Buford Rhea - The Future of the Sociological Classics (RLE Social Theory)

ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: SOCIAL THEORY

Volume 27

Edited by
BUFORD RHEA

First published in 1981

This edition first published in 2015
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ISBN: 978-0-415-72731-0 (Set)
eISBN: 978-1-315-76997-4 (Set)
ISBN: 978-1-138-78309-6 (Volume 27)

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Edited by
BUFORD RHEA

George Allen & Unwin (Publishers) Ltd, 1981.
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. No reproduction without permission. All rights reserved.

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First published in 1981

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Rhea, Buford
The Future of the sociological classics.
1. Sociology
I. Rhea, Buford
301 HM51
ISBN 0-04-301136-5 ISBN 0-04-301137-3 Pbk

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Rhea, Buford
The Future of the sociological classics.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
Contents: Karl Max / Irving M. Zeitlin - Hobbes, Toennies, Vico / Werner J. Cahnman - Max Weber and contemporary sociology / Dennis H. Wrong - [etc.]
1. Sociology - Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Sociologists - History. I. Rhea, Buford.
HM51.F9 301 81-10879
ISBN 0-04-301136-5 AACR2
ISBN 0-04-301137-3 (pbk.)

Set in 10 on 11 point Times by Grove Graphics, Tring
and printed in Great Britain
by Biddies Ltd, Guildford, Surrey

Irving M. Zeitlin,

Werner J. Cahnman,

Dennis H. Wrong,

Donald N. Levine,

Joseph Lopreato,

Edward A. Tiryakian,

Herbert Blumer,

Lewis A. Coser,

Talcott Parsons,

The essays collected here are revisions of lectures given at East Carolina University during the Spring semester of 1978, and they are their authors answers to the question around which the lecture series was organized: What use are the sociological classics today?

Every teacher of sociology will recognize the question since every sociology student asks it, sooner or later, one way or another. It is a legitimate question and it deserves a serious response, though faculty often have trouble remembering the answers. What is worse, we typically organize sociology curricula so that students are virtually informed that the classics are now irrelevant. Such a message is of course unintended, but the tacit learnings of hidden curricula, as Polanyi (1966) and Kuhn (1970) among others have made clear, are often the most important parts of a students education. Thus most undergraduates in this country probably never seriously study a major work of sociology, and in student research the masters appear most frequently, when they appear at all, as footnotes embellishing work whose true inspiration is to be found more in the computer lab or in the administrative directives of applied sociology. Even courses in the history of the discipline, or theory courses which take the historical approach, are ordinarily little more than breakneck surveys of names having no clear relationship to anything else in the curriculum. Knowledge of the masters becomes, in Whiteheads devastating refrain, mere information from which nothing follows (1949, p. 18).

Our lecture series was intended to help correct this state of affairs, and the essays of this volume should be read as in the first instance addressed to beginning majors in sociology juniors, seniors, first-year graduate students though to be sure the problem is not confined to the campus (Wiley, 1979). If the classics have a future, though, as the title of the book affirms, it will be because the new generation of sociologists recognizes their importance and uses them as they should be used.

We assumed that if anyone could convey a sense of that importance it would be those sociologists who have won the general respect of the discipline as students and critics of the classics, and with that criterion in hand the roster of speakers practically suggested itself. The general theme of the series was expressed this way in our letters of invitation:

The lecture series is intended to provide an occasion for sociologists knowledgeable about the classics to demonstrate that, and how, the classics are contemporary and important, not only as means for becoming familiar with the style of a master craftsman (that too, but that is not all of it), but also because the frames of reference employed, the questions asked, the conceptualizations developed, or the specific hypotheses explored remain worth knowing here and now and in the future. Feel free to deal with this issue as you see fit, but at least two topics seem unavoidable. First is the matter of contemporaneity, the demonstration that the thought of the author is not just an item of historical interest. A What Is Living and What Is Dead in his sociology thus seems appropriate, with perhaps some discussion of current research. Also, consistent with the future-orientation of the series, I am sure you will want to say something about what ought to be living or dead: neglected aspects of his work that deserve revival, overworked or banalized themes that need reformulation, misinterpretations that should be corrected, etc. A second, though not a necessary, topic would deal with the gap between theory and practice, i.e. some discussion of how the authors work might be used to confront those problems which are today most often the province of relatively atheoretical applied sociologies. The audience to which the paper should be addressed will be advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate sociology students who will already know something of the author: they will all have had the usual history course and will in addition have been prepped on the author before your presentation (we have organized a seminar around the lecture series). The audience to which you will be