Early American Sociology and the Polish Peasant

Wiley, Norbert

doi:10.2307/202103

Cited by 31 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 69 publications

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“…The present reappraisal of Parsons (Alexander 1978;Bounicaud 1981;Munch 1987) reflects the "current interregnum" in contemporary social theory (Wiley 1985). Parsonian thought may no longer be hegemonic, but neither has it been consigned to the dustbins of intellectual history.…”

Section: Parsonian Action Theorymentioning

confidence: 75%

Weber and Interpretive Sociology in America

Kivisto

Swatos

1990

The Sociological Quarterly

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This article examines the role of Webcr's methodological writings on verstehende Soziologie in the construction of an American variant of interpretive sociology during the first half of the twentieth century. It thereby illustrates thc connections between intellectual appropriation and the academic institutionalization of competing sociological schools. After reviewing Weber's general reception in American sociology, it focuses on the respective relevance of Weber for symbolic interaction, which developed out of the Chicago School; Parsonian action theory; and the phenomenological social theory of Alfred Schutz. Three conclusions emerge. First, the symbolic intcractionists and their predecessors operated with the implicit assumption that they did not need Webcr. Second, Weber was not only intellcctually valuable to Parsons, but also useful in his qucst for intellectual hegemony. Finally, Schutz, in offering a third, alternative and competing interpretation of Weber, served to complicate this struggle bctwecn the two American sociological schools.The relationship between Weber's methodological writings on verstehende Soziologie and the construction of an American variant of interpretive sociology during the first half of the twentieth century constitutes a particularly curious tale in the history of the discipline. A review of that history from the perspective of the sociology of knowledge illustrates the connections between intellectual appropriation and thc academic institutionalization of competing sociological schools. Specifically, we focus on three interconnectcd issues: the first, factors that conuibuted to what Jennifer Platt (1985) rcrers to as the "missing link" between Weber and the Chicago School; the sccond, the manner in which Weber was appropriated by and accorded a privileged position in Parsonian theory; Ihe third, the role played by European scholars who migrated to America betwecn the wars in articulating a Weberian-inspired phenomenological sociology.

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Section: Parsonian Action Theorymentioning

confidence: 75%

Weber and Interpretive Sociology in America

Kivisto

Swatos

1990

The Sociological Quarterly

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“…Although the common opinion of The Polish Peasant remained high in the discipline for several decades (for an insightful retrospective, see Wiley: 1986), House had added rationale for praising it. This was its de facto rejection of statistical sociology as a royal or privileged road to knowledge.…”

Section: Epistemological Schools In House's 1936 Text: Chicago Versusmentioning

confidence: 99%

The myth about “myths of the Chicago School”: Evidence from Floyd Nelson house

Nock

2004

Am Soc

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Some important work (Bulmer, Harvey) in the history of sociology questions whether the Chicago School should be identified with qualitative as opposed to more quantitative, statistical, and correlational methods. This paper will examine whether this characterization is a "myth" or whether tbere was some real basis for this association of Chicago sociology with qualitative research and a broader epistemological stance critical of radical neo-positivism. It does so by utilizing Floyd Nelson House's The Development of Sociology (1936) as a primary source for answering these questions. House received his Ph.D. from Chicago in 1924Chicago in , taught there in 1925Chicago in -1926, and continued to identify himself as a Chicagoan after his appointment to the University of Virginia.Although his book provides a long historical survey, House paid ample attention to the development of American sociology. He frequently drew attention to the differences between Chicago sociology and that produced by the First Columbia School of Sociology founded by the radical neo-positivist Franklin H. Giddings. These differences focused on methods and epistemological stances. House identified himself as part of a Chicago "Group of Five" (including Park, Blumer, Eubank, and Bogardus) which questioned "concrete sociological research" in the absence of careful conceptualization. The contrast between Columbia and Chicago sociology in both descriptive and evaluative terms is, in fact, a leitmotif of what appears to be on the surface an impartial textbook. This paper concludes that the depiction of the Chicago School as welcoming to qualitative methods and much less inclined to radical neo-positivism than the First Columbia School is not a latter-day construction of neo or "wannabe" Chicagoans but has its roots in contemporary developments of the Chicago School in its heyday of the 1920s and 1930s. The Myth About Methods in Chicago SociologySeveral sociological historians of the Chicago School have suggested that it is wrong for sociological historians and commentators to associate a qualitative and non-statistical epistemological-methodological stance with Chicago sociology because this has led to a denial or denigration of that department's quantitative and statistical approaches. Martin Bulmer is probably the locus classicus of this in his important book The Chicago School of Sociology (1984) and a previous article (1981). He refers to "the neglect of this quantitative tradition in Chicago social science in the 1920s and 1930s" by sociological historians and to "the David'Nock has been (full) professor of sociology since 1986. His interests include the history of sociology/ social thought, classical theory, and sociology of knowledge. Nock63

