Abstract
The textual comparisons in Chapter 4 suggest that utopia may usefully be understood as a form of speculative sociology of the future and an explanatory sociology of the past and present, while sociology has a strong utopian element. Yet to talk of the interpenetration of sociology and utopia at the fin de siècle is anachronistic, for what Mills later called the sociological imagination was widely diffused, and sociology barely existed as a distinct and identifiable discipline. As sociology became institutionalized within the academy, it became consistently hostile to its utopian content. As Bloch complained of Marxism, the cold stream of analysis persistently overrode the warm stream of desire to make the world a better place. The denial of utopia resulted in a triple repression within sociology: repression of the future, of normativity, and of the existential and what it means to be human. It also involved a retreat from active engagement and involvement with a wider public. Despite this, subterranean utopian currents have contributed to sociology’s continuing project of social critique.
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Notes
P. Abrams (1968) The Origins of British Sociology: 1834–1914 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press) p. 3. See also
R. Dahrendorf (1995) LSE: A History of the London School of Economics and Political Science1895– 1995 (Oxford: Oxford University Press);
A. H. Halsey (2004) A History of Sociology in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press);
M. Studholme (2008) ‘Patrick Geddes and the History of Environmental Sociology in Britain: A Cautionary Tale’, Journal of Classical Sociology, 8(3): 367–9.
The earliest version of this article appeared as H. G. Wells (1905) ‘The So-called Science of Sociology’, Independent Review, pp. 21–37. A letter from Wells, also headed ‘The So-called Science of Sociology’, appeared in October 1905 in the Fortnightly Review, defending the earlier article against criticism. See H. G. Wells (1998) Correspondence of H. G. Wells, edited by D. C. Smith, 4 Vols (London: Pickering and Chatto) (2): 78–81. The article was published in revised form as
H. G. Wells (1906) ‘The So-called Science of Sociology’, Sociological Papers, 3: 357–77 and again slightly revised for
H. G. Wells (1914) An Englishman Looks at the World: Being a Series of Unrestrained Remarks upon Contemporary Matters (London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne: Cassell and Co.) pp. 192–206. Page references are to the 1906 version. A more detailed account of the context of Wells’s intervention is given in
Ruth Levitas (2010) ‘Back to the Future: Wells, Sociology, Utopia and Method’, Sociological Review, 58(4): 530–47.
The Co-Efficients were convened by Sidney Webb and were ‘a group of men of diverse temperaments and varied talents, imbued with a common faith and a common purpose, and eager to work out, and severally to expound, how each department of national life can be raised to its highest possible efficiency’. Quoted in N. Mackenzie and J. Mackenzie (1977) The First Fabians (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson) p. 290;
H. G. Wells (1984 [1934]) Experiment in Autobiography (London: Faber and Faber) p. 761;
R. J. Harrison (2000) The Life and Times of Sidney and Beatrice Webb 1858–1905: The Formative Years (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan) p. 326 ff.
S. Zizek (2005) ‘Lenin Shot at Finland Station’, London Review of Books, 27(16), August 18: 23.
M. Weber (1949) Methodology of the Social Sciences (Glencoe: Free Press).
H. G. Wells (1905) A Modern Utopia (London: Chapman and Hall) pp. 318–9.
S. Collini (1979) Liberalism and Sociology: L. T. Hobhouse and the Political Argument in England1880–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
M. Studhome (1997) ‘From Leonard Hobhouse to Tony Blair: A Sociological Connection?’, Sociology, 31(3): 531–47;
M. Studholme (2007) ‘Patrick Geddes: Founder of Environmental Sociology’, Sociological Review, 55(3): 441–59;
M. Studholme (2008) ‘Patrick Geddes and the History of Environmental Sociology in Britain: A Cautionary Tale’, Journal of Classical Sociology, 8(3): 367–91.
V. Branford (2010 [1921]) Whitherward? Hell or Eutopia (General Books) p. 69.
See Branford, Whitherward and V. Branford and P. Geddes (2010 [1917]) The Coming Polity: A Study in Reconstruction (General Books). For recent discussion of the role of Branford and Geddes in British Sociology, see:
L. Goldman (2007) ‘Foundations of British Sociology 1880–1930: Contexts and Biographies’, The Sociological Review, 55(3): 431–40;
M. Savage (2007) ‘The Sociological Review and the History of British Sociology’, The Sociological Review, 55(3): 429–30;
J. Scott and C. T. Husbands (2007) ‘Victor Branford and the Building of British Sociology’, The Sociological Review, 55(3): 460–84; Studholme, ‘Patrick Geddes: Founder of Environmental Sociology’; Studholme, ‘Patrick Geddes and the History of Environmental Sociology’.
L. Mumford (2003) The Story of Utopias: Ideal Commonwealths and Social Myths (London: Harrap) p. 41.
S. Bruce (1999) Sociology: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press) p. 83.
L. T. Hobhouse (1908) ‘Editorial’, The Sociological Review, 1(1): 4–5. See also L. T. Hobhouse (1908) ‘The Roots of Modern Sociology’, Inauguration of the Martin White Professorships of Sociology (17 December 1907) (London: John Murray and the University of London).
M. Nussbaum (2003) Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
A. Sayer (2011) Why Things Matter to People (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) pp. 4–5.
G. D. Mitchell (1970) A Dictionary of Sociology (London: Routledge) p. 217.
K. Mannheim (1979) Ideology and Utopia (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul) p. 173.
Ibid., p. 184. For a longer discussion of Mannheim, see R. Levitas (1990) The Concept of Utopia (London: Philip Allan) Chapter 3.
R. Dahrendorf (1958) ‘Out of Utopia: Towards a Reorientation of Sociological Analysis’, American Journal of Sociology, 64(2): 118, 117, 115. Wells’s original says ‘be not’.
R. Kilminster (1998) The Sociological Revolution: From Enlightenment to the Global Age (London: Routledge) p. 147.
A. Bammer (1991) Partial Visions: Feminism and Utopianism in the 1970s (London: Routledge).
H. Bradley (2013) Gender (Cambridge: Polity Press).
M. Phillips (2012) The Moral Maze, BBC Radio 4, 25 July.
F. Jameson (1991) Postmodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London: Verso).
See K. Kumar (1978) Prophecy and Progress: The Sociology of Industrial and Post Industrial Society (London: Allen Lane);
K. Kumar (1995) From Post-Industrial to Post-Modern Society (Oxford: Basil Blackwell), Second Edition, Wiley-Blackwell 2004. For Kumar’s more direct discussion of utopianism, see
K. Kumar (1987) Utopia and Anti-Utopia in Modern Times (Oxford: Basil Blackwell).
M. Horkheimer (1997) ‘Traditional and Critical Social Theory’ in M. Horkheimer (ed.) Critical Theory: Selected Essays (New York: Continuum Press) pp. 188–243.
A recent example is R. Skidelsky and E. Skidelsky (2012) How Much is Enough?: The Love of Money and the Case for the Good Life (London: Allen Lane). For a fuller discussion of Marcuse’s utopianism, see Levitas, Concept, Chapter 6.
T. W. Adorno (2009) Night Music: Essays on Music 1928–1962 (London: Seagull) p. 187.
L. Boltanski (2011) On Critique: A Sociology of Emancipation (Cambridge: Polity Press) p. 163.
P. Hayden and C. el-Ojeili (eds) (2009) Globalization and Utopia: Critical Essays (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan) p. 1.
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Levitas, R. (2013). Utopia Denied. In: Utopia as Method. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137314253_5
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