Anthony King the Sociology of Sociology

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http://pos.sagepub.com Sciences Philosophy of the Social DOI: 10.1177/0048393107307665 2007; 37; 501 Philosophy of the Social Sciences Anthony King The Sociology of Sociology http://pos.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/37/4/501 The online version of this article can be found at: Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com can be found at: Philosophy of the Social Sciences Additional services and information for http://pos.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Email Alerts: http://pos.sagepub.com/subscriptions Subscriptions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Permissions: http://pos.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/37/4/501 Citations by on February 5, 2010 http://pos.sagepub.com Downloaded from

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Sciences Philosophy of the Social

DOI: 10.1177/0048393107307665 2007; 37; 501 Philosophy of the Social Sciences

Anthony King The Sociology of Sociology

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Review Essays

The Sociology of SociologyAnthony KingExeter University

In this recent history of British sociology, Andrew Halsey suggests anintriguing connection between political economic régimes in the twentiethcentury and the development of sociology as an academic discipline, dividingBritish sociology into four periods, 1900-1950, 1950-1967, 1968-1975, and1975-2000. In this way, by connecting disciplinary developments withcontemporaneous régimes of economic regulation, Halsey begins to outlinea sociology of sociology. However, although much of Halsey’s book is infor-mative, especially his description of the period from 1950-1967 when hepersonally entered the discipline, Halsey ultimately fails to develop his soci-ology of the discipline sufficiently, especially after 1967. Although it does notclaim to be comprehensive, this essay attempts to develop Halsey’s sociologyof the discipline.

Keywords: British sociology; social theory; twentieth century

Halsey, A. (2004). A History of Sociology in Britain: Science, Literatureand Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

As part of his recent book on the history of British sociology, AndrewHalsey asked British sociology professors to identify individuals who

had been particularly decisive in the development of the discipline. Oneresponse stood out sufficiently for Halsey to record it in full: “I would notpick out any specific figure. I think that sociology has been developed bythe sociological community, generally impeded by the fetishism of greatmen” (Halsey 2004, 49). The humorless reply exemplifies the sanctimonywhich, as Andrew Abbott has noted (2005), often characterizes professionalsociology. However, the reply also illustrates the central purpose of Halsey’sbook. Halsey calls his book A History of Sociology in Britain but, in fact, itis a sociology of British sociology. Halsey aims to identify the institutionaland social context in which professional sociology has been conducted inthis country since Leonard Hobhouse took the first chair of sociology at the

Philosophy ofthe Social Sciences

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Received 13 September 2006

Author’s Note: I am extremely grateful to Ian Jarvie for his useful comments on this articleand to Marta Trzebiatowska for reading an early draft.

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London School of Economics in 1909. Halsey analyzes the “sociologicalcommunity” which has allowed certain prominent individuals to becomeacademic fetishes. Given the central importance of the sociology of knowl-edge to the discipline since the 1970s, it is perhaps remarkable that sociol-ogists have rarely turned their sceptical eye on sociology itself. WhileBruno Latour, Steve Woolgar, Barry Barnes, and Harry Collins subject thenatural sciences to intense scrutiny, sociology cannot exempt itself from itscritical gaze. Halsey seeks to re-dress this absence of academic reflexivity.Intriguingly, if almost unwittingly, Halsey connects the development of Britishsociology, as an intellectual practice, with the main political economicrégimes of the twentieth century. Thus, Halsey divides the history of Britishsociology into four periods: 1900 to 19501, 1950 to 1967, 1968 to 1975, and1976 to 2000, broadly paralleling the régimes of economic regulation intwentieth-century Britain.

Echoing the work of many other social scientists, Ernest Mandel (1975),for instance, has argued for three main periods of capitalism. Thus, a freemarket period ran from the Industrial Revolution of early nineteenth centuryto approximately the 1930s. Certainly the state provided the legal and insti-tutional context in which the market operated, as Karl Polanyi so brilliantlydemonstrated, but states did not macro-manage the economy as a whole.In the 1920s, this free market régime began to collapse, to be replaced bymonopoly capital. The Wall Street Crash and the Depression demonstratedthat the free market system of regulation was no longer a viable basis ofeconomic development. The state sought to intervene in the managementof the economy which was increasingly dominated by larger concentrations ofcapital. Roosevelt’s New Deal represented the rise of a new system of regu-lation which in Britain manifested itself in the form of Keynesianism, bothsolidifying as a new paradigm of regulation in the Second World War. In mostof the rest of Europe, state interventionism in the 1930s and 40s took thedark form of fascism in Western Europe and Communism east of the Oder.Writing in the 1920s, Gramsci presciently described this new economicrégime as “Fordism,” employing a specialist concept of mass production todescribe a much wider political economic complex. As a system of massproduction regulated by an interventionist state, Fordism was extraordinarilysuccessful in raising living standards, especially after the Second WorldWar. The 1950s constituted the high point of this régime of regulation whenan affluent society emerged out of the disasters of the 1930s and 40s. Not

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1. In fact, in the text, Halsey emphasizes the Second World War as the critical divide and, thus,1945 not 1950. 1945 is used throughout the text to periodize British sociology itself.

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only did the new welfare state intervene in macro-economic managementbut it arbitrated between labor and capital to produce a distinctive triangularcorporatist settlement.

Fordism’s long boom itself came to an end toward the end of the 1960s,eventually collapsing in the 1970s. From the late 1960s, a series of industrialdisputes undermined the corporatist settlement between labor and capitaland it became impossible for the state to act as arbitrator between the twogroups. Increasing economic competition, especially from Japan, and, finally,the oil crises of 1973 and 1974 undermined the state’s ability to regulate theeconomy. At this point, Mandel identifies the rise of a third political economicrégime: multinational capital. In the late 60s, a series of mergers betweenmajor enterprises produced new capitalist conglomerates which began tocompete transnationally with each other. They no longer only had marketsin other nations but a global network of production and distribution. Thesemultinationals were able to subvert the authority of the state through foreigndirect investment. By the 1980s and especially the later half of that decade,a new régime of regulation had begun to emerge, to be described as post-Fordism by many commentators. Economic liberalism has returned as thedominant economic philosophy and states sought to regulate the competitionbetween transnational corporations only indirectly.

