Two sciences, a common concern : sociology in France and Britain (1895-1935)
1
Two sciences, a common concern:
a comparative insight in the emergence of sociology in France and Britain (1895-1935).
Abstract
This paper deals with the so-called absence of academic sociology in Britain in the early 20th century.
Continental historians usually assume that it was a failure, whereas British historians usually argue
that sociology was unnecessary. We show that the two conceptions coexist : sociologists were supporters
of a party in Britain, and thinkers of a system on the continent. Classical sociology only emerged earlier
in the 1890s in France and in Germany as a product of their troubled history at the time, in order to
recreate a social and moral stability under new regimes. Sociology, thriving as an “essentially French
science” led by the durkheimians before WWI was disregarded as inappropriate academically and
intellectually to Britain. In the 1920s, due to unfortunate associations with durkheimism and socialism,
sociology remained taboo in British universities. It was not until the 1930s that a specific version of
sociology started to secure an autonomous existence in universities as a branch of Anthropology,
although focused on the Empire’s needs. We show that, in spite of many differences, both sociologies
remained similarly concerned by modernity.
Introduction.
The history of sociology in England is an interesting case study in itself, and also in the way
the literature deals with it. The usual assumption is that, at a time when thinkers coined a
Two sciences, a common concern : sociology in France and Britain (1895-1935)
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new science called sociology in the late 19th century in Germany and France, sociology did
not emerge accordingly in Great-Britain. By classical, authors usually refer either to an
academic school of sociology in the vein of the Durkheimians in France or to a generation of
connected sociologists like Max Weber, F. Tönnies, G. Simmel in Germany, between 1890 and
1920.
This literature tends to conclude on an intellectual failure of Britain. Although this usually
plays down the importance of Herbert Spencer’s Principles of Sociology (1876-1896) in
England, the consensus prevailing is that sociology, as a distinct academic and intellectual
discipline, was virtually absent in Britain before the 1950s compared to America, Germany,
or France. Much ink has been poured over the topic, and the debate over the so-called
absence of academic sociology in Britain before the 1950s now has a long record in the
literature.
To deal with this abundant literature, it is helpful to draw a dividing line between a first
group of explanations revolving around the intellectual tradition of empiricism and a second
group emphasising the institutional context in England. It will appear that the debate reflects
the opposition between two conceptions of what a sociologist is.
I. Historiography on the history of sociology
The most famous attempt dates back to 1937 when Talcott Parsons, an American sociologist
who had spent a year at the London School of Economics in 1924-25, tried to understand the
sudden demise of English sociology in the 20th century, after the death of H. Spencer in 1903.
Two sciences, a common concern : sociology in France and Britain (1895-1935)
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“’Who now reads Spencer?’, he asks to begin with, ‘Spencer is dead.1’” T. Parsons thought
that although his Principles of Sociology (1876-1896) had been fundamental in the
development of the “positivistic-utilitarian tradition” in 19th century England, his sociology
was overtaken by a strong pessimism and contradictory “socialistic, collectivistic, organic
theories of all sorts” in the 20th century. As Spencer’s sociology would have allegedly been
unable to cope with the new trends of theories of society, according to him he literally fell
into oblivion in the 20th century, and English sociology followed.
The intellectual tradition was brought forward again as an explanation in a famous article by
Noel Annan2 entitled “The curious strength of positivism in English political thought”,
where he argued that English thought was essentially individualistic and rational, thus
hardly consistent with classical sociology. Instead, the dominant tradition of ‘positivism’ in
England – which he debatably equates with individualism – was to be found in classical
economics, not in sociology.
However, from the 1960s, a refreshingly new perspective on the so-called absence of
academic sociology before WWI emerged, necessarily articulating the intellectual tradition to
institutional perspectives. It was pointed out that “it was not so much, or not only, the
intellectual tradition that inhibited sociology in Britain. It was the very system3”: the
empiricist tradition is an interesting, indeed tempting, lead to follow. But it remains a partial
explanation all the more since, as Abrams says, the main problem of British sociology
remained essentially “a problem of manpower4” rather than of a lack of ideas.
