Abstract
Canon: ‘a group of books, poems, plays, etc., that are traditionally considered to be very important’.
What is the purpose of an academic canon? As the definition above indicates, it sets out the terrain of discourse, identifies main themes, and serves to establish the commonly accepted boundaries of a discipline. In so doing, it assures that within this discipline, scholars pursue their studies using the same common references for their work. In that way, it can be seen as liberating. At the same time, the canon can be a constraint, serving not just to define but also to defend the boundaries of a discipline. Relying on the canon, scholars are warned when they breach its borders, chastised for departing from a discipline’s agreed-upon intellectual landscape, and the canon is used to distinguish accepted or inside scholarship from heretical challenges to defined doctrine. Canons evolve over time and change, if at all, slowly.
Sociology, from the Latin Socius (companion) and logy (the study of), was first coined by Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès (during the French Revolution and with the increased awareness of social class), and was later formalized by the work of Auguste Comte, a positivist influenced by the natural sciences, seeking to study social patterns of behavior in what he called a systematic and scientific manner. The French and Industrial Revolutions transformed 19th-century European society, leading to the works of Martineau (translating Comte into English), Marx (rejecting positivism for historical materialism and class struggle), Spencer (writing the first Sociology text and favoring government policy to control market capitalism), Simmel (shifting to a micro-level analysis of society), Durkheim (establishing sociology as a discipline, laying out rules of social research, and the reliance on social facts), Mead (laying the foundations of social interactionist approaches to the study of society), and Weber (whose anti-positivism focused on subjectivity to represent social processes). 1 In the roughly 100 years between Comte and Weber, the boundaries and landscape of sociology was established, clearly rooted in European intellectual history. It was not a discipline in which sociologists were in lockstep, and indeed writing from the different traditions established by these key scholars resulted in serious disagreements. It did, however, establish what we have come to understand to be that Sociological Canon which is most often taught to students at both undergraduate and graduate levels.
So, we can ask again: What is the role of the canon? It is to provide frameworks for sociological analysis. But are all the foundational theorists represented? Of the 53 sections of the American Sociological Association, only one, the Marxist Section reflects one of these canonical theorists. No other sections are explicitly tied to any other foundational theorists (though we might consider the Economic Sociology Section as a primarily Weberian section, and the Crime, Lay, and Deviance as a primarily Durkheimian section), while all the others focus on aspects of contemporary society mainly influenced by Durkheim and Weber (with, at times, a hint at Marx). Marx informs a broad method of analysis of society within which are the various themes; in mainstream sociology, all are separate fields of analysis with different methodologies but with a common framework that accepts the organization of society which Marxism critiques.
Burawoy (2021) raises the idea that what makes the canon useful is the exchanges, conversations if you will, between the various theorists – if not in fact, at least in the way these theorists inform adherents. The results are richly textured inquires into contemporary society. However, as Morris (2015) so carefully demonstrates, American sociology ignores an important scholar who pioneered many of the methods and arguments that have come to define sociological research today. Burawoy (2021) points out that Du Bois, born ‘4 years after Weber and 10 years after Durkheim’ (p. 546), was part of that same generation of scholars and his writings of the 19th and 20th centuries were largely ignored. To carry out his goal of ‘decolonizing’ sociology, Burawoy embarks on a series of what he calls dialogues between Du Bois and, respectively, Durkheim, Weber, and Marx. What is of central importance for Burawoy (2021) is that Du Bois dealt with the same concerns that bring us to the works of these foundational theorists, namely that ‘ . . . we are returning to the raw capitalism – the object of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim’s critical analysis – as it faced deep economic and political crises . . . ’ (p. 546).
These conversations, for Burawoy, raises the following five challenges to the conventional canon (p. 550): (1) the centrality of race in any global and historical perspective on capitalism, (2) a moral science that call for an anti-utopian analysis of the limits of the possible, (3) a reflexive science placing within both the world being studied as well as within contested fields of inquiry, (4) an interdisciplinary science encouraging cross fertilization by crossing disciplinary boundaries, and (5) public engagement taking social science out of the academic arena and bringing theory and empirical analysis to frame debates. 2 It is by incorporating Du Bois into the canon that the criteria defining the canon is changed forcing a rereading of the original theorists.
In the end, various attacks on the canon come from positivists who argue the central figures in the canon are only of historical interest 3 that serves to hinder the advance of science. And they come from postcolonial theorists who argue the canon is an exclusionary legacy of Eurocentric theorizing (Burawoy, 2021, p. 551). Both essentially call for the abandonment of the canon as currently taught, or even altogether. Burawoy concludes that it is best to retain the canon, to expand it to include Du Bois, and to consider the canon not as a collection of doctrinaire writings but rather as something contested and dynamic that allows sociology to flourish through critical dialogues. 4
Burawoy presented his ideas about the canon at a symposium held at Brown University, resulting in several critiques and challenges to his vision. Two of these critiques, by Matlon (2022) and Oeur (2022) , follow in this issue. Matlon offers the opinion that the canon is both incomplete and flawed, so it should be abandoned while Oeur turns to three new intimate dialogues concerned with reconstructing theories and theorists. Burawoy’s (2022b) response to both tries to incorporate each and, as he says, meet them half-way to elaborates on how Du Bois is a positive addition to, while still retaining, the canon.
For retreating armies where circumstances make it necessary to abandon their cannons, they spike the barrels to render them useless. Should we, to follow this metaphor, spike the sociological canon, to consider it no longer of any use and move on? As pointed out, that is the position taken by some for a range of reasons, whether the theorists represent a different time or are emblematic of a socio-political legacy of European domination. For many scholars, the fact that there is a canon is irrelevant as they reject all but the ideas of the tradition that informs their understanding of how society operates. But clearly, there are left-Weberians who occupy the territory between doctrinaire Marxists and strict Weberian positions. There are aspects of Durkheim’s views on social responsibility to and the need for social policies for the most vulnerable in society that resonates with Marxist views on remedies to address exploitation and immiseration within market capitalism. Economic sociologists are convinced that market capitalism is the apex of social development and maximizes the productive forces in society, and yet, many of the key concepts in Marx make their way into that field. It would be fair to say that the dialogues Burawoy advocates that makes the canon an important body already exist.
We do not need to reject the canon, to spike it so to speak, to recognize there is more than just the work of Marx, Durkheim, and Weber as the basis for any analysis of society. Burawoy, and Morris before him, point to the importance of Du Bois both as someone who pioneered much of what we now consider the foundations of American sociology and as the author of important works that form the basis of contemporary analyses. But, as Burawoy points out, the challenges of today require that we move past the critical analysis of capitalism in Marx, the search for social harmony in Durkheim and the understanding of the rationalization of economic, political, and social systems in Weber. We must embrace the importance of race as another dimension that informs this complex society. This vision of an expanded canon should also include foundational work of others, for example, works by feminists who bring the gendered nature of society to the fore. Perhaps, the real challenge for us today is to understand that the canon should not be seen as limiting but rather as a place where we can continually expand the terrain of inquiry to account for all our differences and similarities.
