III. Great expectations, greater disillusions:
sociologists and the universities (1935-39)

 

 

 

When Marett left the presidency in 1934, the Institute of Sociology was extremely successful. As early as 1934, the Annual Report stated that the new Sociological Review issues had been markedly successful and compliments even came from the Unites States to acknowledge ‘the improvement in the qualities of the contribution to the review’ under the new editors. As a result, an increase in the circulation of the Review was already beginning to show by the end of the year.[1]

 

The Report for 1935 further congratulated itself of the new attention given in many papers to some of the statistical articles published in the Review, which ‘being more widely read’ was ‘gaining a position of authority among sociological periodicals’ despite remaining the only one in existence in Britain at the time. 1935 was especially notable for the Institute because of a successful series of conferences it held at King’s College, London, in September with the International Student Service to deal with the relationship between social sciences.[2]

 

The conference, set up in 1935 and again in 1936, became an essential platform of discussion no longer between sociologists only, but with academics from other disciplines competing with sociology for their academic boundaries. The conference was an especially good showcase for the Institute to boost its academic audience, and to emphasise the fact that it was no longer an unconventional ‘common sense’ practice. It could now claim to a science in its own right as T. H. Marshall, who had been a reader in sociology since 1930 at the LSE himself, contended in front of rather distrustful academic rivals:

 

Sociology emerges as a science in its own right. That is one of the striking facts about this conference. Last year [after the first conference] sociology seemed to be a poor relation of the old-established subjects, or even a changeling with no right to a place in the family at all. People asked, almost with a sneer, ‘what is sociology ?’ and were manifestly dissatisfied with the answers they received. […] It is not simply a name denoting the aggregate of the whole group of social studies. Nor is it a product of the common sense and reflective introspection of armchair philosophers reposing in their studies.[3]

 

The ‘old-established subjects’ in universities, whose interest is to make a new discipline always appear redundant or superfluous, such as History, usually considered the claims of sociology too wide, and thus illegitimate. Defending their own boundaries, the well-established disciplines remained to be convinced by the Institute that sociology was not only legitimate but also had academically necessary.[4]

 

To help with the new challenge of convincing universities Ernest Barker was asked to succeed to R. R. Marett as the President of the Institute in 1934. Barker, a Professor of Political Science in Cambridge since 1927 at the time, seemed rather reluctant at first to participate in the Sociological Review although he quite keenly accepted to become the Institute’s new president when Farquharson approached him.[5]

Barker had had little connections with the Institute or even with sociology prior to becoming their new president. The relations he entertained with Farquharson were good, although not as friendly as with Marett previously.[6]

 

Barker’s unexpected commitment to the Institute seemed to come from the feeling that he shared the same lot as sociologists with his own chair of Political Science then largely dominated in Cambridge: ‘I always felt that a Professor of Political Science stood somehow outside the circle as a non descript sort of creature who hovered on the confines of different studies without any fixed or certain allegiance’, he explained in his autobiography. In the inter-war period, Political Science, just like Sociology, was still a marginal science which attracted only a minority of students away from prestigious competing disciplines, History and Economics.[7]

 

Besides this natural sympathy for the lot of sociologists, Baker especially enjoyed the opportunity to promote his own work in Political Science through the Institute, just like Marett did with social anthropology before him. As a disciple of Aristotle Barker had always dreamt of gathering a ‘Lyceum’ of students devoted to his Art in Cambridge; in 1934 the Institute was finally his chance.[8]

 

On the other hand, Farquharson admitted he had cautiously chose Barker to suit the Institute’s needs too. The marriage was made of reason more than of sympathy. Farquharson never hid that his acceptance of the Presidency would specially ‘help the plan upon which I have set [his] heart; namely, the establishment of this Institute in a thoroughly stable and influential position during the next few years’.[9]

 

Given the increasing success of the Institute in 1935, this plan actually took an even more dramatic turn. Farquharson boldly suggested to Marett that his support could now ‘give a real impetus towards the establishment of a department of sociology which would not be swallowed up by other faculties’ in Oxford.[10]

 

For Farquharson, it seemed that time was ripe for this since sociology could now rely on a strong methodological basis provided by the survey method, a professional discipline, and specifically British contribution to sociology, as he pointed out in his sketch for a curriculum:

 

Such a course would not only pay attention to sociological theories (such as those of Durkheim, Weber, Comte, Le Play & Spencer) but would put special emphasis on the methodology required, on the sociological approach to contemporary social problems and on the amount of materials that is available for their interpretation (for example, “Recent Social Trends”, Booth’s Survey, The Merseyside Survey, etc.). [11]

 

Most important, sociology had evinced some intellectual autonomy relatively to the well-established competing disciplines such as history, biology or psychology at the 1935 conference. In spite of his devoted commitment to sociology, it is not clear whether Marett favoured the idea of an autonomous department of sociology in universities ; and at any event he never answered to Farquharson’s suggestion.

