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Harriet Martineau (1802–1876)

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Sociological Theory Beyond the Canon

Abstract

Harriet Martineau was a pioneering social thinker, theorist and methodologist in Victorian England. She was an important figure whose efforts were instrumental in producing a discourse about understanding society through science, in an era long before Sociology was systematized and formalized. She carefully demarcated the subject matter of Sociology, proposed a method of inquiry for scrutinizing society and offered a critique of domination and inequalities. Her efforts were empirical and analytical rather than speculative. Martineau thought systematically and methodically about society and proposed social reforms, moving away from theological and religious explanations of sociological phenomena. Sociology for Martineau was neither philosophical speculation nor abstract theorizing but had to have a practical, empirical impact. That is, to enhance knowledge and understanding, produce the necessary social reforms for the greater good.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Harriet Martineau, In ‘Women in Sociology: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook’, Ed. Mary Jo Deegan, (New York, 1991), 290.

  2. 2.

    According to Hill and Hoecker Drysdale, (2002, 8), ‘Martineau wrote more than 1,500 newspaper columns, of which only a few have been reprinted’.

  3. 3.

    Francis E. Mineka, The Dissidence of Dissent: The Monthly Repository, 1806–1838. (Chapel Hill, 1944).

  4. 4.

    R. K. Webb, Harriet Martineau: A Radical Victorian, (London, 1960).

  5. 5.

    Mineka, The Dissidence of Dissent, (1944).

  6. 6.

    Martineau collaborated with Florence Nightingale (McDonald 1994) and corresponded with George Eliot and Elizabeth Barret Browning (David 1987). She is also known to have developed deep friendships with Erasmus Dickens and Thomas Malthus (Hoecker-Drysdale 1992).

  7. 7.

    Maria Weston Chapman, ‘An Autobiographical Memoir.’ In Memorials of Harriet Martineau, (Boston, 1877).

  8. 8.

    Seymour Martin Lipset, ‘Harriet Martineau’s America,’ in Society in America, Ed. SM Lipset, (New York, 1962); Webb, Harriet Martineau, 1960; Vera Wheatley, The Life and Work of Harriet Martineau, (London, 1957).

  9. 9.

    See Rossi (1973); Deegan (1988); Hill (1987); Pinchanick (1990); Reinharz (1989); Riedesal (1981); Sanders (1986); Spender (1982), Terry (1983); Gayle (1985).

  10. 10.

    Pioneering works include McDonald (1993, 1994), Hoecker-Drysdale, (1992, 1996, 2000), Deegan (1991), Hassett (1996), Hill (1998), Hill and Hoecker-Drysdale (2002), Hunter (1995), Niebrugge-Brantley and Lengermann (1996, 1998, 2002), Orazem (1999), Reinharz (1992, 1993), Sanders (1990), Weiner (1991, 1994). For a very recent edited volume on Martineau, see Sanders and Weiner (2016).

  11. 11.

    Fredrick Harrison, Introduction, In The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, 1 (London: 1895), 17–18.

  12. 12.

    Martineau, Preface to Comte’s translation of The Positive Philosophy, vii.

  13. 13.

    Martineau, Preface to Comte’s translation of The Positive Philosophy, vii.

  14. 14.

    Deegan, Women in Sociology, 290.

  15. 15.

    Hoecker-Drysdale, Harriet Martineau, 33.

  16. 16.

    Lynn McDonald, The Women Founders, 168.

  17. 17.

    Harriet Martineau, Retrospect of Western Travel, (London, 1838).

  18. 18.

    In 1846, she also spent eight months in the ‘Middle East’ (including present day Syria, Egypt and Palestine), which is the basis of her 1848 book, Eastern Life, Past and Present. She also travelled to Ireland and Scotland.

  19. 19.

    Harriet Martineau on Women, edited by Gayle G Yates, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1985.

  20. 20.

    Yates, 1985, 87.

  21. 21.

    While not a member herself, Martineau followed closely the affairs and activities of the National Society for the Promotion of Social Sciences (NAPSS), established in 1857 ‘by members of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, who wished to study political economy, education, and social issues’ (Hoecker-Drysdale 1992, 135).

  22. 22.

    Martineau, Autobiography, 1877, Volume III, 138.

  23. 23.

