Contested Canon: Simmel Scholarship at Columbia and the New School
Author(s): Gary D. Jaworski
Reviewed work(s): Source: The American Sociologist, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Summer, 1998), pp. 4-18 Published by: Springer Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27698867 . Accessed: 15/01/2012 08:29 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp 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. Springer is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The American Sociologist. http://www.jstor.org Contested Canon: Simmel Scholarship at Columbia and the New School Gary D. Jaworski The history of sociology exhibits what might be called, after Gallie (1956), an "essentially contested" canon. The key figures, sacred texts, and central ideas that constitute the sociological tradition are inherently in dispute. This essay examines the "contested canon" within a historical framework to provide at least a partial explanation for the restricted interpretation of Georg Simmel as a structuralist sociologist. The sites of this contest are two New York City institutions, Columbia University and the New School for Social Research, both of which offered mid-century readings of Simmel's works. At Columbia in the mid-1950s, Robert K. Merton advanced a structural reading of Simmel's work. During the same broad period, the New School's Albert Salomon cham pioned a phenomenological reading of Simmel in his classes and seminars. Despite penetrating insights into Simmel's links to the phenomenological tra dition, Salomon's interpretation has had less salience than the approach ad vanced by Merton. The differential success of these competing interpretations is explained in large measure by the institutionalization and dominance of Merton's research tradition relative to Salomon's. The history of sociology exhibits what might be called, after Gallie (1956), an "essentially contested" canon. Like the concepts that Gallie discussed?"power," "democracy," and "freedom," for example?the key figures, sacred texts, and central ideas that constitute the sociological tradition are inherently in dispute. Even when there is agreement over which figures belong in the list of approved writers, the interpretation of those figures is often hotly debated. Recent contro versies over Parsons's reading of Weber and Blumer's reading of Mead are only two examples of this pattern. Unlike Gallie's concepts, however, the inherent contestability of the sociological canon is less a logical than a sociological and political problem. The contending schools of sociology, as Tiryakian (1986) Gary D. Jaworski is a Professor of Sociology, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, New Jersey. The American Sociologist/Summer 1998 and others have observed, canonize intellectual heroes, texts, and traditions, and challenge or ignore others. Approved authors and texts are advanced as schools institutionalize themselves and attain dominance; others are ignored, forgotten, and occasionally resurrected. This essay examines the "contested canon" within a historical framework to provide at least a partial explanation for the restricted interpretation of Georg Simmel as a structuralist sociologist. The sites of this contest are two New York City institutions, Columbia University and the New School for Social Research, both of which offered mid-century readings of Simmers works. At Columbia in the mid-1950s, Robert K. Merton advanced a structural reading of Simmers work in two year-long seminars (1955-56; 1956-57) titled "Selected Problems in the Theory of Organizations." During the same broad period, Albert Salomon, an original member of the New School's Graduate Faculty who had studied with both Weber and Simmel, championed a phenomenological reading of Simmel in his classes and seminars. Despite penetrating insights into Simmers links to the phenomenological tradition, including an examination of the "inner affinity" of Simmel and Alfred Schutz, Salomon's interpretation has had less salience than the approach advanced by Merton. The differential success of these competing interpretations is explained in large measure by the institutionalization and dominance of Merton's research tradition relative to Salomon's. Such an analysis promises to cast light not only on the history of Simmel's American reception but on the vicissitudes of contemporary sociological theories and methods. A useful strategy for comparing intellectual and professional styles of work is to chart them along an intellectual continuum. At one end of the continuum lies "scholarship," that is, intellectual work in harmony with humanist intellectual traditions. Assuming the unity of knowledge, this approach links sociology to literary, philosophical, and historical projects. Texts are examined historically and systematically, employing explication du texte, and biography is accepted as relevant to understanding a thinker. At the other end of the continuum is "abstracted empiricism," to borrow C. Wright Mills's (1959) phrase, in the sci entific intellectual tradition. Work in this vein is characterized less by its ques tions than its techniques. Armed with a positivist philosophy of science, it measures all knowledge by a restricted yardstick of truth. Not surprisingly, many authors are dismissed as unworthy of study; others are of interest only for the hypoth eses and concepts their works contain. Texts are examined, if at all, in isolation from the literary and historical context of their production. In the middle of the continuum is a style of work that shares in abstracted empiricism's instrumen talism, its goal of utilizing a text for some purpose, and in scholarship's univer salism, its desire to advance intellect and learning. This