Table Of ContentTOWARD A CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY
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TOWARD A
CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY
NORMAN BIRNBAUM
NEW YORK
Oxford University Press
1971
Copyright © 1971 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 73-159644
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
FOR HENRI LEFEBVRE
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PREFACE
An author publishing a set of essays written for different pub-
lics, in different countries, over the past fifteen years has awk-
ward choices to make. He may claim a profound inner unity,
nay, progression in his work—and devise a preface to sustain
the claim, whether or not the texts in question can do so.
Struck by the diversity and datedness of the pieces, he may
prefer to revise them. I was greatly tempted, upon reviewing
the collection, to re-write much of it. Had I done so, no doubt
I would have spent the better part of two years at the task. In
offering these essays substantially unaltered, I ask for some-
thing other than indulgence for perfectionism resisted. The
very uneveness of the book's parts, the, obvious marks the
passage of time has inflicted upon some of these, may be
thought of as records of the intellectual situation between
1954, when the first was written, and 1970, when the last were
prepared.
I have employed the term "intellectual situation" and not
something like, "development of sociology" to describe the
context of these writings. Most were addressed to a public
broader than my colleagues in sociology proper. An academic
discipline (and sociology is one with exceedingly ill-defined
boundaries) is but one mode of apprehending reality. We hear
much of a contemporary knowledge explosion, of an expand-
ing intellectual universe. It is more accurate to think of a
knowledge implosion. Our struggles to depict and master
reality erode the distinctions between areas and types of in-
quiry. Shifts of emphasis and perspective in the social sciences
have made ambiguous the notion of fact itself. An irreducible
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Preface
philosophical component, and political judgments, have once
again become prominent in social inquiry. The title, Toward
a Critical Sociology, bespeaks an open avowal of a critical in-
tention with respect to society, an element at least as promi-
nent in these essays as description. The most severely technical
of the essays, perhaps, are those in the initial section on Social
Theory. While these focus on the critical component in social
thought, the contributions in the section on The Sociology of
Sociology extend the discussion to sociology's function in so-
ciety. The themes are related but, for better or for worse,
distinct.
The essays are arranged thematically, but of course they
were written in particular cultural and political settings. Per-
haps a word on these contexts is in order. Some originated in
England, where I taught at the London School of Economics
and Political Science and later at Nuffield College of Oxford
University. The essay on "Monarchs and Sociologists" 1 is so
polemical that I hesitated to reprint it. I decided to do so, not
least to show that the critique of functionalism did not quite
begin yesterday. The early debate on functionalism was, how-
ever, part of a larger controversy. The decade 1950—1960 was
dominated, in the English-speaking world, by a variety of
conservative schools of thought. Michael Oakeshott and Karl
Popper were my respected senior colleagues at the London
School of Economics. Each, if in very different ways, chal-
lenged the view that critical reason could assume an eman-
cipatory function. The longish essay on British culture and
politics, "Great Britain: The Reactive Revolt," is amongst
other things a series of reflections on that decade in Britain.
The essay also shows the influence of my immersion, from
1957 onward, in the original new left. The historical study of
sixteenth century Zurich seems quite remote from these con-
1. The essay is a reply to Edward Shils and M. Michael Young, "The Meaning
of the Coronation," The Sociological Review, Volume 1, No. 2, 1953. The
essay by Messrs. Shils and Young was also reproduced in S. M. Lipset and
N. Smelser (editors), Sociology: The, Progress of a Decade, Englewood Cliffs:
Prentice-Hall, 1961,
viii
Preface
cerns, but it was written when I had the good fortune to be
associated with the historians of the Past and Present group.
The controversy over the role of Protestantism in the origins
of capitalism was not entirely without political undertones.
If Protestantism had no very profound connections with
capitalism, then history was indeed one damned thing after
another. In that case, no interpretation of society which in-
sisted on its fundamental structural elements was likely to be
possible. If, on the other hand, Protestantism could be shown
to have had a causal role in the genesis of capitalism, the
Marxist interpretation of society could be dealt a severe—if
not necessarily fatal—blow. My own essay, which argues for
the capitalist origins of early Protestantism in Zurich, owed
much to the methodological inspiration of historians like Eric
Hobsbawm, who combined large interpretation with pains-
taking attention to detail.
The treatment of the Amsterdam Sociological Congress of
1956 (which preceded the Suez crisis and the Soviet invasion
of Hungary but followed Khrushchev's famous speech on
Stalin) points to yet another context. England was but one
hour, by air, from a very different world. From England, I
continued and deepened that apprenticeship in French and
German thought I had begun, to be sure, before ever leaving
America for Europe. Sociology on the continent had two char-
acteristics not impressed upon it in the English-speaking
world. Firstly, it was conceived as part of a larger philosophi-
cal enterprise, the critique of historical existence. Secondly,
it was not disassociated from the larger society's struggles for
power. Many of my continental friends were politically en-
gaged—or, at any rate, exceedingly aware of the political im-
plications of their thought. My effort to escape the restrictions
of an arbitrarily circumscribed empiricism, in America and
England, heightened the attractions of the continent: I devel-
oped a concern with Marxism which has pervaded my ven-
tures in social theory ever since. "Science, Ideology, and
Dialogue," on the Amsterdam congress of 1956, begins a sec-
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