    Martineau, ‘The Moral of Many Fables’, Illustrations, 1832–1834.

  24. 24.

    D. Logan, Martineau on India.

  25. 25.

    Lipset, Harriet Martineau, 7.

  26. 26.

    How to Observe Morals and Manners, edited by Harriet Martineau, (News Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Books, 1989).

  27. 27.

    Emile Durkheim, The Rules…, (1895).

  28. 28.

    Emile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method (1895).

  29. 29.

    Reinharz, Teaching the History of Women, 92.

  30. 30.

    Martineau, Retrospect of Western Travel, (1838).

  31. 31.

    Hill 1989, Lipset 1962; McDonald 1994, Riedesal 1981.

  32. 32.

    Martineau, How to Observe, 11.

  33. 33.

    Martineau, How to Observe, 40.

  34. 34.

    Martineau, How to Observe, 73.

  35. 35.

    Martineau, How to Observe, (1838).

  36. 36.

    Martineau, How to Observe, (1838), 222.

  37. 37.

    Martineau, How to Observe, 74–75.

  38. 38.

    Gayle, 1985, 87.

  39. 39.

    Martineau, ‘On Female Education’ Monthly Repository 17, October 1822, pp 77–81.

  40. 40.

    Martineau, ‘On Female Education’, 1822, 79.

  41. 41.

    Martineau, ‘On Female Education’, 1822, 80.

  42. 42.

    Martineau, ‘On Female Education’, 1822, 80.

  43. 43.

    Martineau, ‘On Female Education’, 1822, 80.

  44. 44.

    Martineau, Society in America, 1834, 292.

  45. 45.

    Martineau, Society in America, 48–49.

  46. 46.

    Martineau, Society in America, 49.

  47. 47.

    Martineau, Society in America, 49.

  48. 48.

    Martineau, Society in America, 53.

  49. 49.

    Nisbet, Reconsidering Tocquvelli’s Democracy, (1988), 173–4 and Kandal, The woman question, (1988), 73–74.

  50. 50.

    See Lenggermann and Niebrugge, The Women Founders; Sociology, 37.

  51. 51.

    Martineau, Society in America, 223.

  52. 52.

    Martineau, Society in America, 219–220.

  53. 53.

    In view of Tocqueville’s notice that America women were satisfied with their lot in society, ironically 15 years after Tocqueville visited the USA, the largest women’s Suffrage movement in the world was launched at the Convention on Women’s Rights in New York.

  54. 54.

    Martineau, Society in America, Volume II, 73-75.

  55. 55.

    Martineau, Society in America, 126–128.

  56. 56.

    Martineau, Society in America, 291.

  57. 57.

    Martineau, How to Observe, 37.

  58. 58.

    Harriet Martineau, Retrospect of Western Travel, vol. 2 [1838].

  59. 59.

    Martineau, How to Observe, 189.

  60. 60.

    Martineau, How to Observe, 200–201.

  61. 61.

    Martineau, How to Observe, 199.

  62. 62.

    Martineau, How to Observe, 206.

  63. 63.

    Lenggerman 1998; Dryjanska 2008 and 2008a.

  64. 64.

    Lenggermann and Niebrugge, The Women Founders; Sociology, 40.

  65. 65.

    Apart from a handful of feminists in the 1970s and 1980s (Poovey 1988; Rossi 1973; Spender 1982), Martineau’s work have not been engaged by many contemporary feminist scholars. Part of the reason for this as reasoned by McDonald (1994) is due to the critique of empiricist methodology in feminist scholarship today. Empiricist, positivist approaches are defined as being antithetical to feminist methodology and research and are thus rejected. Martineau, given her methodological principles and her self-definition as a woman of science, is caught in the web of such a rebuff.

  66. 66.

    Webb, Harriet Martineau, 308.

  67. 67.

    Rossi, The First Woman Sociologist, 124.

  68. 68.

    See Lengermann and Niebrugge-Brantley (1998), Zeitlin 1997, Ritzer 2000.

  69. 69.

    McDonald, The Women Founders, 242.

  70. 70.

    Terry, Bringing Women…, 259.

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  1. Sociology, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Vineeta Sinha

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Sinha, V. (2017). Harriet Martineau (1802–1876). In: Sociological Theory Beyond the Canon. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-41134-1_4

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