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Re-Reading Park and Burgess’s Landmark Textbook: An Unacknowledged Treatise on Democracy and Inclusion

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Abstract

Reflecting on the centenary of the publication of Robert E. Park and Ernest Burgess’s Introduction to the Science of Sociology (1921), this article attempts to add a new dimension to how that legacy might be construed. It has been a widely accepted view that the book was a landmark in the early history of American sociology, its major contribution revolving around its specification about what it meant to be a science of society. This sets the stage for the claim advanced in this article, which is that it also attempts to outline a perspective on how democracy might be achieved within the parameters of the pluralistic character of modern societies. It sets out to accomplish three things. First, it argues that in the book’s lengthy introductory chapter–authored by Park and published during the same year in the American Journal of Sociology–lays out a theoretical perspective that is primarily influenced by John Dewey, Émile Durkheim, and Georg Simmel. The article proceeds to examine in broad strokes how the following thirteen chapters fit together and add up to a cogent statement not only of the sociological enterprise intended to stimulate empirical research, but as elements of the differentiated and complex character of modernity that a democratic society must confront in establishing the bases for a new form of solidarity. This leads to an analysis of the chapter on assimilation, which should be read as the place where one finds the contours of a perspective on solidarity that while parallel to Durkheim’s work, goes beyond by offering more in terms of a perspective on democracy and inclusion in racially and ethnically diverse societies.

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  1. Department of Sociology, Augustana College, 639 38th Street, Rock Island, IL, USA

    Peter Kivisto

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Kivisto, P. Re-Reading Park and Burgess’s Landmark Textbook: An Unacknowledged Treatise on Democracy and Inclusion. Am Soc 53, 91–106 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-022-09527-2

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