The American journal of sociology
by Albion Woodbury Small
- Login or register to forward title to your Kindle or delivery email
- download the converted book to your desktop.
- Enter rr2.mobi/bCY in your Kindle browser to download
- Click on cover to see Google Books preview
- There is a used print copy of this title at alibris.com
Excerpt:
1 War and Other Essays, ed. by A. G. Keller, Introduction, p. xxiii.
1 American Journal of Sociology, XV, 209.
• Ibid., XXI, 732.
* Introduction to War and Other Essays, pp. xv, xvii.
s Cf. Small, Amer. Jour. Socio!., XXI, 729-48; C. H. Walker, Amer. Jour. Sociol., XX, 820-30; Giddings and Tenney in article "Sociology" in Monroe's Cyclopedia of Education.
three years before his death. These facts doubtless account for the fact that few persons who have not been Yale students, or who have not been intimately acquainted with Sumner's academic work, are aware that Sumner may be accurately classed as a sociologist, and one' need not be surprised that Professor Small was "shocked" in 1907 by the proposal of Sumner as president of the American Sociological Society.' Further, it is doubtful if Sumner's views upon, and contributions to, sociology can ever be accurately determined unless Professor Keller completes from notes and publishes Sumner's unfinished systematic treatment of sociology. At present Sumner's published works on sociology', aside from several brief essays, are almost entirely limited to his Folkways. Of this work it is not inaccurate to say that it is unsurpassed as a sociological monograph in any language and that it has made the sociological treatment of "usages, manners, customs, mores, and morals" practically a completed task.
As far as one can judge from his essays and lectures upon sociology, from his autobiographical sketches, and from Professor Keller's comments,3 Sumner's sociological views were colored by his economic and political predispositions and were inspired by the general thought and methods of procedure of Darwin, Spencer, and Lippert. An evolutionary view of social life and development, a slight predilection for the use of biological concepts, and a firm conviction of the preeminent value of ethnography as the "data" and to a large extent the substance of sociology are the dominant features of Sumner's sociological thought. He seems to have been little influenced by, or acquainted with, the recent systematic sociological literature of America or Europe, and Professor Keller states3 that he had little respect for such works. On the whole it was probably fortunate that Sumner specialized in the descriptive and ethnographic, rather than the theoretical, phase of sociology, as his power of that sustained and logical
1 Cf. Small, AttfT. Jour. Sociel., XXI, 732-33.
3 Cf. "Sociology" in War and Other Essays, pp. 167-93; "Introductory Lecture to Courses in Political and Social Science" in The Challenge of Facts and Other Essays, pp. 391-403; "Sociology as a College Subject," Amer. Jour. Social., XII, 597-09; ibid.. XV, 209; and Professor Keller's Introduction to War and Other Essays.
3 War and Other Essays, pp. xxiii-xxiv.
abstract thinking, such as has characterized Professor Giddings' work, was very modest.
It seems that, tentatively at least, Sumner's position in American sociology may be summarized as follows: He was the first teacher of sociology in the country from the standpoint both of time and ability; his Folkways is one of the richest treatments of a special branch of sociology that has yet appeared; his sociological writings were primarily concrete and descriptive rather than abstract and theoretical; his views regarding social initiative or "collective telesis," to adopt Ward's terminology, were exceedingly biased and archaic, being almost a reductio ad absurdum of the laissez faire individualistic position. If Sumner's uncompleted exposition of his sociological system is ever published from the manuscript and the classroom notes of his former students, one will doubtless be able to form a more just and accurate conception of his contributions to sociology.
