SMALL Albion, What Is A Sociologist

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Albion W. Small. "What is a Sociologist?

" American Journal of Sociology, 8 (1903): 468-477.

What is a Sociologist?
Albion Small

THE American public in general, and the Chicago public in


particular, has had a recent spasm of interest in locating the
genus " sociologist." Our respected president gave the cue by
appointing to the Coal Strike Commission, in the place proposed
for "an eminent sociologist," a railroad employee experienced in
organizing railroad men. The newspapers very naturally raised the
two questions : first, Is the appointee a good man for the place ?
second, Is he a sociologist ? Before the echoes of this discussion
were quiet, the distinguished president of an eastern college took
occasion, in an address before leading Chicago citizens, to
associate the name "sociologist " with the terms " freaks "and "
faddists," and he is reported to have said that sociology seemed
to him to have nothing to do except to gather up what is left after
political science and economics have done all that is important
with the facts of society. Thereupon the Chicago papers reopened
the question, "What is a sociologist?" and some of them showed
intelligence about the subject which clearly outclassed that of the
learned specialist who went out of his way to exhibit his
limitations.

We do not care to ask whether a railroad operative is a better


man than a sociologist to arbitrate a labor difficulty. He may or he
may not be, according to a variety of circumstances. Nor do we
care to ask how high the sociologist deserves to stand in the
esteem of other people. This is a matter that will adjust itself in
time. Meanwhile it may be well for the sociologists occasionally to
state to themselves and to the public just what their part in the
world's work seems to them to be. The sociologist may or may
not be, in the eyes of his fellows, an important member of
society, but his place may be so defined and his work so
described that even college presidents might learn to talk
intelligently about him.

In general, then, a sociologist is a man who is studying the facts


of society in a certain way.  Not every man who deals with
( 469) facts of society is a sociologist, any more than every tinker
and blacksmith is a physicist, or every cook and soap-maker a
chemist, or every gardener and stock-breeder a biologist. There is
a sense in which each of these practical employments is a phase
of the science to which it is most closely related. In that sense,
and in the degree in which the workers enter the scientific ranks,
the laborer might be called physicist, chemist, biologist, etc. If
there is any propriety, whether much or little, in such loose
application of terms, there is precisely the same propriety, in the
same sense and in the same degree, in the case of ordinary social
workers and the term "sociologist." A printer may incidentally be
a statesman, but we do not for that reason call typesetting
statesmanship. In the same way the organizer of a labor union
may be a sociologist, but organizing labor unions is nevertheless
not sociology. Whether a man is a sociologist or not depends on
the extent to which he uses the " certain way* " of studying
social facts, to be more particularly described in a moment.

*certain way : La sociologie a une méthode précise. Une «certaine manière» de la


pratiquer. Un sociologue est quelqu’un qui connait la méthode sociologique.

This is, of course, a matter of more and less. It is not a


distinction between things that are absolutely unlike. We cannot
draw an arbitrary line, on the one side of which men are
statesmen, or scholars, or artists, and on the other side of which
they are not., Every one of us is a small fraction of statesman and
scholar and artist, even at our everyday work. The same thing
might be illustrated in all the occupations of life. There is no way
to guard the term "merchant," for instance, so that it will
distinguish a rank or a class. The vendor of shoestrings or
peanuts on the street corner is a merchant, so far as he goes, as
truly as the directors of the East India Company. The boys who
speculate in'" extra " editions of the newspapers are " financiers "
in their way not less than Mr. Morgan in his larger operations. All
differences of this sort between men are matters of degree. The
gradation of the layman into the scientific man simply falls under
a universal rule.