Parsons, Talcott. The Structure of Social Action. New York: Free Press, 1949: 3-5.
Annan, Noel G. The Curious Strength of Positivism in English Political Thought, Oxford Univ. Press : London, 1959.
3 Kumar, Krishan. "Sociology and the Englishness of English Social Theory." Sociological Theory 19, no. 1 (2001): 41-64.
4 Abrams, Philip. The Origins of British Sociology, 1834-1914 : An Essay, The Heritage of Sociology. University of Chicago
Press, 1968: 101-143.
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Two sciences, a common concern : sociology in France and Britain (1895-1935)
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In academia, potential recruits for sociology in the 1890s had no incentive to go to
universities, contrary to Germany or France, when politics was open to them and to social
reforms. The growing administration in England at the end of the 19th century offered many
opportunities to experts to put social reform into practice, opportunities which may have
“soaked up many energies which, had they not been there, might have turned to academic
sociology instead5”.
Abrams adds that whereas politics was open to sociology, “universities were closed”. Many
institutional analysts allege that universities had a responsibility in the inchoate state of
sociology by being closed to it well into the 1920s. Little evidence has backed this up so far,
apart from Bulmer’s work on the Laura Spellman Rockefeller Foundation6. The Foundation
indeed offered the University of Cambridge to fund a chair of sociology in 1925, which the
university did not accept. Although the move could have been symbolic enough to further
the cause of academic sociology after 1925, his conclusion shows an enduring indifference
towards sociology – that was not unconscious at the time7 – rather than a clear-cut
opposition to it.
It remains true, S. Collini has shown8, that Idealism was widespread in major universities
among philosophers. For these Idealists, social sciences were an attempt to sacrifice
individual action to Society, and as V. Palmer simply put it in 1927 to explain the reluctance
towards sociology, “in England the individual will probably not be sacrificed for scientific
purposes9.” But Idealism should neither be mistaken for conservatism, a political opinion,
Abrams, 1968: 5.
Bulmer, Martin. Essays on the History of British Sociological Research. Cambridge University Press, 1985: 24.
7 Branford, Victor V. ‘A Survey of Recent and Contemporary Sociology.’, The Sociological Review 18, no. 4 (1926): 315-322
8 Collini, Stefan. "Sociology and Idealism in Britain 1880-1920." European Journal of Sociology, no. XIX (1978): 3-50.
9 Palmer, Vivien M. "Impressions of Sociology in Great Britain." American Journal of Sociology 32, no. 5 (1927): 756-761.
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Two sciences, a common concern : sociology in France and Britain (1895-1935)
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nor for a genuine academic obstruction to the course of sociology. Rather, sociologists did
not seriously contemplate turning academics.
If sociology was not conspicuously present as discipline in academia, at least it existed as a
political practice. English sociologists were committed to party politics and had more interest
in politics than their continental counterparts because their political system seemed to offer
more opportunities of social reforms than anywhere else in Europe. Thus, the absence of
academic sociology should not imply the complete inexistence of a sociological
consciousness as political commonsense, as Hawthorn summaries:
“There is… no need to be especially surprised by the lack of a flourishing self-styled sociology in
England before 1939. And there is no need to invoke the ‘empiricist temper of English thought’ or to
invent conspiratorial enemies like the old universities at Oxford and Cambridge to explain it. […]
Sociology was virtually absent in England as an intellectually and academically distinctive pursuit
because it was virtually everywhere present as… mere commonsense10.”
In spite of this, the lack of a distinctive academic sociology is often taken to represent, as L.
Goldman emphasised, “a more wide-ranging failure of national imagination […] that
exemplifies the many lacunae in British intellectual life11”, assuming that the emergence of an
academic sociology was a normal feature in European powers in the 1900-1920s.
