiliesEdited by Jacqueline Scott, Judith Treas, and Martin Richards

The Blackwell Companion to Law and SocietyEdited by Austin Sarat

The Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of CultureEdited by Mark Jacobs and Nancy Hanrahan

The Blackwell Companion to Social InequalitiesEdited by Mary Romero and Eric Margolis

The New Blackwell Companion to Social TheoryEdited by Bryan S. Turner

The New Blackwell Companion to Medical SociologyEdited by William C. Cockerham

The New Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of ReligionEdited by Bryan S. Turner

The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social TheoristsEdited by George Ritzer and Jeffrey Stepnisky

Also available:

The Blackwell Companion to GlobalizationEdited by George Ritzer

The New Blackwell Companion to the CityEdited by Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson

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the wiley-blackwell companion to

Major Social Theorists

Volume IClassical Social Theorists

edited by

george ritzer and jeffrey stepnisky

A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication

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This edition fi rst published 2011© 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell’s publishing program has been merged with Wiley’s global Scientifi c, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell.

Registered Offi ceJohn Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, United Kingdom

Editorial Offi ces350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UKThe Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK

For details of our global editorial offi ces, for customer services, and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell.

The right of George Ritzer and Jeffrey Stepnisky to be identifi ed as the authors of the editorial material in this work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The Wiley-Blackwell companion to major social theorists / edited by George Ritzer, Jeffrey Stepnisky. p. cm. – (Blackwell companions to sociology; 27) Published in 2000 under title: The Blackwell companion to major social theorists. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4443-3078-6 (hardback)1. Sociologists–Biography. 2. Social sciences–Philosophy. I. Ritzer, George. II. Stepnisky, Jeffrey. III. Blackwell companion to major social theorists. IV. Title: Major social theorists. HM478.B583 2011 301.092′2–dc22 [B]

2011003987

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Set in 10/12.5pt Sabon by SPi Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India

1 2011

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List of Contributors viiPreface xiii

Introduction 1Jeffrey Stepnisky

1 Ibn Khaldu-n 12 Syed Farid Alatas

2 Auguste Comte 30 Mary Pickering

3 Harriet Martineau 61 Susan Hoecker-Drysdale

4 Alexis de Tocqueville 96 Laura Janara

5 Karl Marx 115 Robert J. Antonio

6 Herbert Spencer 165 Mark Francis

7 Thorstein Veblen 185 Ken McCormick

8 Georg Simmel 205 Lawrence A. Scaff

Contents

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vi contents

9 Émile Durkheim 236 Tara Milbrandt and Frank Pearce

10 Charlotte Perkins Gilman 283 Judith A. Allen

11 Max Weber 305 Stephen Kalberg

12 George Herbert Mead 373 Dmitri N. Shalin

13 William Edward Burghardt Du Bois 426 Paul C. Taylor

14 Joseph A. Schumpeter 448 Harry F. Dahms

15 Karl Mannheim 469 Colin Loader

16 Alfred Schutz 489 Jochen Dreher

17 Talcott Parsons 511 Victor Lidz

18 Theodor W. Adorno 559 Harry F. Dahms

Index 582

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Syed Farid Alatas, a Malaysian national, is Head of the Department of Malay Studies and Associate Professor of Sociology at the National University of Singapore where he has been since 1992. He obtained his PhD in sociology from the Johns Hopkins University in 1991. He lectured at the University of Malaya in the Department of Southeast Asian Studies prior to his appointment at Singapore. His books include Democracy and Authoritarianism: The Rise of the Post-Colonial State in Indonesia and Malaysia (1997) and Alternative Discourse in Asian Social Science: Responses to Eurocentrism (2006). He has also edited Asian Inter-Faith Dialogue: Perspectives on Religion, Education and Social Cohesion (2003) and Asian Anthropology, with Jan van Bremen and Eyal Ben-Ari (2005). He is currently in the final stages of pre-paring a book manuscript for publication on the thought of Ibn Khaldu- n and is also working on another book on the Ba‘alawi Sufi order.

Judith A. Allen is a cultural and social historian and Professor of History and Gender Studies at Indiana University. Her research centers on intersections between histori-cal forms of feminism, sexualities, and knowledge formations. In addition to articles and book chapters on feminist theory, abortion, sexology, masculinities, and inter-disciplinary gender studies research, her books include: Sex and Secrets: Crimes Involving Australian Women Since 1880 (1990), Rose Scott: Vision and Revision in Feminism 1880–1925 (1994), and The Feminism of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Sexualities, Histories, and Progressivism (2009). Currently, she is preparing a study of late nineteenth- to mid-twentieth-century British heteroerotics and birth control.

Robert J. Antonio teaches sociology at the University of Kansas. He is the editor of Marx and Modernity: Key Readings and Commentary (Blackwell, 2003). He has written widely on classical, contemporary, and critical theory. He has also done work on various facets of globalization, frequently collaborating on that topic with Alessandro Bonanno.

Harry F. Dahms is currently Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Assistant Director of the Center for the Study of Social Justice at the University of

Contributors

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viii list of contributors

Tennessee, Knoxville, where he was Associate Head and Director of Graduate Studies (2006–10). He is also affiliated to the Faculty at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. He received his PhD from the New School for Social Research in 1993. He is the editor of the book series Current Perspectives in Social Theory: No Social Science Without Critical Theory (2008); Nature, Knowledge, and Negation (2009); and Theorizing the Dynamics of Social Processes (with L. Hazelrigg, 2010). His publica-tions include: Transformations of Capitalism: Economy, Society, and the State in Modern Times (editor, 2000); and articles (in Sociological Theory, Current Perspectives in Social Theory, Soziale Welt, Soundings, International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society), and book chapters and encyclopedia entries relating to critical theory, democracy, alienation, and modernity.

Jochen Dreher (Dr. rer. soc.) is chief executive officer of the Social Science Archive (Alfred Schutz Memorial Archive) of the University of Konstanz, Germany, and a lecturer in sociology at the University of Konstanz as well as the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. His scientific research concentrates on sociology of knowledge, sociology of culture, phenomenology, social theory, qualitative social research, soci-ology of organization, intercultural communication and the sociological theory of the symbol. He co-edited volume 4 of the German edition of Alfred Schutz’s works, Alfred Schütz Werkausgabe (ASW). Zur Methodologie der Sozialwissenschaften (2010), and is currently co-editing volume 8, Schriften zur Literatur (2011). His most significant publications related to Schutzian thought are: The Symbol and the Theory of the Life-World: “The Transcendences of the Life-World and their Overcoming by Signs and Symbols” (2003) and Phenomenology of Friendship: Construction and Constitution of an Existential Social Relationship (2009).