The sociologist is, further, a man who is studying the facts of


society in the spirit of a philosopher.  Doubtless the majority are
with one of George Eliot's types in the sentiment : " A philosopher
is the last sort of animal I should choose to resemble.
( 470) I find it enough to live, without spinning lies to account for
life." With due deference to the majority we must insist that the
estimate lacks precision. The philosopher is the man who is not
satisfied with knowing anything in itself. He wants to find out
how each thing fits together with other things. (on peut voir ici la
notion de sociologie pragmatique de SMALL => Compare la
sociologie et la philosophie) Here again all things are relative.
Hamlet's grave-digger and Sam Weller and Maggie Tulliver are
Bacons and Kants and Hegels on a small scale, yet it is only in a
humorous sense that we call them "philosophers." A great many
people are philosophizing above the heads of these types, yet
without grasp of enough things to give their thoughts a rating
among philosophers. They are finding the times out of joint in a
thousand ways. Some of them are trying to mend things. They
may be acting wisely or unwisely in their places. In either case
there is just as much and just as little reason for calling them
sociologists as there would be for calling the inventor of a voting
machine, or a promoter of the Torrens system of registering land
titles, or the captain of a precinct, a "political scientist." He may
be, and he may not. The particular work that he is doing proves
nothing. Then there are men who put still more things together in
their thinking, and show the philosophic spirit in larger ranges.
They deal with facts that go together in sciences. These may be
sciences of things, on the one hand, like astronomy or geology, or
they may be sciences of people, like history or economics. To deal
with these sciences requires a relatively high degree of
philosophic power, but men may and do cultivate these sciences
as though the abstractions which each chiefly considers are
sufficient unto themselves, and do not need to be adjusted to less
interesting aspects of the whole from which they were abstracted.
There have been historians enough, for instance, who were
content to find out just what occurred. They have taken such a
narrow view of their work that learning just what occurred
seemed to them more important than discovering whether it was
worth learning. There have been economists enough who have
added to knowledge of the rules which nations must follow in
order to increase wealth, and have assumed that they have
thereby taken account of all that it is worth while for nations to
consider.
(471) There have been political scientists enough who have
worked out principles of government, and have been content to
explain political machinery as an end in itself, without disturbing
themselves to inquire what the ultimate ends are to which all
government is merely a means. Thinkers of these types deal with
some of the same facts that the sociologist studies, but they
display so little of the philosophic spirit that they are properly only
craftsmen. On the other hand there are historians and economists
and political scientists who try to find out what the connections
are between the facts which they particularly study and all the
other facts which occur in human experience.' These men are
philosophers, and it is only an accidental division of labor, not an
important difference in kind, that separates them from the
sociologists.

The name "sociologist" belongs, then, to all students of society


who think of human life, past, present, and future, as somehow
bound together; and who try to understand any particular
fragment of human life which they may study by making out its
bearings upon and its being-borne-upon-by all the rest of human
life. A great many people have the notion that sociology is merely
a pretentious name for slumming. They suppose it is concerned at
most with some of the least successful, or least desirable,
elements in society. They take it to be absorbed in plans for
improving the condition of wage-earners, or for dealing with
paupers and criminals. This notion has been encouraged by
people in prominent academic positions who ought to have known
better. There is just the same fraction of truth in it that there
would be in the idea that chemistry is devoted to poisons and
putrefactions and foul smells. Every human calling, from tilling the
soil to writing epic poems or founding ethnic religions, has for the
sociologist an interest in exact ratio with the importance of the
part which that particular calling plays in the whole drama of life.
The sociologist is the man who tries to fill the place in our
scientific age which the old-fashioned philosopher occupied in the
ages of metaphysical speculation. If we remember that the older
philosophers varied from Socratic commonplaceness to Platonic
idealism, we shall not be surprised at the different sorts of
sociologists to be mentioned below. The
(472) sociologist tries to look upon life from a point of view which
commands all that science permits us to know about the total
facts of human life; and, whatever his special division of labor, he
tries to adjust it to the whole of life as seen from this point of
view.

The genus sociologist includes, then, a great many species. Il


parle comme un biologiste. Some of them are dealing exclusively
with the largest generalizations that can be derived from
discoverable facts of human society. They are working away upon
a positive philosophy of visible human experience, as a substitute
for all the philosophies built upon preconceived notions of life. In
so far as they succeed in bringing the facts into focus they will
presently make life easier and better for everybody ; but they are
of practically no immediate use whatever to the average man,
and it would be much better for all concerned if in professional
matters this type of sociologist and the average man could be
content to go their several ways and never bother themselves
about each other. (en gros SMALL il dit «laissez nous tranquille».
On est utile. La recherche prend du temps et dans l’immédiat on a
pas toujours les réponses. Pas besoin d’applaudissements ou de
reconnaissance mais juste qu’on le laisse faire ses recherches.)
Everybody will be happier a hundred and a thousand years from
now because Charles Darwin serenely pursued his studies for a
generation without asking the public to applaud his work, and
without turning aside to do anything that the public could
understand. Meanwhile hundreds of men every year learned to
apply in practical ways what was known about the physical
conditions of life, yet without contributing to the development of
biology. Both kinds of men have their place, and there is work in
like ways for both general sociologists and practical social workers
who have but a vague notion of society in general, and who
consequently cannot properly be called sociologists.

