Abstract
This paper seeks to uncover the modes of justification by which sociological theorists legitimize the “canon” of sociological theory in practice, through the stories they tell to students in sociological theory textbooks. Specifically, we ask: how do textbook authors rationalize their decisions to include and exclude some theorists? Further, what are the modes or “rules of the conceptual game” underlying these justifications? To address these questions, we undertake a rhetorical examination of a corpus of 250 English-language editions of sociological theory textbooks. Focusing on their Introductions and Conclusions, we highlight texts that presume the canon is a social fact and investigate the justifications they provide for assenting to this fact. We articulate and illustrate three forms of legitimation: functionalist, historicist, and humanist. Functionalist justifications legitimate the canon by appealing to its capacity to generate disciplinary unity and integrity. Historicist justifications legitimate the canon by appealing to its members’ foundational and influential role in defining the direction of the field. Humanist justifications legitimate the canon through appealing to the intrinsic qualities of its texts and authors. Identifying these pathways is the primary empirical contribution of this paper, which in turn contributes to the collective project of disciplinary self-reflection.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
See also Alway (1995) for a more recent examination of the gendered character of approximately 10 English-language theory textbooks, and a recent 2019 study by McDonald.
Clearly, few sociologists deeply engage with these authors’ entire oeuvres; canonization is not just of authors but of texts. We are not aware of systematic examination of the prevalence of specific texts in syllabi, but information compiled on opensyllabus.org suggests a canonization that would likely be familiar to most sociologists. For Weber, syllabi tend to feature The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, selections from Economy and Society (often “Class, Status, and Party” and “Basic Sociological Concepts”), and the “Intermediate Reflections” from The Sociology of Religion. For Durkheim, syllabi tend to feature selections from Elementary Forms of Religious Life, The Division of Labour, and Suicide, along with the discussion of social facts in the Rules of Sociological Method. For Marx, typical readings include The Communist Manifesto, the discussion of alienation in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, the opening sections of Capital, and selections from The German Ideology, with the Marx-Engels Reader guiding many instructors.
As noted above, textbooks triangulate between at least three audiences: students, professors, and publishers. The relative weight varies, and in some cases the line is not clear between a book for students or geared toward changing professors’ ideas about how to think about theory or teaching theory. On borderline cases, we tended to err on inclusion, confirming that a candidate book appears on syllabi gathered in opensyllabus.org. For example, Martin’s Thinking Through Theory and Swedberg’s The Art of Social Theory (both discussed below) might reasonably be thought to have professional theorists among their central audiences. Nevertheless, The Art of Social Theory appears in 38 syllabi, Thinking Through Theory in 9, and each is co-assigned with common texts in sociological theory courses, such as Goffman’s Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, or Merton’s Social Theory and Social Structure. Even so, a limitation of our study is that our corpus is not a complete census and there is no bright line between what is and is not a “textbook.”.
Sociological theory and social theory can have distinct meanings, which are often debated by theorists. In practice, however, Guzman and Silver (2018) found that sociological theory courses often assign textbooks that are titled with either term. Some even include both in the same title, such as Allan’s Social and Sociological Theory. Many books with “social theory” in their titles deal explicitly with the history of sociology and engage prominently with sociologists. For our purposes, the abstract distinction is less relevant than whether a textbook is geared towards sociology students and is assigned in sociology courses.
Martin (2015) notes the circularity embedded in this conception: “Theory” is then a side effect of canonization. Durkheim has a “theory” because Durkheim was a theorist, and Durkheim was a theorist because we make everyone read Durkheim. Whether this is a result of his institutional machinations and the creation of a school, the result of his intrinsic excellence, or simply a historical accident, is a secondary matter (Martin, 2015, p. 3). Martin argues that this functionalist explanation is a stable but unsatisfying solution: stable, because it is simple and definitional, allowing some authors to be “in” or “out” of the category “theory” without making any invidious distinctions about quality or value; unsatisfying because its circularity threatens to make theory coterminous with sociology as such, leaving no room for an account of what the distinctiveness of “theory work” amounts to.
Later editions removed this argument, a sign that humanist criteria of quality have been difficult to sustain against contextualist and functionalist narratives (Owens, 2015).
“It is often thought that the work of [Talcott Parsons and Karl Marx] is diametrically opposed and, to a large extent, this is true. There are common features, however, in their work which become more apparent as we compare them with other approaches. One of these common features concerns their views about the role of social structural (or macro) features in the shaping of social activity. In this sense they are both ‘affirmers’ of dualism insofar as they make a distinction between the realm of social activity and the realm of institutions, which represent the social conditions under which such activity takes place” (Layder, 2005, p.13).