Mark Francis is Professor of Political Science in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand where he teaches social and political theory. He was educated at UBC, Toronto and Cambridge, and was the Jules and Gabrielle Léger Fellow in Canada and the Fowler Hamilton Senior Research Fellow at Christ Church, Oxford. His publications include: Herbert Spencer and the Invention of Modern Life (2007); “Social Darwinism and the Construction of Institutionalized Racism in Australia,” Journal of Australian Studies (1996); and Governors and Settlers: Images of Authority in the British Colonies, 1820–60 (1992). He is currently engaged in research projects on the political and social uses of civilization during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Susan Hoecker-Drysdale has been a Research Professor-in-Residence, Sociology, at American University, Washington DC, since 2007, and previously was Visiting Professor of Sociology, University of Iowa, 2002–5. She is Professor Emerita of Sociology, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec. She has been a Visiting Fellow, School of Advanced Study, and Visiting Fellow, Institute of Historical Research, at the University of London. Her publications include: Harriet Martineau: Studies of America, 1831–1868 (eight edited volumes, 2004); Harriet Martineau: Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives (co-edited with Michael R. Hill, 2002); Harriet Martineau: First Woman Sociologist (1992); and recent articles: “Political Economy and Journalism” (2009), “Witch Hunts and Enlightenment: Harriet Martineau’s

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list of contributors ix

Critical Reflections on Salem” (2008); “The History of Sociology: The North American Perspective” (with John P. Drysdale, 2007); “The Nobleness of Labor and the Instinct of Workmanship: Nature, Work, Gender and Politics in Harriet Martineau and Thorstein Veblen” (2007). Her areas of interest include sociological theory, fem-inist theory, the history of sociology, and gender. She is a founding member of the British Martineau Society and the Harriet Martineau Sociological Society. She is cur-rently working on The Feminist Tradition in Sociology (Wiley-Blackwell).

Laura Janara is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. In 2003 her book, Democracy Growing Up: Authority, Autonomy and Passion in Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America” (2002), won the Best First Book prize from the Foundations of Political Theory section of the American Political Science Association. In 2004 it was short-listed by the Canadian Political Science Association for the C.B. Macpherson Prize for Best Book in Political Philosophy, 2002–4. Professor Janara has also written on Machiavelli, and continues to work on the problem of familial thinking in modern democratic political thought and discourse. In addition, she is engaged with the question of nonhuman life and how it is situated in political theory and public life.

Stephen Kalberg teaches classical and contemporary theory, political sociology, and comparative-historical sociology at Boston University. He is the author of Max Weber’s Comparative-Historical Sociology (1996), translator of Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (2001, 2010), and editor of Max Weber: Readings and Commentary on Modernity (2005) and The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism with Other Writings on the Rise of the West (2009). His introduction to Max Weber, which draws heavily upon his chapter in this volume, has been published in German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Turkish. He is also the author of Les Idées, les Valeurs et les Intérêts: Introduction à la Sociologie de Max Weber (2010), Max Weber’s Sociology of Civilizations (forthcoming), and numerous studies that compare German and American societies. His articles on Weber include, most recently, “Max Weber’s Analysis of the Unique American Civic Sphere” (2009).

Victor Lidz received his BA cum laude in government in 1962 and his PhD in sociology in 1976 from Harvard University. As a graduate student, he studied with Talcott Parsons, Robert N. Bellah, Erik Erikson, David Maybury-Lewis, and Ezra Vogel among others and served as research assistant to Talcott Parsons from 1963 to 1968. He has held faculty appointments at the University of Chicago and University of Pennsylvania, and co-taught seminars with Talcott Parsons when the latter served as visiting professor at both of those institutions. Lidz has served as a visiting faculty member at St. Joseph’s University and at Haverford College, the latter on several occasions over 25 years. He is presently Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Director of its Division of Substance Abuse Treatment and Research at the Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia. He has published extensively on the writings of Talcott Parsons and on the theory of social action.

Colin Loader is Professor of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His primary area of research is the history of German sociology from 1890 to 1933.

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x list of contributors

In addition to being the author or co-author of three books about Karl Mannheim, he has co-edited a volume of Mannheim’s writings. He has written articles on Max Weber and Werner Sombart, and he is currently working on a book-length study of Alfred Weber.

Ken McCormick has been a faculty member at the University of Northern Iowa since graduating in 1982 from Iowa State University. His book, Veblen in Plain English: A Complete Introduction to Thorstein Veblen’s Economics (2006), has been very well received and led to an appearance on The Bob Edwards Show. One of his jour-nal articles on Veblen has been twice reprinted in books, and another of his articles on Veblen has also been reprinted. He has published over 30 articles in outlets such as the Review of Social Economy, Eastern Economic Journal, Pacific Economic Review, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Applied Economics, and Journal of Economics. He has been awarded three grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities. McCormick has received the Regent’s Award for Faculty Excellence as well as UNI’s university-wide teaching award.

Tara Milbrandt received her PhD in sociology from York University in Toronto in 2006. Her dissertation, “Public Space, Collective Desire and the Contested City,” explored conceptions of social order and collective vitality underpinning everyday/night relations to public space in the city. She now works as Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Alberta’s liberal arts campus of Augustana, where she teaches core courses in classical and contemporary sociological theory as well as courses in community, culture, and media. Drawing upon classical and interpretive sociological theory, her ongoing research explores the negotiated order of public spaces in contemporary society, including forms of social connectivity that corre-spond with the newly pervasive presence of visual recording technologies. Inspired by the Durkheimian endeavor to analyze the social world on its own terms, she is currently writing a book that explores the constitutive power of the visual “record” in twenty-first-century Canadian public life.

Frank Pearce is a Professor of Sociology at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, where he teaches classical and contemporary social theory and the sociol-ogy of crime and law. He has also worked at other universities in Canada, the United States, and Britain. His publications are in the area of social theory (particularly Foucault, Marx, and Durkheim) and on corporate crime. In his book The Radical Durkheim (2nd edn., 2001) and in other writing he has provided a rigorous account of the conceptual structures of both the dominant and subordinate discourses in Durkheim’s work and developed these in fruitful and innovative directions. His most recent book is Critical Realism and the Social Sciences: Heterodox Elaborations (with Jon Frauley, 2007), and other books include Toxic Capitalism: Corporate Crime and the Chemical Industry (with Steve Tombs, 1998). He is currently writing a book on human sacrifice.

Mary Pickering is Professor of Modern European History at San Jose State University, specializing in cultural/intellectual history, social history, and women’s history. She received her BA, MA, and PhD from Harvard University and holds an advanced

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list of contributors xi

graduate degree (DEA) from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (“Sciences Po”) in Paris. She has written articles for the Journal of the History of Ideas, French Historical Studies, Journal of Women’s History, Historical Reflections, Revue philosophique, and Revue internationale de philosophie. The first volume of her book Auguste Comte: An Intellectual Biography was published in 1993. The second and third volumes appeared in 2009.

