Abstract
This paper analyses, on the basis of the available archival documents, the early career of Edward A. Shils (1910–1995), especially in the period around 1950, as well as the changing expectations in the field of sociology in this period more generally. It starts with an overview of Shils’ translations of German texts, especially of Karl Mannheim and Max Weber, and the way in which he benefited from the growing reputational standing of these authors. The focus next shifts to Shils’ transatlantic presence, at both the University of Chicago and the London School of Economics, and the choices he made in this regard. Afterwards we look at his work with Talcott Parsons at Harvard University and the successful last-minute claim to the co-editorship of Toward a General Theory of Action. In the concluding section, it is emphasized that Shils was captivated by the perception of his own life and that of others in terms of a career trajectory – with its specific successes and failures.
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As almost all of the Shils material in the LSE Archives is included in one staff file and as the voluminous Shils papers in Chicago still need to be inventoried, ordered and classified in a systematic way, it does not make much sense to refer to specific archival locations. Throughout the paper, I will therefore focus upon identifying the sender, the receiver(s) and the date of the different archived communications. I should add that I have edited the extant documents for spelling and typographical errors, but preserved all other characteristics, such as punctuation and underlining, in order to convey specific emphases in the communicated messages without distracting attention to the form in which they were expressed.
Some renewed interest in Shils’ writings can nowadays be observed across the social sciences (e.g., Adair-Toteff & Turner, 2019; Schneider, 2016). To my knowledge, however, only three studies on Shils have hitherto made use of the existing archival sources. MacLeod (2016) relied on some Chicago documents (esp. related to the journal Minerva, which was very much Shils’ journal); Husbands (2019, pp. 174–184) used Shils’ personal staff file at the LSE in his history of Sociology at the LSE; Turner (2019) used small parts of the Chicago archive for the introduction to an anthology dedicated to the memory of Shils. These studies are very informative, but also pursue other interests.
Later this version was also used for a new German edition of Ideologie und Utopie, which now also included the German translation of Wirth’s preface to the English edition (Mannheim, 1952).
It might have been a way to pay for the rent. According to the US Census of 1940, Shils and his first wife, Ruth Almond, lived in with the Fraenkels in an apartment at Kimbark Avenue, Hyde Park, Chicago. Ernst Fraenkel, who was of German-Jewish origins, had immigrated with his wife to the US in 1939.
For a discussion of Parsons’ reading of von Schelting’s interpretation of Weber’s work, see Adair-Toteff (2022).
Shils must in the late-1930s or early-1940s not only have shared his Weber translations with Parsons, but also with Gerth and some other scholars (see Oakes & Vidich, 1999, p. 162).
Apart from the sections on law and society, the translation also included some other sections, which were, according to Shils, necessary to understand the texts on law and society. This volume includes Shils’ translation of Weber’s Soziologische Grundbegriffe, which is the section made available to Parsons for the translation of The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, but Shils (again) adds that he did not want to rival with the translation of this text by Henderson and Parsons (Weber, 1947, 1954, p. 1).
The series itself was planned in 1939–1940. The first volume of the series would become General Theory of Law and State by the Austrian philosopher Hans Kelsen; it was first published in 1945.
The Committee on Social Thought was (and is) located in the Division of the Social Sciences. Robert Redfield served from 1934 to 1946 as Dean of the Division of the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago. He was an anthropologist, but, not unimportantly, he was also the son in law of the sociologist Robert Park.
Ralph W. Tyler succeeded Redfield as Dean of the Division of the Social Sciences in Chicago.
Sir Alexander Carr-Saunders was the Director of the LSE, Morris Ginsburg was the senior Professor in the LSE Department of Sociology.
Even its Chancellor intervened with a telegraph to his peer in London: “Most important to us that Shils should be here by May tenth should be deeply grateful for your cooperation” (Hutchins to Parry, 2 April 1949). But he received a polite rejection as well. “We never anticipated that the University of Chicago would press Dr. Shils to take up teaching duties in Chicago during the English academic year” (Carr-Saunders to Hutchins, 14 April 1949).