middle course can be called the "research program." The competing approaches to Simmel in the period after the Second World War do not range very widely along this continuum. Yet Salomon's work at the New School mostly addresses the criteria of scholarship, while the work of Merton and other Columbia sociologists focuses on the research program. Over all, the story of Simmel in post-war American sociology revolves in important Jaworski 5 ways around the relationship between these styles of thought and their corre sponding institutional locations. Columbia's institutional dominance relative to the New School had profound consequences, not only for American Simmel studies but for sociology more generally. In the American academy today, the research program and abstracted empiricism have largely supplanted scholar ship. Explication du texte is a dying art, while methods that ape the natural sci ences are de rigueur in graduate schools across the United States. European style scholarship, with its ties to philosophy and literature, has been rejected as old-fashioned and replaced by an American brand of academic work tied to scientific advance and social improvement. In part, such developments are a result of the academic styles successfully advanced by Merton and Paul Lazarsfeld at Columbia University, where sociology was defined mostly along the lines of the natural sciences. Such a definition entailed substantial gains, including greater prestige for postwar sociology. But those gains have come at a price, namely, the eclipse of the kind of American Simmel scholarship represented at the New School. With few exceptions, con temporary Simmel scholarship has returned to the European community, where the most comprehensive efforts at understanding Simmel's writings, as opposed to developing them for other purposes, are taking place.1 A thorough study of the writings and institutional contexts of American Simmel studies would be necessary to substantiate the above thesis and conclusions. Here I lay the groundwork for such a study by presenting short sketches of work at each institution. The sketches rest on information from my interviews with the principals and their students and from an analysis of published and unpub lished sources, including seminar notes, drafts of papers, and correspondence. Simmel Studies at Columbia Merton's examination of Simmel's sociology is usefully viewed in the context of the Columbia sociology department's project of developing a unified socio logical approach, what Crothers (1996) calls the "Columbia Tradition." Prior to this development, Columbia sociology was dominated by a series of great think ers?first Franklin H. Giddings and then Robert M. Maclver, and assisted by a number of other strong intellects, including Theodore Abel and Robert Lynd? each one professing his own brand of sociology.2 In the late 1930s, there emerged a divide between those members of the department, like Abel, who thought that the department's internal contradictions stimulated individuality of thought and those, like Lazarsfeld and many students, who thought it impaired intellectual accomplishment. This split is evident in a debate between Lazarsfeld and Abel, recorded in the latter's diaries (Abel 1936: 130-131). Lazarsfeld gave the depart ment low marks and argued in favor of a unified approach, a school of thought. Abel, predictably, stressed the department's virtues and defended a scholar's right to do his own thinking. Columbia sociology during the 1940s and 1950s developed along the lines that Lazarsfeld had promoted, as a department characterized by strong intellec 6 The American Sociologist/Summer 1998 tuai coherence. Lazarsfeld and Merton joined formal theory with research meth odology, funded students with strong statistical skills, secured grants for faculty and student research projects, and helped form a school of thought that ensured Columbia's place as one of the country's leading departments. Central to this "tradition" was Merton's definition of sociology as a "special science" focused on the structural factors of social life. Such an approach aimed for autonomy, not only from related disciplines, like psychology and cultural anthropology, but also from other schools of sociological thought. It also entailed a rereading of the sociological tradition, not as a history of great thinkers or a tale of theoreti cal convergence, but as a repository of structuralist insights. Merton's postwar interest in Simmel, then, was part of this project of advanc ing the frontiers of the emerging Columbia school of thought. This focus helps explain Merton's response to Lewis A. Coser's initial dissertation proposal. Coser originally envisioned not a special study of Simmel's essay on conflict but an examination of the German sociologist's intellectual biography. Merton rejected the plan on the grounds that such a study was "unfashionable" (Coser 1987; see also Rosenberg 1984: 44). This response reflected his quest to make Columbia sociology scientific and autonomous, distinct not only from non-scientific fields of study but also from the department's own humanistic past. In developing a distinctive brand of sociology, Merton and his colleagues abandoned continental intellectual styles. The version of social science advanced by his predecessor Maclver closely linked sociology and philosophy (Bierstedt 1981: 243-297). Mertonian structural-functionalism, however, severed the con nection between the two intellectual pursuits. Illustrative of this separation is Merton's Social Theory and Social Structure (1957). One of the era's most erudite and enduring sociological treatises, it nevertheless examines almost no philosophers. In more than 600 pages, Hegel and Nietzsche are cited once each, and there are no citations