George Ritzer is Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland. Among his awards: Honorary Doctorate from La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia; Honorary Patron, University Philosophical Society, Trinity College, Dublin; the American Sociological Association’s Distinguished Contribution to Teaching Award. He has chaired the American Sociological Association’s Section on Theoretical Sociology, as well as the Section on Organizations and Occupations, and is currently the first Chair of the section-in-formation on Global and Transnational Sociology. His books include: The McDonaldization of Society (5th edn., 2008), Enchanting a Disenchanted World (3rd edn., 2010), and The Globalization of Nothing (2nd edn., 2007). His most recent book is Globalization: A Basic Text (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010) and he edited The Blackwell Companion to Globalization (2008). He is currently working on The Outsourcing of Everything (with Craig Lair, forthcoming). He was founding editor of the Journal of Consumer Culture. He also edited the eleven-volume Encyclopedia of Sociology (2007) and the two-volume Encyclopedia of Social Theory (2005) and is currently editing the Encyclopedia of Globalization (forthcoming). Current essays deal with the “prosumer” (one who simultaneously produces and consumes), especially on Web 2.0 sites such as Wikipedia and Facebook, and he is editing a special double-issue of the American Behavioral Scientist on that topic. His books have been translated into over 20 lan-guages, with over a dozen translations of The McDonaldization of Society alone.

Lawrence A. Scaff is Professor of Political Science and Sociology at Wayne State University, Detroit. He has published extensively in social theory, and he is the author of Fleeing the Iron Cage: Culture, Politics and Modernity in the Thought of Max Weber (1991), and of the forthcoming book, Max Weber in America.

Dmitri N. Shalin is Professor of Sociology, Chair of the Sociology Department, Director of the UNLV Center for Democratic Culture, Coordinator of the Justice & Democracy Forum series, and Co-Director of the International Biography Initiative, Erving Goffman Archives and Yuri Levada Archives. His research interests and pub-lications are in the areas of pragmatism, social theory, emotional intelligence, bio-critical studies, democratic culture, and Russian society. He is the author of Pragmatism and Democracy: Studies in History, Social Theory and Progressive Politics, and editor of Russian Culture at the Crossroads: Paradoxes of Postcommunist Consciousness, The Social Health of Nevada: Leading Indicators and Quality of Life in the Silver State, and Bios Sociologicus: The Erving Goffman Archives.

Jeffrey Stepnisky is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He teaches courses in social theory, social psychol-ogy, and the sociology of mental illness. His research interests are in the area of self

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xii list of contributors

and subjectivity with particular attention to the impact of contemporary biotech-nologies, such as antidepressants, on self-understanding. He has published papers on this topic in Social Theory & Health and The Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society. He also has an ongoing interest in the work and writing of Canadian phi-losopher and social theorist Charles Taylor.

Paul C. Taylor is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University, where he also serves as the founding director of the Program on Philosophy After Apartheid at the Rock Ethics Institute. Professor Taylor received his bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Morehouse College and his PhD in philosophy from Rutgers University. He writes on aesthetics, race theory, Africana philosophy, prag-matism, and social philosophy, and is the author of the book Race: A Philosophical Introduction (2004). His recent work includes a study of video model Vida Guerra, and keynote lectures to the Philosophical Society of South Africa, the Alain Locke Society, and the Philosophy of Education Society. He is currently at work on a book called Black is Beautiful: A Philosophy of Black Aesthetics (Wiley-Blackwell, forth-coming).

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This volume of The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists is a sig-nificant expansion and revision of The Blackwell Companion to Major Classical Social Theorists originally published in 2000 and in slightly modified form in 2003. While the first edition featured chapters on twelve classical social theorists, this ver-sion includes eighteen essays. Eleven of the eighteen chapters are written by authors new to this edition. The authors of essays that appeared in the previous edition have thoroughly revised their pieces by re-writing parts of the original essays, adding new sections and ideas, commenting on the relevance of theory in the present moment, and updating the list of secondary sources. In addition, all essays include a feature new to this volume – a Reader’s Guide. Located at the end of each essay, this short guide gives readers a quick summary of the most important entry points into a theo-rist’s work. Ultimately, this companion comes together as a fresh piece of scholarship that enlarges our understanding of the major classical social theorists.

The addition of six new chapters on classical theorists has allowed us to include a broader set of social theoretical perspectives. These theorists were chosen not only for their historical significance but also for their contemporary relevance. Ibn Khaldu- n offers a non-Western perspective on social theory thus addressing a need for the development of a global social theory; Tocqueville helps us to think about democracy; Schumpeter offers a unique perspective on capitalism; Mannheim’s soci-ology of knowledge resonates with current interests in knowledge production, par-ticularly in the field of science and technology studies; Veblen gives yet another perspective on the economy but also articulates some of the first ideas about consum-erism; and Adorno adds the neo-Marxian critical theory that was missing from the original edition and is now particularly influential in the field of cultural theory. This companion also includes a new introduction that discusses classical social theory within the context of what social theorist Charles Taylor has called “modern social imaginaries.”

All of the chapters in this volume are written by contemporary theorists who are experts on the classical theorist discussed in their chapter. However, even for experts there is a great deal of work that goes into researching and writing one of these

Preface

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xiv preface

essays. One of the strengths of this volume is that the essays are quite deep and extensive, including not simply a rehearsal of the major features of each theorist’s ideas, but also the biographical and historical contexts that framed each theorist’s work. The editors are grateful, then, not only for the expertise of the contributors but also for the time commitment involved in writing such essays. The dedication of each contributor shows in the quality of the essays produced.

The editors would also like to thank the team at Wiley-Blackwell for their efforts in bringing these volumes together. In particular, we thank Justin Vaughan who first approached us to expand and revise the volumes. Throughout the writing, editing and production process Ben Thatcher has been an invaluable resource and helpful guide. At various points, Barbara Duke, Sally Cooper, and Joanna Pyke provided helpful feedback. We are also grateful for Sarah Pearsall’s work as copy-editor. These volumes also owe something to Douglas Goodman and Todd Stillman, both of whom helped George Ritzer to edit and develop the first edition of this companion. Finally, Jeff Stepnisky would like to thank Michelle Meagher for her support and feedback throughout the editorial process.

George Ritzer and Jeff Stepnisky

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The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists, First Edition. Edited by George Ritzer and Jeffrey Stepnisky. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2011 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

This volume of The Wiley- Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists offers a comprehensive engagement with the work of 18 of the most important classical social theorists. The essays not only are intended as descriptions of the mechanics of specific theories, but also endeavor to place the work in broad social, intellectual and biographical contexts. The volume begins with a theorist writing in fourteenth- century North Africa: Ibn Khaldun. Often noted, but rarely examined on his own terms, Ibn Khaldun gives us a social theory that originates in an Islamic context. We have included this essay to highlight the importance of developing a global social theory – that is a social theory that finds its roots not only in Western traditions but in a diversity of sources. That said, though a number of the other essays in this vol-ume address global and civilizational themes (see Kalberg on Weber’s sociology of civilizations as well as Tocqueville, Martineau, Spencer, Gilman, Du Bois, and Parsons), they are largely situated in the issues and problems of European and American societies. Starting with theorists writing in the nineteenth century, this includes historical events such as the development of Enlightenment and counter- Enlightenment thought, colonialism, the Industrial Revolution, the American and French revolutions, the development of socialism, as well as numerous other European revolutions. In America, key issues include those arising from the Gilded and Progressive eras as well as the suffrage movement and the first wave of femi-nism. Theorists working in the early twentieth century were shaped by the Communist Revolution in Russia, the Great Depression, World War I, the rise of National Socialism in Germany, and World War II. In fact, this volume ends here (at the close of World War II) with a pair of theorists – Talcott Parsons and Theodor Adorno – whose grand scope of analysis signals the end of an era in social theory. Parsons offered a style of large- scale theory building in tune with the social scientific and social democratic ambitions of post- World War II America. Adorno represented the

Introduction

JEFFREY STEPNISKY

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2 jeffrey stepnisky

counterpoint to Parsons’s approach – a critical take on extant European and North American societies, a challenge to what he called the “totally administered society.” Despite these differences each sought to grasp society as a totality; Parsons for its systemic coherence, Adorno for its irreconcilable contradictions. While Volume 1 ends with these theorists Volume 2 of this companion picks up with the theoretical positions that develop in the latter half of the twentieth century.