Some also thought that this third option could constitute a solution for the tensions which had been building up between the universities of London and Chicago. “In my own mind it is pretty clear that Shils is likely to get an offer from Oxford, and that if he does he will accept it. All things considered I think that this might be the happiest arrangement for all concerned” (Carr-Saunders to Nef, 13 July 1949).
Goldhamer was a social psychologist, who worked at the University of Chicago from 1946 to 1950 (Abbott, 1999, p. 36). He had been a student of Mannheim at the LSE, and Mannheim had recommended him to Wirth (Mannheim to Wirth, 5 June 1934). A paper in the American Journal of Sociology, which Goldhamer and Shils had co-authored (Goldhamer & Shils, 1939), was included by Shils in his application for the readership at the LSE (Shils to Henderson, 5 April 1946).
Such sarcasm can also be found in unexpected places. Burawoy (2005) has nicely commented on a confidential letter of ‘recommendation’ that he once had written for him by Shils (then at the University of Cambridge) and that was, unbeknownst to Burawoy at the time, obviously designed to sabotage his career chances. The Shils Archive contains several similar letters of ‘recommendation’. But it is mistaken, as, for example, Burawoy (2005) and Calhoun and Van Antwerpen (2008) do, to interpret such underhanded tactics as a way to keep ‘the left’ or ‘the heterodox views’ out of academia. Shils used these tactics irrespective of the political outlook or the academic status of the individuals he wrote such letters for.
Shils probably did not inform the LSE about his marriage problems. His argument that he had “to settle up his affairs” was qualified in the margins of the letter as “nonsense” (ibid.). Some financial concerns do become visible in the letters of Ruth Almond, although not to the degree implied in Shils’ messages to LSE officials in August and September 1949. It may be added that Saul Bellow, the famous writer who spent much of his life in Chicago, molded some characters in his semi-autobiographical novels after individuals he knew, including Shils. If the character of Frazer in Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March (Below, 1953) is derived from Shils, then Shils might indeed have faced some financial problems in this period of time.
Ruth A. Almond was the daughter of Russian-Jewish and Ukrainian-Jewish immigrants. She was a younger sister of Gabriel A. Almond, the political scientist, who started, like Shils, his career at the University of Chicago in the 1930s. Edward Shils and Gabriel Almond are in the scholarly literature at times seen to have shared the same ideological view on the modernization of society (e.g., Gilman, 2003).
This second marriage would end in a divorce as well. The Shils Archive in Chicago also contains love letters from the mid-1970s from Katherine Murphy. She was at that time not only his secretary in Chicago, but would also accompany him to Cambridge and the Netherlands (during his fellowship at NIAS) as his secretary (!).
His expertise was seen to be in American sociology with its emphasis on empirical research. His expertise on German sociology was also acknowledged. “As to the work next session I would suggest that you give us a course on contemporary American Sociology and its research methods. This would be most valuable to us… Do you think you could give a short course on selected German Sociologists?” (Ginsburg to Shils, 31 July 1946).
A similar argument can be made for other sociologists with strong European and American connections, including Louis Wirth, who became the first President of the International Sociological Association in 1949 (but who died in 1952 during his presidency). For a broader discussion of the structures of internationalism in the social sciences and humanities and their journals, see Vanderstraeten and Eykens (2018).
The Shils Archive contains many letters of scholars for whom English was not their native language, and who requested his scholars, who requested his help with the publication of the results of their work in English journals or edited books.
Shils later maintained that he had been a reviewer of this paper and claimed credit for its content: “I think that my best contribution of that period was hidden in Talcott Parsons’ essay on social stratification that I read, ostensibly anonymously, for the American Journal of Sociology to which he had submitted it for publication. I wrote a very long report on this manuscript … [and Parsons] changed the paper very markedly in accordance with my suggestions so that the paper that appeared in the American Journal of Sociology was a rather different paper from the paper as it was originally submitted” (Shils, 2006, p. 53–54).
For an elaborate overview of Parsons’ rise to influence in this period, see Gerhardt (2002).
