Founders, Classics, Canons: Modern Disputes Over the Origins and Appraisal of the Social Sciences

by Baehr,Peter

• ISBN13: 9780765801296
• ISBN10: 0765801299
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-05-31
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Three categories -- founders, classics, canons -- have been vitally important in helping to frame sociology's precarious identity, defining the discipline's sense of its past and the implications for its current activity. Today that identity is being challenged as never before. Within the academy, a number of positions -- feminist, postmodernist, poststructuralist, postcolonial -- converge in questioning the status of "the tradition." These currents, in turn, reflect wider social questioning about the meaning and uses of knowledge in technologically advanced societies. In Founders, Classics, Canons, Peter Baehr scrutinizes the nature of this challenge. He provides a model of the processes through which texts are elevated to classic status, and defends the continuing importance of sociology's traditions for a university education in the social sciences.The concept of "classic" is, as Baehr notes, a complex one. Essentially it assumes a scale of judgment that deems certain texts as exemplary in eminence. But what is the nature of this eminence? Baehr analyzes various responses to this question. Most notable are those that focus on the functions classics perform for the scholarly community that employs them; the rhetorical force classics are said to possess; and the processes of reception that result in classic status. The concept of classic is often equated with two other notions: "founders" and "canon." The former has a well-established pedigree within the discipline, but widespread usage of the latter in sociology is much more recent and polemical in tone. Baehr offers arguments against these two ways of interpreting, defending and attacking sociology's great texts and authors. Hedemonstrates why, in logical and historical terms, discourses and traditions cannot actually be "founded" and why the term "founder" has little explanatory content. Equally, he takes issue with the notion of "canon" and argues

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	xi
Introduction	1	(4)
Founders of Discourse	5	(36)
Introduction	5	(1)
Founders: Discursive and Institutional; Deliberative and Appropriated Founders	5	(7)
Foucault's Founders	12	(13)
Wolin and ``Epic Theory''	25	(6)
Constitutions, Discourses, Founders	31	(8)
Conclusion	39	(2)
Founders of Institutions	41	(70)
Introduction	41	(1)
The Social Context of Innovation	41	(2)
Creativity, Reputation and Intellectual Networks	43	(12)
The Shadow Group Revisited	55	(2)
Institutional and Deliberative Founding: Durkheim and the Annee sociologique	57	(9)
The Founder Idea: A Conjectural Genealogy	66	(8)
Conclusion	74	(5)
The Utility, Rhetoric and Interpretation of Classic Texts
Introduction	79	(2)
A Definition of Classic Texts	81	(2)
Classics in Common? The Uses of Classical Theory and The Discipline of Sociology	83	(6)
Rhetoric in the Classical Tradition	89	(7)
Understanding Classic Texts	96	(1)
Presentism	96	(2)
The Historicist Critique and Alternative	98	(4)
Objections to Historicism	102	(6)
Conclusion	108	(3)
Classicality: Criteria and Reception	111	(40)
Introduction	111	(1)
The Stratification of Classic Texts	111	(5)
``Criteria'' of Classicality?	116	(4)
Classics and Their ``Reception''	120	(3)
Classic Reception, Classic Formation	123	(13)
The Classics, Gender and Sexuality	136	(6)
Excursus on Classic Appraisal in Sociology and The Arts	142	(4)
Conclusion	146	(5)
Canons	151	(32)
Introduction	151	(1)
``Canon'' in Current Social Theory: Usages and Appraisals	152	(7)
Conflicting Terminologies	159	(4)
The Christian Canon and the Classics of Sociology	163	(6)
Significance of the Canon Debate: The Controversy Over Higher Education and the Purpose of the University	169	(4)
The University and the Jargon of ``Relevance''	173	(6)
Conclusion	179	(4)
A Concluding Look at the Three Concepts	183	(22)
Appendix on Translation and Reception: The ``Iron Cage'' and the ``Shell of Steel.'' Parsons, Weber and the stahlhartes Gehause metaphor in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism	185	(20)
Bibliography	205	(30)
Index	235