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“….a particular race," and Robert Park placed the "nature of race relations" in the modernization perspective, seeing "minority" groups as the result of "conquest, colonization and migration" during the creation of a unified world economy, with the ultimate likely outcome "a single great society in which race conflicts will be more and more 'confused with, and eventually superseded by, the conflict of classes'" (Manheim 1941). Ethnic groups, then, were studied as collections of individuals held together for the moment by a sense of shared experience, but in process of transformations as new environments resocialized them into "modern" personalities, 4 On the Polish Peasant, see two outstanding analyses: Blumer, 1939, and, on the Polish Peasant and the Chicago School in general, the brilliant essay by Norbert Wiley (Wiley, 1986). people who invested more emotional meaning into their current occupational and political identities than into retrospective loyalties.5…”

Section: -7 1834)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Scientists and the Culture Concept, 1930-1950: The Conflict between Processual and Structural Approaches

Matthews¹

1989

Sociological Theory

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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. American Sociological Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Sociological Theory.This essay attempts to chart the outlines of a major change in the basic assumptions of American social science which took place between 1930 and 1950, and to illustrate it by focusing primarily on the approach of social scientists to race, ethnic and "cultural" groups. The major formal concept involved is that of Culture, already well known by 1930 but becoming central, in a new and different meaning, by the eve of World War II. It is tempting to refer to this change as one of paradigms, but since some historians (perhaps fearful for the truth-value of their field) reach for their uzis at the sound of that word, it might be more prudent to cast light on my central polarity through categories offered by philosophers writing in the 1930s. The Harvard-Berkeley philosopher Stephen Pepper argued that every theory has a rootmetaphor, or basic structural analogy, which the theorizer draws from one "area of common-sense fact" and then generalizes to "understand the world" in general (Pepper 1942, pp. 90-114). Arthur Lovejoy offered a pentateuchal classification of the major elements composing any complex set of ideas: 1) assumptions, or inarticulate but stateable presuppositons; 2) dialectical motives, turns of reasoning or methodological assumptions; 3) metaphysical pathos, the sympathetic vibrations, or emotional resonances, aroused by an idea that give it persuasive force; 4) philosophical semantics, the unpacking of the rich language constituting a worldview; 5) the specific unit-ideas, propositions about the nature of things, which compose the larger worldviews (Lovejoy 1936). Lovejoy's system has been consigned to the attic of obsolete formulas, perhaps because the elements overlap so much as to be difficult to use; but also (I suspect) because most intellectual historians over the last generation have been less interested in this kind of analysis than in finding ways to Parson's language of structure is especially pervasive in Parsons (1960: especially 19-20, 163-71, 192-97, 250-53). The visualization of process as temporary disruption of structure is discussed, 12, 76-77.

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Early American Sociology and the Polish Peasant

Cited by 31 publications

References 69 publications

Weber and Interpretive Sociology in America

Weber and Interpretive Sociology in America

The myth about “myths of the Chicago School”: Evidence from Floyd Nelson house

Social Scientists and the Culture Concept, 1930-1950: The Conflict between Processual and Structural Approaches

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