Goldman boldly reversed the argument by arguing that the presence of an academic
sociology in France or in Germany was far from being normal. Instead, the scarcity of
sociology in universities before the 1950s should be considered a positive sign for England
because, according to him, “academic sociology [had] its origins in political frustration12” on
the continent.
Hawthorn, Geoffrey. Enlightenment and Despair : A History of Sociology. Cambridge University Press, 1976: 170.
Goldman, Lawrence. "A Peculiarity of the English? The Social Science Association and the Absence of Sociology in
Nineteenth-Century Britain." Past and Present, no. 114 (1987): 133-171.
12 Goldman, 1987: 171
10
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The absence of sociology in Britain could prove its political supremacy instead13. German
sociologists emerging in the Verein für Sozialpolitik and French sociologists around the
Année Sociologique in France in the 1890s would have turned academics to carry out reforms
by proxy from university chairs, party politics unwelcoming their expertise:
“Sociology… in England ... was virtually everywhere present as part of the general liberal and liberalsocialist consciousness [whereas in France] there was virtually no sustained consideration of social
reform [and] the responsibility for this lies as much with the intellectuals as with… the fact was that
sociologists had no forum beyond the seminar and arguments about school curricula 14.”
Instead of being a normal feature on the continent, perhaps the emergence of academic
sociology between 1890 and 1920 proved the failure of the French and German politicians to
be either eager or aware to propose reforms – and the sociologists’ tendency to focus on
theoretical squabbles there contrary to Britain, as Hawthorn seems to point out.
But this association between sociology and party politics made in Britain was not familiar to
continental sociologists. Max Weber and Emile Durkheim, the figureheads of early 20th
century sociology, had indeed a sustained interest in politics. The former took part in the
setup of the Republic of Weimar shortly before he died in 192015 whereas the second was
admittedly close to Jaurès’ French Socialist Party in France16. But their interest in politics
never amounted to political interests, all the more since they consciously strove to conceive a
sociology “rising above the fray of party politics”.
Hawthorn, 1976: 166
ibid. pp170-174
15 Eliaeson, Sven, ‘Constitutional Caesarism: Weber’s politics in their German context’ in The Cambridge Companion to
Weber, edited by Turner, Stephen. Cambridge University Press, 2000: 131-148.
16 Jones, Susan Stedman. Durkheim Reconsidered. Cambridge: Polity, 2001: 44-61.
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Sociologists in England before 1939 usually defined themselves as the Webbs did, i.e. as
experts of social issues they thought they were sometimes better apt at handling than the
politicians themselves17. They would therefore claim legitimacy and knowledge in politics,
usually for the Labour Party, something that would deprive them of any scientific claims as a
result18. And as D. Schnapper recently remarked19 British sociologists were eager to be
associated with a political party, French sociologists did not want to do so.
Instead of committing themselves to any specific political party, the Durkheimians in France
chose to consider themselves as the think-tank of the Third Republic. As for Max Weber in
Germany, he who wrote Science and Politics as a Vocation in 1919 probably was aware of the
necessary gap and duties pertaining to the men of science. The condition of academic
sociology was to keep away from politics on the continent, and the consequence of politics
was to be kept away from academia in Britain.
Sociologists did not have the same intentions in Britain and on the continent, and it only
seems that Hawthorn and Goldman misconstrued continental sociologists as disguised
politicians by applying the English grid to the continental situation. Both grids are actually
unsuitable to each other : there are only two distinct definitions of a sociologist. Sociologists
in Britain were for a long time associated with party politics and public policies, and French
and German sociologists were not supporters of a party, they were thinkers of a system
instead.
Frija, Raphaëlle. Sociologie et militantisme, Etude de Methods of Social Study (Beatrice et Sidney Webb). Unpublished DEA
thesis, Université Paris IV, 2005: 35.
18 See a rather severe critique of the Webbs’ Methods of Social Study in L’Année Sociologique, NS Tome I (1923-24), Paris:
Libraire Félix Alcan, 1925: 896.
