Whither Tocqueville in American Sociology?

This essay addresses the declining influence of Alexis de Tocqueville on contemporary American sociology. While Tocqueville was must reading some decades ago, inspiring several classic sociological studies published in the 1950s and 1960s, and while he remains an authoritative source in other social science disciplines, he has virtually disappeared from present-day sociology. Sociologists, it would seem, have left behind works such as Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the French Revolution despite Raymond Aron’s (Main Currents in Sociological Thought, vol. I, Anchor Books, New York, 1968) insistence that Tocqueville be counted among the discipline’s founders. While Meyer (J. Cl. Socio., 3:197–220, 2003) presumed to have addressed this subject, his argument sheds no light on the matter as he ignores the driving concern of Tocqueville’s work, namely, the tensions between the principle of equality and human freedom. I argue that conceptually sociologists today are in no position to reflect critically on equality and its relation to freedom. Since the turbulent 1960s egalitarian commitments have become embedded in the discipline and are thereby shielded from critical inquiry. At the same time, a conceptual fixation on power effectively pushed to the periphery the kinds of questions Tocqueville raised about the problem of authority in democracy and how authority may be encouraging of human freedom. Committed to advancing the principle of equality, however understood, and seeing nothing in authority but power, sociologists espouse faith in egalitarian, mass democracy whereas Tocqueville sought a critical understanding of it. This is much to the detriment of present-day sociologists, so many of whom demonstrate in their own work and professional behavior the democratic dilemmas Tocqueville warned us about.     

Facts, values, and evaluative explanation: Contributions of Leo Strauss to contemporary debates

As the 20th century comes to a close, sociologists remain mired in the long-standing debate surrounding facts and values. The tensions between value-neutral and value-relevant sociologists have raged for decades and no resolution appears likely; at least no resolution is likely within the parameters of the existing debate. This essay is an introduction to the work of social thinker Leo Strauss, whose orientation provides a different perspective on the issue. It was Strauss's conviction that sociologists were fiddling Neros, oblivious to the crisis of value they helped engender, but excused on grounds that they did not know they fiddled and that they did not know Rome burned. A value-free social science that denied the possibility of reasoned discourse on value, while surreptitiously advancing a vision of the good, created little but confusion while undermining the basis on which any vision of the good could be defended. A value-driven social science, animated by what Strauss called the “historical sense,” likewise undermined the legitimacy of the value this social science was designed to serve while casting suspicion on all subsequent value claims. Works by Bellah, Wallerstein and Alexander, Seidman, Collins and Denzin, among others, are used for illustrative purposes. Following Strauss, it is suggested that evaluation and explanation cannot be divorced; theirs was a natural relationship that modern philosophy, beginning with Machiavelli, had unwittingly denied. Strauss advocated a social science that understood value as something to quest for, rather than something to be assumed, and he judged theory to be a guide for action, rather than its substitute. It is suggested that Strauss's reading of the classics could be of benefit to sociologists seeking resolution to the crisis of facts and values.     

The Revitalization of a Popular Movement: Case Study Research from Sweden

This article tries to enhance knowledge about organizational characteristics and processes that are important for mitigating oligarchic tendencies in the governance of CSOs, and to discuss the factors that condition the operation of these characteristics and processes. Civil society is frequently seen as an important part of societal governance and discussed as the intermediary link between the individual and society. This connection is often made through the aggregate function of civil society organizations (CSOs). Currently there are discussions regarding the decline of traditional cross-class federative CSOs and the possible effect of this on democracy in society. This article presents a longitudinal case study of the governance within a large, membership-based federative CSO and illustrates the revitalization of a CSO and its mission through the influx of a new group of members from the surrounding environment. The author argues that this revitalization process was possible partly because the proposed changes were in keeping with the organization’s original ideological core and partly because of the organization’s open democratic governance system. This permeability is found at two levels: first, the borders are open for individuals to enter the organization as members, and second, the borders of the internal governance system are open for members to take part in the decision-making process. This enabled ideas to percolate up from the members through the democratic decision-making system to the top of the organization, and some ideas are translated into statutes and policies, which then trickle down to the members again through the executive structure. The conclusion is that a functioning democratic governance system, which is able to stay true to the organization’s ideological core at the same time as it is able to modify it in light of societal change, seems imperative for this kind of organization. By doing this, the organization is not just staying true to its original mission but also actively contributing to democracy in society by including new groups into the decision-making process.     

