Abstract
Current sociology of knowledge tends to take for granted Robert K. Merton’s theory of cumulative advantage: successful ideas bring recognition to their authors, successful authors have their ideas recognized more easily than unknown ones. This article argues that this theory should be revised via the introduction of the differential between the status of an idea and that of its creator: when an idea is more important than its creator, the latter becomes identified with the former, and this will hinder recognition of the intellectual’s new ideas as they differ from old ones in their content or style. Robert N. Bellah’s performance during the “civil religion debate” of the 1970s is reconstructed as an example of how this mechanism may work. Implications for further research are considered in the concluding section.
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Notes
I interchangeably use “idea” or “cultural object” to indicate any recognizable ideational object—discoveries, facts, theories, paradigms, methods, research programs, novels, ways of acting, paintings, songs, poems, and so on. As I explain later in the article, this choice is justified by the fact that ideas and texts are generally understood by way of simplified formulas that compact them into easily recognizable objects. In this sense, there is almost no analytical difference between “E = mc2” and War and Peace.
Whereas Merton’s work on the Matthew effect focused on multiple discoveries, Cole and Cole (1973, p. 192 ff.) tested “the influence of location in the stratification system on all discoveries.”
See Camic and Gross 2001 for a convincing depiction of the new (i.e., post-Mertonian) sociology of ideas as a common space of discourse.
This apparent tautology occupies the very heart of Bourdieu’s general theory of reproduction. See Bourdieu 1977.
The issue was the offspring of two conferences devoted to “Religion in American Culture” (October 15–16, 1965 and May 14–15, 1966). The story of Bellah’s engagement with America prior to 1967 is recounted in Bortolini 2010.
The appeal of Bellah’s thesis probably partly depended on his use of the expression “civil religion” itself and on his ability in reframing and naming the object of a discussion that had been going on in the 1950s and 1960s. Bellah’s institutional position (see next section) and the eminence of Daedalus itself may be other explicative factors. Not having any other reliable empirical data on the causes of the success of Bellah’s essay, I can only rely on the interviews I had with Donald Jones and Martin Marty, who generally share this view (author files).
Richey and Jones (1974) also assigned Sydney E. Mead’s “religion of the republic” to the same category. In another chapter, Martin Marty (1974, pp. 153–155) advanced a fourfold classification, and called Mead’s and Bellah’s a “prophetic conception of the self-transcendence of the nation.” In fact, the existence of the debate had already been noted (Christian Century 1973; Moellering 1973; Garrett 1974).
For example, in a letter to Dean McGeorge Bundy dated January 9, 1961, Parsons spoke of “the widespread recognition of [Bellah’s] astonishing promise,” and in a letter to Harvard President Nathan M. Pusey (January 24, 1961) he wrote that Bellah was “probably superior, in this regard [i.e., as a theorist], to Robert Merton.” See Parsons Papers, Harvard Archives, HUG (FP) 42.8.8, box 3. For his part, Riesman wrote to Parsons on November 2, 1965: “I regard [Bellah], as I think you do, as the ablest, most dedicated, most disinterested, and most universal scholar in the whole university.” And then again to Ezra Vogel and Albert Craig on November 3, 1966: Bellah “is our strongest colleague in every sense: as an intellectual, and in terms of erudition and dedication without peer, to say that I reverence him would not be too strong.” See Riesman Papers, Harvard Archives, HUG (FP) 15.4, box 17.
Bellah decided to participate in the ACR debate for intellectual and political reasons. On one hand, in the late 1960s he was deeply dissatisfied with American sociology. As Jennifer Platt (1996, pp. 67–105) and George Steinmetz (2007, pp. 339–351; see also Abbott and Sparrow 2007) have argued, in the 1950s and 1960s a general and rather vague positivism had become a widespread doxa. Against this intellectual tradition, which he considered incapable of grasping fully the richness and depth of social and religious phenomena, Bellah had assumed a cross-disciplinary posture (see Bellah 1970a, p. x; Bellah 1970b; Bortolini 2010, 2011). The ACR debate gave him the opportunity to interact with scholars from two disciplinary fields—theology and, especially, American history—that he found much more intellectually challenging, and more prestigious, than 1960s sociology. On the other hand, decisive was Bellah’s deeply felt, if ambivalent, concern for his country. After the beginning of the Vietnam War and the election of Richard Nixon, his outlook had grown increasingly dark. Bellah was also unsettled by what he saw as an indefensible retreat on the part of academe when faced with the “third time of trial” (Bellah 1968; see also Bellah 1975b).