19 Schnapper, Dominique. ‘A View from a French Sociologist’ in British Sociology Seen From Without and Within, edited by
A. H. Halsey, W. G. Runciman. The British Academy: Oxford University Press, 2005: 107-18.
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It would thus be untrue to contend a) either that universities were closed to British
sociologists while they were more interested in politics or b) that German and French
sociologists were frustrated politicians while themselves were more committed to the
Republican system in their country than to any specific party. Yet, if French sociologists had
no political interests compared to their British counterparts, they remained votaries of the
Republic in the 1890s, in dire need for them.
II. The origins of Sociology : a science for new regimes (1890-1920)
As a result, sociology was particularly successful in France and, to a lesser extent in
Germany, in their quest of a new unity under a Republic. We are going to argue that the
emergence of sociology was prompted in France (after 1870) and in Germany (after 1890) to
ensure the stability of a nation through that of a new regime. England, on the other hand,
could rely on a long-standing Monarchy under which issues differed quite considerably at
the same time, thus rendering the emergence of a sociology, as the science of stammering
regimes, still unnecessary.
Why did sociology grow in France ? The question has to asked to begin with, to understand
the conditions which prompted its emergence. On the historical emergence of sociology,
Emile Durkheim wrote a presentation in 1915. The point he made in it was that two
conditions are to be required for sociology to emerge: a scientific “passion for clear ideas” he
thought was embodied in the French spirit of Descartes and, most importantly, the brutal
disruption of the traditional social organisations, something he thought had crucially
happened in France in the wake of the Revolution:
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“Sociology could have been born and developed only where the two conditions which follow existed in
combination: first, traditionalism had to have lost its domain. […] Second, a veritable faith in the power
of reason… was necessary. France satisfies this double condition. There is no country where the old
social organisations had been uprooted more completely and where, consequently… there is greater
need for thought, that is, for science [to reconstruct them]. On the other hand, we are and shall remain
the country of Descartes ; we have a passion for clear ideas.”
The Cartesian origin he summons should, if not debated, at least be taken with as much
caution as when conveniently refering to the so-called “natural empiricist temper of the
English” in sociology. The historical origin, however, is more telling on the imperious need
for sociology in France and, retrospectively, on its lack of relevance for Britain. Durkheim
thought that the origins of sociology were to be sought in the French Revolution which, by
completely uprooting the historical Monarchy and therefore the ‘natural’ organisation of
French society, required science to reconstruct them artificially. Durkheim feared that the
establishment of the Third Republic, the first regime under which the principles (and effects)
of the French Revolution were finally effective20, would lead to a moral and social disorder if
not properly taken care of scientifically.
Durkheim was aware that a Republic in the 1890s could no longer ensure a moral stability if
devoid of the traditional links formerly binding a “poussière inconsistante d’individus21” in a
State, protecting them from anomy22. To ensure social stability and complete its political
system, the Republic wanted a morale officielle, a science of ethics for which his sociology was
consciously built. On a similar occasion after Bismarck, Weber also started to conceive his
sociology in the 1890s with the conscious purpose to serve the emergence of a German
nation, eventually supporting the establishment of the Republic of Weimar in 192023.
Furet, 1988: 8 quoted in Jones, 2001: 46.
Durkheim, Emile. Suicide: a study in sociology, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, [1897] 1952.
22 ibid. Durkheim defines anomy as the ‘lack of collective rules for individual conducts’, a phenomenon which could
eventually lead to suicide.
23 Weber, Marianne. Max Weber : a Biography. Trans. and ed. by Harry Zohn. New York : Wiley, 1926 [1975].
20
21
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Classical sociology only emerged between 1890 and 1920 in France and in Germany as the
means to help the foundation of stammering new regimes, the Republics. On the continent,
Sociology was to help in the building of new durable foundations for society. For Britain,
devoid of the same concern, the emergence of sociology still remained unnecessary.
