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COLLINS - A Sociological Guilt Trip. Comment On Connell
COLLINS - A Sociological Guilt Trip. Comment On Connell
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1
Direct correspondence to Randall Collins, Department of Sociology, University of
California, Riverside, California 92521-0419.
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issues always rose and fell together in the past. It is trendy political slo-
ganizing, but it probably is not true.
For point 3, the claim that evolutionism broke down because of World
War I is ad hoc. The logic of the previous argument is that imperialism
produced the idea of evolutionary progress. But imperialism did not break
down in World War I, and in fact the European empires expanded there-
after; the height of empire was the 1920s and 1930s. The intellectual shift
during this time tells against the imperialism argument.
Connell has no real explanation of why evolutionism broke down but
in effect simply notes that it did. Again this is just the Anglo-American
story, since it is convenient for Connell’s story line to ignore the sociology
of France and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. Here he seems to be taken
in by his own canon seeking, as if, after Weber and Durkheim are dead,
there is no reason to pay attention to those countries. In fact, there was
a network of French researchers and theorists stretching directly from
Durkheim’s nephew Mauss through Lévi-Strauss and Aron to Bourdieu.
French sociology has never been intellectually dependent upon the United
States, but it simplifies matters for Connell to assume that it became so.
For Germany, the devastation of the Nazis makes the question more com-
plex, but here too it is simplistic to assume that the story line is the down-
fall of evolutionism and the adoption of an American canon.
Ironically, although Connell has repudiated the idea that sociology orig-
inated in the problems of urban industrial society, he tacitly embraces
the notion that American sociology in the 1920s focused on exactly these
questions, although he tries to hide the point by renaming them “social
difference and social disorder” (p. 1535). It would be more accurate to
admit that these have been perennial themes.
Finally, in point 4, Connell documents that a canon was established in
mid-20th-century America, but the explanation is vague. He asserts that
the upsurge of empirical research ended in “a severe deficit of legitimacy”
(p. 1537), but there is no evidence for this. One could argue the contrary,
that empirical sociology was highly regarded for its insights into contem-
porary social problems, that research was booming in the 1940s and 1950s,
and the academic discipline was expanding. The creation of the canon
was carried out by rival movements of theorists led by Parsons, Merton,
and C. Wright Mills, who bolstered their positions by translating Euro-
pean texts and making personal alliances with European scholars fleeing
the Nazis. But the formation of these theoretical camps never undermined
empirical research on urban social problems, race and ethnic divisions,
and similar issues that have been the main activity of most American
sociologists throughout the 20th century.
At this point Connell’s argument runs out of ideological steam. He does
not appear to have much of an idea what a theory of canonicity would
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