By way of introduction to this volume, a helpful framing device is Charles Taylor’s (2004) concept of modern social imaginaries. The theorists and theories described here grow out of and contribute to the formation of modern social imaginaries. In their first instance social imaginaries are well- developed theoretical formulations. They are ideas about how the social world operates. In line with this, each of the theorists in this volume defines the nature of the social and offers a theory about how that social world operates. However, a theory only becomes a part of the social imaginary when it is incorporated into everyday life and practice. That is, the social imaginaries describe ideas that have been taken up by entire societies to shape the way they view themselves and thereby act in the world. They are taken- for- granted preconditions that influence thought, perception, action, and the material and insti-tutional make- up of everyday life. Given this volume’s focus on the context sur-rounding the development of social theory, the social imaginary concept is very helpful. To a varying extent, the social theorists described in these volumes have contributed to the overall understanding of society. Many of these ideas continue to inform our lives. Even when the ideas have not been explicitly incorporated into everyday practice, most have sought to engage the world around them, some to bol-ster the existing imaginary, others to challenge dominant imaginaries. At a minimum, these theories are central to the composition of what we might call modern social theoretical imaginaries. That is, even though not every theorist writing in the nine-teenth and early twentieth centuries is covered in this volume, the theorists chosen for this volume offer a fairly comprehensive description of the social imaginaries of the time. At this point, introductions to collections such as this one usually talk about the canon – the set of authors and works deemed central to a field of scholarship. The term social imaginaries moves us beyond that. Despite efforts to rework the canon in recent years, the term still tends to invoke a relatively staid and stuffy history of the voices that mattered. But to use the term social imaginaries emphasizes the dialogue of social theory – to see the theorists in conversation with their social conditions, their personal backgrounds, their fellow social theorists, and even the present.

As for preconditions, Taylor argues that the modern West is distinct because it conceives the social as a realm separate from and prior to the political realm. Before this, people imagined themselves in relationship to religious hierarchies or elite polit-ical groupings. Obviously, the political and the religious continue to exist into the modern period, but the social is introduced as a realm that grounds these other spheres of organization. Taylor has some ideas about the character of this modern social imaginary. Most generally, it is a sphere in which people start to imagine one another in terms of mutually beneficial interactions. The organization and prosper-ity of society do not depend upon some extra- human force, but the kinds of relations into which people enter with one another. Though most of the theorists in this volume take the social as a separate and foundational space, what is remarkable is the struggles to get the concept right – to properly define the social and to argue on


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its behalf. Comte recognized the priority of the social when in 1839 he coined the term sociology. As Pickering shows, he resists efforts to reduce the social to other sciences such as political economy or biology and asserts that sociology is the most complex and therefore most fundamental science. Martineau draws attention to the priority and self- constituting nature of the social when she describes it as an imma-nent form. Durkheim clearly recognizes the priority of the social when he founds the discipline of sociology and designates its object of study the social fact. And even though Marx challenges the form that social relations take within the capitalist sys-tem, ultimately his entire theory depends upon a rejection of religious and political hierarchy and the idea that people in productive cooperation can create a society for the good of all its members. Indeed, Antonio draws attention to the primacy of the social in Marx’s thought when he, provocatively, describes Marx’s theory not as historical materialism but rather as sociological materialism. Simmel, as Scaff argues, builds his sociology out of the study of interpersonal interactions, and Mead, as Shalin shows, grounds his concept of the social in symbolic interactions. Similarly, the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz, as described by Dreher, grounds his sociology of the life- world in the study of everyday life. These theorists give expression to, and then elaborate, the important modern idea that “everyday life” is a sphere of social-ity in and of itself.

The important point is that the modern imaginary highlights the social, in the variety of forms mentioned above, as a foundational sphere of activity. This is what makes social theory a viable topic of study and sociology a discipline in itself. But Taylor goes on to argue that the social manifests itself in three particular institutions: the economy, the public sphere, and the sovereign people. The economy, especially the free market economy imagined by seventeenth- and eighteenth- century thinkers, is a pre- political self- organizing sphere of mutually beneficial exchange. The public sphere is a space for debate that is, again, not reducible or confined to the political sphere – it is the public, broadly conceived. And the sovereign people come into being with the concept of the nation – a self- constituting group that defines itself in social and affiliative, rather than religious, terms. Though these are the most impor-tant, there are other elements of the social imaginary. Reading the following essays we see the classical social theorists contributing to our understanding of these vari-ous social imaginaries as well as introducing imaginaries not discussed by Taylor. The remainder of this introduction is organized around brief discussions of the vari-ous aspects of the social imaginary highlighted in this volume. Though these discus-sions resonate with Taylor’s characterization, they don’t perfectly match his breakdown because they are intended to capture themes found in the contributions to this volume.

ECONOMY

The importance of the economy in modern social life is clear from the fact that almost all theorists covered in this volume discuss it, even if they do not fully theo-rize it. In terms of understanding the origin of this component of the social imagi-nary, the starting point is Adam Smith’s invisible hand. Smith conceptualizes the economy as an autonomous realm of social activity that, if properly organized, will


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bring prosperity. Smith’s attention to political economy signals the beginning of a larger intellectual process in which the economy is singled out as an important force in social life and the nature of that relation detailed. Spencer and Martineau, for example, each allocate political economy a central role in the formulation of their social theories. Furthermore, they both developed their ideas about political econ-omy, and sociology more generally, in the public sphere. Spencer, as Francis shows us, was a well- regarded, internationally recognized, public intellectual. Martineau, as Hoecker- Drysdale discusses, published stories in pamphlets and wrote essays in widely read publications, including the 25- volume Illustrations in Political Economy. Here work and production, the impact of machinery, the division of labor, the growth of middle classes, and spreading social inequalities were treated as significant factors in the make- up of social life. Common to both Spencer and Martineau was the idea that modern capitalism is a complex organism and hence vulnerable to disruptions and instabilities. Given this complexity, it was, as Hoecker- Drysdale shows in a nicely chosen quotation from the Illustrations, the responsibility of all society’s members to understand the principles of political economy – in other words, to hold in view a clear image of the way that the economy shapes social well- being.

