SYA 3010 Sociological
Theory:
William Graham Sumner
Wednesday, March
23, 2016
© 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith
Bolender
1
William Graham Sumner
References
Dressler, David. 1973. Sociology: The Study of Human Interaction. 2d ed. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf.
Hess, Beth B., Elizabeth W. Markson, and Peter J. Stein. 1993. Sociology. 4th ed. New
York: Macmillan Publishing Company.
Perdue, William D. 1986. Sociological Theory: Explanation, Paradigm, and Ideology. Palo
Alto, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company.
Sumner, William Graham. [1883] 1978. What Social Classes Owe Each Other. Caldwell,
ID: Caxton.
Sumner, William Graham. [1906] 1967. “Folkways and Mores.” Pp. 90-100 in The
Substance of Sociology: Codes, Conduct and Consequences, edited by Ephraim H.
Mizruchi. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Sumner, William Graham. 1919. Forgotten Man and Other Essays. Edited by A. G. Keller.
Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries.
Sumner, William Graham. 1963. Social Darwinism: Selected Essays of William Graham
Sumner. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Wednesday, March
23, 2016
© 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith
Bolender
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William Graham Sumner
 1840-1910
 Born in Paterson, NJ
 Ordained in the
Episcopal Church
 Later, taught at
Yale University
 The first to teach
sociology in the
United States
(Perdue 1986:62)
Wednesday, March
23, 2016
© 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith
Bolender
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William Graham Sumner:
Social Darwinism
He was influenced by the works of Darwin
and Spencer
Impressed by the advances in biological
science, he developed an evolutionary
view of society complete with the use of
biological analogies.
(Perdue 1986:63-64)
Wednesday, March
23, 2016
© 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith
Bolender
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William Graham Sumner:
Social Darwinism
For Sumner, the social world, as the
natural, was an orderly creation obeying
the prime direction of all life: a struggle
in which the fit survive and the
unfit perish.
 He believed in individualism
 A staunch defender of Spencer’s noninterference
 An opponent of public welfare
(Perdue 1986:64)
Wednesday, March
23, 2016
© 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith
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William Graham Sumner:
Social Darwinism
The sociologist is often asked if he wants to kill off
certain classes of troublesome and bewildered
persons. No such inference follows from any
sound sociological doctrine, but it is allowed to
infer, as to a great many persons and classes,
that it would have been better for society and
would have involved no pain to them, if they
had never been born.
(Sumner 1963:25)
Wednesday, March
23, 2016
© 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith
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William Graham Sumner:
Social Darwinism
The social variety of natural selection requires no apology,
for it is the method by which a perfect hierarchy takes
shape and the unfit wither away. Sumner wrote under
the influence of Spencer’s principle of noninterference
when he argued that social classes (especially the
successful) owe not a thing to others (Sumner [1883]
1978). Hence, the divergent conditions of the fit
and the unfit do not call for intervention. For the
former student of theology, the drunkard in the gutter,
the pauper without a loaf, the great masters of industry,
and the millionaires have each earned their station.
Wednesday, March
23, 2016
(Perdue 1986:65)
© 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith
Bolender
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William Graham Sumner:
Social Darwinism
Within the process of societal evolution, Sumner
discerned two basic regularities: the law of
population and the law of diminishing
returns. Taken together, these mean that
population increase is ultimately limited by the
level of environmental resources and further
that the labor of workers may produce more
from these resources but never in proportion to
population growth.
(Perdue 1986:65)
Wednesday, March
23, 2016
© 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith
Bolender
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William Graham Sumner:
Social Darwinism
... overpopulation represents an often
unrecognized opportunity, or the “struggle
for existence and the competition of life
are intense where the pressure of
population are great. This competition
draws out the highest achievement.”
(Sumner 1963:23)
Wednesday, March
23, 2016
© 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith
Bolender
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William Graham Sumner:
Social Darwinism
The Forgotten Man
Persons A and B decided how to intervene
to help Person D with a social ill. In
solving the problem with Person D, Person
C has to alter his/her life without much
choice in order to implement the solution
for the social ill.
Wednesday, March
23, 2016
© 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith
Bolender
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William Graham Sumner:
Social Darwinism
There is an almost invincible prejudice that
a man who gives a dollar to a beggar is
generous and kind-hearted, but that a
man who refuses the beggar and puts the
dollar in a savings bank is stingy and
mean.
Wednesday, March
23, 2016
© 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith
Bolender
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William Graham Sumner:
Social Darwinism
Nature’s remedies against vice are terrible. She
removes the victims without pity. A drunkard in
the gutter is just where he ought to be,
according to the fitness and tendency of things.
Nature has set up on him the process of decline
and dissolution by which she removes things
which have survived their usefulness. Gambling
and other less mentionable vices carry their own
penalties with them.
Wednesday, March
23, 2016
© 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith
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William Graham Sumner:
Social Darwinism
Competition, therefore, is a law of nature.
Nature is entirely neutral; she submits to
him who most energetically and resolutely
assails her.
Wednesday, March
23, 2016
© 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith
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William Graham Sumner:
Social Darwinism
Let it be understood that we cannot go
outside of this alternative; liberty,
inequality, survival of the fittest; nonliberty, equality, survival of the unfittest.
The former carries society forward and
favors all its best members; the latter
carries society downwards and favors all
its worst members.
Wednesday, March
23, 2016
© 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith
Bolender
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William Graham Sumner:
Social Darwinism
What we mean by liberty is civil liberty, or
liberty under law; and this means the
guarantees of law that a man shall not be
interfered with while using his own
powers for his own welfare.
Who does this sound like?