How Terrorism Affects Attitudes toward Democracy: Tunisia in 2015

Tunisia is the only country that emerged from the Arab Spring as a democracy. However, Tunisian democracy is threatened by political divisions, economic problems, and the threat of terrorist attacks. We shed light on Tunisia's democratic prospects by examining (1) the degree to which major terrorist attacks in 2015 influenced Tunisian public opinion on democracy and (2) the extent to which preference for a democratic system affected opinions on the prospects for democracy in Tunisia. We use data from three waves of a nationwide survey conducted just before and just after Tunisia's first major terrorist attack, and just after the country's second major terrorist attack. We demonstrate that after the attacks the Tunisian public became less favourable toward democracy and less optimistic that Tunisia would soon be ready for it. Such scepticism was widespread, affecting people who preferred democracy as much as those who did not. We conclude that the prospects for Tunisian democracy are more precarious than is sometimes assumed.     

Prophetic versus priestly sociology: The salient case study of Arthur K. Davis

Arthur K. Davis was President of the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association in 1975–1976 and in 1995 received the association’s Outstanding Contribution award. In Canada, he was particularly known for his article on “Canadian Society and History as Hinterland Versus Metropolis,” originally published in Ossenberg’s anthology of 1971. This article was frequently cited from 1972–1994 and was reprinted a number of times. Davis was also known for his articles on Thorstein Veblen, which continue to receive citation. Davis’ career merits careful study for at least two reasons. The first is that he was a Ph.D. product of the early Harvard sociology graduate program, which has received much less attention than it deserves from sociological historians (unlike the Chicago School). As such, Davis studied under of Talcott Parsons, Pitirim Sorokin, and Robert K. Merton. The second reason is that Davis’ career clearly illustrates the usefulness of Robert W. Friedrichs’ distinction between the priestly and prophetic roles that sociologists may fulfill. Davis’ career started under the influence of a priestly orientation (as symbolized by his doctoral supervisor Talcott Parsons) and then gravitated to a prophetic stance as influenced by Pitirim Sorokin, Paul M. Sweezy, and, more distantly, by Marx and Veblen. Since this transition took place just when the Cold War was falling, his career reveals some of the pitfalls that await the prophetic sociologist in times that favor security and conservatism rather than activism and change.     

Ambivalent Interactionist: Anselm Strauss and the “schools” of Chicago sociology

This article takes up the discussion recently stimulated through the volume, A Second Chicago School? That book’s connecting postwar Chicago sociology with the “Chicago approach” of mainly the 1910s to 1930s is extended, going back as far as the turn of the twentieth century and also forward to the 1990s, with a view endorsing Simmelian interactionism as opposed to Spencerian utilitarianism. Albion Small, first Chairman of the Chicago Department, introduced a Simmelian sociology to the U.S., and the question arises to what extent this legacy is being realized until today. Using Anselm Strauss as a case in point, the article has two main parts. Part One recapitulates various attempts at understanding the phases and realms of Chicago sociology. The focus is not only on the various “Chicago Schools” that may be separated, but also the differences in the work of three scholars who often are grouped together under the label of Chicago, namely Herbert Blumer, Robert Park, and Everett Hughes. Part Two recollects Strauss’s intellectual biography, as life of a scholar determined to make a contribution to modern sociology, in the name of “Chicago interactionism.” Strauss’s work, however, came to endorse Spencerian-type utilitarianism more than Simmelian-type interactionism from the middle 1960s onwards—thereby joining in with anti-structural functionalism tendencies in American sociology.     