of Plato or Aristotle, Kant or Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer or Bergson.3 Moreover, Merton's seminar notes on "Selected Problems in the Theory of Organization" reveal that of all Simmel's writings, only his Soziologie was included. Simmel's cultural or philosophical works, indeed even his other sociological writings, would have been read by Merton's students, only either outside of class or later in their careers.4 In place of a historical and systematic examination of Simmel's writings, Merton developed a strategy of extracting and extending Simmel's structuralist insights.6 The basic approach of each seminar session was to start with a quotation from an assigned text and then rephrase it in terms of contemporary issues or concepts in order to extend, revise, or update the ideas. The primary text was Kurt H. Wolffs translation of The Sociology of Georg Simmel (1950), but other sources? by Parsons, Homans, and Bendix, among others?also provided raw material for those sessions. This procedure is similar to what Merton (1973) has referred to as "codification" in science, an operation considered fundamental in the structural functional school but quite foreign to the humanistic scholars at the New School. Merton's interest in Simmel may have found expression in the Columbia project, but its content largely derives from a contemporary social problem. By the mid Jaworski 7 1950s, when Merton examined Simmel's sociology, America had suffered from years of Cold War suspicion and demagoguery. Through the activities of Senator Joseph McCarthy and his minions, thousands of citizens suffered countless inva sions of privacy and other violations of civil rights. Academics were specially targeted for their real or imagined ties to scapegoated groups. Once the tumult had subsided, the topic of leadership in a democratic society took center stage. For many intellectuals, including Merton's former teacher, Talcott Parsons, the solution to the problem of McCarthyism lay, above all, in improved national political leadership.6 Merton (1957:336-357) forcefully engaged this issue, draw ing on Simmel's ideas about visibility to help him answer one of the crucial questions of this period: What are the conditions that support a vital democracy? (See Jaworski 1990; 1997, ch. 5.) In a discussion of aristocracy in his Soziologie, Simmel (1950:90) wrote: "If it is to be effective as a whole, the aristocratic group must be 'surveyable' [?bersehbar] by every single member of it. Every element must be personally acquainted with every other." Merton extended Simmel's term theoretically by distinguishing between "visibility," a social psychological quality, and "observability," a structural property of a group. Practically, he applied Simmel's insights into the "vital conditions of aristocracy" (Simmel 1950:91) to the problem of demo cratic leadership. In a vital democracy, Merton maintained, leaders and led must be visible and observable to each other; leaders must be willing to communicate openly with the people. The improvement of public opinion polls, for example, would provide an efficient means of communicating to leaders the concerns of the people. While Merton recognized the ethical and social necessity for curbs on full visibility, he was convinced, following Simmel's insights, that improved "visibility" and "observability" would enhance democratic governance. Merton's extension of Simmel's ?bersehbar was thus embedded in an institutional project, developing the "Columbia Tradition," and motivated as well by practical con cern with the renewal of national political leadership. His development of the structural aspects of Simmel's ideas was a theoretical expression of the political problem of secrecy and disclosure, a key concern of the Cold War world.7 The same cannot be said, however, for subsequent applications of Merton's concep tual distinction between "visibility" and "observability." Applied to abstracted research on medical practice, small groups, and scientific prestige, the terms yielded thin results and, consequently, the trickle of studies in this research program dried up (Cole and Cole 1968; Hopkins 1964; Merton et al. 1957).8 Merton's extension of Simmel's ideas contributed to sociological and political theory, but it never became in our sense a "scholarly" examination of Simmel's writings. Neither the seminars nor the writings derived from them represent efforts to better understand Simmel on his own terms. The seminar notes reveal neither an exegesis nor a contextual examination of the text. In the words of one of the seminar participants, The Sociology of Georg Simmel was "a pretext, not a text." It was a point of departure for advancing Merton's research pro gram, which aimed at an analysis of the structural properties of groups. In his seminars, then, Merton was more interested in standing on Simmel's shoulders than in carefully measuring them. 8 The American Sociologist/Summer 1998 Merton attributes the modest productivity of these seminars to his own error of judgment (Merton 1988). For him, their result was the long chapter in the second edition of Social Theory and Social Structure, titled "Continuities in the Theory of Reference Groups and Social Structure" (Merton 1957:281-386). This chapter contains a wealth of directions for research in functionalist analysis, many of which remain buried in those pages and unexplored by his students. Had the piece been published separately, Merton remarked, it would have had greater research salience. Merton's conjecture is realistic. Lewis A. Coser's The Functions of Social Conflict (1956), while written prior to those seminars, also employed Simmelian ideas to advance the functionalist research agenda. Pub lished as a slim volume, it succeeded