Sociologists, as sons of the Republics on the continent, appeared irrelevant in a Monarchy
which could still rely on a historical continuity and traditional social organisations24.
Sociology was born out of a culture, not of a nature25, on the continent and remained as such
inappropriate to the British framework, all the more since it allegedly brought political
assumptions within an allegedly scientific discourse.
As a result of being specifically evolved in a Republic, Durkheimian sociology imported the
ideological community of the French republicans and their celebration of society into science.
To serve the Third Republic, Sociology had to grant Society take precedence over the
individual, something that was hardly palatable to many academics in Britain who remained
mistrustful of ‘French’ sociology owing to these apparently political assumptions.
R. R. Marett, one of the most famous Social Anthropologists of the inter-war, exemplifies this
when remembering the Durkheimians as not only “sociologists, not to say socialistic in
tendency26” in his autobiography. Although he was sympathetic to their quest for a social
science, for he felt they were heading in the same direction27, he somehow qualified his
support by adding that he “could not believe it feasible to deal in their concrete way with an
abstraction, such as social man must be if you leave out his individual aspect”.
Somewhat similar to Perry Anderson, English Questions, London: Verso, 1992.
After Lepenies, Wolf. Between Literature and Science : The Rise of Sociology. Cambridge University Press, 1988: 244.
26 Marett Robert Ranulph, A Jerseyman at Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1941: 162-3.
27 Aston, Mark P. The French School of Sociology, 1890-1920, unpublished D. Phil thesis, Oxford: MSS D.Phil. 1977: p1-23.
24
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For Marett, in spite of being “very enlightening”, the French sociologists were “bending the
stick too far the other way” towards a collective consciousness, the existence of which
Durkheim had assumed and acknowledged to found his sociology28. Thus, by seemingly
leaving little room for the individual action as distinct from that of Society, sociology became
associated with Durkheimian sociology and, therefore, with a socialistic tendency, as
Marett’s statements suggest it.
Perhaps “Durkheim’s intellectual victory before the First World War had been a purely
verbal one29”, as Hawthorn suggests it, but this at least implied he had virtually managed to
monopolise the definition of sociology with his own interpretation. This made sociology,
implicitly equated with durkheimian sociology and socialism in England after WWI, an
allegedly biased science. The Durkheimians were chiefly regarded as a school of
propagandists, as Hawthorn perfectly illustrates:
“The spirit of the équipe of the Année [Sociologique] had been above all an esprit de système. The circle had
been convinced that Durkheim's conceptions were so fundamental and all-embracing that it was
perfectly natural that those infected with them should attempt to apply them elsewhere30.”
The durkheimian school seems to have been taken with some reserves in Britain also because
of its being a theoretical school as such. As a result, continental sociology was usually
equated with durkheimism and with scientific propaganda rather than with proper scientific
work worthy of academic interest. As Palmer again remarked, “Sociology was taboo to
many31” because of these unfortunate political associations.
Durkheim, Emile. The Rules of Sociological Method. Ed. by G. Catlin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1895 [1938].
Hawthorn, 1976: 174.
30 ibid., p173.
31 Palmer, 1927: 758.
28
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It is hardly surprising that the image of sociology as “an essentially French science32”
promoted by “infected” propagandists did not foster its development as an academic
discipline before WWI, all the more given the intellectual competition raging between both
countries in the inter-war. The origins of the word sociology as a bizarre mixture between
Latin and Greek, “distasteful to many scholars with a classical background” had been a
reason enough to be suspicious in the 1830s, the later “interest of the French in the science at
that time was sufficient cause for British disapproval33” and the eventual durkheimian
monopoly over the discipline after the War added to the dismal reputation of sociology in
England.
III. The emergence of a British sociology in the 1930s
Now, at the same time, it should not lead to too rapid a conclusion about British sociology.