See also Silver (2019) which lays out a series of “theory work exercises” for practicing key theoretical skills, such as exegesis, analysis, synthesis, and hypothesis construction.
References
Abrutyn, S. (2013). Teaching sociological theory for a new century: Contending with the time crunch. The American Sociologist, 44(2), 132–154.
Alatas, S. F., & Sinha, V. (2017). Sociological theory beyond the Canon. Springer.
Alexander, J. C. (1989). Sociology and discourse: On the centrality of the classics. Structure and Meaning, 8–67. Columbia University Press.
Allan, K. (2013). The social lens: An invitation to social and sociological theory. Sage Publications.
Alway, J. (1995). The trouble with gender: Tales of the still-missing feminist revolution in sociological theory. Sociological Theory, 13(3), 209–228.
Ansart, P. (1990). Les sociologies contemporaines. Seuil.
Appelrouth, S., & Edles, L. D. (2010). Sociological theory in the contemporary era: Text and readings. Pine Forge Press.
Aristotle. (2018). The Art of Rhetoric. (R. Waterfield, Ed.). Oxford University Press.
Ashley, D., & Orenstein, D. M. (2005). Sociological theory: Classical statements. Pearson College Division.
Baehr, P. (2002). Founders, Classics, Canons: Modern Disputes over the Origins and Appraisal of Sociology's Heritage. Routledge.
Balog, A., & Schülein, J. A. (Eds.). (2008). Soziologie, eine multiparadigmatische Wissenschaft. Erkenntnisnotwendigkeit oder Übergangsstadium? VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.
Bargheer, S. (2017). The invention of theory: A transnational case study of the changing status of Max Weber’s Protestant ethic thesis. Theory and Society, 46(6), 497–541.
Barlösius, E. (2004). Klassiker Im Goldrahmen — Ein Beitrag Zur Soziologie Der Klassiker. Leviathan, 32(4), 514–542.
Bastedo, M. N., Altbach, P. G., & Gumport, P. J. (2016). American higher education in the twenty-first century: Social, political, and economic challenges. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Bazerman, C. (1988). Shaping written knowledge: The genre and activity of the experimental article in science. University of Wisconsin Press Madison.
Bénatouïl, T. (1999). A tale of two sociologies: The critical and the pragmatic stance in contemporary French sociology. European Journal of Social Theory, 2(3), 379–396.
Béraud, C., & Coulmont, B. (2018). Les courants contemporains de la sociologie. Presses Universitaires de France.
Biernacki, R. (2012). Reinventing evidence in social inquiry: Decoding facts and variables. Springer.
Bratton, J., & Denham, D. (2019). Capitalism and Classical Social Theory. University of Toronto Press.
Broćić, M., & Silver, D. (2021). The influence of simmel on American sociology since 1975. Annual Review of Sociology, 47, 87–108.
Brown, R. H. (1978). A poetic for sociology: Toward a logic of discovery for the human sciences. CUP Archive.
Bruyn, S. T. (1964). Rhetorical devices in sociological analysis. The Sociological Quarterly, 5(2), 101–112.
Callinicos, A. (1999). Social Theory: A Historical Introduction. Polity Press.
Clark, T. N. (1973). Prophets and Patrons: The French University and the Emergence of the Social Sciences. Harvard University Press.
Collins, R. (1997). A sociological guilt trip: Comment on Connell. American Journal of Sociology, 102(6), 1558–1564.
Collins, R. (2009). The sociology of philosophies. Harvard University Press.
Connell, R. W. (1997). Why is classical theory classical? American Journal of Sociology, 102(6), 1511–1557.
Corcuff, P. (2020). Théories sociologiques contemporaines: France, 1980–2020. Armand Colin.
Curato, N. (2013). A sociological reading of classical sociological theory. Philippine Sociological Review, 61(2), 265–287.
Döpking, L. (2016). How Sociological Theory Is Taught in Germany. Theory. The Newsletter of the Research Committee on Sociological Theory, Summer: 4–11.
Dubar, C. (2006). Le pluralisme en sociologie: Fondements, limites, enjeux. Socio-Logos. Revue De L’association Française De Sociologie, 1, 1–14.
Edmondson, R. (2007). Rhetorics of social science: Sociality in writing and inquiry. In P. Aasuutari, L. Bickman, & J. Brannen (Eds.), The Sage handbook of social science methodology (pp. 479–498). Sage Publications.
Esser, H. (1999). Soziologie. Allgemeine grundlagen. Campus.
Firestone, W. A. (1987). Meaning in method: The rhetoric of quantitative and qualitative research. Educational Researcher, 16(7), 16–21.