in shaping several generations of thinkers. (See Jaworski 1997, ch. 6.) It is well known that The Functions of Social Conflict was Coser's doctoral dissertation, written under Merton at Columbia. Less widely known is the fact that the published book is actually only half of his dissertation, and that the other half remains unpublished/The part that has become famous follows Merton's functionalist research program, especially the focus on unintended consequences of social action. Its style is also heavily indebted to Merton, whose strategy of examining Simmel's writings is in all essentials the same approach Coser follows in his book. Coser's study departs from functionalism, however, in privileging conflict over consensus as the cohesive force of liberal, democratic societies. In this sense Coser calls himself "a heretic in the church of functionalists" (Rosenberg 1984: 44). The unpublished first part of Coser's dissertation is titled "The Concept of Social Conflict in American Sociology: An Exercise in the Sociology of Knowl edge" (Coser 1954: 5-188). It was written partly at Chicago, partly at Columbia, and represents a very different research program from that followed in the published part (Coser 1989). In the unpublished material, Coser's basic purpose is to explain the changing status of conflict in American sociological thought, from a positive valuation among the founding generation to a negative estima tion in the generation represented by Elton Mayo and Talcott Parsons. Drawing on Mead, Znaniecki, and C. Wright Mills, Coser observes that the first generation of sociologists addressed reformist audiences: men and women engaged in social conflict who positively valued this struggle. A shift in audience and affiliation occurred during and after the New Deal period, as sociologists increasingly worked in applied positions within various public and private bureaucracies. Along with new audiences came a new style of work, "applied sociology," and a new type of administration-oriented sociologist. A fear of conflict dominated the intellectual outlook of this new generation and resulted in work preoccu pied with cohesion, common values, and social integration. As this brief review indicates, Coser's response to Merton's rejection of his proposal to write an intellectual biography of Simmel resulted in a dissertation that contributes to two research programs. The published part, with its analysis of the "positive functions of social conflict," advanced the functionalist research program; the unpublished part presents a critique of that theoretical perspec Jaworski 9 tive, especially of its more conservative branch. It represents an attempt to forge a critical sociology on quite different theoretical grounds. Simmel Scholarship at the New School What Columbia rejected, the New School embraced. In the 1940s and 1950s, the New School sociology department produced dissertations on Max Weber, Thorstein Veblen, Carl Gustav Jung, George Herbert Mead, Emile Durkheim, and the lay sociologist, Mark Twain, among other topics.9 These studies not only offer intellectual biographies of their subject, but also include Simmelian analy ses and reflections. Rosenberg's dissertation on Veblen singled out Simmel's essay on the stranger as a key text in understanding its subject; Natanson's study of Mead identified the similarities and differences between Mead's and Simmel's analyses of self and society; even Skelton's dissertation on Mark Twain offered a Simmelian analysis of Pudd'nhead Wilson, one of Twain's characters, as mav erick and stranger. It is likely, then, that the New School faculty would not have rejected a dissertation proposal for an intellectual biography of Georg Simmel. In fact, Albert Salomon was eager for a new interpretation of Simmel. Salomon, himself, was working on such a revised reading of his former teacher as early as 1940, when he wrote to Harry Elmer Barnes, "My Simmel interpreta tion will give me much work. However, it is highly necessary to revise the very imperfect book of Spykman and to suggest a new [reading] of Simmel himself" (Salomon 1940). Salomon was referring to Nicholas J. Spykman's book, The Social Theory of Georg Simmel, first published in 1925. At the time, this was the only major study of Simmel available in English, and both its contributions and limitations were widely recognized. Salomon's work on a new interpretation of Simmel led to two publications in the 1940s: an entry on Simmel in The Universal fewish Encyclopedia (Salomon 1943) and a section of his chapter on German sociology in Gurvitch and Moore's Twentieth Century Sociology (Salomon 1945). Both pieces are animated by a desire to make sense of Simmel's writings, as opposed to employing them for some other research purpose. They also link Simmel's work to more general philosophical and literary traditions. Indeed, Salomon's insistence on reading Simmel as a. philosopher and sociologist distin guishes his reading of Simmel from his American contemporaries, who preferred to extract Simmel's sociology from his philosophy, focusing primarily on the former and ignoring the latter. To Salomon, such an approach was "scandal ous."10 Both of these early essays on Simmel draw out the connections between Simmel's philosophy and his sociology. For example, in his 1945 chapter on German sociology, Salomon described Simmel as "primarily a philosopher." But he quickly added, "however, sociological thinking was a fundamental element of his philosophical reflection" (Salomon 1945:604). In later publications, as well as in seminars and class lectures, he stated this point more forcefully. "I submit," he said to his class on Simmel and Schutz, "that in the case of Simmel, sociology and philosophy basically merge and are one and