The effect of limited search ability on the quality of competitive rent-seeking clubs

A competitive rent-seeking club (CRSC) offers its members the chance of winning a prize (status, position, privilege) by being selected, typically, by a civil servant or a politician. The selector replaces in our setting the usual contest success function; instead of determining the winner on the basis of the club-members’ efforts, he selects the winner on the basis of quality. This article focuses on the effect of incomplete search of the selector on the efficiency of democratic self-governing and decentralized RSC’s that control admittance to the club and its transparency, assuming that quality of their members is fixed. The incomplete search of the selector is assumed to take the simple form of fixed random sampling of the contestants—the members of the CRSC. Our results imply that, even when active rent-seeking expenditures are disregarded, the decisions of CRSC’s regarding their composition and transparency tend to reduce quality and are therefore inefficient.     

Union democracy in the international typographical union: Thirty years later

The International Typographical Union, long cited as the one deviant case to Michel’s “iron law of oligarchy,” is examined thirty years afterUnion Democracy to determine whether or not democracy can survive in the face of today’s hostile environment. An analysis of events occurring within the union as well as the results of a case study of a large ITU local indicate that an unfavorable environment poses unavoidable challenges to democracy. The author thanks Ed Gross, Phil Kienast, Dennis Quinn, Terry Mitchell, Bob Aulerich, and Northwest Typographical Union #99 for assistance at various stages of this research.     

Civil Society Capacity Building for Democratic Reform: Experience and Lessons from Indonesia

This article examines civil society strengthening experience in Indonesia to illuminate issues, challenges, and lessons for non-governmental organization (NGO) capacity building and international donor-supported democratic reform. The authors conceive of capacity as a function of contextual factors, and internal factors associated with an individual NGO or a network of NGOs. Contextual factors that need to be taken into account in Indonesia include weak reform implementation, state distrust of NGOs, and backsliding on some basic freedoms. Among the important internal features of NGOs in democracy promotion are overreliance on confrontational advocacy strategies, shallow organizational capacity, inability to cooperate to leverage impact, limited outreach to indigenous constituencies and sustainability problems. Indonesia’s democracy-promotion NGO coalitions have largely operated as instruments of donor-supported reforms. As they seek to become socially embedded actors pursuing indigenous agendas, they face the need to confront the various expectations of their stakeholders regarding their roles and legitimacy, develop flexibility to respond to new engagements with government and with citizens, and address their internal capacity gaps. Three cases are presented that illustrate both the problems and the encouraging progress with government–NGO collaborations in democratic governance.     

Computational application of the mathematical theory of democracy to Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem (how dictatorial are Arrow’s dictators?)

The article is based on three findings. The first one is the interrelation between Arrow’s (Social choice and individual values, Wiley, New York, 1951) social choice model and the mathematical theory of democracy discussed by Tangian (Aggregation and representation of preferences, Springer, Berlin, 1991; Soc Choice Welf 11(1):1–82, 1994), with the conclusion that Arrow’s dictators are less harmful than commonly supposed. The second finding is Quesada’s (Public Choice 130:395–400, 2007) estimate of their power as that of two voters, implying that Arrow’s dictators are not more powerful than a chairperson with an additional vote. The third is the model of Athenian democracy (Tangian, Soc Choice Welf 31:537–572, 2008), where indicators of popularity and universality are applied to representatives and representative bodies. In this article, these indicators are used to computationally evaluate the representativeness/non-representativeness of Arrow’s dictators. In particular, it is shown that there always exist Arrow’s dictators who on the average share opinions of a majority, being rather representatives. The same holds for dictators selected by lot, which conforms to the practice of selecting magistrates and presidents by lot in ancient democracies and medieval Italian republics. Computational formulas are derived for finding the optimal “dictator–representatives”.     

The Work Sites of an American Interactionist: Anselm L. Strauss, 1917–1996

This article offers a situated overview of the work of Anselm Strauss. Beginning from its intellectual genesis at the University of Chicago with Blumer and Hughes, Strauss's creation of a sociology of action through concepts of routine and nonroutine action, negotiated order, social worlds, arenas, properties and kinds of work, and trajectory are examined. Strauss's ideas about medicine and chronic illness, psychiatric institutions, death and dying, awareness contexts, biography and trajectory are discussed. His profoundly innovative contributions to research methods, including grounded theory and the integration of structural elements through his conditional matrix, are also detailed. In conclusion, the ways in which Strauss himself framed the critical space of an interactionist sociologist are laid out through new interview materials.     