Fischer, J. (2014). Multiparadigmatizität der Soziologie Übersichten, Unterscheidungen, Ursachen und Umgangsformen. In S. Kornmesser & G. Schurz (Eds.), Die multiparadigmatische Struktur der Wissenschaften (pp. 337–370). Springer VS.
Frickel, S., & Gross, N. (2005). A general theory of scientific/intellectual movements. American Sociological Review, 70(2), 204–232.
Gerhards, J. (2014). Top Ten Soziologie. Soziologie-Forum Der Deutschen Gesellschaft Für Soziologie, 43(3), 313–321.
Giddens, A. (1971). Capitalism and modern social theory: An analysis of the writings of Marx. Cambridge University Press.
Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. University of California Press.
Go, J. (2020). Race, empire, and epistemic exclusion: Or the structures of sociological thought. Sociological Theory, 38(2), 79–100.
Grauerholz, L., & Gibson, G. (2006). Articulation of goals and means in sociology courses: What we can learn from syllabi. Teaching Sociology, 34(1), 5–22.
Guillory, J. (1987). Canonical and non-canonical: A critique of the current debate. ELH, 54(3), 483–527.
Gusfield, J. R. (2017). Two genres of sociology: A literary analysis of the American occupational structure and tally’s corner. Performing Action (pp. 61–99). Routledge.
Guzman, C., & Silver, S. (2018). The institution of sociological theory in Canada. The Canadian Review of Sociology, 55(1), 9–39.
Guzman, C., Silver, D., Döpking, L., Underwood, L., & Parker, S. (2021). Towards a Sociology of Sociological Theory. (ASA 2021: Sociological Theory Regular Section, Online).
Hall, E. J. (1988). One week for women? The structure of inclusion of gender issues in introductory textbooks. Teaching Sociology, 16(4), 431–442.
Hall, E. J. (2000). Packaging poverty as an intersection of class, race, and gender in introductory textbooks, 1982 to 1994. Teaching Sociology, 28(4), 299–315.
Hamilton, R. F. (2003). American sociology rewrites its history. Sociological Theory, 21(3), 281–297.
Heilbron, J. (2015). French sociology. Cornell University Press.
Holland, L. V. (2018). Counterpoint: Kenneth Burke and Aristotle’s Theories on Rhetoric. Pickle Partners Publishing.
Holzhauser, N. (2021). Quantifying the exclusionary process of canonisation, or How to become a classic of the social sciences. International Review of Sociology, 31(1), 97–122.
How, A. R. (2016). Restoring the classic in sociology: Traditions, texts and the canon. Springer.
Hunter, A. D. (Ed.). (1990). The rhetoric of social research: Understood and believed. Rutgers University Press.
Jasper, J. M., & Young, M. P. (2007). The Rhetoric of Sociological Facts 1. Sociological Forum, 22, 270–299.
Jenks, C. (1998). Core sociological dichotomies. Sage.
Joas, H., & Knöbl, W. (2009). Social theory: Twenty introductory lectures. Cambridge University Press.
Johnson, D. P. (2008). Contemporary sociological theory: An Integrated Multi-Level Approach. Springer Science & Business Media.
Kivisto, P. (Ed.). (2003). Social Theory. Roxbury Publishing Co.
Kneer, G. & Schroer, M. (Eds.). (2009). Handbuch soziologische Theorien. Springer VS.
Lallement, M. (2019). 50 ans de sociologie. Idees Economiques Et Sociales, 1, 19–27.
Lamont, M. (2000). Comparing French and American Sociology. The Tocqueville Review, 21(1), 109–122.
Lamont, M. (2004). The theory section and theory satellites. Perspectives, 27, 1–17.
Layder, D. (2005). Understanding social theory. Sage.
Lee, M., & Martin, J. L. (2015). Coding, counting and cultural cartography. American Journal of Cultural Sociology, 3(1), 1–33.
Lenger, A., Rieder, T., & Schneickert, C. (2014). Theoriepräferenzen von Soziologiestudierenden. Welche Autor*innen Soziologiestudierende tatsächlich lesen. Soziologie, 43(4), 450–567.
Lengermann, P. M., & Niebrugge, G. (2006). The women founders: Sociology and social theory 1830–1930, a Text/Reader. Waveland Press.
Levine, D. N. (1995). Visions of the sociological tradition. University of Chicago Press.
Levine, D. N. (2015). The variable status of the classics in differing narratives of the sociological tradition. Journal of Classical Sociology, 15(4), 305–320.
Lizardo, O. (2020). The end of theorists: The relevance, opportunities, and pitfalls of theorizing in sociology today. Pamphlet Based on the Lewis Coser Memorial Lecture. Retrieved Dec 6, 2020, from https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/3ws5f/. Accessed 06 December 2020.