The twentieth century can be broadly periodized into four régimes; theliberalist era ran from 1900 to the 1930s, the Fordist from the 1930s to1970, followed by the collapse of Fordism in the 1970s, and, finally, the riseof post-Fordism in the 1980s. Few of these specific terms appear in Halsey’sbook but the parallel between his periodization of British sociology withits four periods and this standard account of twentieth-century economicdevelopment is too striking to ignore. Of course, there is no suggestion thatthere is any direct causal relation between sociology and the political econ-omy in which it was conducted. Neither the economy nor the system ofstate regulation determined sociological inquiry directly. Rather, in eachera, the central political and social issues of the day which confrontedall members of British society also framed and channelled sociologicalresearch. Sociologists, institutionally embedded in universities, were them-selves connected professionally and personally to other public and privatesector organizations and groups. Consequently, they necessarily reflectedthe concerns and priorities of the wider culture which they analyzed. Sociologywas part of the Zeitgeist. Ultimately, Halsey’s book insightfully implies thateach era of the twentieth century gave rise to the kind of sociology which itdeserved. This is a deeply suggestive way of comprehending the developmentof the discipline.

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Imperial Sociology: 1900-1945

“Who reads Hobhouse now?” (Halsey 2004, 53). Referencing Parsons’famous question at the start of The Structure of Social Action (1956), Halseyneatly introduces an obvious question which confronts British sociologists.Why was British sociology so underdeveloped before the Second WorldWar and is the work which was done in its name by Leonard Hobhouse andEdward Westermarck, in particular, now all but forgotten? The underdeve-lopment of sociology in Britain in the first half of the twentieth century isan anomaly which must be explained. In Germany, France, and the UnitedStates, by contrast, sociology enjoyed high academic status from the begin-ning of the twentieth century. The prominence of sociology in France andGermany was perhaps a product of the strength of the state in those countriesand, therefore, the centrality of social issues to national debate. Sociology wasan intellectual manifestation of the state and its power. In addition, flowingrespectively from Hegel and Rousseau, there was a strong tradition of socialphilosophy in both countries. Yet, in the United States where the state, as inBritain, was always much weaker, a powerful tradition of sociology alsodeveloped before the Second World War. The Chicago School was the mostobvious example of the academic status of the discipline but at both Harvardand Columbia strong sociology programmes had also been developed (Halsey2004, 69). It is strange that sociology did not develop in Britain.

Halsey does not provide a definitive explanation of why sociology wasso neglected in Britain but he suggests some likely possibilities. In his chapteron pre-War sociology, Halsey concludes with a discussion of social anthro-pology on the grounds that “the boundaries without and divisions withinsociology were defined more fluidly in the early part of the twentiethcentury” (Halsey 2004, 65). However, Halsey’s discussion of social anthro-pology suggests not merely a blurring of the two disciplines but the superi-ority of anthropology in Britain in the first half of the twentieth century.Indeed, Halsey is necessarily diverted into a discussion of sociology’s sisterdiscipline precisely because of the latter’s intellectual dominance in thesedecades. Sociology simply did not have sufficient intellectual autonomy tomerit its own pre-War history. Indeed, it is notable that much of EdwardWestermarck’s “sociology” explicitly focused on Islamic culture in NorthAfrica and marriage practices in particular; it was indistinguishable fromanthropology.

Halsey does not explore the thesis but it seems highly probable that thepre-eminence of social anthropology and the concomitant underdevelopmentof sociology in Britain was a result of the Empire. For Britain, the colonial

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encounter was a political and intellectual center of gravity, demanding analysisand debate. Although Asad’s (1973) critique of social anthropology is inplaces overly conspiratorial, he demonstrates the close institutional connec-tion between social anthropologists and the colonial administration. To conducthis research on the Azande, Evans-Pritchard (1937) was given the localstatus of a colonial official, while S. F. Nadel’s A Black Byzantium includesa forward by Lord Lugard, former Governor General of Nigeria and thearchitect of British West Africa. Anthropologists were not necessarily apolo-gists for the Empire but their close colonial connections aided their researchand seem to have facilitated their high status within Britain. Anthropologiststhrew fascinating light on the sources of British greatness. Sociologists, bycontrast, seemed to be concerned with less appealing issues; with the condi-tion of the working class, industrialization, urbanization, and state policy.The exotic was replaced with a grim analysis of the mundane. Not only wassociology dissonant with Britain’s imperial self-perception but its interestsand methods conflicted with the liberal consensus and the state’s laissez-faireapproach to urban and industrial problems. The collectivist orientation ofsociological theory contrasted with the dominant individualism of the time.

It seems likely that sociology in Britain was underdeveloped preciselybecause Britain was an imperial power, therefore. The Empire may also haveinfluenced the research which was conducted under the name of sociology.In particular, the colonial encounter seemed to have prioritized the issue ofevolution—and, indeed Darwinism—in the works of early sociologists likeHobhouse and Westermarck. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,Darwinism had not only colonized a whole area of scientific investigationbut had also influenced much broader trends of thought, connecting closelywith the imperial projects of the major European powers. In some cases,such as in the phrenological studies of the late nineteenth century or thewritings of De Gobineau, Darwinism assumed a virulent form of racism.Darwinism was also sometimes mobilized to justify the liberal economy inwhich only the strongest companies could adapt and survive. Darwinism waspart of a cultural paradigm which was dominant from the middle of the nine-teenth century and reflecting this Darwinian hegemony both Westermarck’sand Hobhouse’s work was substantially concerned with social evolution.However, both sociologists sought to engage critically with and, ultimately,to reject Darwinian socio-biology even while adopting an evolutionary frame-work. Thus, Hobhouse’s Mind in Evolution (1901) and Morals in Evolution(1906) and Westermarck’s The Origins and Development of Moral Ideas(1906) dismiss biological accounts of human social development. For them,humans do not simply behave; they must collectively understand what they,

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as members of a group, are trying to do: “The heart of social life is humanpurpose, and purpose is to be interpreted not like an event in nature throughits causes but in terms of its wisdom or unwisdom, its goodness or badness,in a word its value” (Hobhouse 1924, 12). Consequently, a biology basedon individual organic evolution which ignores human consciousness mustbe inadequate to the explanation of human culture. Rather human socialdevelopment had to be understood as “orthogenic evolution.” Human deve-lopment is a cultural product of the social group, developed through socialinteraction and meaningful discussion. It was not the manifestation of bareindividual need. For Hobhouse, “the true method of social enquiry is notscientific at all but philosophical” (Hobhouse 1924, 12). Sociology must bephilosophical because it is concerned with meaning and understanding notwith mechanics.