Wednesday, March
23, 2016
© 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith
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William Graham Sumner:
Normative Order
In an examination of standards and expectations, Sumner
sought to explain normative order, and in so doing he
examined the question of social control. He began in
characteristic Darwinist fashion by arguing that
persistent group habits and customs are shaped by:
 Underlying instincts (unlearned behavior), all of which
reflect the common motivation of self-advantage
 The inherent predisposition to define behavior primarily
in terms of pleasure and pain.
These underlying biologically based impulses lead to
behavior that prove to be more or less adaptive.
Wednesday, March
23, 2016
© 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith
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William Graham Sumner:
Normative Order
Through trial and error, Sumner argued,
human beings learn which behavior works
best to maximize pleasure, minimize
pain, meet instinctual needs, and
recurring behavioral norms that contribute
to the struggle for existence, he termed
folkways. They are backed by weak
sanctions and emotions.
Wednesday, March
23, 2016
© 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith
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William Graham Sumner:
Normative Order
When standards and expectations for behavior acquire
ethical or philosophical content, they are then raised to
another plane. Known as mores [pronounced “moreays”], such norms include the power to “make anything
right.” Mores set the limits for ideas, faith, and tastes
and are founded on strong sanctions and sentiments. As
such, they carry taboos or punishments that follow
violations. Mores provide the moral basis by which a
society coerces individual members. And for Sumner,
they change only in accordance with the needs of the
societal organism.
Wednesday, March
23, 2016
(Perdue 1986:66)
© 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith
Bolender
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William Graham Sumner:
Normative Order
Folkways are not considered important
enough to be strictly enforced. No court
will punish the child who eats with her
fingers. Violations of folkways are typically
handled informally, through words and
gestures of disapproval.
(Hess, Markson, and Stein 1993:62)
Wednesday, March
23, 2016
© 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith
Bolender
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William Graham Sumner:
Normative Order
 As a general rule, folkways come into a society without planning on
the part of its members.
 Folkways enter the culture when most members of the group to
whom they apply have come to accept them as customary and
appropriate.
 Since many folkways are introduced into the culture without
planning, their sources are likely to be obscure.
 Folkways are transmitted informally by word of mouth, by behavior,
through mass media, and in other way.
 In the main, folkways are informally enforced.
 Although folkways are expected or required behavior, some are
more arbitrary than others.
 Folkways are comparatively durable.
Wednesday, March
23, 2016
© 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith
Bolender
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William Graham Sumner:
Normative Order
 Although folkways tend to be durable, they sometimes
disappear from a culture.
 The regulatory function of folkways determines much of
individual behavior.
 Folkways make it possible for an individual to achieve a
feeling of identification with other members of a group.
 The individual responds not only to the generally
accepted folkways of his society, but also to those of the
subcultural groups with which he identifies himself.
(Dressler 1973:137-141)
Wednesday, March
23, 2016
© 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith
Bolender
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William Graham Sumner:
Normative Order
Mores are norms that cover moral and ethical
behavior, more crucial to social order than the
folkways and therefore are more severally
enforced. For example, the obligation to help a
relative, to respect authority, and to maintain
community standards of decency are moral
rules that bring public condemnation and scorn
on the violator. These reactions, though still
informal, are powerful shapers of behavior.
(Hess, Markson, and Stein 1993:62)
Wednesday, March
23, 2016
© 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith
Bolender
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William Graham Sumner:
Normative Order
…the mores of one historical period may not be the same
at another date. For example, it was the duty of a
Puritan parent to beat the evil out of a child, whereas
the same behavior could be considered abusive today.
In the case of premarital sexuality, many of today’s
college students [nationally] would have been expelled
just a few decades ago or most certainly placed in the
stocks of a New England village in the 18th century.
(Hess, Markson, and Stein 1993:62)
Wednesday, March
23, 2016
© 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith
Bolender
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William Graham Sumner:
Normative Order
Another way to view Sumner’s normative
order:
 Permitted = Folkway
 Preferred = More
 Required = Law
(Dressler, 1973)
Wednesday, March
23, 2016
© 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith
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William Graham Sumner:
Normative Order
Ethnocentrism
Ethnocentrism is the technical name for this view of things
in which one’s own group is the center of
everything, and all others are scaled and rated with
reference to it. Folkways correspond to it to cover both
the inner and the outer relation. Each group nourishes
its own pride and vanity, boasts itself superior, exalts its
own divinities, and looks with contempt on outsiders.
Each group thinks its own folkways the only right ones,
and if it observes the other groups have other folkways,
these excite its scorn.
(Sumner [1906] 1967:93)
Wednesday, March
23, 2016
© 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith
Bolender
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William Graham Sumner:
Normative Order
Ethnocentrism is the tendency to judge
other cultures by one’s own.
Ethnocentrism was once defined as the
belief that the “axis of the world runs
through my home town.”
Ethnocentric attitudes often have to do
with race, nationality, religion, and the
family, but they are not limited to these.
Wednesday, March
23, 2016
(Dressler 1973:88-90)
© 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith
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William Graham Sumner:
Normative Order
Ethnocentrism is based on two groups:
In-group (we)
Out-group (they)
Wednesday, March
23, 2016
© 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith
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William Graham Sumner:
Normative Order
Positives of Ethnocentrism
Loyalty to the group, sacrifice for
it...brotherhood within…
…contributes to the survival of a culture
Negatives of Ethnocentrism
Encourages conformity, discourages
interpenetrating by other cultural groups, and
justifies and perpetuates the status quo.
(Dressler 1973:90-91)
Wednesday, March
23, 2016
© 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith
Bolender
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William Graham Sumner:
Normative Order
Real world
examples and
applications of
ethnocentrism.
Wednesday, March
23, 2016
© 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith
Bolender
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