Of course, Karl Marx also worked to bring the machinations of political economy to wider public attention, most famously in the Communist Manifesto but with greater technical detail in Capital. In both accounts the vision of economy provided by classical political economy is treated as a sham – a reification that hides the social relations, in particular the relations of inequality, that sustain the sphere of produc-tion. Even though the economy and material forces are central to Marx’s work, it is ultimately a conceptualization of the social that informs Marx’s imaginary. Humans, as Antonio emphasizes in his piece on Marx, exist in cooperative relationship with one another. Under the conditions of capitalism this cooperation continues to oper-ate but is distorted. Antonio not only shows how this makes sense of Marx’s world, but how this view offers a compelling alternative to the current neoliberal vision. In light of recent financial collapses and clear problems with the global capitalist econ-omy it seems that the economy cannot operate (and never really has operated) as a sphere unto itself. Instead, it is influenced and interpenetrated by various social, political, and cultural forces. Indeed, though different in many important ways, this opposition to neoclassical economics is also central to Weber’s analysis in his opus Economy and Society. Even though, as Kalberg points out, Economy and Society takes the economic domain as its analytic centerpiece, this is really an opportunity to demonstrate the autonomy and interrelationship of a number of social domains. Here, then, economy is just one piece of the puzzle in what Kalberg describes as Weber’s larger project of explaining the emergence of modern western rationality.

Thorstein Veblen, presented by Ken McCormick, gives us yet another vision of the economy. Not as well known as the neoclassicists, Marxists or Weberians, Veblen nevertheless presents a welcome, socially nuanced, theory of economic action. The theory is both Darwinian and cultural. In particular, people are driven by what Veblen calls an instinct of emulation which, under the conditions of capitalism, man-ifests itself as conspicuous consumption – the purchase and display of commodities that demonstrate one’s social status. Even though Veblen’s broader economic theory is, as McCormick points out, under- appreciated, conspicuous consumption is a term that has entered popular discourse, and shaped the writing of theorists like Jean


introduction 5

Baudrillard and Pierre Bourdieu. Veblen, then, gives us an early vision of the con-sumer society – a system in which individuals are swept up, almost uncontrollably, by culturally mediated consumer desires. Here Georg Simmel should also be given brief mention as he too emphasizes the cultural and psychological foundations of the economy and in particular the role that they play in establishing the value of money. Scaff captures this point when, quoting Simmel, he describes the Philosophy of Money as an effort to “construct a new storey beneath historical materialism.” Like Weber, Simmel argues that this emerging cultural foundation is based in the spirit of calculative reason. Simmel is of two minds about this foundation – on the one hand it offers freedom, on the other hand it tends toward the objectification of cultural and psychological life. The larger point though is that for Simmel money is not merely a commodity, but it is also expressive of a larger cultural ethos.

Finally, Schumpeter’s work, described here by Dahms, gives us one last look at the variety of forms the economy has assumed in the modern social imaginary. Schumpeter was an interdisciplinary thinker who had an appreciation for the social, political, and cultural contexts in which economic activity was undertaken. Indeed, detailing his contributions to social theory, Dahms emphasizes Schumpeter’s reliance on neo-classical economics but also describes him as a Marxian Weberian. In particular Schumpeter relies upon these thinkers to delineate the dynamic character of early modern capitalism, described as entrepreneurial capitalism, and its eventual trans-formation into managerial or corporate capitalism. Unlike strict neoclassical eco-nomic theory which ultimately imagines the capitalist economy as, to use Dahms’s words, “a stationary state characterized best as a circular flow,” Schumpeter treats capitalism as an entity driven by the ever creative activities of entrepreneurs. Ironically this dynamism also entails a process of “creative destruction” – the dismantling of the structures and institutions that constitute prior forms of capitalism. In the end, while giving us a rich characterization of the various ways that capitalism has been and could be imagined, Schumpeter also gives us a picture of capitalism as an entity in a constant state of flux and flow. Indeed, this is a characterization quite close to that imagined in current discussions of globalization.

POLITICS

The political is another pervasive theme in classical social theory. Again, what is important is the way that this domain is connected to the concept of society. With the modern imaginary, Taylor argues, the political becomes an expression of what are increasingly seen to be general social concerns. Politics is, as Weber defines it, the realm of power, but this is power as exercised for the so- called people rather than for a select political elite. In this context, a number of the essays in this volume offer discussions of democracy, imperialism, colonialism, and the state – all spheres in which we see the concentration and deployment of power.

Janara’s essay on Tocqueville is particularly helpful in thinking about the various benefits and dangers of democracy. The concept of democracy establishes the notion of the people as a general social and political category, but the modern period has yet to work out how “people” is to be constituted, and who is to count as the people (indeed this remains a contemporary problem). In general, Tocqueville saw democracy


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as a break from older social hierarchies. In principle it offers greater social equality but this does not always amount to political liberty – an ideal prized by Tocqueville. He suggests that the loss of aristocratic bonds threatens social order and stability. America, in particular, favors the authority of the individual. This focus on the indi-vidual tends toward materialism and envy, but most fearfully leaves persons isolated and fragmented, without a common focus or voice. This in turn leads to what Tocqueville called “democratic despotism,” a condition in which, ironically, the majority rules over the individual. In her description of the various forms of this despotism Janara gives us a snapshot of New England social life but also takes the opportunity to discuss how these democratic dynamics intersect with, and sustain, inequalities around race and gender. This is where we also find a useful comparison to Harriet Martineau. In fact, in her essay, Hoecker- Drysdale draws attention to the growing literature comparing the work of Tocqueville and Martineau on their trav-els in America. In short, while for Tocqueville equality and liberty are incompatible, for Martineau equality of women and equality of people of color are central to the successful establishment of democracy. Here then are two different ways of imagin-ing the political collective.

Tocqueville, then, is worried about the unregulated practice of democracy and in particular its affiliation with individualism. His solution is a democratic politics modeled on older republican forms of association. This tension between the indi-vidual and the social order is a more general problem picked up by early social theo-rists. Here we see a legacy of complicated efforts to harmonize the ideals of individualism, equality, and liberty with social order. Comte develops his positivism, Pickering shows, not merely as a research program but as a vision of social order that combines ideals of liberty and self- expression with religious institutional foun-dations. Durkheim’s entire sociology is an effort to develop a socially mediated moral grounding to combat the malaise and anomie of modernity. In their essay, Milbrandt and Pearce explain these elements of Durkheim’s thought but also, quite uniquely, write about his political sociology and in particular his engagement with socialism. They acknowledge that Durkheim is often “technocratic and authoritarian,” but a closer look also shows sympathy for socialist and democratic visions of social order. In short, while Durkheim did not endorse state control of the economy, he did think that the state and occupational associations should remain in constant contact with one another. While recognizing Durkheim’s ambivalence on these matters, Milbrandt and Pearce push for a radical reading of Durkheim’s social theory, something also exemplified in their discussion of imperialism and sacrifice in Durkheim’s work.