In addition to the evolutionary theme, the work of Hobhouse andWestermarck is also characterized by a concern with individualism andliberalism. In this, their work was a reflection of the culture of the time.Although liberalism experienced a strange death after the First World War,even Hobhouse’s and Westermarck’s later work remained heavily influ-enced by liberal concerns. Hobhouse and Westermarck articulated the Britishpolitical consensus in sociological form, elucidating the cultural originsof individualism. Nevertheless, as with evolution, they adopted an interest-ing sociological position on liberalism, arguing that individual freedom was asocial product not the essential property of the individual. Opposing themerely “slack” freedom of simple societies, Hobhouse describes the pos-itive liberty of “higher communities”:

But there is also a freedom which is the soundest basest of efficiency—thewilling partnership of the citizen in the common life, not cramping, butenlarging and enriching the individual personality. Such freedom is onlypossible if each man effectually feels the common good to be in some sorthis own, that is, it implies some kind of measure of equality in partnership.(Hobhouse 1924, 35)

Positive freedom is, for Hobhouse, a collective good, produced in socialgroups as humans mutually support each others’ efforts to contribute to sharedgoals. In an interesting parallel with Durkheim’s Division of Labour—and indirect opposition to the liberal Cult of the Individual—Hobhouse claims thathumans become freer as they become more dependent on each other.

Unfortunately, although in many respects admirable, the work of Hobhouseand Westermarck is compromised by its concern with issues parochiallyspecific to Edwardian Britain such as social evolution and liberal politics.

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Today, they remain, as Halsey rightly notes, almost unread. Halsey’s Historysets itself an important task of illuminating the much neglected origins ofBritish sociology. However, while always interesting, Halsey’s account lacksa level of detail and precision to provide a convincing story. Of course, in this,Halsey demonstrates only the reality of contemporary British sociology;there is very little intellectual connection between the work conducted underthe name of sociology in Britain between the first and second halves of thetwentieth century.

Keynesian Sociology: 1945-1967

While Halsey’s history of pre-War sociology is somewhat sparse, hisbook comes alive in his description of the institutionalisation of Britishsociology after the War. This is the strongest part of the book. It is obviouswhy Halsey’s account attains an authoritative and yet intimate tone in thissection. This is precisely the period in which Halsey himself was inductedinto the profession in which he was to become a leading light. He is able tofuse personal biography with institutional development in a rich descriptionof the rise of an intellectual discipline out of the margins. Halsey notes in apointed aside that Hobhouse and Marshall were both from public school.Indeed, he records Marshall’s honest deprecations of his “higher professional”class background: “Add to this my conventional schooling, first in a veryselect preparatory boarding school, and then at Rugby, a solidly bourgeoisand not particularly snobbish ‘Public School’ and it is easy to understandhow limited, and how naively unsociological was my youthful view ofsociety” (Halsey 2004, 75). After the War, by contrast, sociologists wereincreasingly drawn not from public schools but from grammar schools andthey had often served in the armed forces. Like many other British con-scripts, the War acted as a crucible for a new political consciousness forthese future British sociologists. They remained committed nationalists butthey “argued themselves into democratic socialism and enthusiastic supportfor Attlee’s government on His Majesty’s ships, airfields and army camps”(Halsey 2004, 73). Above all, these new acolytes to the discipline regardedthe working class as the central focus of their inquiries. While Marshallnoted that he “knew nothing of working class life” (Halsey 2004, 75), theyimmersed themselves into the realities of urban existence in Britain. Theyconstituted an intellectual arm of Beveridge’s strategy of universal enfran-chisement, seeking to incorporate the working class into the very centre ofacademic discussion.

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In this way, these new sociologists were ultimately an element inthe emergent corporatist consensus providing academic mediation betweencapital, labor, and the state itself. It was no accident that British sociologyenjoyed its closest relationship to government during this period. Indeed,Raymond Aron dismissed British sociology as preoccupied with theintellectual problems of the Labour Party. Although intended disparagingly,Aron accurately identified the underlying ethos of the discipline. Britishsociology was forged in this distinctive cultural milieu when a new socialcohort entered the discipline at a moment of changing national politics.These emerging academics, Halsey among them, had the energy and imag-ination to address the critical issues of post-War Britain. They sought toanalyse the reality of British society in order to contribute actively to theOne-Nation consensus. It was, according to Halsey, “a golden age” (Halsey2004, 112).

In one of the most evocative passages in the book, Halsey describes theunlikely ground in which the seeds of this intellectual florescence were sown.

The LSE was an intellectual-cum-political Mecca. Its buildings sprawled ingrimy vitality on the East and West sides of Houghton Street off the Aldwych.Demob suits and battle jackets, incongruously adorned by the college scarf,thronged the street between the two main lecture theatres. The library washeavily used, assailing the nostrils with the mustiness of books and the sick-liness of human sweat. The students’ refectory was a clutter of cheap andunappetizing snacks, and the Students’ Union pub, The Three Tuns, normallypermitted no more than standing in discomfort. But the aspiring sociologistswere indifferent to the chaotic ugliness of the architecture. The inconveniencesof the human ant heap were of no significance by comparison with the conver-sation and the visibility and audibility of great scholars. (Halsey 2004, 74)

It is interesting to compare this milieu with the sterility which KingsleyAmis (1954) records in his novel about post-War university life, Lucky Jim.Although an economic historian, the protagonist in that novel, a grammarschool-educated social democrat represented precisely the profile of the post-War British sociologist and its disdain for enduring Edwardian archaism.This new intellectual culture manifested itself most clearly in the series ofpublications which began to appear from the late 1950s, documenting andanalyzing the British working class. Richard Hoggart’s Uses of Literacy(1956) was seminal in this regard, initiating a wave of publication on theworking class. Clearly, Goldthorpe and Lockwood’s Affluent Worker numberremains the most prominent among these but there were a number of majorcontributions in which this work should be situated, including Dennis’,

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Henriques’, and Slaughter’s Coal is Our Life (1969), Robins’ The ClassicSlum (1971), Zweig’s The Worker in an Affluent Society (1961), and Jackson’sWorking Class Community (1961). Illustrating the close relationship betweensociology and contemporary politics, all of these books sought to examinedirectly or indirectly the validity of the “embourgeoisement thesis.” Theyanalyzed how the working class was changing in the face of Fordist affluenceand, indeed, whether the working class was disappearing entirely. Withinthat framework, the studies constituted the first sustained sociological studiesof Britain conducted within the academy.