Then there are sociologists who are working on some minute


phase of social activities, let us say some problem in the
psychology of social action. Their general idea of life unites them
with all the rest of the sociologists, but their division of labor is
concerned with some detail of the machinery of life. These men
again will in the end make every farm and home and shop in the
world a fitter place for human beings ; but meanwhile they have
practically nothing to do directly with the public, nor the public
with them. Their work, like that of the former type, must filter out
into general use through the modifications that it will gradually
make in all branches of social science and practice. (A un
moment, la recherche va donner lieu à des
avancées/modifications de la société/de la recherche...) A few
years ago I called with a friend upon Professor Virchow. My friend
thought that he was suffering from a disorder for which the
celebrated pathologist would prescribe. When our errand was
explained, Professor Virchow lifted both hands above his head in
vigorous protest. " Why," he said, " I haven't written a
prescription in twenty years, and I wouldn't dare to. "Yet not a
thoroughly educated physician or trained nurse in the world had
received a diploma in those twenty years whose conduct in the
sickroom had not been foreordained by Professor Virchow's work.
If the sociologists of these two types realize any fraction of their
hopes, the results will have a similar relation to social practice.
They will be carried to society at large through applications made
by workers of other sorts.

Again there are sociologists who prefer to call themselves


psychologists, or historians, or economists, or political scientists,
but their proper classification is indicated by the fact that they,
consciously or unconsciously, work from a point of view that is
strictly sociological. Others frankly call themselves sociologists,
but they work chiefly upon psychological, or historical, or
economic, or political, or other problems, yet with sociological
organization of their work always in mind. The former are
particularly interesting to the professed sociologists, for in spite of
themselves they are vindications of the sociological argument.
They admit more or less consciously every principal claim which
the sociologists have made. They begin to assert with the zeal of
new converts that the phase of social activity to which they give
chief attention can be correctly estimated only when viewed as a
part of all the rest of life. This is the strategic point of the
sociological position. Use of this perception as a corrective of all
surveys of social facts is the advance in thought which sociologists
first of all demand.

Then there are sociologists whose immediate interest is in some


concrete religious, or educational, or industrial, or political, or
charitable, or criminological improvement. They want to find out
what is worth doing, and how to do it. They want to pro-
( 474) -mote more success in everything that belongs to complete
life, and they select some definite division of practical activity for
their special effort. This species is very widely contrasted, in its
peculiar traits, with the first and second ; but the common generic
trait of all the types is that they do their work in the spirit and
from the point of view described above. The general
sociologist does his generalizing with a view to its bearings at
last upon all particular cases, and the concrete sociologist
does his particularizing under control of regard for all the
general truths that the social philosophers may formulate. (3
types de sociologues)

It is possible to counterfeit each of these types of sociologist,


but the same thing is true of all specialists. We have no way in
this country of patenting scientific titles. Every slack-wire acrobat
and every chiropodist is at liberty to dub himself "professor.
"Every snake-charmer or fortune-teller may make gain of the title
"psychologist." Every peddler of cure-alls for governmental
corruption may glory in the title "political scientist.' Every inventor
of a panacea for poverty may announce himself an " economist,"
and alas! each of these, if it suits his fancy better, may advertise
himself as a "sociologist." It will probably be a long time before
the general public, or even all college presidents, can draw as fair
lines between spurious and genuine sociologists as are drawn
between quacks and scientific workers in older professions.
(SMALL => Cherche à «nettoyer» les rangs de la sociologie =>
De la même manière que la médecine s’est élevée par exemple)
Meanwhile it is our business to live up to our own scientific
standards, and to make the quality of our work distinguish itself.

Within each of the sociological groups referred to, as distinctive


problems are under investigation, the methods are as critical, the
results are relatively as creditable, as in any older division of
science. To assert or to imply the contrary is a provincialism
which scholars in other fields will be more and more anxious to
avoid.