Many authors tend to look at sociology in Britain with the aforementioned continental
framework, concluding on its so-called failure, without even mentioning its surprising
existence outside universities. It is not because nothing happened in universities that nothing
happened at all in British sociology, although its absence from the universities is an already
clear indication of how discredited it was then considered34 : universities and official
institutions remained indifferent to the inter-war attempts of sociology to emerge as a nonacademic discipline.
As Durkheim contended in his presentation of Sociology, op.cit., 1915.
Palmer, ibid. The word Sociology was coined by A. Comte in his Cours de Philosophie Positive in 1830 from an
improbable merger between a Latin (socius, ‘society’) and a Greek (logos, ‘understanding’) roots.
34 Evans, David, Le Play House and the Regional Survey Movement in British Sociology 1920-1955, unpublished M.Phil Thesis,
City of Birmingham Polytechnic / CNAA, 1986: 3 [available at http://www.dfte.co.uk/ios, accessed 6 May 2006] tends
to think this bias remains in most of the current literature.
32
33
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However, the perception changed in the 1930s when a specifically British interpretation of
sociology emerged in universities, and could replace both an ‘essentially French’ discipline
and a ‘collectivist’ interpretation of the individual. Against the continental sociology which
seemed inadequate, sociologists constantly strove to found their own version of sociology,
adapted to the British historical and institutional conditions starting with the creation of the
Sociological Society in 1904.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, sociology could not yet refer to a true professional
discipline in Britain. It remained an heterogeneous community sharing, if anything, “a
certain nebulous common sense which guided investigation”, a common sense which was to
feel destabilised by Durkheimian sociology:
“Durkheimian sociology was, in this climate [following the creation of the Sociological Society], doubly
perturbing ; it defined sociology as a completely autonomous disciplines, and it also postulated
analytical categories which were fundamentally foreign to the common sense of the British human
sciences. Although Durkheim had had some British precursors, these precursors had elaborated
sociologies of a quite different style. The Année Sociologique was to precipitate the disintegration of the
community and of its common sense35.”
The debate over sociology started away from universities with the foundation of the
Sociological Society in 1904, under the remote patronage of the durkheimians36. The problem
of British sociology precisely laid in this smothering patronage from a French theoretical
school which seemed to be both an interesting success, and yet an inadequate model because
“the postulates of the British human sciences and the postulates of the new French sociology
were incompatible37”. This was the clear conclusion M. Ginsberg drew in 1935: “the influence
exerted by Durkheim on the social sciences appears to have been very great… this was a
Aston, Mark P. The French school of sociology – 1890-1920, unpublished D. Phil thesis, Oxford: MSS D.Phil, 1977: p1-20.
Durkheim, Emile. ‘On the Relation of Sociology to the Social Sciences and to Philosophy’, Sociological Papers, I, 1904:
197-200.
37 Aston, Mark P., 1977: 1-21.
35
36
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vitalising thought, even though the particular form of the theory of society as a supraindividual reality may turn out to be unacceptable38 [for British sociology].”
This international competition with Durkheim, added to personal conflicts and a divergence
of interests between founding members39, led the Society to a rapid demise after 1910. Yet, as
Palmer remarked it in 1927, sociology in the inter-war was being shaped and recreated
“imbedded in a background of social thought that is essentially British”, in its own
intellectual tradition and framework. In spite of being entangled in an exhausting debate
over its definition in the inter-war period40, British sociology eventually came to a head in the
1930s.
A compromise was eventually found after the creation of the Institute of Sociology in 1930,
so much so that a clear definition of sociology was consistently worked out. Only, as Ernest
Barker wrote it in Papers on the Social Sciences : Their Relations in Theory and in Teaching, a
report of one of the most important conferences held under the auspices of the Institute of
Sociology in 1936, it turn out to be surprisingly remote from what was acknowledged as
sociology on the continent:
“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 in any form of society. Its
concern is therefore not with society, but with human society… both in their succession and in their
contemporary variety41.”