The empirical focus of British sociology in the post-War era reflectedthe emergent political economic régime. Yet, the theoretical framework inwhich that work was conducted is also explicable historically. While Parsonsdominated American sociology in the post-War period, his reception wasless assured in Britain. While they recognized the importance of The Structureof Social Action, British sociologists were deeply sceptical of The SocialSystem. Functionalism was certainly “not the undisputed sociological pietyof the 1950s which the fashion of the 1970s made it out to be” (Halsey 2004,85). On the contrary, “Both Parsons and Marx offered theories of societyas a totality in terms of categories which were surely too arbitrary to carrythe empirical weight of social analysis of a particular country in a particularhistorical period” (Halsey 2004, 85). For Halsey, Lockwood’s famous theoryof system and social integration sought precisely to overcome the limita-tions of Parsons’ emphasis on norms and Marx’s account of the objectivesocial system as fundamental to social order (Halsey 2004, 86). It repre-sented a typically pragmatic middle way by British sociology. In fact, it isnot at all clear that Lockwood had superseded Parsons. While he avoidedParsons’ “weirdly unwieldy and polysyllabic prose” (Halsey 2004, 85), hisnotion of an objective social system sustained at localized points by theinculcation of collective norms in processes of social integration was remi-niscent of Parsons’ work. Yet, the unacknowledged parallel with Parsons ranmuch deeper than this.

While dismissing Parsonian esoterica, the theoretical substructure ofBritish sociology in the post-war era nevertheless demonstrated a closefamily resemblance to Parsons. Although British sociologists rejected theimplied, though not necessarily intended, emphasis on social harmony inParsons’ work, their work presumed that social order was ultimately basedon normative consensus. Through their research, they demonstrated that pureobjective economic factors are themselves not enough to comprehend theworking class. The collective beliefs and understandings of the working classhad to be considered for these beliefs had a decisive role in determining

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what the working class actually was. The working class demonstrated thatsocial order was possible only through sharing norms, culture, and lifestyle.The efflorescence of British sociology after the Second World War occurredin a distinctive political situation. Precisely because Halsey was personallyinvolved in these developments, he tells the story of this intellectual nais-sance with force. Within a convincing story of disciplinary developments, heweaves personalised leitmotifs to produce a genuinely sociological accountof the rise of British sociology. Unfortunately, for Halsey, things were aboutto fall apart.

The Post-War Crisis: 1968-85

For Halsey, the sociological crisis of this period was closely related tothe collapse of the Post-War settlement more widely. Halsey identifiesstudent troubles, economic crisis, and the Thatcher government as fatal tosociology. Indeed, for Halsey, “it was the combination of social, politicaland economic forces which spelt at least temporary disaster for sociology”(Halsey 2004, 143). In particular, where sociology had enjoyed governmentpatronage during the previous decades, the Thatcher governments from1979 were actively hostile to sociology. Keith Joseph infamously rejectedsociology’s claim to being a science, preferring the putatively “less ambitiousand better established disciplines which are heirs to the grander claims ofsociology—for example, human geography, social psychology and socialanthropology” (Halsey 2004, 139-40).

These institutional difficulties manifested themselves intellectually inthe discipline. Halsey claims that the discipline began to decline and fragmentin the 1970s. Above all, Halsey claims that the politicization of the discipline,first by Marxism, and then by feminism, “split and weakened the collectiveranks of the sociologists” (Halsey 2004, 122, 143). Of course, both Marxistsand feminists would claim that they did not undermine the discipline butraised it to a higher plane, overcoming the unseen normative biases of post-War sociology. Unfortunately, at this critical point in the development ofthe discipline in Britain, Halsey fails to engage with the work of Britishsociologists with any precision, vitiating his analysis of the discipline’sdevelopment. While Halsey vividly recalls Britain’s “golden age,” he onlyregrets developments in the 1970s and 1980s and the text becomes cursory.His comments on the putative destructiveness of Marxism and feminism areassertive at best.

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Yet within the framework which Halsey provides it is possible tocomprehend the dynamics at work within the discipline in this troubleddecade. In the 1970s, one of the most distinctive Marxian research programswithin British sociology was represented by the Birmingham Centre forContemporary Cultural Studies (BCCCS). The Centre was founded by RichardHoggart in the 1960s for the sociology of working class culture and, by the1970s, its leading figure was Stuart Hall. Recognizing that the economicfocus of much of Marx’s writing was limiting, Hall mobilized AntonioGramsci’s Hegelianized Marx to provide the theoretical framework for theCentre’s work. Class and class conflict remained the enduring focus ofthe Centre’s studies, comprehended within a historical trajectory, but thecollective understandings of the working class and the hegemonic projectof the state had to be an essential element of any sociological analysis.In Resistance Through Rituals (1976) and the celebrated Policing the Crisis(1978), Hall et al. conducted cultural analysis within a structuralist classframework. They sought to explain individual cultural responses to structuraltransformations of class: “conflicts of interest arise, fundamentally, from thedifference in the structural position of the classes in the productive realm;but they ‘have their effects’ in social and political life” (Hall and Jefferson1976, 38). These studies were sociologically important. Yet, they demon-strated the analytical tensions at work in sociology at this time. Althoughthe BCCCS rightly disparaged the crude structural economism of Althusserand Poulantzas, their approach was ultimately only a revision of it. Althoughthe cultural sphere had some partial autonomy, the origin of subcultures,resistance, and struggles against hegemony remained the “productive realm”and the objective class structure which arose therefrom. The economic struc-turalism of the BCCCS distorted their always fascinating interpretations ofnew working class subcultures.

