Introduction: Contemporary Themes in Sociological Theory

Author(s): Randall Collins

Source: Sociological Theory, Vol. 1 (1983), pp. xix-xxiii
Published by: Wiley
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 Introduction:
Contemporary Themes
in Sociological Theory

This initial volume of Sociological Theory offers a sampling of

some of the significant themes of current sociology.
One development in recent years has been a resurgence of inter-
est in evolutionary theories. These have come in a variety of forms,
ranging from neo-Weberian views of the long-term growth of rational-
ity (expressed especially by contemporary German theorists) to
mathematical models of cultural change modeled on biological genet-
ics. In Chapter One of this volume, Joan Dyste Lind offers an unusual
version of evolutionism. Instead of an accumulation of benign ad-
vances, she proposes that at the level of human societies techniques of
coercion evolve. Lind thus combines evolutionism with a conflict
approach and with a rational choice mechanism.
Another area of growing interest and potentially great impor-
tance is the interface between sociology and economics. In Chapter
Two, Norbert F. Wiley argues that virtually all comprehensive socio-
logical theories have an economics attached to them, with the apparent
exception of Weber. He then finds an appropriate economics for a
Weberian vision of the social world in the economics of John Maynard
Keynes. The proposed synthesis is particularly noteworthy because it
argues for a fundamental micromechanism in both theories, centering
on cognitive responses to uncertainties. Wiley suggests that this socio-
logical angle of vision may help solve such current economic issues as
the inexplicable coexistence of stagnation and inflation. A different
approach to the same economics-sociology linkage is provided by
Charles H. Powers and Robert A. Hanneman in Chapter Three. They

xix

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xx Introduction

proceed by puncturing a myth about Pareto, showing that what has

seemed mysterious and unfounded in Pareto's cyclical theory of politi-
cal power and social beliefs (the lions and foxes, sentiments and
residues) is actually determinative when linked to Pareto's theory of the
economic cycle. Powers and Hanneman provide a formal model that
predicts right and left political swings, together with a lagged cycle of
traditionalizing and innovating cultures, that is connected with secular
rises and falls in the economy. The analysis has applications to the
swings of the pendulum in our own society in recent decades. My
conjecture would be that the empirical situation of a society over such a
time period is subject to more causal conditions than those spelled out
in the Powers-Hanneman model; but it may provide an analytical
skeleton for one major component of social and economic change.
Such developments in the sociological approach to economics
are particularly important at this time because of the obvious theoreti-
cal difficulties economics itself is having on its own turf. Sociologists
have gotten into this arena for several reasons. One is the claim by
Marxian political economists to be able to handle problems of eco-
nomic crisis and change better than conventional economics. Other
kinds of sociologists have also gotten into the act. I think this involve-
ment foreshadows, within the next decade, a major transformation in
our understanding of the economy. In this intellectual revolution soci-
ologists may well be the key movers. The Wiley and the Powers and
Hanneman chapters are more than straws in the wind; for instance, a
recent article by Harrison White (one of the advisory editors of Socio-
logical Theory), "Where Do Markets Come From?" (in American Jour-
nal of Sociology, November 1981), proposes a major analytical shift in
the whole conception of economic phenomena. Various pieces are now
turning up for a new sociology-based economics; the puzzle has not yet
come together, but I believe that we are sitting in front-row seats at a
paradigm revolution.
There is another reason, incidentally, why sociologists have
been interested in economic-style models. We have ourselves made use
of them in such forms as exchange theory and in theories of cultural
capital. These sorts of models are appealing because they promise a
solid structural link for the micro-macro connection. It is possible to
think of the entire macro structure of society as comprised of exchange
relations, conversational markets, or the circulation of cultural capital.