Sociology in France was, according to the long-standing Comtian ideal of the “queen of
science”, supposed to include every aspect of Man in society, this allegedly including
Institute of Sociology, the. Papers on the Social Sciences : Their Relations in Theory and in Teaching, 1936: 201.
Abrams, 1968: 104.
40 This may explain why so little has been written on the period so far. The topic will be dealt with more specifically in
my dissertation paper.
41 Institute of Sociology, the. Further Papers on the Social Sciences : Their Relations in Theory and in Teaching, 1937: 9.
38
39
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anthropology42. In England, sociology had been conceived as a specialist branch of
anthropology, which considered itself to be the “Science of Man”. Sociology had a different
origin in each case, either fathered by anthropology or by philosophy.
However, they still shared a similar concern, as Ginsberg underlined when comparing
Hobhouse’s and Durkheim’s attempts in sociology: “both are concerned with the problem of
reconciling individual autonomy and social order43”. And “despite a fundamental difference
in philosophical background”, which Ginsberg hoped “should not obscure the ground they
have in common”, this common concern should leave the door open to “the possibility of
real co-operation between the French School of sociology and that which is growing up in
England [as for 1936].” However remote they remained, it is interesting to remark that both
sociologies did not discard the possibility of a further cooperation.
The biggest difference was that, as it was recently underlined, “the British only adopted a
definition of their sociology in contrast to the French, who had refused any strict
demarcation of their field44”. British sociology was born as a specialist branch of
Anthropology, the Science of the Empire, in the 1930s, whereas French sociology had been
fathered by Comte’s philosophy as an all-encompassing theoretical discipline since the 1890s.
Both definitions competed, and usually misconstrued each other for obvious reasons of
incompatibility. Words did not have the same meaning, and beyond, postulates of the British
human sciences and of the French sociology remained genuinely incompatible45.
See Victor Branford’s Science and Sanctity reviewed in l’Année Sociologique, op. cit., 1925: 219.
Institute of Sociology, 1936: 205.
44 Schnapper, 2005: 116.
45 Aston Mark P., 1977: p1-22.
42
43
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Hence the manifold misunderstandings between French and British sociologists in the interwar. Against the Durkheimian holistic vision of society, as Hobson remarked in the 1930s
“the prevailing disposition amongst sociologists in England is to deny the existence of a
social mind, collective consciousness, and to regard all social activities and institutions as
contributions to… life of the individual[s] who join in… co-operative processes46”. As
opposed to the French tendency of “bending the stick too far” towards a collective
consciousness, thus subsuming the individual under the social groups to which he belongs
in a Republic, British47 sociologists were stressing the individual consciousness and natural
basis.
It was repeated in the inter-war that there was “no gulf between ‘nature’ and ‘man’ ; man is
immersed in nature, and every science concerned with man is also concerned with the
Natural foundations of man48.” All sociologists had been influenced in the early 20th century
with a strong biological interpretation of human life49 conspicuously present in Spencer’s
sociology, whereas French in a majority has little knowledge of biology but were educated as
academic philosophers.
Academically,
the
emerging
British
sociology
started
to
secure
an
academic
acknowledgement as a branch of Anthropology in the 1930s. A Memorandum on Anthropology
drafted for the University of Oxford in 1934 stated that sociology should now be included in
the curriculum as a branch of Social Anthropology, defined as
Hawthorn, 1976: 168.
I am aware that a more specific distinction should be made between English and British sociology.
48 Institute of Sociology, 1937: 11.
49 Halliday R. J., ‘The Sociological Movement, The Sociological Society and the Genesis of Academic Sociology in
Britain’, The Sociological Review NS 16, no. 3 (1968): 377-398.
46
47
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“the comparative study of social phenomena, their geographical distribution and historical
development: social organisations, including marriage customs, economics, government and law; moral
ideas and codes, magical and religious practices and beliefs including treatment of the dead. The
psychology of primitive peoples, including the relation of language to thought50.”