For instance, John Clarke described how skinheads sought the magicalrecreation of a working class community; “the skinheads had to use an imageof what that community was as the basis of their style” (Clarke 1976, 100).Yet, although these young men understood themselves as protecting theirlocales, their strategies, from dress-style to football hooliganism and “Paki-bashing,” denoted a quite radical transcendence of their parent’s culture.They were forming new groups and were engaged in quite new forms ofsocial practice. Any image of a working class past mobilized by them wasinvented in the face of current exigencies. Clarke recognized the profoundtransformations which the skinheads embodied but armed with a structuralisttheory could not fully acknowledge them. Thus, their imaginary re-creationof a working class culture nevertheless constituted a structural reproduction

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of their position. Clarke, like the skinheads he studied, searched for a pristineand authentic working class. Throughout these works, then, there is a tensionbetween the rich dynamism of the empirical material and the more woodentheoretical system in which that material appears. Increasingly inappropriateconcepts of class and structure were mobilized as analytical frameworks ofinquiry which were not adequate to the collective cultural processes whichthe BCCCS sought to describe. In effect, Marxian sociologists of the 1970sand early 1980s were trying to analyze dynamic processes with staticconcepts. The Marxian sociology of the 1970s recognized the profundity ofcontemporary social transformations but its concepts were becoming asstrained as the Keynesian principles which underpinned this order.

A similar tension between conceptual rigidity and empirical insight wasevident in emergent British feminism from the late 1960s. De Beauvoir’sSecond Sex initially constituted a foundational text for the movement. However,while De Beauvoir’s work employed a sophisticated Hegelian theory ofself-realization based on the Master-Slave dialectic, British feminists, inparticular, adopted a more direct approach. While British feminists werespread on a continuum between Marxist and radical theorists who respectivelyunderstood women’s subordination as a product of capitalism or patriarchy,they were broadly unified around certain central premises (Jackson 1998, 13).Drawing on structural Marxism, British feminism—and particularlythe patriarchy theory of radical feminism—understood women as a sex class.The exploitation of women by men was a universal fact. All women, like allworkers, were unified by this exploitation whatever apparent social differenceseemed to exist between them (Walby 1992, 21). Women who did not seetheir role as a form of exploitation or who did not act in accordance withthe interests of their sex class were guilty of false consciousness. In the 1970sand 80s, feminism and patriarchy theory, in particular, was theoretically bluntbut, on the basis of it, British feminists produced some very interesting work.The problem was, of course, that the concept of the sex class was theoreti-cally and empirically reductive. It was simply unsustainable to demand theunity of all women despite the obvious social differences between them orto dismiss any female compliance as mystified. Moreover, the concept simplycould not explain the dramatic social changes which were occurring to womenat this point. Like Marxian sociology, feminism illuminated a hitherto ignoreddimension of social reality but it framed its subject in a way which obscuredmany of the most interesting aspects of change. Similarly, although Halseyignores the sociology of race beyond some very brief references to John Rex,the study of race in Britain assumed a similar structuralist form to Marxism

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and feminism.2 Halsey is not completely correct when he claims that Marxismand feminism undermined the discipline. On the contrary, they—along withthe ignored study of race—drove it forward as they responded to contempo-rary transformations but, rather like British workers in their Ford Cortinas,outmoded concepts were still the vehicles of their analysis.

Anthony Giddens, as the most prominent British sociologist, is particu-larly interesting here in illustrating the adherence to increasingly obsoleteconcepts in a changing era. Giddens’ rise to prominence in British andinternational sociology was a product of the important role he assumed inre-affirming the importance of classical sociology to the discipline at a timeof radical change and the introduction of Continental theory as well as, aboveall, hermeneutics into British sociology. These two projects were closelyrelated since Giddens effectively fused contemporary styles of Europeanthought with a re-interpretation of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim in order toproduce a social theory adequate to the 1970s and beyond. It is an achieve-ment for which he has been rightly lauded. However, the tensions which aremanifest within Marxian and feminist sociology of time are also evidentin Giddens’ structuration theory (1984), albeit at a more abstract level.Structuration theory sought precisely to reconcile objectivist, functionalistapproaches with (putatively) subjectivist, hermeneutic, and interactivesocial theories. It sought to explain how social institutions were reproducedbut also potentially transformed by the individual. Each individual wasconfronted by objective social conditions but an individual was always freeto do otherwise. An individual could always improvise and innovate. As aresult of all these individual innovations, the social structure as a wholewould be changed in a process of unintended consequences. Giddens’ struc-turation theory remains an important statement of social theory but it denotesthe fundamental problem of sociology at that time. It preserves the conceptof structure while emphasising the interactive dynamics of human socialexistence. Consequently, structuration theory seeks a new synthesis whichre-interprets functionalist and hermeneutic traditions. Yet, ultimately, itfalsely individualizes the hermeneutic tradition and then freezes these twoapproaches in an easy stand-off with each other; Giddens oscillates between

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2. Thus, although Rex and Moore eschew economistic Marxism in their work on housing,structural concepts of class are central to their analysis of housing policy in Birmingham: “Oncewe understand urban society as a structure of social interaction and conflict, prejudiced behav-iour may be shown to fit naturally into or even be required by that structure” (Rex and Moore1967, 13). With some obvious exceptions like Michael Banton, the sociology of race in Britainfrom the late 1960s to the 1980s was often conducted within a class framework with racial andethnic conflict being understood as a manifestation of structural economic contradictions.

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structure and agency. Like the BCCCS, Giddens recognized the potential ofcollective action but was unable to theorise it adequately. In this, structurationtheory exemplified the post-War crisis more widely. Like the state itself,structuration theory was trapped by its adherence to obsolete categories andconcepts which social reality consistently denied.

The 1970s and 1980s may have indeed constituted a crisis of Britishsociology as they were for the British state. Yet, as with many crises, the 1970sstimulated great creative energy in sociology which produced diverse newlines of investigation. Certainly, many of the texts produced in this era maynow appear problematic and even crude. There was also a high level ofdissension and debate in the discipline at the time. However, it is inappro-priate for Halsey to dismiss British sociology in this period by broad swipesat Marxism and feminism. Although his personal regret at the lost era of hisyouth is understandable, a genuine sociology of British sociology demandsa more engaged approach to the work conducted in this era. It is a shamethat Halsey did not explore these new lines of research more.