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Introduction xxi

What then does it do for our models of social markets if the very
conception of an economic market is breaking down into something
rather different from the classical (or the neoclassical or even the tradi-
tional Marxian) model? This question might be more of a worry if it
were not for the fact that it is sociologists who are on the forefront of
rebuilding economics. My long-term bet is that any paradigm revolu-
tion that we carry out in economics will rebound very quickly into our
own field. The two disciplines are going to have some very interesting
times together over the next few years.
It may be worth noting that both the Wiley and the Powers and
Hanneman chapters use classical theories-Weber, Keynes, Pareto-as
bases for theoretical development. This strategy is also followed in
several other chapters. Both Michael Hammond (Chapter Four) and
Dean R. Gerstein (Chapter Eight), in quite different ways, use Durk-
heimian theory as a basis on which to make arguments that have their
own novelty and power. There seem to be several lessons here-that
there is still meat on the old theoretical bones, that it is eminently
worth our while to pay attention to many of the sociological classics,
and that theory can be advanced via the route of going back over some
insights from the past. The issue of just how one ought to approach the
classics is, in fact, one of the themes of Gerstein's chapter. On the
whole, I think sociologists today are often too timid, confining them-
selves to historical exegesis of earlier work. Certainly a bolder and more
cumulative approach is well represented in this volume.
The volume also includes contributions along very recent lines
of theorizing. Barry Wellman (Chapter Six) and Mark Granovetter
(Chapter Seven) both deal with the theoretical side of network analysis,
a modern research technique that is now coming of age and producing
theoretical payoffs. These chapters also illustrate a point that I hope
Sociological Theory will be able to carry: that methodology need not
be a purely technical specialty, but that methodologies have theoretical
implications. Sometimes the theoretical implications are hidden and
constricting. Sometimes-especially when they are made explicit-
they can be theoretically creative. Wellman's and Granovetter's chap-
ters both show the cumulative advance now characterizing network
analysis, as well as something of the vision of society it is painting.
Perhaps it is too soon to mention the term "paradigm revolution"
again, but it is clear that even in the highly quantitative side of sociol-

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xxii Introduction

ogy the battle lines are shifting. The predominance of causal models of
aggregate individual traits is being challenged by a much more struc-
tural view of society in the form of network models.
Yet other developments will be found in these pages, showing
the many divergent lines of creative thinking that are currently going
on. Dair L. Gillespie and Ann Leffler (Chapter Five) overview an area
of microsociological research: studies in physical proximity in face-to-
face interaction. Their theoretical payoff comes in the form of the
verdict as to which rival perspective-ethological/sociobiological,
enculturation/socialization, internal psychological states, or situa-
tional/stratified resources-is borne out by the evidence. Yet another
approach is represented by David A. Snow and Richard Machalek
(Chapter Nine), which emphasizes the importance of the form of lin-
guistic discourse in laying bare the social character of religious
conversion.
In this volume the "Theory News" section touches on recent
revolutionary developments among biological theorists and points to
some of their carry-over into the sociobiology debate within sociology.
Nicholas C. Mullins, who turned the techniques of the sociology of
science on sociology itself ten years ago, gives us an update on what has
happened in the interim to our contending theories and to the theory
groups that have carried them. Another notable development of our
times, probably the most widely famed of the last twenty years, was
Thomas Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions. Sal Restivo gives us a
report-perhaps one should call it an expose-of what has happened
to Kuhn's paradigm theory in the sociology of science itself, where
Kuhn now seems to have the status of a conservative among much more
radical theories.
It is often claimed that sociology is in a dead spot, that nothing
of significance has been happening in the last decade, and perhaps that
nothing much is to be expected for the upcoming years. Personally, I
could not disagree more. I think this first volume of Sociological
Theory shows that there is plenty of vitality in our field, if only one
looks in the right directions. Perhaps we are misled by the sheer
weight of sociological writings, a good deal of which is inevitably
routine, or worse. But the pace of intellectual development is not quite
like that of events in the daily newspaper. One can hardly expect a

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Introduction xxiii

breakthrough every week, or even every year. But over the expanse of a
decade, quite a lot can happen-and has. There have been some major
transformations in sociological theorizing in the 1960s and 1970s.
From all indications, the 1980s are going to cap those developments
with even more extensive ones. Sociological Theory promises to keep
the sociological community informed on all the intellectual action as it
happens.

Randall Collins

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