The memorandum effectively led to the establishment of a lectureship in African Sociology
bestowed upon E. E. Evans-Pritchard in 193551. For the first time after the LSE precedent in
1906, a post in sociology was created in a major university, as a sign of its rebirth. It is not
surprising that an anthropologist should secure it, as sociology was defined as one of its
specialist branches, all the more given that Evans-Pritchard had been professor of sociology
at King Fuad I University in Cairo, Egypt, since 193252. A chair of “Civic Sociology” had also
been in existence since 1914 at the University of Bombay, once occupied by Patrick Geddes,
leader of the Edinburgh School of sociology53. If rare in England, at least this shows sociology
did have an existence and a relevance in the British Empire. Sociology only turned to
universities, after a detour through and for the Empire, to settle in the 1930s in Britain with a
vengeance.
By the late 1930s, British sociology could be said to have achieved an autonomous existence,
both intellectually (from the previous French and German attempts) and academically (from
competing disciplines). Sociology had been the daughter of the Republics on the continent in
the 1890s, it was recreated in the 1930s in England as that of an Empire.
IV. Conclusion
Oxford University Archives (OUA), Memorandum on the work now done in anthropology in the university of Oxford with
suggestions for its future development, 1935, Reports of Board Meetings 3 (1935-37): 5.
51 Chester, Norman. Economics, Politics and Social Studies in Oxford, 1900-85. London: Macmillan, 1986.
52 R. G. Lienhardt, ‘Pritchard, Sir Edward Evan Evans- (1902–1973)’, rev., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford
University Press, 2004.
53 Mairet, Philippe. Pioneer of Sociology: the Life and Letters of Patrick Geddes, London: Lund Humphries, 1957.
50
Two sciences, a common concern : sociology in France and Britain (1895-1935)
18
All this tends to show that a) a British sociology did exist in the inter-war, albeit on the
universities’ doorstep before the 1930s, b) the absence of sociology before that was not a
failure, but an adaptation of an inadequate ‘Republican’ science to the context, and main
concern, of the British Empire and c) both trends turned out to be incompatible, but
coexisted.
In this paper, we tried to shed a new light on the thorny debate surrounding the so-called
absence of academic sociology in Great-Britain between 1890 and 1920. In Britain,
sociologists were close to party politics and were not as necessary as on the continent, to
support new instable regimes. In Germany and France, sociologists were thinkers of a
system, not actors of party politics. These two definitions of a sociologist remained
incompatible but coexisted, and are often mixed up in the literature.
Sociology essentially emerged and flourished in France under the Third Republic in the
1890s only as the greater reflect of its disorganisation. Science was needed to reorganise
society, recreate its ethics and ensure the social stability of the new regime after the ‘deeply
uprooting Revolution’. Britain on the other hand could rely on a historical continuity under a
Monarchy, and had no interest such a science. Sociology was born out a culture, not of a
nature.
The smothering example of durkheimian sociology, both apparently successful overseas and
yet inadequate to the British context, hindered the Sociological Society’s early attempt to
found a specifically British sociology in the early 20th century. As a result of the French
virtually abducting the definition of the word before WWI, sociology remained taboo in
universities in the 1920s and implicitly associated to ‘a French science’ allegedly biased
politically.
Two sciences, a common concern : sociology in France and Britain (1895-1935)
19
Times were finally ripe when the conjugated work of non-academic sociologists in the
Institute of Sociology in 1930 and a detour through the Empire in the 1930s led a specifically
British sociology to establish itself, unsurprisingly diverging from that of the continent, as a
branch of social anthropology. In spite of these differences, they remained similarly
concerned “with the problem of reconciling individual autonomy and social order”.
The research on modern societies was common to Great-Britain, France or Germany in the
inter-war. Although it emerged at different points of history in each country and seemed
incompatible beyond each nation’s boundaries, sociology reflected a similar concern with
modernity, which, at least, was commonly shared.
Baudry Rocquin, University of Oxford, April 2006 <source: britishsociology.com>.