indivisible" (Salomon 1962). In 10 The American Sociologist/Summer 1993 1963, when he lectured on Simmel at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York City, he repeated this refrain: Simmel was a philosopher-sociologist, "one and indivis ible" (Salomon 1995[1963]:363). Like Merton's work on Simmel, which was tied to advancing the frontiers of Columbia sociology, Salomon's Simmel scholarship was embedded in an institu tional project. In the 1950s and 1960s Alfred Schutz, and later Aron Gurwitsch and Dorian Cairns, was making the New School the center for phenomenological philosophy (Rutkoff and Scott 1986). Since this perspective was well out of the mainstream of social and political thought, which was dominated by positivist assumptions, special efforts were made to legitimate the approach. In their bid for legitimacy, the Graduate Faculty employed the strategy of interpreting social theory with an eye to establishing the links between the phenomenological tradition and other European and American developments. Schutz's writings on William James and George Herbert Mead, for example, underscored the parallels between those American thinkers and Husserl and Bergson (see Coser 1984:121 125; Rutkoff and Scott 1986:205-206; Wagner 1983). As Schutz (1970: 13) explained, in those writings his aim was "to show that phenomenology [was] not quite a stranger in this country." Salomon's work on Simmel contributed to these efforts to vindicate one of the New School's most important emerging philosophical positions. He does this by interpreting Simmel as an important progenitor of the phenomenological tradi tion. In his writings and class notes, Salomon emphasized Simmel's relationship to both the European phenomenological tradition and analogous American philo sophical thought. As a former student of Simmel's, he wrote about his teacher having a "remarkable influence" on the liberal youth in his classes, introducing them to James and Bergson and combining those thinkers "with the idealistic traditions which were then prevalent" (Salomon 1943:542). Another example is found in Salomon's seminar on Simmel, offered in the semester preceding Schutz's own 1958 seminar on James and Bergson. As he wrote, "I considered [my semi nar on Simmel] as an introduction to Professor Schutz's course on Bergson and James....Simmel knew that Bergson was closest to his own work, and he recog nized the greater potency of the French philosopher" (Salomon 1966). A few years after Schutz's death in 1959, Salomon offered his course "Simmel and Schutz as Sociologists," a tribute to both thinkers (see Appendix). Again in this course, Salomon maintained that Simmel was an important precursor to phenom enological philosophy and sociology: in his examination of intersubjectivity as a constitutive element of human conduct; in his analysis of social types and typi fications; and in his philosophy of life and essays on the life-world. In all these ways, and others, Simmel reveals his affinities to that tradition. As Salomon (1945:609) stated elsewhere, Simmel's work is "living and suggestive," for he "has seen the problems that the Phenomenological School applies to the analysis of social phenomena." The seminar on Simmel and Schutz explored the affinities between the two figures, including their common background in the philosophy of Bergson and the similarity of the intellectual problems on which they worked.11 While Salomon Jaworski 11 admitted the fundamental differences between their respective intellectual worlds, he insisted on the "inner affinity" of Simmel and Schutz as sociologists. Accord ing to Salomon, both thinkers are concerned with vindicating the subject in the face of social forces that "were turning the constructive and spontaneous indi vidual into a stereotype and pattern of institutional logic" (Salomon 1962). Simmel's defense of the subject, Salomon showed, took the form of under standing how individuals transcend the relationships and structures within which they interact. Whether they are examining art or fashion, the money economy or religion, Simmel's writings illustrate how our ways of being with others al ways include ways of going beyond them. To employ Salomon's (1962) apposite phrase, according to Simmel, "the beyond is not irrelevant for the social being." Schutz's vindication of the subject lay on different foundations than Simmel's? especially on the works of Husserl and Weber?but he too focused on the world as experienced and understood from the subjective point of view. Thus, despite the manifold differences in their work, Simmel and Schutz occupy common ground. The "inner unity" of the two thinkers shows in other ways as well. Both were essayists in the tradition of Montaigne, a stylistic similarity that perhaps accounts for Schutz's appreciation of Simmel's special investigations, including his essays on the role of numbers in social life, the poor, and faithfulness and gratitude. But his regard for Simmel's essay on the sociology of the letter has deeper roots (Simmel 1950:352-355; see Schutz 1964:112). Simmel's analysis of the letter contrasts face-to-face communication with communication through the written word. He explores the paradox of written communication: it enhances the logi cal clarity of communication while magnifying the ambiguity surrounding an understanding of the individual. Because the reader of a letter does not have immediate access to the visual and audible signs of delivery, the letter is more open to interpretation and also misunderstanding. Hence, what Simmel calls the "secret of the other"?a person's moods and qualities of being?while poten tially accessible through face-to-face interaction, is concealed in written commu nication (Simmel 1950:355). Simmel's analysis of the letter