Victor Branford and the Building of British Sociology

Abstract

Victor Branford was a central figure in the institutional development of British sociology in the first thirty years of the twentieth century. He is, however, a neglected figure and little is known about his life and his work in sociology. This article presents a biographical account of Victor Branford and outlines his sociological ideas. Particular attention is given to the part played by Branford and his second wife, Sybella Gurney, in the establishment of the Sociological Society and The Sociological Review. Writing between 1903 and 1930, he set out a distinctive view of the nature of sociology and an account of modernity, which he saw as underpinning a conception of a third way in politics that goes beyond capitalism and socialism. He tied this view, set out in the years after the First World War, to a conception of the public role of sociology in which the sociologist was to be a leading element in the building of social citizenship through social reconstruction.Despite his centrality in the history of British sociology, Victor Branford is a neglected figure. 1 He is known -if at all -only as one of the rather nebulous figures involved in the early days of British Sociology. Though he had no formal university position (he had applied for Chairs at Birmingham and at Manchester), he was central to the building of the key institutions that sustained sociology in Britain for the first thirty tears of the twentieth century. He set up the first Sociological Society, was the founder, editor, and prime mover of The Sociological Review, furthered its scientific activities through the formation of study groups, and ensured that the Society had premises from which to work. He was involved in sociological work at all levels, including the Board of Sociological Studies at the London School of Economics, the principal centre for the teaching of sociology in Britain throughout the period. Despite producing numerous publications (see, for example, Branford, 1914Branford, , 1923Branford, , 1924, his intellectual impact was marginal. Nevertheless, his reflections on the public role of sociology were of pivotal significance in the early organisation of British sociology.There are few discussions of Branford's life or ideas, and none of any length. 2 Those discussions of the history of sociology that mention him, do so only in passing and give only the barest details of his life. Using data from civil The Sociological Review, 55:3 (2007)

The Palgrave Handbook of Sociology in Britain

“…However, those themes also filtered through into discussions about British sociology's past, which was the subject of renewed interest during the centenary of the discipline's first chair and journal. This was most evident in discussions about the Scottish biologist and sociologist, Patrick Geddes, a leading candidate for the first British chair of sociology, which turned into a highly controversial debate -the kind in which the Nazis feature -about what exactly evolutionism meant a little over 100 years ago (Fuller, 2007;Studholme, 2007;Scott and Husbands, 2007;Studholme et al, 2007).…”

“…This recognition of the interdependence of culture and nature was developed most systematically by Patrick Geddes and Victor Branford (Scott and Bromley, 2013;Scott and Husbands, 2007;Collini, 1991). Their approach was more rigorously Comtist and drew also on the work of the French empirical investigator Frédéric Le Play, whose work stressed the materiality of environmental conditions and their impact on family and community forms.…”

Class cities: Classics, utopianism and urban planning in early twentieth-century Britain

“…Together Gurney and Branford were the intellectual and financial force behind the development of British sociology and urban studies. 57 In 1917 Victor Branford and Patrick Geddes published what was almost a manifesto for the movement, The Coming Polity: A Study in Reconstruction. They called for a new politics based on regionalism that would break with the nationalist structures of the state and escape the capitalist competitivism that they saw as dominating sociological thought.…”

Social Science Couples in Britain at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: Gender Divisions in Work and Marriage

“…The Branfords adopted two boys who were born to a relative who could not care for them and re-baptized them with new first names. 54 The Webbs consciously decided not to have children. Going the long way around to explain the decision, Beatrice wrote: rightly or wrongly we decided against having children; I was no longer young, he had been overworking from childhood, we were both of us unusually energetic.…”