There Is No Such Thing as Sociology

Author(s): Immanuel Wallerstein

Source: The American Sociologist, Vol. 6, No. 4 (Nov., 1971), p. 328
Published by: American Sociological Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27701814
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 Blurring boundary lines permits one to abandon the larger,
more pervasive, more difficult, and currently critical societal
problems in favor of problems that lend themselves to fash-
ionable research techniques. A quick run-through of three
journals yielded the information that over a period of two
years 72 percent of ali research articles in social psychology
employed data drawn from classes in introductory sociology
or psychology, hardly a good sample of anything (perhaps
not even of introductory classes in sociology and psychology) .
If Professor Nisbet were faced with the prospect of teaching
introductory courses in sociology and psychology to classes
composed of the same students in each course, he would dis-
cover why it is important to differentiate these two closely
related, but clearly distinguishable disciplines. Incidentally,
just when did Mead's theory of interaction become sociologi-
cal?
Too many sociologists have used Merton's "theories of the
middle range" argument to rationalize their ignoring the
larger sociological problems and to turn to social psycho-
logical ( microsociological?) interests. I believe that we who
do that have something in common with the inebriate who,
having lost his quarter in a dark alley, sought it on the
boulevard because there was more light there. Failure to
recognize, and to give attention to, the differences between
sociological and other kinds of problems, together with the
subscription to a subjective definition of problems, accounts
in part for the colossal failure of the social sciences to make
positive contributions to the alleviation of the more serious
problems of our times such as racism and the ills of the urban
ghetto. No microsociological or social psychological approach
will, in a millennium, significantly alleviate or eliminate the
misery and strife of the poverty-stricken slum. Recently I lis-
tened to a new Ph.D. from a well-known eastern university
lament that she did not yet know the difference between
sociology and social psychology. As long as we are satisfied
with the definition of sociology as the descriptive summary
of each sociologist doing "his thing," regardless of what that
thing is, such a state of affairs denies us the claim that so-
ciology is a discipline.
RICHARD DEWEY
University of New Hampshire
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SOCIOLOGY
Hurrah for Robert Nisbet's letter in the May 1971 issue of
The American Sociologist (p. 182) entitled "Sociological
Identity." 1 have been irritated for years by expressions like
"what is specifically sociological about ... ? " or "the sociolo-
gist's contribution to the study of this problem is ...."
There is no such thing as sociology if by sociology we
mean a "discipline" that is separate and distinct from an-
thropology, political science, economics, and history (not to
speak of demography and so on). They are ali one single
discipline which 1 suppose we may call social science. This
single discipline was subdivided for convenience and ideo-
logical reasons in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries into the various categories with which we have be-
come organizationally stuck.
The ideological origins of these particular divisions lie in
the philosophic frameworks of nineteenth century thought
and are now antiquated. That is, they no longer serve any
heuristic purposes and are sustained heavily by self-interest.
Since 1945 many people have been fooling around with
ways out of the dilemma. lnterdisciplinary studies miss the
boat by suggesting that each issue has a sociological, politi-
cal, or other side that has to be elucidated. This stretches our
328
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credulity and subjects us to jargon. Behavioral science as a
new construct misses the boat in two ways: it includes psy·
chology, which distorts the social science; and it excludes
much of social science on the grounds that it is, or was, in-
sufficiently oriented to quantitative research methods.
No doubt lumping all present social science "departments"
into one big hag would be cumbersome and perhaps create
pedagogical difficulties. ldeally 1 suppose we should give a
student introductory courses in social science and then let
him go off into sorne narrower area the boundaries of which
could he agreed upon in ad hoc fashion every ten years or so
to be consonant with the developing state of knowledge. But
this is a somewhat utopian proposal, and 1 have no illusions
about the likelihood of its acceptance.
In the meantime, 1 suggest we live as best we can within
the existing organizational boundaries, remembering at all
times-and teaching others-that books are good or bad and
conceptual frameworks are useful or not, but it is pernicious
to identify books, concepts, or methods as "sociological,"
"historical," "economic," and so on. lt is pernicious because
it implies a judgment on a basis as irrelevant as skin color
and has the consequence that we neglect to read things we
ought to read (for want of the proper label) and strain to
make our research designs conform to sorne given subset of
legitimate research designs.
IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN
Center for Advanced Study in <the Behavioral Sciences
WHEN SOCIOLOGISTS SHOULD NEGLECT
HISTORY
Kai Erikson (The American Sociologist, November 1970)
has added another contribution, more literate and informa-
tive than most, to the growing inventory of works explicitly
or implicitly advising sociologists of the importance to their
interests of the methods and findings of history. It is inter-
esting that counsel so consistently given over the years
should be so consistently rejected by those to whom it is
aimed. At least rejection is common enough to encourage
Erikson to add his name to the list of those exhorting us to
pay more attention to history.
lt strikes me that, at least for sorne kinds of sociology,
those sociologists championing the cause of history are going
about it the wrong way. They ought to urge sociology on
historians, not history on sociologists. 1 wish to make clear
that I am referring only to the kinds of sociology that focus
on the human actor in his everyday world-for example, par-
ticipant observer studies or ethnomethodological experiments.
What is so striking about the findings from this sort of re-
search is how utterly unaware the typical human actor is of
the formal or objective history-history as constructed by
historians-that might bear on his routine activities. In other
words, many groups simply are "outside history," to use
Charles R. Walker's phrase; other groups, though inside
history in sorne of their roles, are outside it in others.
Historians' objective history, in contrast to collective com-
mon-sense history and individual biographical history, is
irrelevant to sorne people sorne or ali of the time. This seems
to be what W. I. Thomas had in mind when he observed in his
essay, "The Need for a Social Science" (in E. H. Volkhart
[ed.], Social Behavior and Personality, 1951), that we live in
an entirely new world, unique, without parallel in history.
History, he said, has not helped us. Nor can it do so, since
we fail to understand it. W e must first understand the past
from the present, by viewing the present as behavior. Even
historians recognize the irrelevance of much of objective
The American Sociologist