Critical theory meets America: Riesman, Fromm, and the lonely crowd

A reading of David Riesman’s classic The Lonely Crowd is presented that emphasizes its links with the critical theory of German psychoanalyst and social critic Erich Fromm. The intellectual and personal relationship between Riesman and Fromm brings into focus Riesman’s adaptation of the insights of European critical theory as well as the strengths of American social science and social criticism. Riesman’s relatively neglected theoretical approach has much to offer a sociology concerned with retaining its links to public debate and empirical evidence. Thanks to Robert Alford, Linda Boos, Steven Brint, Scott Davies, Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Louis Greenspan, Rhoda Howard-Hassmann, Lisa Kowalchuk, Bonnie Oglensky, Rolf Meyersohn, Stephen Steinberg, Alan Wolfe and Dennis Wrong for comments on earlier versions of this paper. A McMaster University ARB grant provided funds for a trip to German where I read the extensive correspondence between Riesman and Fromm housed in the Erich Fromm archives maintained by Rainer Funk. The paper was first presented at the American Sociological Association annual meetings in Chicago in 1999.     

Popular discontent,divided perceptions,and political polarization in Taiwan

Popular discontent with political performance has been a preeminent feature in Taiwanese politics since the first power alternation in 2000. Potential explanations include economic decline, deteriorating quality of democratic governance, and electoral over-competition. For an emerging democracy like Taiwan, the political experience under the Chen Shui-bian administration was a crucial test for the transition to a mature democracy. While popular discontent with various political agencies might convey different messages, the author argues that the synthetic outcome is a partisan-laden perception of political accountability, which led to serious political gridlock and ingrained partisan rivalry that could have jeopardized Taiwan's fledgling democracy. More importantly, polarized politics in Taiwan under the Chen administration can be seen as a lesson, one that illustrates how the process of democratic consolidation can be possibly reversed in an emerging democracy.     

Charles S. Johnson’s the Negro in Chicago

Charles S. Johnson’s classic study of the Chicago race riot of 1919,The Negro in Chicago, can provide contemporary social scientists with valuable historical insight into urban race relations and a model of methodological comprehensiveness. This review of Johnson’s study suggests the influence of the Chicago School of Sociology and especially of Robert Park on its methodological and conceptual framework. In contrast to the tendency of many recent studies of black urban communities to maintain a narrow theoretical and empirical focus,The Negro in Chicago draws on a wide array of types of data and uses an organic metaphor to suggest the complex interrelatedness of urban residents in the many contexts of their daily lives.     

Gambling Motivations,Money-Limiting Strategies,and Precommitment Preferences of Problem Versus Non-Problem Gamblers

Studies attempting to identify the specific ‘addictive’ features of electronic gaming machines (EGMs) have yielded largely inconclusive results, suggesting that it is the interaction between a gambler’s cognitions and the machine, rather than the machine itself, which fuels excessive play. Research has reported that machine players with gambling problems adopt a number of erroneous cognitive perceptions regarding the probability of winning and the nature of randomness. What is unknown, however, is whether motivations for gambling and attitudes toward pre-session monetary limit-setting vary across levels of gambling severity, and whether proposed precommitment strategies would be useful in minimizing excessive gambling expenditures. The current study explored these concepts in a sample of 127 adults, ages 18 to 81, attending one of four gambling venues in Queensland, Australia. The study found that problem gamblers were more likely than other gamblers to play machines to earn income or escape their problems rather than for fun and enjoyment. Similarly, they were less likely to endorse any type of monetary limit-setting prior to play. They were also reticent to adopt the use of a ‘smart card’ or other strategy to limit access to money during a session, though they indicated they lost track of money while gambling and were rarely aware of whether they were winning or losing during play. Implications for precommitment policies and further research are discussed.     

