Abstract
There are many social theory textbooks out there. What does this one have to offer that is not already covered by many others published in recent years, such as Anthony Giddens' globally successful textbook Sociology (2006), Steven Seidman's Contested Knowledge (2007) or Charles Turner's Investigating Social Theory (2010)?
Gregor McLennan's The Story of Sociology: A First Companion to Social Theory is not a textbook but, as the title indicates, a story; to be precise, the Story of Sociology. The advantage of reading a story, according to McLennan, is that ‘the book [is] slim and approachable enough for readers to delve into [it] whilst away from their desks and doing other things’ (p. xii). Besides, I would argue that stories are also much more associated with pleasure than textbooks and McLennan's Story confirms this.
The Story of Sociology is especially targeted at first-year sociology students but it is equally attractive for more advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students and academics. Written in clear and simple language, the book documents McLennan's long-standing research and teaching experience and his well-developed sense of capturing the most common difficulties of students to understand social theory. He makes sociology accessible by using the argument that social theory cannot be seen separate from empirical work and that they go hand in hand. McLennan flawlessly weaves current empirical examples of social life into the text, thereby inviting readers to understand everyday life facilitated by social theory. The Story of Sociology is not only entertaining and witty, but a comprehensive training of the analytical mind. It leaves behind the classic textbook style of providing a chronological narrative of traditional sociology that remains unchallenged in its substance.
The Story of Sociology has ten sections with corresponding chapters. At the end of each section, the author includes a question-and-answer exchange. McLennan starts out by explaining why we want to know more about sociology in the first place. In the first section he joins the students where they are at that moment in time, in the market environment of the university, having to choose a university and a degree and also having to think about their future chances in the labour market. McLennan provides arguments in favour of a critical social science degree, such as the development of critical thinking. The second section is dedicated to ‘sociology as understanding modernity’. McLennan depicts the key features of modernity, such as socio-economic transformation and modern nationhood, and outlines in what way this differs from seeing society as postmodern. The next section, ‘Legacies of Enlightenment’, is particularly relevant as it presents both the main characteristics of enlightenment, such as rationalism, universalism and its euro-centric, white, male, upper-class focus, as well as how these legacies have been encountered by feminism, postcolonialism and cosmopolitan studies, to name a few. In contrast to the common chronological descriptions of enlightenment followed by failure and critique, this way of presenting the story of enlightenment and its critiques allows the reader to develop a more holistic perspective of the here and now. Within a space of only ten pages, this zipped history of enlightenment and its failures provides the perfect point of departure for students to gain an in-depth understanding of contemporary and historical sociology.
The following section deals with three founders of sociology – Saint Simon, Comte and Spencer – and three classics of sociology. Rather than leaving today's critical reception of the founders of sociology for later chapters, McLennan weaves critique into all his chapters and, for example, illustrates how Herbert Spencer's social model of evolutionism can be understood as euro-centric (p. 51). At first sight, McLennan's approach to the sociological classics narrative – with Marx, Durkheim and Weber in the forefront – seems traditional. However, in the introduction to this chapter he explains that we can only speak of three classics instead of the three classics as ‘what counts as a “classic” in an academic discipline is not a straightforward matter’ (p. 55). So as not to be too narrowly restricted to three classics, McLennan adds another three in the following chapter – Georg Simmel, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and W.E.B. Du Bois. By including American feminist Gilman and African-American Du Bois into the ranks of classics, his initial statement of changeability of what counts as a classic does not remain mere rhetoric. Moreover, it is yet more proof of McLennan's more interdisciplinary approach to framing the subject of sociology and its contributors. This approach promotes a more contemporary mode of thinking in students during their key period of socialization into sociology.
Surprisingly, McLennan dedicates one section to ‘American hegemony’, covering pragmatist interactionism and Talcott Parsons. On page 112 he admits that this chapter leaves aside a great part of American Sociology. It is lamentable that he does not stick to the successful format of discourse and counter-discourse employed in all the other chapters. It would have been good to see C. Wright Mills presented as one of Parsons's major opponents, as only in this complete version can the dynamics of American Sociology of the 1950s and 1960s be fully grasped. The eighth section entitled ‘Conflict, Contention and Synthesis’ addresses the key question of structure and agency and covers some of the conflict theories since the 1960s. This makes up for the lack of integration in the previous chapter.
The ninth section ‘From the Past to the Posts’ is a sophisticated response to students' frequent confusion about the meaning of theoretical movements emerging with a ‘post’-suffix, starting from postmodernity and postcolonialism and moving through to post-secularism and post-disciplinarity. Once again, this is cleverly done and brings rich learning insights in a few pages, analysing the post-movements in their togetherness, rather than as separate entities. It also reminds us of Steven Seidman's Contested Knowledge (2007) which represented a major shift in social theory textbook writing through the rewriting and questioning of the traditional sociological canon. In fact, one cannot stress often enough the significance of ‘new’ social theory accounts, such as McLennan's, that treat the postcolonial and gender categories as analytically crucial categories that run through all parts of social life rather than as mere sub-sociologies and appendices to the story of classical sociology.
The final chapter is dedicated to a discussion of Michael Burawoy's Public Sociology and his four-field scheme of public sociology, policy sociology, professional sociology and critical sociology. This author sparked a lot of discussion about the purpose of the sociological profession and the search for sociological identity.
All in all, McLennan's The Story of Sociology is a theoretically sophisticated book, written in a crisp and accessible style. It is methodologically firm and very apt for sociology readers of all levels. Fun factor 10.