American Anthropology and Company: Historical Explorations

Chapter 13: Resistance to Sociology at Berkeley

246 13 Resistance to Sociology at Berkeley Around the beginning of the twentieth century in the United States, sociology “was institutionalized before it had a distinctive intellectual content , a distinctive method, or even a point of view,” in Anthony Oberschall’s (1972:189) characterization. Institutionalization was made possible in part by the zeitgeist of reform of that time. Existing institutions of higher education expanded and new ones were created west of the Eastern seaboard. New programs, particularly graduate studies on the Prussian model, but also new academic departments emerged under the favorable conditions of an expanding system. Another stimulus was that the Christian clergy, whose status was being successfully challenged (Hofstader 1955), were driven to investigate the “modern world” that seemed to be bypassing them. “Social Gospel” inquiry into the lives of urban workers was one response to industrialization, social change, and the isolation of the clergy from the central processes of the day. In the United States, as in Europe, both Christian and secular reformers set out to collect facts about social disorganization (Oberschall 1965, 1972; T. Clark 1973). The needs of ministers and social workers for vocational training and a theory of the emerging industrial world provided an entrée for university sociology programs. Initially, most academics calling themselves “sociologists” were Protestant ministers or sons of Protestant ministers who were interested in social reform. For the most part, they lacked training in science: many scholars in other longer-established disciplines disdained their education and cultural level. A “science” of society was desired by some, although this desire prompted schemes of universal historical progress, jargon-coining, and unrealistic programs more often than it led to empirical research or to empirically based theorizing. Nevertheless, as in the simultaneous history of American anthropology (Darnell 1998a) and the somewhat later history of American linguistics (Murray 1984), missionaries and their Resistance to Sociology at Berkeley 247 concerns were ousted by professionally trained advocates of “science,” with the scientism of Franz Boas (in anthropology) and Franklin Giddings (in sociology) at Columbia University and the more nebulous science of the social of Albion Small in sociology at the University of Chicago carried in various directions by their students. Sociology as an academic enterprise flourished in the new universities , most notably at the University of Chicago, where serious research on social disorganization was undertaken by W. I. Thomas and by Robert Park and Park’s many students. There were what Mullins (1972) called “intellectual leaders” elsewhere—William Graham Sumner at Yale, E. A. Ross at Wisconsin, Lester Frank Ward at Brown, and Charles Horton Cooley at Michigan (see Hinkle and Hinkle 1954)—but intellectual leadership was supplemented by “organization leadership,” primarily at Chicago , first by Albion Small and later by Ernest Burgess. Chicago-trained sociologists were placed in jobs and built sociology departments on the Chicago model, just as Boas-trained anthropologists filled positions (some of which were created for them) and built anthropology departments. Boas placed his students in institutions distant from New York, whereas Chicago school dominance was confined to the Midwest. Although the University of California was a new and expanding school, no sociology department formed there until much later, even than in elite East Coast universities. To understand the “postmaturity” of the development (see chapter 10) requires examination of the social science fiefdoms established at the university before sociology and the context of the university before the Second World War. The University of California University president Benjamin Ide Wheeler was “the sole organ of communication between the faculty and the regents” and made certain that “the President should have sole initiative in appointments and removals of professors” (Stadtman 1967:41). In the two decades of his tenure, Wheeler “planted on his campus a remarkable lot of able men” (Sauer 1951). Wheeler ran the university as he saw fit, but he recruited junior faculty who became distinguished scholars and spent their entire academic careers at Berkeley. Up until the end of the Second World War, University of California departments had little autonomy in making decisions and professors “saw [it] as part of their mission to maintain the standards of the uni- 248 Resistance to Sociology at Berkeley versity,” not just of the department that contained them (Kenneth Bock, 1978 interview). They saw themselves not as professors of one discipline but as “professors of the university.” In considering the social science fiefdoms aligned against the introduction of sociology, a discipline that was...