The public discussions alluded to above raised another point


that deserves notice. Some of the most intelligent editorials upon
the work of sociologists vigorously belabored the jargon in which
sociologists express themselves. They complained that
sociologists use language which common people cannot

( 475) understand. (vocab socio se spécifie et les gens ça leur


plait pas) Letters frequently reach the editors of this JOURNAL
voicing the same complaint. It must be admitted that there is a
measure of justice in these rebukes, yet there is another side to
the case which laymen do not appreciate, but investigators must
not allow themselves to be confused about it. Scientific discussion
is by no means a mere matter of rhetoric. It is not simply
expressing something. It is often an essential part of the process
of getting something to express. It is an attempt to formulate a
real profession where the layman has no suspicion that a problem
exists. It is hazarding a thesis to be tried against the attacks of
competent critics. It is an hypothesis to be tested It is a tentative
generalization. Simply because it is a generalization, whether it
proves valid or net, it is beyond the usual range of ordinary
reflection. That is, the subject and the predicate extend beyond
the horizon of everyday vision. No matter how precisely they are
expressed, therefore, they do not present a clear image to minds
not accustomed to that outlook. If the proposition were expressed
so that it would mean more to the layman, the language might
lose the very elements that contain its peculiar meaning for the
specialist. Of course, it is an affront to omniscient democracy to
intimate that every man is not as competent a specialist as any
man upon such a familiar subject as human society. Of course, if
the average man does not take in the full meaning of a
sociological proposition, it is the fault of the sociologist who utters
it. IL EST TELLEMENT SALE! Nevertheless, it will be necessary for
a good while to come that men who are actually advancing
knowledge shall talk to each other a great deal in language that
says little or nothing to the layman. On the one hand, the layman
has no business to find fault with this, and, on the other hand, if
he does, the specialist has no business to mind it. Whatever may
have been their sins of abstruseness, American scholars have
committed more and greater sins through overambition to
impress the public. Premature plays for popularity are much more
deplorable than mysterious technicality`. In the end scientific
tasks are performed sooner and better if scientists address
themselves exclusively to their kind, till they convince each other
that they
(476) have something to say. It is time enough then to throw
away the technicalities and put the new knowledge into general
circulation.

The really flagrant sins that have been committed in the name
of sociology in recent years have been inflammatory utterances,
in terms that found quick response in popular feeling, while there
was no proper social knowledge behind them. They conveyed
definite impressions, but they were simply audacious appeals to
prejudice. Serious sociology is a deliberate plan to discredit that
sort of thing and to find a basis for social opinion in a sufficient
analysis of social facts. The details of this analysis will not be
edifying to the multitude. They will seem academic and pedantic.
No doubt they will be, to a considerable extent, as this has been
the case in nearly every other field of knowledge. In the end,
however, sound learning will be promoted sooner and faster by
discussing unsettled problems in the technical language
appropriate to problems, than by a parade of simplicity which
encourages the public to assume that open questions are settled.

The necessity for this professionalism varies in different


divisions of sociology. It is greatest among the first two types
named, and least in the fourth group. Members of the latter are
less likely to offend the public by excessive obscurity of terms
than by the moderation of their conclusions. Popular impatience
craves what the serious sociologist can never furnish. There is
always a brisk demand for social specifics, but relatively languid
interest in social hygiene. One could get tooted as a social
prophet any day by publishing a scheme to do away with
government. If one merely points out a practicable way of
improving the workings of government, it may be a generation
before he gets a hearing. A new way to abolish private property
would command wide attention at any moment. A feasible plan of
juster taxation would have a long and thankless struggle for a
chance to explain itself. A crusade to smash "trusts" is always in
order, and there is never a lack of spectators eager to see the
fun. Serious analysis of inequities in the workings of corporations,
and proposals of sane remedies, meet
( 477) indifference at best and contempt as a rule. The man who
promises to end crime, if society will only adopt socialism, counts
as a statesman and a seer with the contingent always ready to
accept visionary promises at par. The man who points out an
available means of removing temptations to crime, or of heading
off criminal propensities before it is too late, is too commonplace
to spur the radical imagination. Ten thousand people will swallow
a cure-all to one who will think. The sociologist who asks the
public to reflect, instead of flattering the demand for quick and
complete remedies for social ills, sends himself to Coventry for a
long term.

The conclusion of the whole matter for the sociologists is that,


when we reach results which are ripe for popular consumption, we
should spread the news as widely as possible, and in the plainest
terms. On the other hand, while sociology is good for
nothing unless it can enrich average life at last, our
primary task is to work out correct statements of social
problems and valid methods of solving them. We ought not
to be distracted either by popular clamor for quick results or by
ignorant misrepresentation of our aims. Our main business is to
study society by methods which competent judges must indorse.

The worst enemy of the sociologists is defect of scientific


patience. Itch to be talked about, without having made any real
contribution to knowledge, is the stigma of the pseudo-scientist.
Genuine research, no matter how slow in reaching results, and no
matter how minute the result in each case, will in due time win for
the real sociologists, as for all others scientific workers, their fair
share of appreciation.

ALBION W. SMALL.
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO.

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