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Edward Shils' beliefs about society and sociology

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References

  1. Parsons, Talcott and Shils, Edward A. (eds), Toward a General Theory of Action (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1951); Parsons, Talcott, Bales, Robert E. and Shils, Edward A., Working Papers in the Theory of Action (Glencoe: Free Press, 1953); and Parsons, Talcott and Shils, Edward (eds), Theories of Society (New York: Macmillan, The Free Press, 1961).

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  2. “[W]e were substantially on the right track [in their joint work on the paradigm of integration in the early 1950s] ..., however much we might have been mistaken in proceeding so deductively” (Center and Periphery, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975, p. xxxv). Observing that Parsons' “theory of action has now reached a degree of complexity which begins to approximate that of the model of the DNA molecule,” he adds: “This observation, it should be obvious, says nothing about the intellectual validity of Professor Parsons' analysis of society” (The Calling of Sociology, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980, p. 84). The highly abstract nature of Parsons and Shils' analysis of social integration may be judged by these representative sentences from their discussion of “The Integration of the Social System”: “The primary integration of the social system is based on an integrated system of generalized patterns of value-orientation... The institutionalization of value-orientation patterns... constitutes, in the most general sense, the mechanism of integration for social systems. However, social integration does not require a single uniform set of value-orientations equally and universally distributed throughout the social system. Social integration may well include a whole series of subsystems of common value-orientations varying around a basic pattern. Institutionally, this brings us before the integrative problem of partial integrations... ” (Toward a General Theory of Action, pp. 202–203).

  3. The Calling of Sociology, p. 411.

  4. See The Constitution of Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 53–54.

  5. Center and Periphery, p. xii.

  6. The Constitution of Society, pp. 6–7.

  7. “From the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, British society... achieved a degree of moral unity equaled by no other large national state.” Center and Periphery, p. 147.

  8. Ibid., p. xvi.

  9. Ibid., p. xiii.

  10. The Constitution of Society, pp. 24–26.

  11. Center and Periphery, p. 138.

  12. Ibid., pp. 154ff.

  13. The Constitution of Society, pp. 125–126.

  14. Ibid., pp. 119ff.

  15. However, see Center and Periphery, p. xxxv, where he states that he and Parsons proceeded deductively.

  16. The Constitution of Society, p. xxviii.

  17. With MorrisJanowitz: “Cohesion and Disintegration in the Wehrmacht in World War II”, Public Opinion Quarterly, XII (Summer 1948), pp. 280–315, (and Center and Periphery, pp. 345–383) a study based upon interviews with and polls of German prisoners of war; and with Michael Young, an analysis of the coronation in 1953 of Elizabeth II: “The Meaning of the Coronation”, Encounter (1956), (and Center and Periphery, pp. 135–152). In 1941, Shils interviewed nativists and Nazi sympathisers on Chicago's North Side (apparently unpublished). With Henry V. Dicks, in 1950, he designed and organised an inquiry into the structure of the Soviet army during the Second World War, based upon interviews with deserters and war prisoners who had remained in Germany: The Soviet Army (Santa Monica: Rand Corporation, 1951). The Intellectual Between Tradition and Modernity: The Indian Situation (The Hague: Mouton, 1961), a broad, insightful examination of the condition of Indian intellectuals, reflects extensive, thoughtful interviewing-as well as much additional thought and comparative knowledge.

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  18. Center and Periphery, p. xiii.

  19. The Constitution of Society, p. xxix.

  20. 30 December, 1987, letter to the author.

  21. The Constitution of Society, pp. xxviii–xxix.

  22. “Social Science as Public Opinion”, Minerva, XV (Autumn-Winter 1977), p. 284.

  23. Ibid.

  24. Ibid., p. 277.

  25. Ibid., pp. 276–278. Though Shils used no names, his description of these sociologists' work is unmistakable. His comments on Robert Merton referred to the index of “an important book published recently”, probably Sociological Ambivalence (1976), in which “the dissensual topics outnumber the consensual topics by a ratio of more than seven to one. Is there any reason to believe that dissensual events are seven times more numerous or seven times more important than consensual ones? It is not that the eminent sociologist believes that American society is as dissensual as his distribution of attention would suggest. It is rather that he is a sociologist and although rather an original one, the weight of tradition was too strong for his curiosity” (ibid., p. 276).

  26. Ibid., p. 279.

  27. Ibid.

  28. “The Modern University and Liberal Democracy”, Minerva, XXVII (Winter 1989), p. 446.

  29. The Calling of Sociology, p. 288.

  30. Center and Periphery, p. 111.

  31. The Calling of Sociology, p. 121.

  32. The Present State of American Sociology (Glencoe: Free Press, 1948), p. 55.

  33. Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), p. 323.

  34. “A Great Citizen of the Republic of Science: Michael Polanyi, 1892–1976”, Minerva, XIV (Spring 1976), pp. 4–5.

  35. Ibid., p. 5.

  36. “Government and Universities in the United States” (the Jefferson lecture), Minerva, XVII (Spring 1979), p. 135.

  37. Ibid., p. 130.

  38. Editorial in Minerva, I (Autumn 1962), p. 5.

  39. The Intellectuals and the Powers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), p. 243.

  40. 14 May, 1975, letter to the author.

  41. S.N. Eisenstadt has remarked that Shils “came to social science through literature”. Joseph Epstein states that “he had read more literature than I, a literary man, every expect to read. I never mentioned a writer, no matter how minor, whose work he had not read and whose measure he had not taken”. “My Friend Edward”, The American Scholar, LXIV (Summer 1995), p. 376; reprinted in this issue of Minerva, pp. 103–123.