Post-Fordist Sociology: 1985 to the Present

It is perhaps significant that The Constitution of Society was publishedin 1984, the year of the miner’s strike in Britain. Although it is easy toreconstruct Thatcher’s premiership as the inevitable triumph of political logic,in fact, Thatcher’s reforms were furiously contested in the early 1980s. Theyear 1984 marks the watershed after which a post-Fordist and liberal régimewas established as the new political paradigm in Britain. After this date, nopolitical party in Britain could seriously consider holding power unless theyconsented to the tenets of the free market. Crucially, her premiership wasfounded on a liberal concept of the individual expressed most famously whenshe denied the existence of collective social obligations: “there was no suchthing as society, only individuals and families” (Morgan 1990, 440). It wouldtake the Labour Party 13 years to reconfigure itself to this new paradigm.Thatcher was certainly assisted by the Falklands War but the decisiveconflict of her premiership took place principally on the picket lines of southYorkshire. Her triumph over the miners constituted the quietus of the post-War consensus.

Analogously, in sociology, The Constitution of Society might be inter-preted, like the miners’ strike, as the coda of the post-War consensus. Thiswas the last attempt to sustain a post-War sociological consensus, sustainingthe concepts and approaches in the face of historical change. The path which

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Giddens took after his final time on the sociological picket line, armed withconcepts of structure, system and class, is instructive. After The Constitutionof Society, the concerns and style of Anthony Giddens’ writing changes fromthe dense theoretical cogitations of the earlier period, to the breezier discus-sions of the defining characteristics of late modernity, which Alexander hassatirically called “Giddens lite” (Alexander 1996, 135). For Giddens, glob-alization has liberated the individual; “The self is seen as a reflexive project,for which the individual is responsible. We are, not what we are, but what wemake of ourselves” (Giddens 1995, 74). Significantly, the arena in whichindividuals establish their identities for themselves is no longer work buttheir lifestyles, which Giddens regards as gaining “primacy” in late modernity(Giddens 1995, 81). At this point, as he affirms the autonomous, consumingindividual, Giddens unwittingly echoes the neo-liberal, Thatcherite rhetoricwhich was congealing as a new political paradigm. Giddens pointedly rejectsKeynesian collectivism in favor of the individuals’ reflexivity and freedomto choose their lifestyle (Giddens 1995, 42). Giddens’ social theory reflectsthe seismic shifts in British society. He struggles to conceptualize a frag-menting order in the 1970s and 1980s through the application of compromisedconcepts which he subsequently rejected in the mid-1980s. Objectivistsconcepts of structure, system, and class are dispensed with in favor of anaffirmation of the individual and consumption. In this, British social theorywas a reflection of the times. It was becoming post-Fordist.

Giddens is certainly the most prominent social theorist in Britain to havebroken with the post-War consensus but he represents a paradigm shiftin the discipline more broadly. It is particularly obvious among the verysociologists who clung most obdurately to class concepts in the 1970s,Marxists and feminists. Stuart Hall is an apposite example here. Stuart Hallhas argued for the emancipation of the individual in contemporary societyin manner consistent with Giddens. Thus, in promoting his “new times”project, Stuart Hall disparages his former Gramscian structuralism; “For along time, being a socialist was synonymous with the ability to translateeverything into the language of ‘structures’” (Hall 1990, 120). In place ofstructure, sociologists should focus their attention on the empowered indi-vidual agent: “One boundary which ‘new times’ has certainly displaced isthat between the objective and subjective dimensions of change. This is theso-called ‘revolution of the subject’ aspect” (Hall 1990, 119).3 He is notalone. According to Scott Lash and John Urry, one of the distinctive featuresof the present era is the increasing significance of the individual; “Structural

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3. Symbolically, the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies was closed in 2002.

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change in the economy forces individuals to be freed from the structuralrigidity of the Fordist labour process” (Lash and Urry 1994, 5). For Lashand Urry, the individual, freed from structural constraint, has more agencyand autonomy in post-Fordist society.

This accelerating individualization process is a process in which agency is setfree from structure, a process in which, further, it is a structural change itselfin modernization that so to speak forces agency to take on powers that heretoforelay in social structures themselves. (Lash and Urry 1994: 5)

Critically, the sphere of consumption has been the decisive arena in whichindividuals are able to make and re-make their identities. Although Urry’swork on tourism (2002) analyzes the historical development of this industryvery successfully, his concept of the “tourist gaze,” based on the figure ofthe “flaneur” is resolutely individualist (Urry 2002, 126-7). The experienceof the post-tourist is private and personal rather than collective. Flaneurs donot engage in collective practice but merely gaze on each other and theirsurroundings, internalizing their mutual observations (Urry 2002, 135).

In feminist studies, there has been a similar re-orientation, as scholarshave reacted against the essentialism of patriarchy theory of the 1980s.Emerging principally out of France with the work of Kristeva and Mouffe,feminist theory from this period became increasingly dissatisfied with theconcepts of the sex class, the equivalence of women, the universality ofexploitation and the denigration of all “female” roles including motherhood.These concepts may have served an important contingent political functionin women’s liberation but they were not consonant with the actuality ofwomen’s lives. In the last two decades, British feminists adopted a newperspective on themselves and their work: “We have also recognized thatthe idea of a unitary, fixed rational self is not tenable, that it does not matchthe complexities and contradictions of our lived experience as women andfeminists” (Jackson 1998, 25) Not only were these concepts empiricallyinaccurate, reductively unifying all women, but they were manifestations ofprecisely the phallocentric culture which feminists abhorred. Patriarchytheory only confirmed the male-female dichotomy of masculinist, westernculture. In place of perduring essences, post-feminists sought to develop alter-native concepts which de-centered female identity into evanescent moments.In contemporary British feminism, the same move away from structuralismto individualism is manifest.