 

Within the university in Oxford, the situation was no longer specially favourable to the emergence of a department of sociology in the 1930s, given the competition already raging around the PPE degree and between economics, social anthropology and geography to secure an academic autonomy for themselves. In this battle for autonomy, the sociologists from the Institute lacked any serious point of entry into the major universities, thus of the institutional leverage necessary to promote a new discipline, and seemed to arrive a bit too late.[12]

 

The academic distrust to sociology, Barker recalled, remained prevalent among universities not only on Idealist intellectual grounds but also for academic strategy. A scheme to found a Social and Political Studies Tripos in Cambridge had already failed in 1930, in spite of being put forward by the Professor of Moral Philosophy at the time, E. Sorley. The reason for the failure, he explained, was that

 

neither historians nor economists, nor lawyers nor philosophers, wanted a dubious competitor, which was all the more dubious because it might be attractive and seductive to the young. […] All will unite in thinking but little of a fresh pattern [the new Tripos] which is anyhow newfangled and may possibly be a rival.[13]

 

Sociology was not only still not regarded as a serious, but dubious, academic competitor, by these more prestigious subjects. Many hurdles thus remained to the furtherance of sociology in universities: the Institute not only had to fight its way into universities against the well-established disciplines, without adequate institutional means, but it seems that the president himself denied that sociology had legitimate claims as a social science.

 

Contrary to Marett’s previous dedication to promote sociology as a pure ‘human science’, Barker had at least warned Farquharson in advance that he was himself quite reluctant to consider sociology’s claims as legitimate:

 

I don’t see how any ‘science’ of social life can be other than an attempt to analyse and understand. To go beyond analysis & understanding, into the region of ‘art’ and advice – truly it is… what generous spirits will always want ; but, alas, they will never be listened to by those who are ‘doing’ things ; and if they were, any scientific or ‘artistic’ control of social life is a thing which, on the whole, I don’t want. I like the multitudinous diversity of private and voluntary endeavour[14].

 

What Barker distrusted in sociology was obviously the temptation of social determinism : sociology was the natural enemy of individual action because its first assumption was that society was liable to a rational investigation, that is, of control. A ‘human’ science could clash with individual ethics. Thus it is not that Barker, as an Idealist, was adverse to any kind of sociology, as long as it would restrict itself to ‘an attempt to analyse and understand’, i.e. a philosophy instead of a science. This however was precisely what L. Hobhouse, a philosopher himself, had had to refute and come to terms with: sociology could not remain another mere speculative moral philosophy if it intended to become a new department of knowledge.[15]

 

Barker repeatedly contended at the conferences, although he chaired them, that a positive science of society was to him ‘not a possible human achievement’. Hence, his ideal vision of sociology implicitly debunked the Institute’s own claims for a scientific version of sociology:

 

A science of society… ought to be a normative science of conduct… but at the present these is no clear sign of the development of such sciences : what their methods and aims might be remains still a matter for speculation. Consequently, sociology… tends to look like a specialised branch of philosophy, comparable to aesthetic. A sociologist becomes a philosopher who has given special attention to the problems of society.[16]

 

Making the sociologist a philosopher was tantamount to declaring the Institute’s efforts to secure as a scientific discipline null and void, suggesting there was still ‘no clear sign of the development of such sciences’. Against Marett’s firm conviction that sociology had a ‘recognised place among the human sciences’, Barker’s presidency reversed this position almost completely.[17]

 

The problem of ‘what we mean by sociology’ was inevitably resurfacing with competing disciplines. An internal unity had been painstakingly found between the competing schools of sociology through the Institute of Sociology, yet this definition had not prevailed in universities. Academics in universities, and philosophers above all, remained to be convinced by the non-academic sociologists they were not merely philosophers themselves – but were entitled to an autonomous, scientific and academic discipline. The real conflict between universities and non-academic sociologists laid in the opposition between a science and a philosophical study of society, which would determine whether sociology should be granted an autonomous department or integrated as a sub-branch of another.