Clyde Kluckhohn had himself studied in Europe (Oxford and Vienna) in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
This was a high salary for a relatively young scholar, especially because he combined it with his income from the LSE and the University of Chicago. An overview of salary and tax withholdings provided by the University of Chicago shows that Shils received $1.833 for his new appointment in the Committee on Social Thought for the period from October 1949 to December 1949 (Lincicome to Shils, 26 Febr. 1951).
But, as we have seen, Shils would only resign from his full-time position at the LSE on September 30, 1949. His letter of resignation was dated September 26, 1949.
Two seminar groups were actually formed (see Parsons & Shills, 1951, p. v), one with the external staff of the Carnegie project and the ‘inner circle’ group in the Department, which was mainly composed of senior members of the faculty sympathetic to its program, and one with the ‘outsiders group’ (to which all members of the Department not included in the insiders group were invited). For detailed discussions of the way in which Parsons maintained the pretense of inclusiveness within the Department of Social Relations, see Nichols (1998, 2019).
Parsons was fond of the way in which the psychologist James Olds (a PhD student in the Department of Social Relations) had rewritten the second part: “He really did a Gargantuan job on the personality chapter, and I think improved it immensely” (Parsons to Shils, 8 March 1951). Parsons therefore communicated to Shils that it would be just to change the authorship of the second part to “by you and myself and with the assistance of James Olds rather than simply acknowledging in the Preface that he has done an editorial job” (ibid.).
The epilogue would become one of Shils’ best-known essays in the later phase of his career. It is also the title piece of the third volume of his collected essays (Shils, 1980).
But there is no evidence which indicates that Parsons considered engaging Shils as a collaborator in his project on The American Academic System (despite Shils’ work on universities). The main outcome of this project, the monograph titled The American University, was co-authored by Parsons and Platt (1973). Whereas Neil J. Smelser had been approached as co-author, he would finally contribute a separate epilogue to the monograph, which is fairly critical of the analyses presented by Parsons and Platt (see Vanderstraeten 2015).
A third statement, included in his application package itself, was by Louis Wirth. Shils also mentioned two other academic referees, namely Hans Speier and Harold Lasswell, but his personal file at the LSE does not include their statements. They might not have submitted their statements (on time).
Theodore W. Schultz served as chair of the Department of Economics of the University of Chicago from 1946 to 1961. Shils and Nef (who was himself an economic historian) had probably counted on the support of Frank H. Knight, an influential member of the Department of Economics, who had been involved in the establishment of the Committee on Social Thought. Knight was familiar with the work of Max Weber – to the extent that he corresponded with Marianne Weber about the translation of (parts of) Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Weber to Knight, 13 March 1937).
Philip M. Hauser served as chairman of the Department of Sociology from 1956 to 1965.
This self-presentation is often repeated in the literature on Shils. To quote an example: “If anyone rose above the usual deficiencies of American sociological theory—its monolingualism, limited general literacy, ignorance of history and philosophy, obsession with local disciplinary status hierarchies, faddishness, political naivete, intellectual subservience to European thinkers, reductive thinking in terms of brand-name “perspectives,” and its self-abasing craving for respect from quantitative sociologists—it was Shils” (Turner, 1999, p. 127). But, rather than repeating this image, one should ask why Shils time and again presented himself in such terms.
The latter story is repeated on several websites with biographical information about Shils, e.g. https://biography.yourdictionary.com/edward-albert-shils. But in his own autobiographical fragment (Shils, 2006, p. 40), he lists a few sociology courses in which he took part.
This is not to say that Shils did not identify himself with the interdisciplinary Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, quite to the contrary. Although the Shils Archive contains evidence of conflicts with several colleagues, Shils generally regarded the ‘interstitial academy’ of the Committee as a (potentially) very productive environment for scientific work (see Isaac, 2012; Nichols, 2019). He was also quite active in bringing people of diverse and ‘complex’ (i.e. multi-disciplinary) intellectual background to the University of Chicago. In this regard, he could build on the reputation he had already established in his early career.
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The author would like to thank Chris Husbands, Larry Nichols and the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their helpful and generous feedback.
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Vanderstraeten, R. Making a Career in Academia: The Case of Edward Shils and Mid-Twentieth Century Sociology. Am Soc (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-022-09553-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-022-09553-0