Besides editing the book version of the Daedalus issue in 1968 and responding to some critics in The Religious Situation 1968 (see Bellah and McLoughlin 1968; Cutler 1968), Bellah was already giving talks on American problems in 1969–1970. A comparison between the Frank L. Weil Memorial Lectures (delivered in 1971) and The Broken Covenant (Bellah 1975a) reveals that for the most part the work reproduces the conferences verbatim: Chapters 1–5 duplicate the Weil Lectures with very small changes or additions, and the last chapter only retains the title (“The Birth of New American Myths”) as well as the first and last pages of the original lecture, which had already been delivered in 1970 and was published as Bellah 1972. See also Bellah 1971. For a partial list of seminars and symposia, see Kathan and Fuchs-Kreimer 1975. Kevin Proffitt, whom I would like to thank, sent me a CD copy of the audio recordings of the Weil lectures from the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati.
According to Herbert Gans (1997), Habits is among the eight best-selling sociological books in America of all time. In 1987, the five authors of Habits also edited a paperback anthology of readings from classical and contemporary thinkers, entitled Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Bellah et al. 1987).
A content analysis of 34 book reviews and articles focusing on Habits between 1985 and 1989 (author files) shows the use of the following phrases: “the authors” (24 times); “Bellah” and “Bellah et al.” (10 each); “Bellah and his associates” and “Bellah and his colleagues” (9 each); the authors’ five names (4); “Bellah and his co-authors” and “the Bellah team” (3 each); “Bellah and company,” “Bellah and the others,” “Bellah’s group,” “Bellah and friends,” “Bellah’s coworkers”, and “Bellah and his collaborators” (2 each); “Bellah and his crew” (once). I must add that the advance for The Good Society was equally shared between the five intellectuals, and that Bellah always insists that the books were a collective endeavor (Bellah 2007).
See http://berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2001/01/10/bellah.html (accessed on January 24, 2012).
See, among the most recent works citing BCR, Demerath 2003; Alexander 2006; Gentile 2006; Wolfe et al. 2006; Cristi and Dawson 2007; Hecht 2007; Kao and Copulsky 2007; Flere and Lavric 2007; Alexander and Thompson 2008; Bankston and Caldas 2009; Hvithamar et al. 2009; Roof 2009; Santiago 2009; Crook 2010. Yale sociologist Philip Gorski is presently writing a book on American civil society.
As Harry M. Collins (1993) noted, in their studies on the institutional structures of science the Mertonians rarely took the content of scientific discoveries or ideas into account. Among the post-Mertonians, Pierre Bourdieu’s “scenario” works, such as Homo Academicus or The Rules of Art, portray intellectuals within the space of positions as if their ideas were evidently and unequivocally related to genres, theoretical stances, or poetics (see Bourdieu 1988; Bourdieu 1992). The same problem affects even the finest works of some scholars who were inspired by Bourdieu, such as Johann Heilbron (1995) and Fritz Ringer (2004). This simplification does not depend on the scope of the inquiry: in his book-length treatment of the relationship between Martin Heidegger’s philosophy and National Socialism, Bourdieu (1991) reduces the German philosopher’s work to a tiny set of metaphysical slogans. Similarly, when Michèle Lamont (1987, pp. 584–585) analyses the fate of “Derrida,” she is handling a compact cultural object constituted by Jacques Derrida’s writings, biographical facts about him, and their representations within relevant scholarly niches—the same is true for Neil McLaughlin’s Erich Fromm or Randall Collins’s characterization of “Fichte” as “a way of designating a social movement within the intellectual community” (Collins 1998, p. 4; McLaughlin 1988). The sociology of scientific knowledge has generally paid more attention to the content of cultural objects. At the same time, its focus on controversies privileges either the clash between two rival ideas championed by different (groups of) scientists or priority fights between two or more scientists over the same discovery, when the scientists’ names are used to designate clear-cut stances or vice versa (see Collins and Pinch 1995; for another example see Laub and Sampson 1991). By reducing complex bodies of work into standardized formulas, sociologists of knowledge prevent themselves from appreciating both the social processes that lead intellectuals to pursue innovative directions and the effects that changes of mind may have on their careers. Collins’s or Bourdieu’s quick hints at the positional interests of promising protegés or emerging novelists do not amount to a full explanation of changes of mind, whereas Latour’s studies of successful “translations” seem to take for granted an almost unlimited malleability of cultural objects at the service of their creator’s interests (see Collins 2002; Bourdieu 1992; Latour 1987). The few cases in which changes of mind have been the focus of inquiry—such as Neil Gross’s book on Richard Rorty or Edward Welch’s monograph on François Mauriac (Gross 2008; Welch 2006)—are extremely interesting for our argument, although they do not touch upon the phenomenon I am trying to highlight here.