Feminists have become aware of the sources of pleasure in women’s lives aswell as the sources of pain and deprivation; they are less inclined to dismiss

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pleasure as ‘false consciousness’ and more likely to take seriously as meaningfulactivities the pleasure of watching soap operas or reading romances. (Jacksonand Jones 1998, 7)

It would of course be possible to analyze female leisure as forms ofcollective practices, but framed by postmodern conceptions, the growinginterest in feminine consumption has comprehended these practices in indi-vidual and personal terms. Feminists have focused primarily on their meaning-fulness to the individual, rather than on the way in which these practices aresustained and developed by groups of women, mobilizing shared under-standings. Similarly, the study of race in Britain has moved from its structuralphase in the 1970s and 1980s, to focus on identity politics from an individ-ualist perspective. While Paul Gilroy was central to questioning structuralclass approaches to race in this period (Gilroy 1995, 27), he has placedincreasing emphasis on individual agency to subvert old concepts of nation-alism and race (Gilroy 2001). Indeed, he disparages all particularistic formsof social identity in favor of universal identification with the human race asa whole, each member of which has a unique self-conception (Gilroy 2001,98-9). Ethnic and racial studies, more generally, now mobilize concepts likehybridity to analyze how individuals understand themselves and constructnew identities for themselves in changing social environments—rather thancollectives.

Of these interesting and important developments and their connection towider social change, Halsey has almost nothing to say. He bemoans onlythe development of postmodern theory and “its suicidal tendencies towardsvarious forms of relativism” (Halsey 2004, 122). He recognizes that post-modernism is now in retreat but not before, he implies, it has done greatdamage to the discipline. In fact, it is possible to draw the kinds of connec-tions, which Halsey successfully identifies in the middle of the twentiethcentury between wider social conditions and disciplinary developments inthe current era. A parallel can still be drawn between society and sociology.Unfortunately, Halsey does not begin to analyze how or why this quiteprofound paradigm shift from the compromised structuralism of the 1970sto the individualism of the 1990s was possible. He remains a child of histimes, understandably nostalgic about the lost days of his own formativeprofessional years, but unable to comprehend the transformation of thediscipline he knew or the birth of a new order. He is like a miner who con-stantly recalls the camaraderie of the pit disparaging its re-branding as atourist attraction, even though this facility now provides employment forhis community.

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Conclusion: Toward a Sociology of the Twenty-First Century

Sociology in Britain emerged partly in response to the dominance ofDarwinian evolution but in its early period it was always overshadowed bysocial anthropology. It then went through a “Keynesian” period focusing onworking class culture empirically, conceptualized in terms of collectivenorms at the level of theory. This “golden age,” when sociology establisheditself intellectually and politically in Britain eventually foundered in the1970s but fascinating new lines of research were explored through the useof increasingly obsolete structuralist concepts. From the 1980s, Britishsociologists rejected the structuralist concepts which had constrained them,turning to an apparently redeeming—but actually equally compromised—individualism. They moved from structure to agency.

In a curious revanche of history, the social sciences are now once againthreatened by biological imperialism in the form of genetics and a form ofindividualism analogous to Edwardian liberalism. The question is: whatkind of sociology will be best capable of defending itself against intellectualcolonization? As Halsey’s book illustrates, sociology has always reflectedthe historical conditions in which sociologists lived. The four disciplinaryperiods which he identifies can be related to wider social and historicalcircumstances. The four periods respectively reflect the liberalist consensusof early decades of the century, the rise of Keynesianism in the mid-century,its collapse in the 1970s, and finally the emergence of a new post-Fordistsettlement in the 1980s. In confronting contemporary challenges, the histori-cism of sociology is potentially problematic, compromising its intellectualintegrity. If sociology is indeed no more than a superstructural reflection ofthe conditions in which it has been conducted, then the discipline lacksintellectual validity. Like Marx’s “ruling ideas” in The German Ideologywhich were nothing more than ‘the ideal expression of the dominant materialrelations’ (Marx and Engels 1990, 156), sociology would have no criticalor analytical worth. It would play only an affirmatory role, legitimatingcontemporary social order. It would be possible to deconstruct the disciplineinto a set of historically situated tropes and fictions which reflect only thedominant values of the society.

It is possible to counter this historicist challenge. Sociologists need to beself-conscious and to recognize the social origins of their own investigations.Certainly, British sociology, like artwork, has assumed a certain style andfocused on particular subjects which reflect the circumstances of its creation.

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However, British sociology—and indeed sociology internationally—is alsounified by common concepts and a shared orientation which outlast the his-torical fluctuations of the twentieth century. In British sociology, for instance,the working class has been displaced by a focus on new social movementsemerging around sites of consumption. That change is manifestly historical.Yet, these changing styles and foci are unified by a coherent disciplinaryframework. Underlying the best work in British sociology is a common tra-dition. It is found in Hobhouse’s work on the self-realization of human reasonthrough cultural development in the early twentieth century in Goldthorpe’sanalysis of working class culture, Hall’s work on youth culture and themedia, Rex and Moore’s study of housing (1967), Wacjman’s analysis ofmale and female managers (1996), Mackenzie’s work on nuclear weapons(2000), Banton’s work on race (1983), Collins’ and Pinch’s work on science(Collins 1998; 1991; Collins and Pinch 1996) and, indeed, in Giddens’concept of practical consciousness—as well as many other writings. In theseworks, neither structure nor agency is prioritized; abstract theorising isrejected. In its place, these British sociologists focus on the way in whichsocial groups mobilize themselves within a specific historical context on thebasis of collective understandings. They examine the way these collectiveunderstandings co-ordinate action within these groups so that they can engagein specific forms of social practice.

Thus, Elias has rejected the reification of society into a thing whichconfronts the individual (Elias 1987a). By contrast, through a rich analysis ofthe development of “civilized” practices among western European elites, hedemonstrates how emergent bourgeois groups began to unify themselvesagainst the land-owning nobility through new concepts of civility, therebyorienting themselves to common shared political and economic goals (Elias1987b, 1982). Similarly, Barry Barnes (1988) has stressed the centrality ofunderstanding to social interaction. For him, society is a self-referentialreality in which the way a group collectively understands itself constituteswhat it actually is. Once the self-referential nature of society is recognized,apparently objective forces such as power assume a quite different reality.Power no longer emanates from a single individual or from structure toimpose on others. On the contrary, power is at every point dependent on theshared understandings of the social group: “We shall not be able to treatpower as independent of knowledge of power, or the distribution of poweras independent of knowledge of that distribution” (Barnes 1988, 53). Groupmembers must collectively defer to designated authority for power to exist;leaders are given “discretion” to do certain things by the group which recog-nizes them. Consequently, power is a collective product sustained by social

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networks on the basis of members’ shared understanding of themselvesand their relations with each other. Barnes gives the example of the Iranianrevolution in which the Shah lost his power as a result of a transformation inthe way Iranians understood themselves and their social hierarchy (Barnes1988, 62). The Shah himself was the same person and, indeed, even after therevolution he was very rich and formally held his title. However, decisiveIranian groups no longer recognized the discretion they once invested inhim. The power which he seemed to hold was in fact conferred on him byprominent groups in Iranian society. When critical social groups mobilizedthemselves on the basis of alternative understandings, envisaging an alternatepolitical order pursuing different collective goals, he lost his power. Tobe powerful, a ruler has to be recognized as powerful. These processes areubiquitous.