reveals close the matic links to Schutz's own analysis of degrees of intimacy and anonymity in social relations (Schutz and Luckmann 1973, ch. 2), thus lending support to Salomon's view of the "inner affinity" of the two figures?their mutual concern for "the secret of the other." As this brief review indicates, Salomon's unpublished notes on Simmel are powerful and suggestive. His published writings on Simmel, however, are not as clear or comprehensive as are the writings of some of his contemporaries, such as Kracauer's (1995 [1920-21]) essay on Simmel. Indeed, his assertions are some times cryptic and undeveloped. Consider this elusive statement: "Simmel's mode of thinking moves between George Herbert Mead and some problems of a phi losophy of existence" (Salomon 1995[1963]:374). Such writing may be the result of poorly considered ideas, but more likely it has another source. As his intel lectual biographer, Matthiesen, has shown, Salomon's efforts to join the Ameri can academic mainstream were repeatedly rebuffed and may have led him to withdraw to the small audiences that accepted him, his students and fellow New 12 The American Sociologist/Summer 1998 York Jewish refugees (Mathiessen 1988). In speaking to this audience, it may have been unnecessary to elaborate on points known to all. The meaning of Salomon's point about Simmel's relationship to Mead would likely have been obvious to his students, especially if they attended his seminar on Mead, which he jointly conducted in spring of 1944 with Alfred Schutz. Maurice Natanson, a student of both Salomon and Schutz, wrote a dissertation on Mead that ad dressed this question clearly, if briefly. Despite these limitations, Salomon's writings on Simmel make several contri butions, not the least of which is their powerful if implicit critique of the recep tion of Simmel's work by mainstream American sociology. Salomon's insistence on the unity of Simmel's philosophy and sociology, as well as his reading of Simmel within the phenomenological tradition, are important contributions then as now. Matthiesen (1988:330) echoes this point when he writes, "Salomon showed why the American Simmel reception, which favored formal sociology and conflict sociology, had to remain inadequate without also considering the strong philoso phy of life undercurrents, the influence of Dilthey as well as Bergson and James." Conclusion Merton (1973 [1959]:55) once wrote that controversy among sociologists of ten "is less a matter of contradictions between sociological ideas than of com peting definitions of the role considered appropriate for the sociologist." The place of Simmel in the sociological canon, I maintain, is an outcome of such a contest between what I earlier called the "research program" and "scholarship" models of intellectual work. While intellectuals in both traditions often agreed on the value of Simmel's work, they construed his significance in very different ways. Empiricists and advocates of the research program sought to extract insights from Simmel's work and develop them into a series of fundable research proposals. The emi gres in Greenwich Village, by contrast, resisted this trend by salvaging the rem nants of the continental tradition threatened by war and atrocity and developing them on American soil. Their efforts were a mixed success (Krohn 1993), but the attempt to transplant "old world" styles of scholarship must be judged a failure. Empiricism and the research program, both consistent with the structure and reward system of American higher education, came to dominate its aca demic style of work. Columbia's research program overshadowed the New School's alternative, and thereby contributed to the restricted understanding of Simmel among American sociologists that lasts to this day. Ironically, despite the relative success of the Columbia intellectual style, its program of research on Simmel remains only partially incorporated into Ameri can sociology. Like Salomon's interpretation of Simmel, which is captured partly in publications, partly in class notes and syllabi, Merton's Simmel interpretation is buried in seminar notes and the dense thickets of his magnum opus, Social Theory and Social Structure. Perhaps something about Simmel's writings makes them inassimilable by mainstream academic styles. His radically individual talent Jaworski 13 may be the ultimate protection against what Merton calls "obliteration by incor poration." Neither surpassed nor fully assimilated, Simmel's oeuvre remains to be understood. Acknowledgments This article is a revision of a paper presented at meetings of the Research Committee on the History of Sociology, International Sociological Association, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, May 16-18, 1996. I am grateful to Charles Crothers, David Frisby, and Arnold Simmel for helpful conversations about American Simmel studies, and to Larry Nichols and Mary Rogers, who helped to make this a better essay. Permission to quote material from the Albert Salomon Collections of the Leo Baeck Institute (New York) and the Sozialwissenschafliches Archiv (Constance) is gratefully acknowledged. Notes 1. I have in mind the editors of the Simmel Newsletter (Universit?t Bielefeld), the contributors to that important forum for Simmel-studies, and those who are responsible for producing the Georg Simmel Gesamtausgabe. 2. The beginning years of Columbia sociology, under Giddings, have been extensively studied (Wallace 1991, 1992), as have the years of the postwar period of the Lazarsfeld-Merton team (Clark 1995; Crothers 1996; Lipset and Smelser 1961). But the pivotal decade of the thirties has yet to be investigated with the same intensity. 