  42. The Calling of Sociology, p. 84.

  43. Ibid., p. 12.

  44. Glencoe: Free Press; first published in 1947 in Pilot Papers, edited by Charles Madge.

  45. “The University World Turned Upside Down”, Minerva, XXVIII (Autumn 1990), p. 330.

  46. “The British Universities in Tribulation”, Minerva, XXXII (Summer 1994), p. 217.

  47. “The Modern University and Liberal Democracy”, op. cit., p. 452. Although these remarks were directed especially at humanistic studies in modern languages and literatures, they were also in considerable measure applicable to the social sciences. “Sociology, anthropology and political science all have somewhat more intellectual discipline than do the present-day practice of the humanities, but they have not been resistant to the infectious spreading from the humanities and from the radical epidemic of two decades ago” (ibid., p. 455).

  48. Ibid., p. 448.

  49. 14 May, 1975, letter to the author.

  50. 1 June, 1976, letter to the author.

  51. The Constitution of Society, p. 69.

  52. Ibid., p. 304.

  53. Ibid., p. xiv.

  54. The Academic Ethic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 3; first printed in Reports and Documents, Minerva, XX (Spring-Summer 1982), pp. 107–208.

  55. “The Theory of Mass Society”, in The Calling of Sociology, p. 412.

  56. Ibid., p. 388.

  57. “Reflections on Tradition, Center and Periphery and the Universal Validity of Science: The Significance of the Life of S. Ramanujan”, Minerva, XXIX (Winter 1991), p. 397.

  58. The Calling of Sociology, pp. 383–385.

  59. “Governments, Foundations and the Bias of Research”, Minerva, XVII (Autumn 1979), p. 459.

  60. The Academic Ethic, p. 4.

  61. The Intellectuals and the Powers, p. 185.

  62. The Calling of Sociology, pp. 19–20.

  63. Tradition, p. 125.

  64. The Calling of Sociology, p. 20.

  65. “Social Science as Public Opinion”, op. cit., p. 273.

  66. The Calling of Sociology, p. 96.

  67. Ibid., p. 279.

  68. “The Service of Society and the Advancement of Learning in the Twenty-First Century”, Minerva, XXX (Summer 1992), p. 259.

  69. Tradition, p. 139.

  70. The Constitution of Society, p. 380.

  71. The Calling of Sociology, p. 244.

  72. The Present State of American Sociology, p. 57.

  73. The Constitution of Society, pp. 381–82.

  74. See “Reflections on Tradition, Centre and Periphery and the Universal Validity of Science”, pp. 395, 408.

  75. The Calling of Sociology, pp. 153–155.

  76. The Intellectuals and the Powers, pp. 261, 259.

  77. The Calling of Sociology, p. 37.

  78. Ibid., p. 38.

  79. Ibid., p. 61.

  80. Ibid., p. 62.

  81. Ibid.

  82. Ibid., pp. 37, 38.

  83. See ShilsEdward, “Social Inquiry and the Autonomy of the Individual”, in Lerner, Daniel (ed.), The Human Meaning of the Social Sciences (New York: Meridian Books, 1959), pp. 114–157. The institutional committees which examine proposed medical and social research procedures to safeguard the rights and health of human subjects were instituted after an order in 1966 of the United States Surgeon General requiring that they be established to review Public Health Service research and training grants. The American Sociological Association adopted its first code of ethics in September 1971. At that time, the American Psychological Association was the only one of the five major social science associations (in sociology, psychology, economics, political science, and anthropology) to have both adopted a code and taken meaningful steps to enforce it.

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  84. See Shils, Edward, “Social Inquiry and the Autonomy of the Individual”, in Lerner, Daniel (ed.), The Human Meaning of the Social Sciences (New York: Meridian Books, 1959), p. 126.

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  85. See Shils, Edward, “Social Inquiry and the Autonomy of the Individual”, in Lerner, Daniel (ed.), The Human Meaning of the Social Sciences (New York: Meridian Boks, 1959), p. 147.

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  86. See Shils, Edward, “Social Inquiry and the Autonomy of the Individual”, in Lerner, Daniel (ed.), The Human Meaning of the Social Sciences (New York: Meridian Books, 1959), p. 150.

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  87. See Shils, Edward, “Social Inquiry and the Autonomy of the Individual”, in Lerner, Daniel (ed.), The Human Meaning of the Social Sciences (New York: Meridian Books, 1959), p. 152.

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  88. The Intellectuals and the Powers, p. vii.

  89. Ibid., p. ix.

  90. “Joseph,” he once said to Joseph Epstein, pointing to three young thugs, “note those three schlumazim”; asked what that meant, he explained, “highwaymen who, after stealing your purse, out of sheer malice slice off your testicles” (“My Friend Edward”, p. 374).

  91. Ibid.

  92. The Calling of Sociology, p. 32.

  93. “Government and Universities in the United States”, p. 177.

  94. The Calling of Sociology, p. 9; see also “Social Science as Public Opinion”, pp. 273–285.

  95. The Constitution of Society, p. 272.

  96. The Calling of Sociology, p. 52.

  97. “The Modern University and Liberal Democracy”, p. 455.

  98. Ibid., p. 459.

  99. Ibid, p. 460.

  100. 26 May, 1991, letter to the author.

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Orlans, H. Edward Shils' beliefs about society and sociology. Minerva 34, 23–37 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00124198

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