Yet another take on this set of tensions is found in Colin Loader’s essay on Karl Mannheim. Loader describes Mannheim’s familiar sociology of knowledge, but he places that work, and in fact Mannheim’s entire career, within the context of the problem of public knowledge. For Mannheim the question always was: How can a social scientist best prepare the public to engage the changing world around them? Here, alongside the idea of a “public,” is indicated yet another component of the social imaginary – the intellectual whose task it is to educate the public. Writing in the context of the early twentieth century, Mannheim, not unlike the aforemen-tioned thinkers, fears the disappearance of the “organic public” which could medi-ate and educate citizens in the exercise of democracy. Classical liberal democracy gives way to mass democracy and the potential emergence of dictatorships like that


introduction 7

in Germany. Here, then, the goal of Mannheim’s work is to instill a sociological attitude that could serve as political education for citizens.

This discussion of the political has focused largely on the self- composing imaginary – the way that nations, intellectuals, and political elites imagined them-selves and their immediate societies. But of course this was also a period of colonial and imperial expansion during which Western nations imagined the “others” who existed outside, or even inside, their borders. Thus, alongside the image of the “people” we also have an image of those others who are not the people. This becomes a basis for conquest and governance abroad. Tocqueville and Martineau, as previously noted, differed in their thinking on inclusion. Janara further describes Tocqueville’s writing on colonialism in both America and French Algeria. Tocqueville is not will-ing to extend democracy to Algeria – to treat the Algerians as equal to the French – but rather encourages imperial domination. Other thinkers challenge the imperialist imaginary, even though they adopt racialist views. Comte condemned the French take- over of Algeria and hated racism and imperialism, opting instead for an all- embracing religion of humanity. Spencer condemned imperialism largely because it was grounded in outmoded forms of patriotism not appropriate to advanced indus-trial societies – economy and society had moved on, so, too, should politics. Here, Alatas’s essay on Ibn Khaldun can serve as a counterpoint to the Western social imaginary. It is a place in which we can imagine what Taylor, following Eisenstadt (2000), calls “multiple modernities” – the many different pathways into the modern world. Indeed, the entire point of developing a concept of modern social imaginary is to show the variety of imaginaries and cultural repertoires through which a society composes itself and its relations with others. In contrast, then, to the generally Western, linear account of state and social formation in which religion is replaced by a secular state, Ibn Khaldun gives us a cyclical theory of state formation. Urban cent-ers of state power exist in relation to, and in fact gain their stability from, tribal religious powers. The two need each other. This, Alatas suggests, does not merely describe the composition of the state in fourteenth- century North Africa, but can also explain historical societies such as Safavid Iran, as well as modern societies such as Syria and the Arab world in general.

CULTURE

Culture is another component of the modern social imaginary. The meaning of the term culture is varied, but in this volume there are two general, though related, uses – two ways of imagining culture. First, culture refers to the identity and practices of a people – ethnicity, nation, or, in Du Bois’s work, race. In one sense this version of culture is what Taylor has in mind when he describes the “sovereign people,” where it also overlaps with the political dimension of the social imaginary. Second, culture refers to collective expressions as in art or religion. Increasingly in the modern world, religion, art, and other cultural forms are not viewed as ontological givens, but as human creations that constitute and express the unique cultural forms. Again, cul-ture is ubiquitous in these essays. Durkheim, especially in his later work on religion, treats culture as a foundational force – it holds society together. Weber of course gave culture – in particular the Protestant ethic – an important explanatory function


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in accounting for the emergence of Western capitalism. Parsons, as Lidz argues, gives culture a central place in his social system, and much like Durkheim treats it as the glue that holds everything together.

In particular, though, Simmel’s focus on the aesthetic dimensions of social life has given his sociology pride of place in early conceptualizations of culture. As Scaff tells us, Simmel’s early development was shaped by his immersion in the nineteenth- century fin- de- siècle “culture of feeling.” This influenced both his style of writing and his choice of subject matter. Among other topics, he wrote on religion, art, and fashion, but most importantly he regularly returned to the conflict between what he called subjective and objective culture. Here Simmel captures a more general trend in which the nineteenth century is caught up in a battle between two forms of sociality – that which is grounded in Enlightenment values of reason, utility, and objectivity, and that which is grounded in the romantic values of emotion, feeling, and subjective expression. Simmel was never so crude as to directly oppose these two forces – he is a nuanced and tricky thinker – but he nevertheless feared for the future of subjective culture. Here Mead should also be mentioned. Though Mead didn’t make culture per se a focal point of his work, Shalin does a wonderful job of dem-onstrating how Mead’s work, like that of other American pragmatists, was animated by the romantic spirit.

We encounter similar themes in Paul Taylor’s essay on W. E. B. Du Bois. Also an American pragmatist, Du Bois incorporates both elements of culture described above in his work. For one, his early work is grounded in a version of German historicism that treats race as a cultural form. Here Du Bois’s work also shows us how culture can be defined as the essence of a people, and that well- being depends upon the full realization of the cultural essence. This is also where Du Bois’s work includes the second meaning of culture – it is the cultural expressions of the subjugated races that allow for their full realization as a people. Later, as Du Bois moves from what Taylor calls “critical empiricism” to “anticolonial materialism,” his view is modified by Marxist arguments. Here Du Bois develops the important contemporary idea that culture is not only a source of meaning and identity, but also a contested battle-ground.

By drawing attention to the later, materialist, aspects of Du Bois’s work, Taylor suggests that culture is not just a given social and historical force but it is socially produced. Indeed, in a number of the following essays there are descriptions of the mechanisms by which culture is produced. Here we come across another more recent meaning of culture, namely that culture is constituted through language and sym-bols; these are the media through which the more specific cultural forms already described are created. Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge describes the social and political context behind the production of knowledge, itself a particular form of culture. This attention to the social and cultural character of knowledge is also found in the work of Alfred Schutz. Indeed, Dreher draws attention to the role that signs and symbols play in constituting the “internal meaningfulness of the life- world.” Though for Schutz the life- world is a pre- theoretical domain, access to, and under-standing of, the life- world depends upon signs and symbols, i.e. culturally circum-scribed knowledge. Furthermore symbols serve an integrative function that allows for the harmonization of individual perspectives and hence the creation of collec-tives. In the terms used in this introduction, symbols are central to the construction


introduction 9

of social imaginaries. This work feeds into the later social constructionism of Berger and Luckmann (1967), and also falls into line with a whole set of French structural-ist and poststructuralist theories that treat language as a foundational cultural space with its own, analyzable, structures and properties.