3. According to the Name Index of Merton's Social Theory and Social Structure (1957), the following figures received one citation each: Adorno, Comte, Hegel, Hobbes, Hume, Husserl, Jaspers, Leibniz, Mill, Nietzsche, Russell, and Smith. Dilthey, James, Luk?cs, Peirce, and Rickert earned two citations each. Whitehead received five citations. Compare these citations to the Foreword and Index to Maclver (1965). 4. Information from telephone interviews with three seminar participants: D. Harper, Professor of Sociology, University of Rochester, July 24, 1996; C Kadushin, Professor of Sociology, City University of New York, Graduate Center, April 25, 1996; and G. Lindt, Dean of Columbia University's School of General Studies, March 18, 1996. 5. I am grateful to Professor Merton for making available to me the second year's report, "Working Memo randa (Preliminary Draft)," 1956-57. From "Selected Problems in the Theory of Organizations," Soc. 321, Columbia University. 6. In his essay on McCarthyism, Parsons advocated "far-reaching changes in the structure" of American soci ety, the "most important" of which was a revision in the source and character of "national political leadership" (Parsons 1963 [1955]: 228). 7. Merton's terminology articulates in theoretical terms E. Shils's (1956: 237) claim that "the stability of the free society" acknowledges both "the claims of individuals and corporate bodies to privacy" and "the proper practice of publicity." 8. For an exception, see R.L. Coser (1961). 9. Identified chronologically, these dissertations are: E. Fischoff, "Max Weber and the Sociology of Religion with Special Reference to Judaism" (1942); B. Rosenberg, "Thorstein Veblen in the Light of Contemporary Social Science" (1949); I. Progroff, "CJ. Jung's Psychology in its Significance for the Social Sciences" (1952); M. A. Natanson, "George H. Mead: Social Scientist and Philosopher" (1953); K. T. Skelton, "Mark Twain: Sociological Realist" (1956); J.W. Harris, "Thorstein Veblen's Social Theory: A Reappraisal" (1956); and A. Ben-Ami, "Durkheim's Sociological Method and Parsons' Action Theory: A Study in Sociological Theory" (1956). See Contributions to Scholarship (1973). 10. Kurt H. Wolff (1993) has revealed that Salomon used the word "scandalous" to describe Wolffs introduc tion to his translated collection of Simmel's writings, The Sociology of Georg Simmel (1950). 11. On Bergson and Schutz, see Wagner (1977; 1983: 273-284). On Bergson and Simmel, see Schwerdtfeger (1995). Salomon's students were encouraged to read an important essay on Simmel by V. Jank?l?vitch (1925), a student and friend of Bergson 's. References Abel, Theodore. 1936. fournal of Thoughts and Events, Volume 3 (March 5). Theodore Abel Collection, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Bierstedt, Robert. 1981. American Sociological Theory: A Critical History. New York: Academic Press. Clark, T.N. 1995. "Paul F. Lazarsfeld and the Columbia Sociology Machine." Unpublished manuscript. 14 The American Sociologist/Summer 1998 Cole, S. and Cole, J.R. 1968. "Visibility and the Structural Bases of Awareness of Scientific Research." American Sociological Review 33:397-413. Contributions to Scholarship: Doctoral Dissertations of the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science. 1973. New School for Social Research. Coser, Lewis A. 1954. Toward a Sociology of Social Conflict. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia Univer sity. -. 1956. The Functions of Social Conflict. New York: Free Press. -. 1984. Refugee Scholars in America: Their Impact and Their Experiences. New Haven: Yale University Press. -. 1987. Interview with the author, May 14. -. 1989. Interview with the author, October 2. Coser, Rose L. 1961. "Insulation from Observability and Types of Social Conformity." American Sociological Review 26:28-39 Crothers, Charles. 1996. "The Postwar 'Columbia Tradition' in Sociology." Unpublished manuscript. Gallie, W. B. 1956. "Essentially Contested Concepts." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 56. Hopkins, T. K. 1964. The Exercise of Influence in Small Groups. Totowa, NJ: Bedminster Press. Jank?l?vitch, V. 1925. "Georg Simmel, philosophe de la vie." Revue de m?taphysique at de morale 32:213-57, 373-86. Jaworski, Gary D. 1990. "Robert K. Merton as Postwar Prophet." American Sociologist 21:209-216. -. 1997. Georg Simmel and the American Prospect. New York: State University of New York Press. Kracauer, S. 1995 [1920-21]. "Georg Simmel." In T.Y. Levin (ed.), The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays.Camb?dge: Harvard University Press. Krohn, C.-D. 1993- Intellectuals in Exile: Refugee Scholars and the New School for Social Research. Translated by Rita and Robert Kimber. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Lipset, Seymour M. and Smelser, Neil J. 1961. "The Setting of Sociology in the 1950s." In Lipset and Smelser (Eds.), Sociology: the Progress of a Decade. Engelwood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Maclver, Robert M. 1965. The Web of Government. Revised Edition. New York: Free Press. Mathiessen, U. 1988. "'Im Schatten einer endlosen grossen Zeit': Etappen der intellektuellen Biographie Albert Salomons." In Ilja Srubar (ed.), Exile, Wissenschaft, Identit?t: Die Emigration deutscher Sozial-wissenscbaftler, 1933-1945. Frankfurt-am-Main: Suhrkamp. Merton, Robert K. 1957. Social Theory and Social Structure. Revised and Enlarged Edition. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. -. 1973 [1959]. "Social Conflict Over Styles of Sociological Work." In The Sociology of Sciences: Theoreti cal and Emprirical Investigations. New York: Free Press. -. 1988. Interview with the author, February 18. -, Reader, G.G., and Kendell, P.L. (Eds). 1957. The Student Physician. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Mills, C. Wright. 