At the time of writing, England is competing in the World Cup Finals inGermany and the entire country is dominated by this international spectacle.Enduring and transient networks have mobilized themselves around theircollective support of the national team in ways which illustrate the dynamicsof human social life. Thus, in April 2006, England’s best player, WayneRooney, broke his foot in a domestic league match for his club, ManchesterUnited. Manchester United and the Football Association (FA), which orga-nizes the national team, were locked in a dispute following the injury overwhether Rooney was fit to play in the World Cup Finals or not. The club, whopay the majority of Rooney’s wages and who fear the loss of a multi-millionpound asset, insisted Rooney was not fit. The FA, which has analogous butopposite interests in ensuring that Rooney played, asserted that his injuryhad healed. The dispute was intense before the World Cup and remainedlatent while the competition continued. Rooney’s foot stands as a usefulsociological example. The institutions Manchester United and the FA aremanifestly powerful. Indeed, in the case of Manchester United, it is one of themost famous and powerful clubs in the world. Yet, the basis of this powerseems fragile. The might of Manchester United is based on nothing more solidthan the fact that millions of people around the world believe themselvesto be Manchester United fans. These millions follow Manchester Unitedand support the club financially by paying to watch games at the ground oron television and by buying club merchandise. This mere act of collectiveunderstanding, realized in moments of effervescent celebration, has produceda manifest social reality; an economically powerful club capable of criticizingthe FA and questioning the national team as the primary interest of footballfans in England. Manchester United illustrates a critical sociological truthwhich is evident in the best work of British sociology.

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Society cannot be understood as the interaction of independent individ-uals nor in terms of either structural, economic, or biological determination.On the contrary, human consciousness and understanding are fundamentalto all forms of social life. Humans must orient themselves to shared meaningsbecause their actions can be co-ordinated only insofar as all have a commonunderstanding of what they are trying to achieve. These collective under-standings are constitutive of their social relations and practices without whichthe latter would not exist. Indeed, shared understanding is a self-constitutingact of collective alchemy, creating something concrete—a group—wherenothing existed before. As John Searle has noted, social facts have “no ana-logue among physical facts” because the attitude we take toward the phenom-ena is partly constitutive of the phenomena (Searle 1995, 34). Merely bybelieving themselves to be Manchester United fans, attending games, followingthe team, and wearing red shirts, millions of individuals have formed a potentsocial group. Moreover, once the members of a social group mobilize them-selves around shared understandings, humans orient themselves toward thedistinctive collective goals of the group. By co-operating in the pursuit ofshared goals, group members contribute to the production of collective goodsfrom which they also benefit. Social groups from small subcultures, includingfootball fans, to professional status groups utilize the mechanism of honor andshame to enforce adherence to collective goals and exclude outsiders. Groupmembers who contribute to the collective good are honored and awardedeasy access to shared goods while those who try to free-ride or who fail tocontribute are shamed and eventually expelled from the group.

In each historical era and in each social group, the particular patterns ofthis social dynamic are distinctive. Diverse groups engage in alternativesocial practices, oriented to particular goals, on the basis of different sharedunderstandings. These groups are themselves always situated in a uniquesocial configuration in relation to other groups and institutions which influencewhat the group can be. Sociological analysis must always aim to depictthese historical realities. Nevertheless, the most successful sociology whetherthe analysis is of sexuality, scientific practice, or of the largest scale organi-zations is able to demonstrate how the dynamics of the group interaction—informed by shared understanding—produces specific forms of collectivepractice at any particular point. Underlying the different schools in thetwentieth century, British sociology is unified by this common understandingof the human group, however large or small it is. As long as the membersof the discipline adhere to this collective understanding and direct themselvesto common research goals on the basis of it, British sociology will endure.Whatever the political and commercial interests of genetics, psychology, or

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economics, sociology will remain a viable and, indeed, unassailable part ofthe academy.

There is, of course, another future for British sociology. It will forget itscommon origins and endeavors; it will forget the distinctive social ontologyon which the discipline is justified. Sociologists will be carried passivelyalong by contemporary trends, reflecting rather than analyzing the currentera. They will comment loosely on important social themes rather thanmobilizing sociological theory to analyze the precise character of contem-porary social developments. Sociology will become merely “decorative”(Rojek and Turner 2000). In this debased form, sociology will not be ableto sustain attacks from genetics, nor from the other social sciences, such aspolitics, economics, or psychology. Only the current heirs of those excitingdays in the Three Tuns can ensure the legacy of the early pioneers likeHalsey. We must recognize the distinctive character of social reality—andtherefore—the special contribution which sociology, as a form of empiricalphilosophy, can contribute to the academy. Andrew Halsey’s book begins tosketch the trajectory of British sociology. Unfortunately, at critical points itfails to provide a sufficiently sustained account of the development of thediscipline in Britain. Nevertheless, it may prevent one possible future for thediscipline ever happening. Whatever its shortcomings, Halsey does encouragethat the reader to consider the British “sociological community,” includingits great figures, as well the role of the discipline in Britain. Moreover,Halsey’s despairing asides at the contemporary decline of the disciplinewarn what might happen if sociologists fail to abide by the central collectiveunderstandings of the discipline which have endured from Hobhouse onwards.In this, Halsey’s book may play a role in preventing British sociologybecoming history.

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Anthony King is a professor of sociology at Exeter University. He has published widely onfootball and social theory, including The European Ritual: Football and the New Europe (Ashgate2003) and The Structure of Social Theory (Routledge 2004), and is currently completing aresearch project on the transformation of Europe’s armed forces. The monograph from thisresearch will be written next year.

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