Finally, in his second essay for this volume, Dahms reviews the life and work of Theodor Adorno. The essay spends some time with Horkheimer and Adorno’s famous essay on the “culture industry”: in mid- twentieth- century capitalism, cul-ture becomes a commodity and thereby loses its authenticity and critical edge. However, this analysis is only an example of Adorno’s larger project which is to develop a critical social theory. Like anything else in modern society the meaning and significance of culture is obfuscated through the contradictory processes of modernity; the very institutions that are supposed to provide clarity and enlighten-ment contribute to confusion and misunderstanding. In particular, as described in what Dahms calls Adorno’s most important book, Negative Dialectics, Adorno develops the concept of identity thinking – a form of reductionism that is unable to think outside of its own self- sustaining ideologies. Negative dialectics then is an attempt to develop a form of thought and life that is never self- contained, but always able to move beyond its own forms of self- representation. In the end, though it would be incorrect to say that negative dialectics has been taken up into the cultural imaginary, in it we nevertheless find an important component of the social imagi-nary: a suspicion of culture; the idea that culture is not only an expressive, but also a deceptive, social form.

NATURE AND SCIENCE

In his depiction of modern social imaginaries Taylor does not explicitly address the themes of nature and more broadly science, but these topics are so pervasive in clas-sical social theory that a separate section is required for their discussion. In the most general sense, science refers to the scientific method and in particular the idea, first expressed by Comte, but then carried through Spencer, Martineau, Durkheim, Du Bois, Parsons, and others, that society could be studied using a positivist method. Here society becomes like nature, either a machine or an organism whose structures and functions can be discerned through objective scrutiny. What is also striking is the variety of ways in which each of these theorists conceived positivism – a review of the above theorists shows that there is no one simple version. In addition, classical social theory, growing up under the influence of Newtonian physics, Darwinian evolution-ary theory, and at its tail end Einsteinian physics, shows an ongoing concern for the relationship between nature, science, and society. Moreover, like the themes of econ-omy, politics, and culture, nature and science are of central relevance to contempo-rary social theory and social life. In order to think through these relations today, it is important to understand how social theorists have understood them in the past.

As Francis shows in his essay on Herbert Spencer, these relationships are complex. He warns us against simplistic and reductionist understandings of the relationship between biology and society. To this end, Francis’s essay offers details on the various forms of evolutionary theory on offer in the nineteenth century – in particular he shows the complexities of Darwinian and Lamarckian accounts and their various


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uses in social theory. The surprising twist in Francis’s essay is when he argues that Spencer was neither a Social Darwinist nor a Lamarckian (both common interpreta-tions of Spencer’s work). Moreover, Spencer never advocated a “survival of the fit-test” theory of society or political program. Instead Francis says that Spencer relied more heavily on the findings of neurophysiology. In the end, this provides a more contemporary and nuanced Spencer than most readers have come to expect.

Gilman, on the other hand, aligns herself with Darwin when she develops what Allen calls a “reform Darwinist feminist account of sexual oppression.” Allen not only describes Gilman’s role as a theorist and public intellectual but also provides a nice feel for the language and tone of feminist scholarship of the time. One of the premier feminists of turn- of- the- century America, Gilman reflected deeply on the relation between nature and culture. In particular, she argued that the “androcentric culture” (patriarchal, gendered culture) had perverted evolution, giving men eco-nomic control over sexual relations and undermining women’s development. Through a quasi- Darwinian view of the universe, then, Gilman imagines creating a social order that better lines up with the biological capacities of men and women. This, ultimately, is the grounds for equality and happiness.

Perhaps most surprisingly, George Herbert Mead offers a social imaginary con-nected to the natural world. Usually presented as a micro- social theorist and social psychologist, Shalin gives us a Mead who, at least in his later work, generates a pragmatic cosmology inspired by Albert Einstein’s relativist physics. In the human world relativity emerges as the capacity to take different perspectives, and operate within a variety of frames. In fact, Mead reads these characteristics of sociality back into nature, suggesting that in its relativity the natural world possesses a proto- sociality. Here then Mead develops a cosmology – a view of the universe in all its parts – through the concept of sociality. This pragmatist cosmology, Shalin argues, is the grounds through which we should understand Mead’s varied writings, whether they be on the topic of social psychology or democratic politics.

In all of this there is a mingling of the categories of nature and society – humans are on the one hand part of nature, biological and physical organisms whose con-duct and social organization are grounded in natural processes. Thus, the social is imagined as nature. Even though Spencer does not reduce social evolution to Darwinian processes, he insists that all organisms operate on the same “general organic principles.” Society is no longer modeled on human beings (a Leviathan) but rather stands alongside all other biological processes. Mead does something similar. By locating human behaviors within a larger cosmology, he treats them as instantia-tions of more general relativistic processes. At the same time, however, even though these societies are mixed up in nature, the ways in which they participate in these pro cesses distinguish them as unique. Thus all three theorists – Gilman, Spencer, and Mead – describe the ways in which humans gain some control over (acquire some distance from) these natural processes. The mechanisms by which persons partici-pate in, yet transcend, the natural order seem crucial to imagining society not only in the classical period but also right into the present.

As developed in this introduction, the concept of modern social imaginary is meant to provide a framework for reading the essays in this volume. While the aspects of the imaginary described here – economy, politics, culture, nature and science – describe crucial aspects of the intellectual and social context in which these


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theorists worked, there is no claim that these are the only aspects of the imaginary. Indeed, part of the purpose of providing such an introductory framework is to encourage further critical reading. Where do the above characterizations find their limits? How do they extend into the contemporary period described in the second volume of this Companion? What other imaginaries can be discerned in these essays? What imaginaries have been silenced? The idea to keep in mind though is that an imaginary is not simply an idea contributed by a single thinker – the goal is to develop accounts that describe the larger terrains within which theory operates. What are the assumptions and characterizations of social life that make it possible to think about social life in the first place? How do these theorists expose, reveal and then extend such assumptions? It is our view that reading these essays with such a project in mind not only fosters a more general understanding of the conditions that make social and intellectual life possible, but also provides for a rich engagement with these already tremendously rich essays.

References

Berger, P. and Luckmann, T. (1967) The Social Construction of Reality. Garden City, NY: Anchor.

Eisenstadt, S. N. (2000) “Multiple Modernities.” Daedalus 129(1): 1–29.Taylor, C. (2004) Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.


The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists, First Edition. Edited by George Ritzer and Jeffrey Stepnisky. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2011 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

INTRODUCING IBN KHALDUN

Walı al- Dın ‘Abd al- Rah·man Ibn Muh·ammad Ibn Khaldun al- Tunisı al- Had·ramı (AH1 732–808/AD 1332–1406) is most well- known among scholars, Muslim and non- Muslim alike, as a founder of sociology.

He was born in Tunis into a family that traced their origin to the Kinda, a South Arabian clan of the Hadhramaut. Prior to settling in Tunis, his ancestors had lived in Seville, Andalusia, in the early period of Arab rule in the Iberian Peninsula. They eventually left for the Maghreb (North Africa) after the Reconquista, and settled in Tunis in the seventh/thirteenth century. Many of Ibn Khaldun’s ancestors were prom-inent personalities. One, by the name of Kurayb, was said to have revolted against the Umayyads in the ninth century and subsequently set up a quasi- independent state in Seville (Rosenthal 1967: xxxiii–xxxiv). The Banu Khaldun also had impor-tant roles in the political life of Seville. This attraction to political office remained a characteristic of the family after they had left Andalusia for the Maghreb. Ibn Khaldun himself held many positions in the courts of Andalusia and North Africa. He lived during a period of political upheavals and instability in North Africa. His firsthand experiences with political fragmentation and chaos must have had an impact on the development of his theory of society. Indeed, it was his disillusionment with politics and the attraction of scholarly pursuit that led to his retreat from office so that he could write his Muqaddimah or prolegomenon to the study of history.