1959. "Abstracted Empiricism." In The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press. Parsons, Talcott. 1963 [1955]. "Social Strains in America." In Daniel Bell (ed.), The Radical Right. New York: Doubleday. Rosenberg, R. 1984. An Interview with Lewis Coser. In W. Powell and R. Robbins (Eds.), Conflict and Consen sus: A Festschrift in Honor of Lewis A. Coser. New York: Free Press. Rutkoff, P.M. and Scott, W.B 1986. New School: A History of the New School for Social Research. New York: Free Press. Salomon, Albert. 1940. Letter to H.E. Barnes, April 20. In the Albert Salomon Collection, Leo Baeck Institute (New York), Box 1, Korrespondenz, A-N. -. 1943- "Simmel, Georg." The Universal fewish Encyclopedia. Volume 9. New York: Universal Jewish Encyclopedia. -. 1945. "German Sociology." In G. Gurvitch and W.E. Moore (eds.) Twentieth Century Sociology. New York: Philosophical Library. -. 1962. Lecture Notes to "Simmel and Schutz as Sociologists." Salomon Papers, Sozialwissenschaftliches Archiv, Universit?t Konstanz, Mappen Number 29. -. 1995 [1963]. "Georg Simmel Reconsidered." International fournal of Politics, Culture, and Society 8:361-378. -. 1966. Lecture Notes to Dilthey-Simmel Course, Sozialwissenschaftliches Archiv, Universit?t Konstanz, Mappen Number 26. Schutz, Alfred. 1964. "The Homecomer." In Collected Papers. Volume 2. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. -. 1970. "William James's Concept of the Stream of Thought Phenomenologically Interpreted." In Collected Papers. Volume 3. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. -, and Thomas Luckmann. 1973. The Structures of the Life-World. Translated by R.M. Zaner and H.T. Engelhardt, Jr., Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Schwerdtfeger, J. 1995. "Bergson und Simmel." Simmel Newsletter 5: 89-96. Shils, Edward. 1956. The Torment of Secrecy. New York: Free Press. Jaworski 15 Simmel, Georg. 1950. The Sociology of Georg Simmel. Translated and edited by K.H. Wolff. New York: Free Press. Spykman, Nichols J. 1925. The Social Theory of Georg Simmel. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Tiryakian, Edward A. 1986. "Hegemonic Schools and the Development of Sociology: Rethinking the History of a Discipline." In R.C. Monk (ed.), Structures of Knowing. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Wagner, H. R. 1977. "The Bergsonian Period of Alfred Schutz." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 38:187-199. -. 1983- Alfred Schutz: An Intellectual Biography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wallace, R. W. 1991. "The Struggle of a Department: Columbia Sociology in the 1920s.." Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 27: 323-340. -. 1992. "Starting a Department and Getting it Under Way: Sociology at Columbia University, 1891-1914." Minerva 30:497-512 Wolff, Kurt H. 1993. Interview with the author, March 7. 16 The American Sociologist/Summer 1998 APPENDIX Graduate Faculty, New School for Social Research Albert Salomon Simmel and Schutz as Sociologists Georg Simmel, Sociology, Trans. Kurt Wolff, The Free Press 1950 (referred to hereafter as Sociology) Kurt Wolff, ed. Georg Simmel, 1958-1918?^4 Collection of Essays, Ohio State University Press, 1959 (hereafter Essays) Georg Simmel, Conflict and The Web of Group Affiliations, trans. Bendix and Wolff, Free Press, 1955 Alfred Schutz, Der Sinnhafte Aufbau der Sozialen Welt. Essays in: Social Research (hereafter SR), Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (hereafter P & Ph R) I. How is Society Possible: Intersubjectivity? (on Schutz) Richard Zaner, "Theory of Intersubjectivity: Alfred Schutz" SR Winter, 1961 Simmel, "The Problem of Sociology," "How is Society Possible?" Essays II. The Problem of Communication Schutz, "Sartre's Theory of the Alter Ego," P & Ph R V. IX, 1948; "Scheler's Theory of Intersubjectivity," ibid., 1942; "Scheler's Ethics and Epistemology" Journal of Metaphysics, 1954 (on Simmel) Tenbruck "Simmel's Formal Sociology" Essays III. The Social Distribution of Knowledge Schutz, "The Well Informed Citizen: An Essay in the Social Distribution of Knowledge" S.R., V. XIII, December, 1946 Simmel, Philosophie des Geldes, Part six, Lebensanschauug: Ch. I and II IV. On Multiple Realities Schutz, "On Multiple Realities" P&PhR, V. 5, 1945 Simmel, "The Adventure," "The Actor," Essays, The Secret, Sociology, "Fashion" AfS, Vol. LXII, #6, May 1959 V. Schutz, "Aspects of Human Equality," Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion, Symposium, 1955 Simmel, Philosophie des Geldes, Last Division; "The Metropolis and Mental Life," Soziologie', and Mills, Images of Man VI. The Problem of Individual Psychology Schutz, Sinnhafte, parts 3, 4, on Descriptive Psychology; "James' Concept of Stream of Thought," P&PhR, vol. I, 1941; "On Husserl's Ideas," P&PhR, vol. XIII, 1953. Simmel, Sociology, Philosophie des Geldes, Lebensanshauung VIL Schutz, Problem der Vergangenheit in der Sozialwelt Simmel, "Das Problem der historischen zeit," "vom wesen des historischen verstehens," "Die Formation de Historischen Kunstwerkes." VIII. Schutz, "Common-Sense and Scientific Interpretation of Human Action" P&PhR, vol. XIV, 1953, Also in Coser & Rosenberg, Sociological Theory Jaworski 17 Simmel Lebensanschauung, ch. 1,2, Fragmente, Br?cke und T?r, Philosophie des Geldes. IX. Schutz, "Symbol, Reality and Society," Conference in Science, Philosophy and Religion, Symposium, 1954 Simmel, Goethe, Rembrandt, Kant und Goethe, Probleme der Philosophie, Essays on George X. The Stranger Schutz, "The Stranger," AfS 1944 Simmel, "The Stranger," Sociology XI. Schutz, Die Mitweltliche Beziehung und die mitweltliche Beobachtug Simmel, Exkurs ?ber den Schriftlichen Verkehr, Die Soziologie der Sinne 18 The American Sociologist/Summer 1998