Charles Tilly,German Historicism,and the Critical Realist Philosophy of Science

This paper examines Charles Tilly’s relationship to the schools of thought known as historicism and critical realism. Tilly was committed to a social epistemology that was inherently historicist, and he increasingly called himself a “historicist.” The “search for grand laws in human affairs comparable to the laws of Newtonian mechanics,” he argued, was a “waste of time” and had “utterly failed.” Tilly’s approach was strongly reminiscent of the arguments developed in the first half of the 20th century by Rickert, Weber, Troeltsch, and Meinecke for a synthesis of particularization and generalization and for a focus on “historical individuals” rather than abstract universals. Nonetheless, Tilly never openly engaged with this earlier wave of historicist sociology, despite its fruitfulness for and similarity to his own project. The paper explores some of the possible reasons for this missed encounter. The paper argues further that Tilly’s program of “relational realism” resembled critical realism, but with main two differences: Tilly did not fully embrace critical realism’s argument that social mechanisms are always co-constituted by social meaning or its normative program of explanatory critique. In order to continue developing Tilly’s ideas it is crucial to connect them to the epistemological ideas that governed the first wave of historicist sociology in Weimar Germany and to a version of philosophical realism that is interpretivist and critical.     

Games,Pastimes, and Leisure Pursuits

In studies ranging from oracular practices and court proceedings to alternative philosophies, reality disjunctures, and a family’s work in maintaining the normality of a severely retarded child, Mel Pollner put together something like a cabinet of curiosities exhibiting the social character of reasoning’s worldly enterprises. At the same time, he felt that ethnomethodology—and, in particular, ethnomethodological studies of work—had taken a wrong direction, turning away from disciplinary sociology’s sociological project. This paper, by examining the play of bridge, soccer, checkers, and chess, reconsiders this position and illustrates some of the peculiarities of a sociology of the witnessable social order.     

Bernard Barber’s social system theory

Conclusion Barber’s theory writing expressed his vocation. For him theory-user-friendliness, academic-sociological-openness, and scientific-empirical-insightful-encouragement seem to have been synonyms. Hence, there is a hypothesis implicit to this memoire that should be tested by a full assesssment of Barber’s academic contribution, perhaps by a doctoral dissertation. It is this: Bernard Barber has continued to contribute sociological theory in the way he began (before his courage students to scientifically reflect upon the “paradigmatic” theory enunciated by Parsons (and Merton), how it bad developed, and how it could he made more fruitful. This was also a special “field of study” which gave ongoing stimulus to his studies in the sociology of science and, finally to his late-in-career exposition of his social system theory. This would have to be confirmed by a careful study of all his works, based upon what he wrote, the accounts of those who knew him, and of those who have studied his work as students and colleagues. It would also involve analysis of the work of his students, colleagues, and collaborators.     

Economic development and the transition to democracy a formal model

In this essay, we have developed a rational choice model to study the transition to democracy. Such a model implies that the change or maintenance of a political system is the result of rational decisions by individuals, interest groups, and political parties under specific constraints. Our analysis shows that political systems are critically dependent upon the level of economic development. If a nation is at the lower stage of economic development, and, particularly, if its citizenry is poorly educated, the nation would lean toward choosing a dictatorship. As the nation accumulates more and more reproducible capital, it will tend to move toward democracy. Similarly, the model shows that, as the cost of democracy becomes lower and lower over time, a democratic system is likely to be chosen as the political infrastructure for social and economic development. Received: 15 February 1995 / Accepted: 23 June 1997     

Ellen Swallow Richards: “Humanistic Oekologist,” “Applied Sociologist,” and the founding of sociology

Best known as the first woman graduate from MIT, and the founder of Home Economics, Ellen Swallow Richards was a Progressive Era reformer who applied social science research techniques to problems of concern to early sociologists. As a mentor to many women who joined the “Cultural” and “Pragmatic” feminists of Hull House, her secular theories of “Oekology” and “Euthenics” challenged many of the models of social change prevalent in the Cambridge and Chicago academic communities. Her most radical contribution as a feminist was her assertion that women’s unpaid labor in the home played a vital economic role in maintaining capitalism and was the ultimate source of their second-class citizenship. She shared a belief in democracy and education as a feminist “Pragmatist,” and laid the groundwork for the contemporary “Ecofeminist” movement. Although she was a biochemist by training, she engaged several genera-tions of women in the application of scientific methods to the solution of contemporary social problems. As a political organizer, much of her legacy is reflected in the accomplishments of the reform organizations she was instrumental in founding.