as the discipline was first institutionalized in the US. She drew on sociology as well as her work with immigrants to help found the field of social work.7 Perhaps most remarkably, the great Black sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois was not just neglected but actively excluded from sociology.8 His work should have shaped ‘mainstream’ sociology more than it did. This has left ‘unfinished business’ on race above all, but also on cities and colonialism. Innovation in contemporary sociological theory is based partly on recovering neglected voices or themes or arguments from classical sociological theory.
It is not accidental that Martineau and Addams were women, and Du Bois was Black. Correction of biases and blind spots has been driven by inclusion of women and people of color (and indeed, sociology has been among the most inclusive of all academic disciplines). Likewise, sociological theory has been improved by perspectives rooted in the postcolonies of the global South, in the communist and then formerly communist countries, and writing from non-Western civilizational histories.
New research is still shaped by the questions classical theorists asked and their strategies for answering them are still helpful. Du Bois, offers a powerful example. He worked to integrate analysis of racial domination into a perspective also shaped by his fellow classical theorists Max Weber and Karl Marx. He argued, for example, that we should not think in terms of race vs class but of their deep relationship, that experiencing racial domination and nationality produced ‘double-consciousness’, and that basic social trends like urbanization could not be understood apart from the racial and ethnic organization of cities. He helped to create a perspective later sociologists called ‘intersectionality’ – thinking in terms of ‘both/and’ rather than ‘either/or’.9
As the work of Du Bois demonstrates, improvement in sociological theory is not just a matter of representation or inclusion. It is innovation, which is constant not only because of faults discovered in older work, but also because society changes, research produces new or more precise empirical evidence, and because theorists develop powerful new ideas. Du Bois’ work is relevant to sociological theory in general, not just theories of race. Likewise, Martineau’s and Addams’ work is relevant beyond questions of gender.
Continuing the work of theoretical innovation is important today. This is why there is a companion volume on ‘contemporary’ theory. New theory is not only guided by classical theory, but strengthened by engaging it, becoming part of the enduring intellectual project it initiated.
From Social Thought to Sociological Theory
Sociological theory is a relatively new project, developed as part of modern science. But it is closely connected to a long history of social thought, extending back to the ancient world and part of every civilization. In the West, Greek philosophers, Roman lawyers, and Jewish and Christian religious scholars all contributed significantly to the “prehistory” of sociological theory. They thought about what made society, how it changed, what rulers – or parents – should and shouldn’t do, and what caused social order sometimes to collapse. The Jewish Torah and Talmud include social thought expressed in rules, narratives, and analytic reflections. The Christian Bible engages in social thought with accounts of marriage and family, communities based on love, and ‘rendering unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s”.
Social thought is also prominent in the Koran and flourished in the Muslim empires that reached from what are now Spain, Syria and Persia through Northern Africa, Mughal India, and along the coasts of Asia. Likewise, social thought was highly developed in the China’s Confucian tradition – which emphasized harmonious integration – and in its ‘Legalist’ adversary – which emphasized strategic use of power. Social thought is important to Buddhist traditions that spread from India across Asia and to Hinduism’s Vedic narratives. Most of what we know about all this earlier social thought comes from surviving texts. But social thought was also embedded in thinking about kinship, clans, ancestors, and how to resolve disputes among peoples with little or no writing, whether in Africa, the Americas, or Europe.
In short, thinking about social relations, change, culture, or power is not unique to the modern Western experience that generated sociology. All the world’s civilizations can – and do – contribute to sociology and to sociological theory. Indeed, there are important criticisms of Western sociological and significant alternative versions from postcolonial and other non-Western thinkers. Within every tradition there are efforts to think beyond the contexts of its origins.
But for all the diverse anticipations of sociological theory, and all its continued transformations, it was formed crucially between the 18th and mid-20th centuries as European and North American societies grappled with the challenges of the era they called modernity. The scientific revolution made it possible. But the project of specifically sociological theory seemed needed because of rapid and unsettling change in social organization, social psychology, culture, and the relation of politics and economics to each of these. We look first at how science shaped the distinction of sociological theory from social thought in general, and in the next section at the issues that became its enduring central themes.
Science: The rise of science transformed the ways in which people understood the conditions of their own lives and relationships as well as the ways they understood astronomy or gravity. At the most general level, and aside from any of its specific discoveries or theories, the scientific revolution centered in 17th-century Europe brought an emphasis on new learning. That is, researchers set out to gather as much knowledge as possible and especially as much empirical knowledge as possible, and to organize it as systematically as possible. Correspondingly, they relied less on tradition. Modern science not only added to knowledge, but also subjected it to questioning and tests.
When early scientists stressed the importance of logic and rational thought on the one hand and empirical evidence on the other, they meant specifically to challenge the notion that we should simply believe what we are taught. They meant that even the most respected authorities and the most venerated traditions could sometimes be wrong. From Galileo to Darwin, this brought controversy with the defenders of established views.
As Robert Merton showed in the 1930s, science depends on a normative order.1° It is not perfectly free of values, but rather constituted by commitment to specifically scientific values – like the pursuit of truth. Scientists must not be driven primarily by personal gain, must not be subordinated to political power, and must demonstrate ‘organized skepticism’. The starting points of science are to think for oneself, in the most rigorous way possible, and to trust the evidence of one’s senses, especially when it is rooted in experiment or careful, systematic observation rather than casual everyday experience. In addition, science seeks to discern logical order in enormously complex and always incomplete collections of facts.
This is something different from simply offering a summary of established facts. Sociological theories must integrate empirical observations into coherent logical structures explaining patterns of relationship. Think of the difference between stating the price of some object and saying prices are determined by supply and demand. Then add to the picture the way luxury goods gain higher prices by their connection to social status.
Facts always require interpretation – figuring out what they mean in relation to different questions or arguments. Making interpretation systematic is one of the main tasks of theory. Sociological theories must offer empirical claims that can be the basis of either tests (and thereby confirmation, correction, or improvement) or comparisons among theories (and thereby judgment as to which more accurately grasps social reality).
Science advances not just by an accumulation of facts, but through a process the philosopher of science Karl Popper called “conjecture and refutation.”11 That is, a scientist (or someone else) puts forward propositions about how the world works; these are initially conjectures, products of imagination as well as knowledge. They become the basis for hypotheses, and research and analysis confirm