 

Where did sociology stand? The problem was that the answer was blur. As Barker put it, sociology reached in ‘human philosophy’, i.e. ethics, but partly belonged to ‘the domain of biological sciences’, i.e. of physics or biology, too. As a ‘third culture’, between literature and science, Sociology was in principle a natural science that overlapped with the human realm, relating to philosophy. Because of this hybrid form, it was neither regarded as a pure natural science like biology, nor as a sheer literary study and would nonetheless encounter both oppositions in academia.[18]

 

The academic tradition thus tended to move sociology towards an anthropological study in Oxford. Against the definition of sociology as a social science, many would rather follow E. Barker when he defined it as a social ‘study’ close to anthropology:

 

Sociology means a study or consideration of the behaviour of men in society [not a science]. […] We may say that Sociology is that branch or aspect of Anthropology which is concerned with the particular phenomena presented to our observation by man when he lives and acts in any form of society.[19]

 

Barker was obviously playing an ambiguous game : he spearheading the Institute of Sociology after 1935, and yet he was praising the non-scientific definition of sociology as ‘an aspect of Anthropology’, something that was quite alien to the non-academic sociologists. His change of mindset may have something to do with the establishment in 1935 of a lectureship in ‘African Sociology’ in Oxford, as part of the Department of Anthropology, thanks to a Rockefeller Foundation endowment. Since the appointment of E. Evans-Pritchard, then involved in research in Africa, to it, the definition of sociology as a branch of anthropology started to prevail.[20]

 

Evans-Pritchard had occupied a chair of sociology at the King Fuad I University of Cairo between 1932 and 1934, although he acknowledged that the definition of his subject was unclear (he recalled that he did not know what a sociologist meant when first appointed in Egypt, until he was informed that ‘by a sociologist they meant a philosopher’). Patrick Geddes himself had also occupied a chair of ‘Civics and Sociology’ specially created for him at the University of Bombay, India between 1914 and 1919, owing to a suggestion of the then Governor of Madras.[21]

 

By 1935, it seemed that a second definition of sociology had matured in the British Empire, as a branch of social anthropology, and returned to British universities thanks to the institutional support of the colonial administration. The recent development of social anthropology in Oxford literally stole much of the sociological heritage and support, R. R. Marett being appointed to a professorship of social anthropology in 1936, while gathering a more consensual intellectual and institutional support than sociology.[22]

 

In this climate of distrust towards sociology, social anthropology was often explicitly constructed as a defence of the ‘nobler’ facets of human life, as a more acceptable version of ‘human sciences’. It was then too late for the Institute of Sociology to counter the claims of the emerging discipline against its own matured definition of sociology when Oxford first introduced it as a specialist branch of anthropology after 1935. E. Evans-Pritchard insisted in defining social anthropology as ‘historical sociology’, blurring the definitions.[23]

 

1935 was thus a turning point for sociology, unveiling how precarious the allegiance of many to the Institute remained. By 1937 the Institute started to lose most of its academic support due to the emergence of new rival disciplines that it ironically helped by fostering the debate between social sciences: the same year, the chair of social anthropology created in Oxford was bestowed upon A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, whereas the chair of social biology created at the LSE was to L. Hogben.[24]

 

In 1937, A. Carr-Saunders also left the Editorial Board of the Review to become the new director of the LSE and Tom Marshall started Mass Observation with David Glass, an organisation increasingly vying with the Institute. By 1938, the creation of an ‘Institute of Economic and Social Research’ around the Keynesians in Cambridge caused a deeper concern to Barker that the identity of the Institute of Sociology would now be mistaken.[25]

 

Barker, who was to retire in 1938, seemed relatively unable to help with practical and financial matters which he was keen to delegate to the Secretary, A. Farquharson. At the same time, he expressed the wish to remain the President of the Institute of Sociology over his normal tenure, something that the constitution would not allow. Barker found an apathetic successor, G. Gooch, Historian from Cambridge, from which no correspondence apparently survived.[26]

 

The fate of sociology as a definite non-academic science seemed sealed by then. Despite a temporary financial settlement, and much to Barker’s dismay, the Institute of Sociology could not afford to remain in London in early 1939 and had to retire to a country centre in Malvern, Worcestershire. After the greatest expectations, it seemed that a whole quest had ultimately failed.[27]