Llored, R. (2007). Sociologie, théories et analyses. Ellipses.
Mallory, P., & Cormack, P. (2018). The two Durkheims: Founders and classics in Canadian introductory sociology textbooks. Canadian Journal of Sociology/cahiers Canadiens De Sociologie, 43(1), 1–24.
Manza, J., Sauder, M., & Wright, N. (2010). Producing textbook sociology. Archives Européennes De Sociologie/european Journal of Sociology/europäisches Archiv Für Soziologie, 51(2), 271–304.
Martin, J. L. (2015). Thinking through theory. WW Norton.
Martin, J. L. (2017). Thinking through methods: A social science primer. University of Chicago Press.
Martuccelli, D. (1999). Sociologies de la modernité: l’itinéraire du XXe siècle. Gallimard.
McDonald, L. (2019). Sociological Theory: The Last Bastion of Sexism in Sociology. The American Sociologist, 50(3), 402–413.
Miles, S. (2001). Social theory in the real world. Sage Publications.
Mosbah-Natanson, S. (2008). Internationalisme et tradition nationale: Le cas de la constitution de la sociologie française autour de 1900. Revue D’histoire Des Sciences Humaines, 18(1), 35–62.
Mouzelis, N. (1997). In defence of the sociological canon: A reply to David Parker. The Sociological Review, 45(2), 244–253.
Nelson, L. K. (2020). Computational grounded theory: A methodological framework. Sociological Methods & Research, 49(1), 3–42.
Outhwaite, W. (2009). Canon formation in late 20th-century British sociology. Sociology, 43(6), 1029–1045.
Owens, B. R. (2015). ‘The Status of the Classics: A View from Today’ (Comment on Donald Levine, ‘The Variable Status of the Classics in Differing Narratives of the Sociological Tradition’). Journal of Classical Sociology, 15(4), 435–440.
Parker, J., Mars, L., Ransome, P., & Stanworth, H. (Eds.). (2003). Social Theory: A basic tool kit. Palgrave Macmillan.
Platt, J. (2008). British Sociological Textbooks from 1949. Current Sociology, 56(2), 165–182.
Poggi, G. (1996). Lego Quia Inutile: An alternative justification for the classics. In S. P. Turner (Ed.), Social Theory and Sociology (pp. 39–47). Blackwell.
Poggi, G., & Sciortino, G. (2011). Great minds: Encounters with social theory. Stanford Social Science.
Reckwitz, A. (2002). Der soziologische, Kanon’: Disziplinierung oder Grenzüberschreitung? Soziologische Revue, 25(3), 247–257.
Ritzer, G., & Stepnisky, J. (2020). Classical sociological theory. Sage Publications.
Rojas, F. (2017). Theory for the working sociologist. Columbia University Press.
Sanderson, S. K. (2015). Rethinking sociological theory: Introducing and explaining a scientific theoretical sociology. Routledge.
Schneider, M. A. (2006). The theory primer: A sociological guide. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Schrecker, C. (2008). Textbooks and sociology: A Franco—British comparison. Current Sociology, 56(2), 201–219.
Shilling, C., & Mellor, P. A. (2001). The sociological ambition: Elementary forms of social and moral life. Sage Publications.
Silver, D. (2019). Theorizing Is a Practice, You Can Teach It. Canadian Review of Sociology, 56(1), 130–134.
Stinchcombe, A. L. (1982). Should sociologists forget their mothers and fathers. The American Sociologist, 17(1), 2–11.
Stinchcombe, A. L. (1987). Constructing social theories. University of Chicago Press.
Stones, R. (2008). Key sociological thinkers. Palgrave Macmillan.
Swedberg, R. (2014). The Art of Social Theory. Princeton University Press.
Timasheff, N. (1955). Sociological Theory: Its Nature and Growth. Doubleday.
Timasheff, N. (1967). Sociological theory; its nature and growth (3d ed.). Random House.
Tucker, K. H. (2001). Classical social theory: A contemporary approach. Blackwell Publishers.
Turner, J. H. (2012). Theoretical sociology: 1830 to the present. Sage publications.
Van Maanen, J. (2011). Tales of the field: On writing ethnography. University of Chicago Press.
Vine, M. W. (1959). An introduction to sociological theory. Longmans, Green, And Co.
Von Hallberg, R. (Ed.). (1984). Canons. University of Chicago Press.
Funding
This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSRHRC) (Grant Number: 435–2018-0801).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding authors
Ethics declarations
Conflicts of Interests
On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Silver, D., Guzman, C., Parker, S. et al. The Rhetoric of the Canon: Functional, Historicist, and Humanist Justifications. Am Soc 53, 287–313 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-022-09529-0
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-022-09529-0