Bellah wrote the paper at the explicit request of his mentor, Talcott Parsons, who was to be the chairman of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for the 1967–1971 term. As he now remembers: “I had not wanted to participate because I did not feel I knew enough about America. I was, after all, a Japan specialist; but Talcott assured me that a sociologist can write on anything” (Bellah 2006, p. 137; see also Mathisen 1989, p. 130, n.1). On Bellah and the United States before “Civil Religion in America,” see Bortolini 2010.
I purposely use a neutral expression here, since I am not convinced that any one of the two main conceptions of agency used in the sociology of ideas—namely Bourdieu’s “habitus” (stressing practices and unconscious strategies) and Neil Gross’ “intellectual self-concept” (stressing reflexivity and conscious strategies)—can ultimately be used to explain one’s actions sufficiently. See Gross 2008 and Bourdieu 2004.
Given his upbringing and intellectual record, Bellah’s decision to aggrandize his “embodied cultural capital” (Bourdieu 1986, p. 244) by way of long hours of study and reflection could easily have been foreseen, but this result cannot be taken for granted. He may have thought that lay audiences deserved no effort on his part or, conversely, that academic criticism was not to be taken seriously—after all, he had a top job in one of the top sociology departments in America and the anti-Parsonsian tide was rising with violent and quite unfair overtones (Alexander 1983). Moreover, he could have settled down in an intellectual niche, repeating over and over again his original civil religion thesis, or he could have abandoned the debate after his first difficulties. Last but not least, he could have used extra-intellectual resources to silence his interlocutors—this strategy would have been perfectly appropriate, for example, in my own country.
A content analysis of Bellah’s publications on American matters from 1967 to 1985 reveals a constant widening of his connoisseurship, as measured by the rate of new works, authors, and historical personalities cited, as well as the disciplinary diversity of works and authors mentioned (files of the author).
Bellah’s changes of mind might thus be explained as the outcome of three factors: his increasing expertise in the field and his willingness to pay due attention to critiques from knowledgeable interlocutors, combined with the search for a more individual voice (see Bortolini 2010).
This is reproduced word for word in The Broken Covenant (Bellah 1975a, pp. 45–46). In the Weil lectures Bellah also presented his views on some other problems: in his denunciation of the “double crime” against blacks and American Indians, the harsh judgment on the Civil War as “a drama in the white soul,” and the whole lecture titled “Nativism and Cultural Pluralism in America,” Bellah anticipated the critiques of Long (1974), Richardson (1974), and Deloria (1976). With his analyses of how the main values of the American creed had been betrayed and interpreted in a particularistic way, Bellah set the record straight about his alleged optimism.
As some transcripts show (e.g., Tanenbaum 1975; Bourg 1976), the same was happening at seminars and conferences. Later on, attempts at synthesis (West 1980; Gehrig 1981; Hughey 1983) produced modest results, and symposia devoted to Bellah or civil religion failed to convey the complexity of his thought on religion in America (Hammond et al. 1994).