Among Ibn Khaldun’s principal works is his autobiography, Al- Ta'rıf bi Ibn Khaldun wa rih· latuhu gharban wa sharqan (Biography of Ibn Khaldun and His Travels East and West) (Ibn Khaldun 1979). In addition to the autobiography, there are several works dealing with Ibn Khaldun’s life and writings, including a well- known early one by Muhammad Abdullah Enan [Muh·ammad ‘Abd Allah ‘Inan], an

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Egyptian sociologist (Enan 1941; ‘Inan [Enan] 1953). There are a large number of contemporary writings that introduce and describe Ibn Khaldun’s ideas. These works tend to emphasize the importance of Ibn Khaldun as a founder of sociology and other social sciences.

THE SOCIAL CONTEXT

Ibn Khaldun experienced much political upheaval and witnessed what he considered to be the cultural decline of his society. His tenure in office, his service to various rulers, and the chaos of politics and decline in economic prosperity undoubtedly influenced the development of his social theory.

Ibn Khaldun’s world of fourteenth- century North Africa was vastly different from the centuries that preceded it. He seemed to be aware that he lived in a time of cultural stagnation and political fragmentation. Long before Ibn Khaldun’s time the political economy of the Maghreb, as was the case in the eastern part of the Arab world, was characterized by a high degree of monetization and to a lesser extent the development of large- scale landed property. The ruling aristocracy was tribal- based and the appro-priation of economic surplus was primarily from trade, especially the trans- Saharan trade in Sudanese gold. Centuries before Ibn Khaldun, the growth of merchant capi-talism, particularly in relation to the gold trade, led to the rise of cities, petty com-modity production and the development of bureaucracy (Simon 1978: 15; Lacoste 1984: 20). Along with these came a thriving scientific, literary, and artistic culture.

By the time of Ibn Khaldun’s birth, there was little that was left of large empire. The Maghreb was ruled by three dynasties, the Marinids, the Abd al- Wadids, and the Hafsids. The relative unity that characterized the Maghreb under the previous successive dynasties, such as the Almoravids and the Almohads, had disappeared. Agriculture and city life were constantly under threat from nomadic invasions and pillaging. Territories within a state were differentiated in terms of regions under government control that paid taxes (bilad al- makhzan) and those outlying areas that were able to avoid such obligations (bilad al- siba) (Lacoste 1984: 35). The tribes assigned to collect taxes by the ruler in the makhzan areas often conducted raids on the peasantry, greatly contributing to economic insecurity and a sense of vulnerabil-ity. This was exacerbated by wars between the rulers of the three states, tribal wars, and internal rebellions.

Generations of Khalduns before ‘Abd al- Rah·man were famed scholars, intellectu-als and statesmen, having played important roles in Andalusia in the eleventh cen-tury and then North Africa from the thirteenth century. From a young age, Ibn Khaldun himself served under various rulers in Tunis, Fez, Granada, and Bougie, in the capacities of Master of the Signature, private secretary to the sultan, head of the chancellery, ambassador, and governor. The offices that he held, and the plotting and intriguing that he participated in, eventually led to his life being in danger, causing him to seek refuge among the Dawawidah, an Arab tribe of the Banı H. ilal (Lacoste 1984: 53). During his political career he also acted as intermediary between rulers and tribesmen.

It was probably his tenure in politics, his firsthand experience of the insecurities and vicissitudes of political life, and his observations of the tenuous relationship


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between rulers and tribes, that led Ibn Khaldun to be curious about the causes of historical events. The political economic problems of Ibn Khaldun’s century, which he sensed were of critical proportions, were described by Ibn Khaldun as requiring systematic treatment (Ibn Khaldun 1378/1981: 32–3 [1967, vol. I: 64–5]).2 This systematic treatment, however, was not to be merely of political economic problems but more generally of the underlying structure of historical change.

Ibn Khaldun eventually gave up public life and service and withdrew into seclu-sion to write the Muqaddimah. A prolegomenon to the study of history, this was completed in 1378 and introduces what Ibn Khaldun believed was a new science that today would be understood as sociology but which he named ‘ilm al- ‘umran al- basharı (the science of human social organization) or ‘ilm al- ijtima‘ al- insanı (the science of human society).

THE PROBLEMATIZATION OF HISTORY AS THE BASIS FOR SOCIOLOGY: THE INTELLECTUAL CONTEXT

Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah was finished in 1378 and was intended as an introduc-tion or prolegomenon to Kitab al- ‘Ibar, his empirical work on the history of the Arabs and Berbers in several volumes. In explaining the rationale for the pro-legomenon, Ibn Khaldun states in the foreword to the Muqaddimah, that the field of history, if merely providing information about past political happenings and facts about dynasties of the past, only covers the surface (z· ahir). This can be distinguished from the inner meaning (batin) of history which is reached through “speculation and an attempt to get at the truth, subtle explanation of the causes and origins of existing things, and deep knowledge of the how and why of events” (Ibn Khaldun 1378/1981: 1 [1967, vol. I: 6]). In Ibn Khaldun’s terms, the Kitab al- ‘Ibar has as its subject matter the surface phenomena of history in that it reports the historical facts con-cerning the history of the Arab and Berber dynasties of the Arab East and North Africa. The Muqaddimah, however, attempts to arrive at explanations of the causes and origins of those facts. In the terms of modern sociology, it attempts to theorize the surface dimension of history. The Muqaddimah is the first book of the Kitab al- ‘Ibar, which comprises three books. A theoretical work, the Muqaddimah was written by Ibn Khaldun as an integral part of the Kitab al- ‘Ibar. The Muqaddimah makes a case for the need for a new science of society. Books 2 and 3 discuss selected aspects of the history of the Arabs, Israelites, Persians, Greeks, Byzantines, Turks, and Berbers (Ibn Khaldun 1378/1981: 6 [1967, vol. I: 11–12]). Properly deal-ing with such empirical topics as covered in books 2 and 3, however, requires what El- Azmeh (1979: 17) calls a master science, or what Ibn Khaldun calls the science of human society.

Ibn Khaldun’s approach was a positive rather than normative one. He was con-cerned with the study of society as it is rather than as it should be. In this sense, he departed from the dominant writings on the state and society that preceded him. Ibn Khaldun was concerned with how things are rather than how they should be (Ibn Khaldun 1378/1981: 6 [1967, vol. I: 11]). The traditional method of distinguishing right from wrong in historical studies, which relied on assessing the reliability of sources, the character of transmitters of information, and so on, was regarded by


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