My description seems to imply that Bellah’s changes of mind had gone entirely unnoticed. This is obviously far from true. Talcott Parsons, for one, was strongly critical of what he perceived as a major shift in his former student’s thought. Parsons had enthusiastically endorsed BCR even before it went to print and had incorporated it into his interpretation of American society (Parsons 1966, p. 134; Parsons 1974). Upon reading a draft of The Broken Covenant, however, he privately expressed his reservations: “Quite frankly I was disappointed in the manuscript and I feel that it is not up the high level of scholarly standards which you have so impressively maintained over a long period.” Parsons emphasized that his strictures were “deeply felt and meant” and asked Bellah to take them into account in the final revision of his manuscript—advice that Bellah decided not to follow. See Parsons to Bellah, 09/10/1974, Harvard Archives, HUG (FP) 42.8.8, box 3. Other eminent friends—including Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Kenneth Burke, David Riesman and Ed Tiryakian—were more supportive of his new work. See: Smith to Bellah, 09/27/1975; Burke to Bellah, 01/31/1974; Riesman to Bellah, 12/12/1973 and 09/17/1974; Tiryakian to Bellah, 12/09/1974 (BPF). Parsons articulated his critique of The Broken Covenant in Parsons 1977, pp. 44–50. Some commentators simply hinted at Bellah’s change of mind, while others interpreted it as either a mere sharpening of his original civil religion thesis (Kessler 1977) or a shift to pessimism (Jolicoeur and Knowles 1978).
This is particularly evident at seminars and conferences, to which intellectuals are invited to speak as the walking embodiments of their better-known ideas. For example, on January 19, 2004, Jürgen Habermas and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger exchanged their views on liberalism, Western secularization, and the public role of religion at the Katholische Akademie in Munich, Germany. That night, Habermas embodied sophisticated secularized liberalism, just as Ratzinger embodied Roman Catholic theology—the whole point of having them arguing on “reason and religion” was to hear, and see, two bodies of knowledge debating through the bodies of their champions (see Habermas and Ratzinger 2007). Interestingly enough, this aspect of seminars and debates was not analyzed by Randall Collins (1998, pp. 24–37) in his explanation of the importance of face-to-face discussions in intellectual life.
The “Bellah affair at Princeton” began in March 1973, when a harsh but nonetheless ordinary academic fight found its way to the wider public sphere. Bellah had been proposed by Clifford Geertz and Carl Kaysen as a permanent member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton—Geertz and Kaysen being respectively the Institute’s only professor of social science and its director. When a coalition of historians, philosophers, and mathematicians opposed Bellah’s nomination, the Board of the Institute confirmed the appointment, provoking the faculty’s rage. In a violation of academic etiquette, newspapers had direct access to confidential evaluations of Bellah’s work, and his public renown appeared to be in jeopardy. When the “affair” subsided, Bellah had become a well-known public persona. See Bortolini 2011.
A good example of this kind of work is Jean Lockwood’s attempt to explain the development of Bellah’s ideas on ACR by relating them to his more theoretical works (e.g., “Religious Evolution”). Lockwood (1975) was violently criticized by Bellah (1975c) in one of his few rejoinders. I interpret Bellah’s unusually wild tone as an indicator of his unease with his new status.
See note 16 above.
It is true that Habits intentionally made no mention of the ACR; however, its theoretical foundations closely resembled Bellah’s more recent ideas on American politics and religion: Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and the distinction between biblical and republican traditions and utilitarian individualism had been the cornerstones of many post-BCR essays. One may safely say that, from the viewpoint of content, Habits was recognizably much closer to Bellah’s later essays on the ACR than “Civil Religion in America.”
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Acknowledgments
Earlier versions of this article were presented at the 38th International Institute of Sociology Annual Meeting, Budapest, June 2008, and the Urbino Seminar in Critical Theory, July 2008. The author would like to thank Robert Bellah, Matteo Bianchin, René Capovin, Harry M. Collins, Andrea Cossu, Gary A. Fine, Neil Gross, Donald G. Jones, Samuel Z. Klausner, Andrea M. Maccarini, Neil McLaughlin, Gianfranco Poggi, Massimo Rosati, Marco Santoro, Giuseppe Sciortino, John Torpey, Isacco Turina, and the Theory and Society reviewers and Editors for their kind help.
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Bortolini, M. The trap of intellectual success: Robert N. Bellah, the American civil religion debate, and the sociology of knowledge. Theor Soc 41, 187–210 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-012-9166-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-012-9166-8